"To be honest, even the word End is not accurate enough. It is just a familiar term we use to describe it. In truth, it is the endpoint where nothing exists, the final destruction of all things."
"And by the way, this concept cannot be controlled by any god. Just like the concept itself, whoever tries to take it will vanish immediately." There was no exception to that rule.
"But it appeared down there anyway, didn't it?" Bella pointed at the screen.
If no Crimson God could control such a concept, then how did this thing appear? Why did it require so many Crimson God to merge? Was the monster below some kind of shared illusion?
"That monster is not a Crimson God that theoretically controls the End," Ham explained. "All those Crimson God did something similar to burning their souls and abandoning their Authority, deliberately pushing themselves toward destruction to briefly touch that concept."
"Over countless ages, Crimson God have swallowed countless rule concepts. Authority itself is already a chaotic mix of many rules. When a certain number of them commit collective suicide like this, they can barely touch the End."
"They did not fuse into the End. By gathering together and killing themselves, they triggered a phenomenon that drew the End over, and then used their own existence to bear it for a short time." That was the true mechanism.
Bella more or less understood. In simple terms, it was a life-burning fusion form where all Crimson God killed themselves to summon something that should not exist. It was a move that harmed themselves completely while the enemy damage was unknown.
That concept was simply too terrifying. It did not distinguish friend from foe and killed everything equally. Its very existence symbolized the endpoint of all things.
Bella remembered the story Ham once told about that great Rift. Back then, Ham and Safas had discussed it openly in their empty castle, so it was as if she had heard it firsthand. The memory returned clearly.
Hearing that Belial was about to fight such a monster, Bella recalled that Ham and others like the former God of Light had once tried to stop it and had succeeded. That gave her a bit of hope.
"So is there any way to deal with it?" she asked.
Ham tried to sense the clash between the two monsters below. From the other side, there was nothing he could feel except deep despair. He opened his mouth, sounding weak.
"Controlling the End is impossible, because whoever tries will be erased. It is like summoning an ultimate weapon that wipes out everything without distinction." He paused briefly.
"However, because those Crimson God are the ones bearing the erasure, they can barely decide the End's first target." That small detail mattered.
"So the only method is to stall. As long as those Crimson God do not truly want to die, once they are erased to a certain extent, they will be forced to break apart. When that happens, the End will disappear with them."
"But the way we stalled it back then was not by brute force or people blocking it directly. We relied on another special Authority to barely hold it back. Pure strength is useless against the End."
"What Authority was that? Was it from God of Light? Can we call them over to help? They are about to start fighting down there!" The question came out fast.
"…That Authority was Gold RankDusk, the former true the Lord. Its current state is complicated," Ham replied. "Even worse, it is not in our hands right now. I cannot help."
Gold RankDusk represented the moment when the sun sets but its glow remains. If the End was the final destruction of a story, then Gold RankDusk was the attempt to stretch the process, changing the path even if the ending was fixed. It was a fragile balance.
Even a concept that barely approached the End like Gold RankDusk was almost killed on the spot after taking a true strike from it. Ham was anxious, especially since Gold RankDusk had fallen into someone else's hands when no one could intervene. That made everything worse.
Someone had gone to retrieve it for this very reason, to prepare for the day when those Crimson God would choose mutual destruction again and summon the End once more. No one expected events to spiral so quickly. Least of all in this way.
No one imagined that Belial would be this absurd. Alone, he charged into Abyss and pushed all the Crimson God into a corner, forcing them to release the End. Even knowing his strange resistance to many Authority, could he really endure the endpoint of all things?
"Looks like I cannot really take it," Belial muttered.
The existence that symbolized the end of everything was staring at the first thing it encountered since appearing, which was Belial. Slowly, it raised its clawed arm toward him. The motion alone felt decisive.
From the Rift, raging blood-red matter poured out and wrapped around the arm. Just the movement caused Void itself to reach its endpoint and vanish completely. The power continued to condense, and in an instant, a faint glow spread along the arm.
A slashing claw attack followed. The motion was casual.
A fan-shaped area the size of a blockbuster release zone was cut out effortlessly. Everything it passed through collapsed into a blood-red region the size of a blockbuster, where the erased Void once existed. Broken rules, hatred, and all else vanished together into their end.
Concepts like time, space, or causal Fate meant nothing here. Blocking or defending was a joke. Under such a concept, all things were treated equally and pushed into their final state.
When Belial came back to his senses, his Crystal ecological The Continent was left with only half its area. The other half was completely gone, and he had not even noticed how it disappeared. The loss was silent and total.
That disappearance did not feel like destruction from an attack. It felt more like a programmer deleting something at the source code level and emptying the recycle bin. There was no trace left behind.
"Mm… this kind of attack?" Belial muttered.
The pain finally arrived. A massive slash appeared across his chest, and his arm was cut open as well. Huge energy sparks burst out, triggering a large-scale explosion.
The expanding ball of energy even blew a floating corner of The Continent into powder-like Shard. Countless Crack spread out, releasing a flash comparable to a star. The light was blinding.
He himself was flung from one end of The Continent to the other by the negligible momentum of the final outcome. The shockwave flattened the surface of the massive The Continent, which was comparable in area to a planet. The scene was left in ruin.
Collapse followed immediately. Under the immense force, the ecological domain beneath his feet could not even maintain its basic structure. It shattered into countless Shard fragments.
How strong was that move, exactly? It was enough for Belial to judge it as a true threat to himself, and that alone was not something to dismiss. Compared to his various Heat Ray abilities, his defenses had always been just as solid, built on absurd movement tricks and layers upon layers of shields.
He had been slaughtering enemies here for so long that none had truly broken through his defenses and dealt damage that could be called dangerous. Most of the time, he would activate Electromagnetic Shield along with Light Reflection Shield, stand in place, and trade blows head-on. Punches flew, enemies fell, and over time he had almost forgotten what dodging even meant.
Like someone who had sat in a wheelchair for too long and suddenly remembered he had perfectly good legs, Belial widened his eyes. "Damn, that power is no joke. It really deserves its boss status."
"Looks like I need to get serious too, but where did this thing even come from?" He touched the wound that had just been cut into him. In the past, such a shallow injury would have healed before he even noticed it, yet now it was still there, regenerating so slowly it felt like Trisolarans had fallen back to stone-age internet speeds.
Some strange power clung to the wound, continuing to deal damage and blocking his recovery. Still, it did not really matter to him, since it only meant slower healing. "My health bar is still long, and honestly, it has been a long time since I fought someone who could really threaten me head-on."
With the power of Clone fully returned, Belial was back to around his former strength. He could confidently say he could beat ten versions of his newly arrived self. As for this thing in front of him, that remained to be seen.
"Ultra-Helix Fusion Reaction Heat line!" "Charged Particle Cannon... times five!"
A blinding white beam erupted, followed by five simultaneously constructed Charged Particle Cannon as a probing first wave. The recoil alone shattered the Crystal ground for kilometers around his feet into broken Shard fragments, while heat surged to tens of thousands of degrees.
Beast of the End did not react at all, remaining motionless as the attack plunged into the drifting haze. Within that fog, faint changes appeared as the power was continuously weakened. When the attack reached Overlord Ridge and struck the surface bones with force enough to severely wound a Crimson God, its power began to drop at an alarming rate.