Chapter 679: Beyond Compare
Viewed from the upper atmosphere, the central urban grid of Tokyo looked identical to a singular pitch-black dot, from which endless silver ripples continuously cascaded outward.
But those expanding ripples were, in material reality, a grim visual frame of a soaring steel jungle of a modern metropolis caving into complete, total ruin.
A devastating shockwave exploded out from the exact perimeter where the Sword of Damocles had pinned itself into the dirt, unleashing twisted kinetic forces that mirrored a catastrophic, Category-9 geological event wave, hammering outward in non-stop, concussive surges.
Regardless of whether the native citizens had burrowed into fortified subterranean shelters or huddled within the structures of neighboring blocks, their biological husks were instantaneously pulverized down to the atom by that all-cleaving force.
Fresh blood sprayed across the landscape like drops of ink hitting a clean scroll, bleeding into the dust within a handful of frames.
Suspended high across the airspace via an array of unique capabilities, the gathering of veteran Reincarnators watched with stark, dazed expressions, their cognitive processing completely failing to map the data for a brief window.
Granted, a small percentage of them had historically navigated mirror-image scenarios inside various secondary story worlds—but those were merely story worlds!
Reincarnators, regardless of what metrics their jaws voiced on the grid, almost universally maintained a fundamental tier of profound arrogance deep within their tracks.
They were unique organisms capable of traversing an infinite spectrum of dimensions; native characters and native worlds were, across multiple cycles, processed as nothing more than interactive toys to feed their advancement.
Watching those assets fracture, perish, or twist out of recognition lacked the priority to ever inflict a severe wave of existential shock onto their focus.
But right now was entirely distinct!
This was material reality!
This was the exact world line where every single Reincarnator had naturally taken birth and walked before logging their profiles into the Space terminal—the foundational safe harbor they had continuously depended upon back when their intellects were just as dull and un-awakened as the ordinary mortal cattle currently being smashed to pieces by the Mad King's engines!
At this exact microsecond, the immense visual shock forced even a battle-hardened practitioner like Hong Chen to freeze dead, his features completely blank, while Mo Shi Mo Wang instinctively dug his fingers into his hair out of pure panic.
"That absolute... that absolute lunatic..."
"Where are the Monarchs? What happened to the leader of the Azure Sky... why has zero tracking arrays moved to blockade his hand? How can a capability of this classification be unleashed across the real world without a single restriction..."
Mo Shi Mo Wang's scalp prickled with an intense wisp of terror. That profound sense of loss—watching the foundational rules of reality systematically shatter as their absolute safety port vanished from the ledger—was layout-wise, monumentally difficult for his sanity to endure.
He held a family, he held friends, and his files compressed an infinite web of material attachments; the mere calculation that an interloper could casually deploy an apocalyptic capability of this classification within the real world without a single backlash left his motor nerves unable to cope.
Pfft!
Because his inner core had generated an unsuppressable, ravenous wave of killing intent targeting the Mad King, Mo Shi Mo Wang's nervous tracks were nearly melted down by the agonizing burning of his master-servant contract, the final thread anchoring his psychological baseline on the verge of total collapse.
Hong Chen's left hand continuously vibrated with a heavy tremor. Below their boots, that colossal Sword of Damocles sat rigidly and detachedly at the absolute center of Tokyo, the open ocean blocks already initiating a violent inward surge to flood the crater.
A silver silhouette began to radiate a succession of heavy conceptual waves, standing directly beneath the shadow of the colossal sword with his arms thrown wide, his booming, strangely warped voice vibrating across the atmosphere.
"Vassals of my crown, there is absolutely zero programmatic reason to register panic, much less wander into despair. This is merely the sharp, necessary pain of a transition between eras; this is explicitly the bitter cost of a world line restructuring its parameters."
"Anchor your steps directly behind my sovereign throne, and every wisp of worldly karmic hindrance will be permanently disqualified from disrupting your tracks. The unblemished reality of the universe... shall finally be laid bare..."
The individual logged under the codename [The Mad King]—an asset whose absolute civilian name remained entirely unmapped—had thoroughly dissolved the biological cage of his external flesh. Lazily drifting upward, an unmapped multitude of memetic factors and data strands smoothly converged to feed his core.
His silver-sheened biological vessel methodically trod upon rows of literal steps compiled exclusively from raw information tracks, beginning a slow march straight toward the high heavens.
Those illusory, silver-glowing steps webbed around the massive hull of the Sword of Damocles, looking identically to an absolute stairway to heaven.
The Mad King's phantom-like silver frame advanced step by step, the energy waves rippling across his dermal layers scaling past all historical benchmarks.
Identical to how the ignorant human populations of the medieval past arrogantly visualized the Earth as the absolute, undisputed center of the cosmos, centuries down the line, this current generation of [Reincarnators] maintained an equally dull, arrogant delusion holding that their native world line was the most noble, unique dimension in existence.
The Mad King's silver phantom frame remained beautifully, flawlessly calm, completely ignoring the non-stop, deafening roar of collapsing high-rises, fracturing tectonic plates, and rushing ocean blocks echoing below his boots.
He looked as if his intellect were purely, clinically meditating on a cosmic theorem.
His analytical comprehension mapping the parameters of the Infinite Dimension Space, the primary story worlds, the secondary dimensions, and the primal root matrices was layout-wise, monumentally deeper than a standard champion.
When stripped down to its core equations, this world line possessed zero innate nobility, zero unique attributes; the singular variable separating its profile was the diagnostic fact that this specific dimension housed that supreme [Observer] logged as the [Infinite Dimension Space]—absolutely nothing more.
