Hearing this, Solanky finally understood why Elishen coveted the Bayoka clan's treasure — as the true owner of the infinite source world, he knew precisely what it was worth. By Solanky's reckoning, Elishen meant to use it to bolster the power of his cultivated, weaker avatar. Solanky stayed within the Ancestral World Tree's domain for ten years, absorbing everything he could learn about the devil ancestor.
At the decade's end, he bid the tree farewell and set off to visit the remaining source worlds. He returned with the pledged support of a hundred and fifty source gods, sworn to the god realm's cause. A hundred years later, every ally the god realm could muster stood massed at its borders, waiting for the devils to strike — Solanky and Elena, in her true dragon form, at the front of them all.
Solanky sat in silence, still as a mountain, eyes closed, Elena coiled beside him. For three days, they watched as hordes of devils and the forsaken tore through the void and spilled out like puppets with no regard for their own survival — the weakest among them already at the level of devil of devils. The god of gods warriors moved to charge, but Tee held them back, sensing that the oncoming horde was mere illusion, the real attack force lying in wait behind it. The instant the gods froze in place, a slow clap echoed from the void where the illusory devils stood, and a slender figure stepped forward. "Impressive, seeing through my illusion so easily. Few below the perfect source level could manage that. I'm genuinely impressed."
The slender man was Ayeko. He waved a hand, and the illusion dissolved, revealing trillions of devils and other beings behind it, killing intent rolling off them in waves.
Ayeko pointed toward the god realm. "Charge!" The devil realm's forces surged forward, their combined energy shaking the void itself as they passed through it. Elena gave the order in turn, and the war for the infinite source world began in earnest. The devils fought without restraint, their massive bodies giving them the early advantage — until the god realm's vassal races joined the fray. These allies weren't bound to flesh and blood; some were built from stone, crystal, oil, water, or lava, far more resilient than anything found on worlds like Earth or Sabiru.
The clash of weapons rang out as the war reached its peak. Combatants were segregated strictly by power level — a battlefield reserved for those below dimensional god or devil status, where no one above that threshold was permitted to interfere, on pain of triggering retaliation severe enough to threaten countless promising lives. But this battle broke that unspoken rule. A three-headed devil at dimensional level rushed the lower battlefield, targeting the god realm's weaker fighters — beings with no hope of resisting a dimensional devil. Before it could reach them, Sect Master Okafor's roar tore through the field. "You dare! Not while I still stand."
The roar alone shattered the invading devil's will, sending it stumbling back in fear. Ayeko's fury spiked at seeing one of his commanders humiliated. The devil tried to retreat, but Okafor was already beside him, bringing a palm down without mercy. The devil commander was shattered into pieces — at fifth-dimensional level, reforming from such a blow should have been trivial, but against a ninth-dimensional god capable of rearranging matter down to the sub-subatomic level, any attempt at reformation was doomed before it began.
Just like that, the devils lost a dimensional-level commander to the gods, and their rage boiled over. Devils surged into the lower battlefield en masse, intent on slaughtering the weaker gods — but the gods held the line, blocking and restraining them at every turn. Ayeko raised his hands, smiling. "Devil ancestor's domain." The void twisted into a desolate wasteland of flowing blood, and in its sky, an enormous eye opened. Wherever its gaze fell, an aura of death spread, and every being below dimensional god level on the god realm's side collapsed into a comatose state.
Gido saw it happen and swelled from a dozen kilometers to three billion, his movements losing none of their speed despite the scale. He swept up a third of the fallen god realm forces in his massive hands, using his own body as a shield against the devils' attacks, storing the unconscious inside his internal world space as he kept growing — eight light-years now — before reaching up, seizing the eye in the sky, and crushing it.
The devils reeled in disbelief at the sheer size Gido had reached. Twelve of them fused together, swelling to match his scale, and a brutal clash erupted — until a crushing pressure fell from above without warning, slamming Gido's massive form down into the wasteland below. Solanky opened his eyes. "What took you so long to show up?" The moment he spoke, the sky above the desolate land shattered entirely, revealing the bare void beyond — and from it descended two figures: the devil ancestor, and the Elishen everyone knew.
Solanky rose and walked toward the battlefield. "I've been sitting here for over fifty years. I was starting to think you were too afraid to come out and face us." Fury rippled through the devils at hearing their ancestor addressed so casually. Some moved to strike Solanky down, but their ancestor stopped them himself — this was a confrontation he intended to handle personally.
For the first time, something like pity stirred among the devils, watching their ancestor deign to act in person against this one being. Elishen's true body shot toward Solanky at blistering speed. But Solanky had already anticipated this moment — certain that Elishen would want to personally confirm whether he truly was the reincarnated soul who'd once slipped free of him — and had arranged, through Elena and the god realm's strongest, to place a marker on every participant in the war beforehand, a precaution to protect them the instant Elishen made his move; anyone below the creation and destruction level caught in the crossfire would otherwise be erased from existence with no hope of reincarnation.
So the moment Elishen struck, every god realm combatant below that threshold vanished at once, whisked into the internal worlds of the gods of creation and their allies. Elishen noticed but made no move to stop the retreat. He closed the distance to Solanky and drove a kick into him, sending him hurtling into the distance.
Elishen froze, startled — that kick, at full strength, should have crippled even a perfect source god's body outright. Solanky only smiled at him. "You've improved a little since we last crossed paths, Elishen."
The devil ancestor's shock deepened. He'd never imagined Solanky would be the one to stand against him today — and how did this being know his true name? Solanky's smile didn't waver as he closed the distance and struck.