Chapter 668: Chaos
Annoyed, Arthur used his cosmic energy to create a crushing gravitational downforce. The swarm surrounding him was pushed to the ground with such force that they were flattened.
But it was a fleeting victory. The swarm was endless.
Evan teleported beside Arthur, burning away the remaining swarm and helping the teen godslayer to his feet.
Arthur reached out into empty air, his hand disappearing into the portal that was his subspace and remerging with shattered divine sparks in his hand.
The pieces he’d taken from the Titan god Novak’s corpse.
Arthur threw them shards into his mouth and within seconds, they dissolved into energy, replenishing his reserves and allowing him to recover enough to stand by himself.
Beside him, Evan switched out the magic stones on his forearm guard and reactivated Limit Break, glancing around as he cursed.
"Damn it."
More swarm charged at them and the two boys swung their blades, incinerating hordes of them over and over.
Then suddenly, something Evan said snapped Arthur’s mind into focus.
"Damn, no matter how much we cut them down, they just chaotically mash themselves together and throw everything at us."
"...huh?"
Arthur’s eyes widened, and in his head, he felt something click into place.
It was a sudden, inexplicable sense of clarity that hit him.
Evan’s words echoed in his head like a mantra.
Chaotically mash themselves together and throw everything at us.
At that moment, Arthur’s mind zoned out the world, dethatching from the present. A second stretched to infinity, and in that infinite second, Arthur’s Pseudo-Authority of Time replayed a series of memories for Arthur.
It had been 10 months and 10 days since then.
45 weeks. 315 days. 7568 hours. 454,080 minutes. 27,244,800 seconds.
But Arthur could not forget it. The day of his loss to Duskhand in Cheigh.
More importantly, he couldn’t forget the thing he had used that day—the thing that made Duskhand shift his focus from resolving a grudge to nipping a potential threat in the bud.
The thing that cemented Duskhand’s conviction to kill him at all costs.
When Arthur used that attack, what had he done?
He had chaotically mashed his powers together and thrown everything at Duskhand.
But in all his attempts to replicate it, Arthur didn’t chaotically mash anything. He’d perfectly controlled everything.
Unlike then, when he had just chaotically mashed his energies together in the heat of the moment, he arranged everything impeccably and perfectly blended the different powers.
However, all his attempts at replication did not even reach half the power of what he had used against Duskhand.
It didn’t make sense to Arthur.
Arthur had replayed every detail in his mind, using the same energies, the same amounts—but it never reached the same intensity.
And now, just as he was thinking that he needed one attack to cut through all of the swarm, expose the Broodmother, and end the Broodmother in one go, just as he was considering using Chronoslash, Evan’s words entered his ears.
’What if the reason I failed to replicate it, is because I was perfectly controlling everything? Perfectly aligning everything, perfectly synergising them all?’
What if the key was to stop trying to perfect it? To chaotically mash his power again, just like he had done that day?
Arthur’s combat fundamentals taught him that control was something he must NEVER neglect. He MUST always have control over every ability, every strike, every technique.
But if that control was the reason he was failing at replicating it...
What if...
Then what would Arthur do?
’Abandon Control.’
He made the decision without hesitation.
’Not completely. Having 0% Control is a recipe for disaster, but I can’t have 100% control like always.’
Chaotically mash everything together, but give that chaos an upper limit. Don’t try to forcefully synergise the energies, just put them there and let them react naturally.
It doesn’t matter the order in which the energies are poured in, as far as they end up together in the end.
But still maintain control over the quantity of energies being thrown into that chaotic mix.
They should not be equal.
’My Anti-Divinity should be more than my Divinity, but less than my Temporal Law energy, which would, in turn, be slightly lesser than my Destruction Law energy.’
’This mixture must blend together with cosmic energy—the force making them all coexist.’
And finally, his Null. Arthur’s power of Erasure.
The cosmic energy would anchor the chaos, but it wasn’t truly complete without his unique touch—his power to ’destroy and accelerate that destruction until it happened almost instantaneously’.
Without that, it wasn’t Extreme Nothingness.
’Let’s see, 13%, 11%, 29%, 30%, 17%.’
’Null does not really need a percentage since it’s more dependent on the process of Destruction itself—its primary role is to remove and erase that which stands in the way.
Its purpose is functionality, not quantity.
Thus, it can always scale with the chaos of the energies around it, boosting the effects of the other powers in a more fluid, reactive way rather than being locked into a fixed contribution.’