Mankind, Reincarnators, and the grander layout of this planet merely gained an artificial layer of importance because that Observer's tracking arrays remained continuously locked onto the grid.
Yet the long-standing belief among Reincarnators holding that their cognitive faculties occupied a vastly superior, higher-dimensional plane compared to native story characters was merely a farcical, self-absorbed illusion.
The empirical verification was absolute: the exact frame those [Black Kings] similarly secured the Space terminal's observation routines, breaking cover to exit their native dimensions, they could manually and ruthlessly manipulate, dominate, and liquidate any Reincarnator asset on the board without a single frame of decay.
Those thoroughly broken, world-ending Avengers were highly, statistically likely hunting for a valid entrance right now—a precise spatial gateway to plunge their blades straight into this native world...
A serene, completely natural smile anchored the Mad King's features.
This world line was so pathetically fragile, and these humans were so thoroughly foolish; when that definitive day of reckoning completed its countdown, what manner of profile would this planet present?
"Your intellect shares an identical conclusion, does it not, Mercenary Tao? This world line can layout-wise, no longer be permitted to drift along this primitive track. A dimension capable of naturally cultivating peerless, beyond-compare geniuses of our exact classification... is fundamentally disqualified from ever being snuffed off the board by a swarm of common bugs..."
The Mad King kept his eyes perfectly level, evaluating Kaito Shirogane, who had materialized at an unmapped coordinate of the timeline to block his path further up the steps.
Kaito Shirogane's grin was contorted exceptionally wide, a brilliant divine light flaring from his irises. Tilting his skull, his vacant eyes looked down from a superior vertical alignment to dissect the Mad King's true sovereign profile.
"Stairway capacity... Concussive Pulse of the Spiritual Light... the Fourth Tier?"
BOOM!
A boundless, ravenous battle intent, multiplied across a massive aura of golden Ki, violently erupted from Kaito's cells. He had completely refrained from opening his Kaio-ken tracks, yet the exact microsecond his Qilin Armor completed its active plating, his predatory cells—already heavily stimulated by the adrenaline of the conflict—registered the material presence of an exceptionally elite opponent. The internal Ki tracking his meridians began to violently and ecstatically rage.
Evaluating Kaito Shirogane—who had completely manual-overrode his speech, ceding his philosophical metrics zero frames of attention—the Mad King gently shook his head.
As expected, regardless of how flawlessly an elite beast out-scales its peers, at its primitive core, it remains nothing more than a [Beast]. Topics concerning global survival or the macro-preservation of the human species lacked the priority to ever trigger its focus.
Monitoring Kaito Shirogane as his golden [Ki] flamed furiously into the sky, the Mad King voiced a line of genuine appreciation for the demon's absolute mastery over power, while simultaneously experiencing a sharp drop of internal disappointment upon verifying that zero organisms on the board held the capacity to parse his grand strategic ambitions.
He was layout-wise, completely sane—yet every single asset logged across the networks categorized his profile as an absolute madman.
"When all variables resolve, this is explicitly the absolute reason a King can only ever self-visualize as a solitary entity~"
"My sovereign person... draws the blade."
Kaito's scalp violently prickled with an intense wisp of instinctual alarm. A multi-directional, all-penetrating sword intent aggressively punched out from all coordinates to clamp onto his coordinates. He executed a lone blink, the third eye mounted at the center of his brow forcing itself completely open.
In the very next fraction of a second, the universe plummeted into an absolute slow-motion track. The Mad King's silver frame sliced into the empty air with a velocity that was layout-wise, slow yet mathematically all-penetrating, before methodically pulling his fingers backward.
A pristine, silver-glowing phantom greatsword slowly materialized out of the vacuum.
[Notification: Your engine has established direct head-on contact against the Spiritual Light: All Creation Submits to the Sovereign.]
Pfft, pfft, pfft, pfft, pfft!
The twisted Three Powers Combined Strength force field shielding Kaito's skin was instantaneously and flawlessly overwhelmed by an infinite cascade of brilliant silver sword lights. The underlying sword intent was completely all-penetrating, riddling his dense kinetic pressure fields with thousands of microscopic structural fractures in a single micro-frame.
And the Mad King had merely completed the manual draw of his sword, guiding the edge back over his shoulder plates.
High across the skyline, Mo Shi Mo Wang desperately slammed both of his palms onto his violently rattling longsword, his features filled with unadulterated terror.
He verified a catastrophic diagnostic reality: his system had just sustained a total deletion, permanently stripping away his [Swordsmanship Specialization Lv9] milestone alongside multiple active capabilities tied to his flying sword tracks.
The Space terminal cede his display a single, cold alert:
[Alert: Your profile has sustained the overriding influence of the Spiritual Light: All Creation Submits to the Sovereign. Multiple capabilities and character traits have been temporarily deactivated.]
In the very next fraction of a second, Hong Chen's face went exceptionally pale and cold. His physical body entered a dead, vertical drop through the air currents. Directly beneath his falling vector, the Mad King casually extended a lone palm into the heavens. Along with a sudden, severe drop in the ambient thermal metrics—
A colossal, thousand-meter saber energy had already completed its automated compilation.
(End of Chapter)
~~~
Get early access to 50+ advanced chapters on Patreon!
https://www.pat-reon.co-m/c/Hollowborn
~~~
Every 5 new reviews = 2 extra chapters
Every 100 Power Stones = 1 extra chapter