"Now, you're out of reach from everything. Any spell that calls for help will reach no one," Seth said softly, his voice calm as he stepped away from the emperor's position. He moved to retrieve a sword from nearby, then returned and thrust it toward the emperor's stomach. The emperor had managed to regain his footing during those brief moments.
The Emperor reacted with desperate speed, summoning his Abyss Shattering Sword and moving to intercept Seth's blade head-on. He channeled the absolute full might of the Abyss into his counterattack, understanding instinctively that anything less would result in his certain defeat.
The power of the Abyss surged forward, attempting to consume and devour everything in its path. It behaved like a liquid black hole, an all-consuming darkness that converted everything it touched into raw power for its wielder. What force in existence could possibly hope to withstand such devastating might?
The attack should have been completely immune to magic and all conventional forms of attack. So why? Why was it that when confronted with Seth's presence, the dark energy suddenly reversed its trajectory and shot back toward the Emperor himself?
Its time had been frozen mid-attack, transforming it into an unstoppable force that cleaved the Emperor's body cleanly in half as though his flesh offered no more resistance than empty air.
"I refuse to believe this," the Emperor managed to gasp out, desperately attempting to call upon the Abyss to regenerate and heal his catastrophically damaged body. But despite his brain sending urgent commands to his magical reserves, his magic stubbornly refused to respond or manifest. Seth had used Infinity on his brain, meaning such singles had to travel an infinite distance…
"I heard that as one advances in tier, they become progressively harder to kill. I was quite certain my own attack wouldn't be sufficient to end you, so I scared you into attacking me directly," Seth explained with casual lightness in his tone. "How foolish you were to willingly provide me with exactly the power necessary to kill you."
The emperor froze for a heartbeat as the terrible implications of those words sank in, then coughed up a violent mouthful of blood.
"Don't be angry about it—you were honestly pretty weak compared to what I expected. Now, we come to a simple choice: do you want to hand over your Overlord Title willingly and peacefully, or should I simply take it from your lifeless corpse?" Seth's smile remained pleasant and almost friendly. "I genuinely want you alive to manage this place properly when I'm gone, so you can rest assured I fully intend to return the title to you and depart in approximately two months."
"Like hell I would trust you," he responded weakly, his voice barely above a whisper. Seth nodded in apparent understanding, acknowledging the validity of the concern.
"Good argument, I can see your reasoning. I wonder how your ancestors would react, seeing as you were the direct cause of their empire's complete destruction. How many years has this empire stood—thousands or perhaps even millions of years? And yet it all ends because you couldn't bring yourself to believe the words of a man who could annihilate this entire empire with a simple snap of his fingers." Seth shook his head with theatrical disappointment. "What a genuine shame. I suppose I'll become the emperor myself and simply abandon ship once this empire starts crumbling and falling apart around me."
The Emperor gritted his teeth hard enough that they ground audibly against each other, fury and helplessness warring across his features for several tense seconds before he finally spoke.
"Fine!" he spat through clenched teeth, formally transferring the title of Overlord to Seth.
The moment the transfer completed, Seth froze completely still as his body suddenly erupted with overwhelming power. He had become one hundred times stronger in an instant—a massive, almost incomprehensible boost to his capabilities that temporarily left Seth's vision going completely blank, his consciousness struggling to process the sudden influx. But after a disorienting second, he managed to return to full awareness and reality.
With a combat power now reaching 600 million without his eyes, Seth found himself able to perceive far more detailed information about the Emperor's true stats. What he discovered was genuinely impressive: the Emperor's actual combat power registered at least 600 trillion, a truly terrifying number by any reasonable measure.
But Seth didn't particularly care about the numerical comparison, and using his newfound authority within his newly acquired territory, he commanded time to return to its normal flow. In the same instant, he teleported himself, Evelin, the grievously injured emperor, and Alara directly to the Abyss Emperor's throne room.
