The rain that fell over the ruins of the Silver District wasn't water. It was grey, lukewarm ash the fallout from Fang and Aris's universal collision.
Null stayed in the dirt. The Grey Crown had fallen from his head and rolled into a puddle of sludge. He didn't reach for it. He didn't reach for anything. His jet-black hair was plastered to his forehead, and his eyes, once the proud cross-stars of a God-candidate, were now just the dull, flat eyes of a boy who had lost his home twice.
"I'm just a human," Null whispered into the mud. "A human father. An elf slave mother. I wasn't born to be a King. I was born to be a victim."
Fang stood a few feet away, his body smoking from the dragon-scale burnout. He looked down at Null, not with pity, but with a cold, ancient frustration.
"Is that what you think?" Fang's voice was hoarse. "That the Universe only rewards the high-born? That the King of Stone is strong because of his blood? No, Null. He is strong because he *chose* to be a monster. You are failing because you are waiting for your blood to tell you who you are."
The Descent into the Ego
Suddenly, the ground didn't just feel cold it vanished.
Because of Null's intense self-loathing, his 49% power reacted to his emotions. Instead of an external domain, he triggered an **Inward Collapse**. He didn't fall into the Void; he fell into the **Archive of the Unworthy**.
He found himself standing in a library that stretched into infinity. The shelves weren't filled with books, but with jars of flickering, dim light. These were the memories of the "low-ranks" the servants, the humans, the slaves who had died throughout the history of the Realms.
"Why am I here?" Null asked, his voice echoing in the vast, dusty silence.
"Because this is where you think you belong," a voice replied.
Null turned. Standing by a shelf was his father. Not the warrior-god he had imagined, but the man he actually was. He wore a simple leather tunic, his hands calloused from work, his face tired but kind. Beside him stood a woman with pointed ears and the brand of a slave on her collarbone. His mother.
"Dad? Mom?"
They didn't hug him. They weren't ghosts; they were echoes.
"We were nobody, Null," his father said, his voice sounding like dry parchment. "I died because I was too strong for the weak to handle, and too weak for the strong to notice. Your mother died because she was a commodity."
His mother stepped forward, her eyes the same grey as Null's crown. "You hate that you come from us. You think our 'low rank' is a ceiling that keeps you from the 50%."
The Paradox of the Slave
"Aris is a General of the King," Null shouted at the echoes. "He copies the laws of the universe! Fang is a Primal Shepherd! And I... I am the son of a murder victim and a slave. How am I supposed to balance the world when my own foundation is made of trash?"
His father laughed. It was a hollow, echoing sound.
"Trash? Null, look at these jars." He pointed to the millions of memories on the shelves. "The Gods built the high heavens, but *we* built the ground they stand on. The 'High Ranks' are fixed. They are stagnant. A God is born a God and dies a God. But a human... a 'low-rank'... we are the only ones who can become **Anything**."
His mother reached out and touched his chest, right where the 49% was flickering.
"The 50% isn't about blood, Null. It's about the Axiom of Choice. The King of Stone wants to rewrite the world into a perfect, unchanging diamond. But you... you are the Ink. You are the mess. You are the mistake that the system can't account for."
The First Step of the True King
The Archive began to shake. Outside, in the real world, the King of Stone's presence was beginning to manifest. A giant, monolithic pillar of obsidian was descending from the clouds, intended to crush the Silver District once and for all.
Null looked at his hands. They were still black. He was still the son of an orphan.
"I don't need a divine bloodline," Null whispered.
He reached out and grabbed a jar from the shelf. It was a memory of a nameless human soldier who had died defending a gate he knew would fall. He grabbed another an elf mother who had starved so her child could eat. He began to pull the "Unworthy" memories into himself.
[God-Skill: Legacy of the Forsaken]
He wasn't absorbing power. He was absorbing Weight.
The Grey Crown in the mud outside began to vibrate. It didn't turn gold. It didn't turn silver. It turned a deep, crushing Iron Grey.
The Resurrection
Back in the ruins, Fang looked up. The obsidian pillar was seconds away from impact. It was a "World-Ender" class attack. Fang tried to stand, but his legs gave out.
"It's over," Fang muttered, closing his eyes.
***BOOM.***
The pillar hit. But it didn't crush the city.
A single hand was holding the bottom of the trillion-ton obsidian monolith.
Null stood there. He wasn't glowing. He wasn't flaring his aura. He just stood in his tattered clothes, his jet-black hair messy, his eyes no longer having crosses in them. They were solid, deep grey like a stormy sea.
The Grey Crown sat firmly on his head, but it looked different. It looked like it was made of the very chains his mother had worn.