Once Arthur came to this conclusion, words spilt from his lips involuntarily.
"I’ve got it."
The second passed.
Arthur’s perception returned to the present and the swarm around him zoned back into his worldview.
As Arthur held Lostvayne aloft, the sword sensed something and stirred of its own accord.
The Silver lines running through the blade glowed and from its hilt, circuit-like tendrils lunged out and pierced into Arthur’s hands.
The Sword ’Released’ itself, pouring its cosmic energy into Arthur, doing its own part to make sure Arthur succeeded in whatever he was doing.
It knew that Arthur’s reserves were lower than usual, and the sword had more than enough to make up for that.
The cosmic energy that flowed through its obsidian hilt, passed through Arthur’s energy circuits and immediately flowed out along with his other energies.
The energies surged up the length of the blade in a rapid, violent rush—each of the forces blending and coalescing as they travelled from Arthur’s core to the very edge of Lostvayne.
But where other variations of Extreme Nothingness took on a deep, haunting purple as the blue of time blended with destruction’s red, this time was different.
This time, the blade glowed with a silver light—Arthur’s silver.
Evan who was next to Arthur felt his Personal System’s Survival Enhancement Mode activating and his gaze shot in Arthur’s direction.
His eyes widened as the terrifying combination of forces flooded Arthur’s sword, and without hesitation, he took distance from the teen godslayer.
’Is this it, Charisse?!’
Such a thought crossed Evan’s mind as the air itself warped around Arthur.
Arthur’s grip tightened around Lostvayne’s hilt, and he spoke in a low murmur, the words coming naturally to him as they were engraved in his very being.
|¬Extreme Nothingness¬|
Then, without a second thought, he swung the blade downward with all his strength. His lips parted, calling out this attack’s name; a fitting name for what it was.
|¬Chaos¬|
The strike split the air with a deafening sound.
The slash jagged forward as it cleaved through the air, its silver glow cutting a path through the fabric of space.
The chaotic swirl of powers gathered within the blade detonated like a cosmic bomb as it made contact with the swarm. Each of the countless creatures within its reach vanished, reduced to nothingness in an instant.
Their forms, so chaotic and relentless just moments ago, were simply erased, as though they had never been.
No remnants, no trace—just gone.
The slash continued its path, tearing through Triffid’s towering wooden shields like paper, each layer of bark and vine splintering apart with a shrieking sound, crushed under the weight of Arthur’s ’Chaos’.
The shielded walls of the massive tree buckled and cracked as the attack made its way deeper, reaching the Broodmother.
The Broodmother didn’t stand a chance.
The blade sliced through the creature as easily as a hot knife through butter, cleaving its monstrous body in half.
A terrible scream, a mix of rage and agony, echoed through the air, but it was quickly silenced, its body torn asunder.
The pieces of the Broodmother fell away, disintegrating into oblivion as they hit the ground. It was as if the creature’s very existence had been expunged from reality, swallowed by the cosmic power in Arthur’s strike.
But the slash didn’t stop there.
The silver light carved its path forward, continuing for a full kilometre. The land itself trembled beneath the weight of the slash as the earth split apart with a violent rending sound.
For a moment, the world seemed to stand still.
Everyone on the battlefield felt it.
The Elder Spirits and Infernal Archdevils in the sky saw it.
Their eyes widened.
When Charisse had warned them about her visions, the Elder Spirits believed her, but they didn’t understand exactly why she acted like that since they had not seen what she had seen.
Now, they understood.
In the centre of the Spirit’s forces, Charisse looked at the devastation Arthur’s attack had wrought, and her lips curled up into a faint smile.
"I told you, didn’t I? You would achieve what it is you were seeking in this Dimension."
And indeed, Arthur had achieved what he was seeking.
With the Third Variation of Extreme Nothingness perfected...
| Condition 10: Creation of Three Forms? of Technique?? Or Unique Skill?? Or Ability?? Termed by Entity: ’Arthur Vaughn’, as ’Extreme Nothingness??’: 3/3|
|Transcendence Conditions: 10/10. |
|You have exceeded Level 899 classification|
|Your Level is: Undefined|
|Your Stats are: Undefined|
|You have proven your qualifications to surpass Mortality. |
...
|Your Existence is not permitted to remain below Transcendence anymore. |
|You are Transcending immediately. |