Seth, naturally, took full advantage of the opportunity to extract everything of value he could possibly obtain from this empire's accumulated wealth and knowledge. He dedicated considerable time to studying their ancient books and scrolls, working through their treasury vaults with thorough attention to detail, and during this extensive search Seth discovered many remarkable treasures and techniques that had been hidden away.
Among the most valuable finds were SS-tier skills, including one particularly potent ability that allowed the user to develop and maintain an additional subconsciousness for every one million combat power they possessed, effectively multiplying their mental processing capabilities. Another SS skill granted the wielder the extraordinary ability to peer forward and see glimpses into the future with varying degrees of clarity, along with many more equally extraordinary and powerful techniques stored within their archives.
The empire possessed only twelve SS-tier skills in total across their entire civilization, making each one an incredibly precious resource they had carefully safeguarded and steadfastly refused to distribute or use casually.
These skills represented the future hope and foundation of their entire empire, kept in reserve for only the most critical situations. But Seth didn't care even slightly about their importance or cultural significance, and he claimed all of them without the slightest hesitation or remorse.
What were they realistically going to do about his this anyway, given his overwhelming power advantage? As for the more common S-tier skills that filled other sections of the treasury, he took his time selecting only those specific abilities he found genuinely interesting or potentially useful, leaving the rest completely untouched where they lay. He outright ignored the A-tier skills entirely, not even bothering to examine them closely, considering them far beneath his current level of attention and need.
As for the vast collection of physical items, magical artifacts, and materials stored throughout the various treasury chambers, he came across something particularly valuable and immediately useful to his goals: Skill Upgrade Crystals.
These exceptionally rare objects possessed the inherent magical power to permanently upgrade a single skill up to a predetermined limit based on the crystal's own tier.
Seth immediately claimed every single crystal available and wasted no time using them to upgrade both his [Thrive] and [Survival] abilities, successfully elevating both skills to SS-tier status and unlocking their far more potent evolved forms.
Unfortunately, the Skill Upgrade Crystals themselves were capped at SS-tier quality in terms of their own ranking, which meant they lacked the necessary power to push any skill all the way up to the coveted SSS-tier level.
But even with this limitation, the upgrades were still more than good enough for his immediate purposes and represented a massive increase in capability.
[Thrive (lvl 5/5)] underwent a dramatic transformation and evolved into its new form: [WDKMOMMS (1/5)] - What Doesn't Kill Me, Only Makes Me Stronger. Just as the straightforward name explicitly stated without any ambiguity, any damage the user took would directly translate into a corresponding increase in overall strength and power.
At the initial level one, injuries severe enough that they had nearly claimed the user's life would permanently increase their total combat power by a factor of two. But at the maximum level five, those same catastrophic, life-threatening injuries would instead multiply combat power by a dramatically larger factor of five.
All of this exponential scaling came with absolutely no upper limit whatsoever, allowing for theoretically infinite growth through surviving damage. The skill did impose one notable drawback in the form of a minor debuff to the user's natural regeneration capabilities, making it somewhat more difficult and time-consuming for injuries to heal.
[Survival (lvl 5/5)] underwent an equally dramatic transformation into its far more powerful form: [Unkillable? (1/5)] - This skill would elevate the user's willpower stat to such an extreme and unprecedented degree that their sheer force of will alone could directly affect, influence, and even manipulate the physical world around them in tangible ways.
At the initial level one, willpower alone would enable the user to continue consciously existing as a coherent entity even after their physical body had been completely destroyed and reduced to nothing, allowing them to reach out and forcibly seize control of a new body to use as a replacement vessel.
At the maximum level five, willpower could be condensed and made tangible enough to become a weapon in its own right, or alternatively, the concentrated will could be channeled inward to facilitate rapid recovery from any injury or even enable complete reformation and reconstruction of the user's original body after suffering total physical destruction.
The user retained the option to take over another person's body and then gradually reshape and reform that commandeered vessel into a perfect copy of their original form over an extended period of time.
(Note: This skill progressively increases the user's willpower stat through exposure to increasingly challenging trials presented as hyper-realistic illusions)