"Aris said I was a child playing with tools," Null said. His voice wasn't loud, but it caused the obsidian pillar to start cracking. "He's right. I'm a child of the mud. I'm the son of the 'Unworthy.' And that means I have nothing left to lose."
With a single, casual shrug of his shoulder, Null shattered the King of Stone's pillar. The pieces of divine obsidian fell like rain, but they didn't touch the groundthey turned into black ink before they could hit the ruins.
Null looked at Fang. "I'm not at 50% yet, Fang. But I've stopped looking for it. I'm going to the King's throne. Not as a God. As a Human."
Fang looked at Null and felt a shiver. He didn't see the boy anymore. He saw a man who had finally realized that the lowest rank in the world is the only one that can't fall any further.
The Horizon of 49.9%
Null turned his gaze toward the sky where the King of Stone's fortress was hidden behind the clouds. He didn't fly. He simply stepped onto the air, and the air formed a staircase of black ink beneath his feet.
"Wait for me, Aris," Null whispered. "I have a few more things to teach you about 'low-ranks'."
The King of Stone's kingdom did not sit upon the earth, nor did it hide in the depths. It hung in the high atmosphere, a sprawling gothic nightmare of obsidian and gravity-defying spires that looked down upon the world like a predator.
Null didn't fly to reach it. He walked.
Each step onto the sky created a platform of hardened black ink that vanished the moment his heel left it. He reached the grand entrance a hallway so vast that the doors were the size of mountains.
Inside, the King's army was waiting.
There were thousands of them. Behemoths from the deepest pits of the Wonder World, towering demons with skin like jagged flint, and obsidian-clad soldiers whose spears could pierce through dimensions. They stood as tall as the vaulted ceilings, their breath a toxic yellow fog that filled the corridor.
Null entered.
He didn't run. He didn't scream. He just walked.
His jet-black hair was a shadow against the dim light. In his right hand, he gripped his scythe, the blade dragging behind him on the stone floor, creating a trail of sparks that hissed like dying stars. His black arm was pulsing white, divine veins throbbing under the skin, pumping with a rhythm that sounded like a drum in the silence.
As he walked past the first row of giant soldiers, he didn't even look at them.
Snap. Pop. Thud.
The soldiers didn't even have time to raise their weapons. As Null passed them, the pressure of his Iron Crown and his 49.9% presence simply erased the space where their heads existed. They didn't explode; they just ceased to be. Their massive bodies stayed upright for a heartbeat before collapsing like hollow shells.
Null kept walking.
He stepped over the twitching limbs of demons. He walked through the blood of giants. He was headed down the long, central path of the palace a symbolic descent into the heart of the enemy. Every beast that tried to roar found its throat crushed by the invisible weight of Null's unworthy aura. He looked cold. He looked like a machine designed for one purpose: to reach the end of the line.
The Smoking Executioner
At the very end of the hall, before the final set of doors that led to the King's throne, the slaughter stopped.
The air here was different. It was still.
Aris was there. He wasn't standing in a combat stance. He was sitting on a pile of broken marble stairs, looking strangely casual. His obsidian armor was scuffed, and his single hand held a long, thin pipe. A thick, grey smoke curled out of his mouth, rising into the rafters.
Aris watched Null approach, his pale eyes tracking the white veins pulsing in Null's black arm. He took one last pull from the pipe and exhaled, the smoke obscuring his face for a moment.
"You've been busy," Aris said, his voice echoing through the now-silent hallway of corpses. "You walked through five thousand of my men and didn't even get blood on your shirt. That's a new record for a 'low-rank'."
Null stopped ten feet away. The Iron Crown hovered above his head, glowing with a dull, heavy heat.
"Step aside, Aris," Null said. It wasn't a threat; it was a statement of fact.
Aris let out a dry, hacking laugh, a cloud of smoke following it. "Why did you come here, kid? Really? You think killing the King of Stone fixes the world? You think the Axiom will just give you a hug and bring your brother back?"
Aris stood up then, dropping the pipe. He didn't draw his sword immediately. He just looked at Null with a strange, tired pity.
"You've reached the 49.9%. You're heavy. You're cold. But the King... the King isn't a person anymore. He's the Law. To kill him, you have to break the universe. Are you ready to be the villain who ends everything just to satisfy your own grudge?"
Null looked at the massive obsidian doors behind Aris. "I'm not a hero, Aris. I never was. I'm just an orphan coming to collect what's owed."
Aris nodded slowly, a dark wind beginning to swirl around his missing arm. "Then I suppose I don't have to feel bad about what I'm going to do to you."
End of chapter 84
See you next time