Chapter 507: Equal Treatment for All
"Well, I've certainly been played. Just what brought the two of you monsters together? It seems I grossly underestimated the methods and preparations of those who once stood against us."
In the void, hundreds of kilometers from their entry point, Sulla drifted weightlessly through nothingness, speaking in a cool, detached tone. This situation was evidently nowhere near what he had anticipated.
Wang Yu faced him across the gulf of emptiness. Beside him, within that opaque cubic domain whose interior no outsider could glimpse, sat Avia—controlling the Lady of the Night's power through the Chariot's power—and Lady Darkness, who crouched silently at the boundary of the field, her gaze fixed unblinking upon Sulla.
"..."
Wang Yu did not answer. His expression did not change; he did not speak. He simply waited for Avia to finish preparing the battlefield, at which point he would use the Chariot to beat this man to death. Everything else was irrelevant.
"..."
Seeing that Wang Yu had no intention of speaking, Sulla fell silent as well. The chatter he'd displayed earlier evaporated. He had understood at last that Wang Yu was impossible to negotiate with—not because he lacked comprehension, but because he cared for nothing outside his predetermined goal. Even if Sulla claimed he knew the way back to Earth, Wang Yu would cut him down first and interrogate him about it after.
A massive chain erupted from the lowest depths of the void, lashing itself around Sulla's waist with impossible speed. Its links swirled with horrifying corruption and distorted power—one could hardly imagine the strain Sulla endured merely by allowing it to touch his body.
"I hadn't prepared anything suitable in advance... so I'll borrow its power for now. Let me see if you can withstand its taint."
Tiny flakes drifted free from the air around him. They looked like snow, but were far more insidious. They were fragments of shattering souls.
"Wang Yu, I believe I've confirmed the nature of his existence. In essence, Sulla is something akin to the aggregate consciousness at the core of the Utopia.
"His awareness is surrounded by countless souls that do not belong to him. They're clustered together into a massive, powerful whole. Unlike undead creatures who devour souls to strengthen themselves, these spirits remain individually intact. They're sacrificing themselves to shield him from the void's corruption.
"As for his true soul, it must be unimaginably strong to support such an enormous mass clinging to it. My hypothesis is that over long, long years, he fused with other souls who shared his ideal. Much like how undead strengthen themselves by devouring souls, he reinforced his own existence.
"And the reason he hasn't become like that bone dragon, Old Bones, who lost his memories and wisdom through prolonged erosion, is likely because of that shared ideal. It acts as an anchor: a common purpose possessed by every soul willingly subsumed. As long as that ideal remains, he will never lose sight of this ultimate goal.
"Sulla was once a real person. But he's since merged with an ancient being of indeterminate age. Only pieces of his original self linger in his personality."
Avia relayed her deductions calmly. The face Sulla wore was still that of the greatest magician. But his true identity... trace him back along the timeline of the continent, and countless different figures might emerge.
"So he loves talking because of a flaw in his soul, then?" Wang Yu replied at last. "Those who let him devour them shared only an ideal, not their personalities. If they merged together, they'd inevitably distort whoever he once was."
The region around them was now coated in the Lady of the Night's power, which shaped the battlefield. With this, Avia could draw upon the void far more freely. As for Sulla, Wang Yu could sense the power within him. But that didn't matter.
"That's likely to be the case," Avia confirmed. "Be careful. His power is already affecting the surroundings. Under its influence, we can only use the Lady's power to assist you, not for confrontation."
Acknowledging Wang Yu's comment, she warned him that the battle had formally begun.
"Alright, then. Sulla's physique can't surpass mine. And thanks to you dragging him somewhere the Utopia can't reinforce him, I actually have a chance."
In the distance, a colossal black eye snapped open. Sulla was now entirely engulfed in the power drawn from the depths of the void, all but a singularity of chaos and distortion. The only sign he hadn't been devoured completely was the constant stream of soul fragments spilling from that enormous obsidian eye.
The eye fixed itself upon Wang Yu. An invisible strike erupted from within, immense and unreasonable, tearing through the divinity of the night effortlessly. Compared to the force Sulla had borrowed from some presence deep within the void, even the void energy wielded by the Lady of the Night was nothing.
Wang Yu braced himself, punched forward with his fist, and collided with that unseen force. The impact blasted shockwaves across the battlefield, sending him skidding backward until he shattered several walls of solid darkness before coming to a stop.
The Chariot's power was now almost entirely within his body now, filling every last inch of his terrifyingly strong frame. Only a small portion remained with Avia, sufficient for her to manipulate the Lady's power and create footholds beneath him.
"You're too dangerous. You must die before you mature any further. The threat you pose to this continent is no less than what lies beneath it."
Even now, Sulla kept talking, just as Wang Yu had predicted.
"Bring it on."
Standing atop the firm black platform Avia had shaped, Wang Yu curled a finger at the massive, abyss-born eye. From their first exchange, he had already learned what he needed. He wasn't the one who was in a hurry. Sulla was.
The provocation could hardly have rattled him, but regardless, the attack came all the same. There was no ripple of void energy. The mere gaze of that colossal eye could unleash an assault without blind spots. And the strikes themselves were uncanny, requiring no channeling of void energy at all. After all, they originated from the void itself...
Wang Yu slid low across the pitch-black ground, skimming forward in a razor-swift slide. Though the eye's attacks were invisible, he could track their trajectories precisely by relying on the Chariot's power.
He raised his hands and seized a spear that thrust out of nowhere, its point meant to impale him. His fingers, wrapped in the Chariot's power, clamped onto it. He used the momentum to launch himself straight at that obsidian eye.
A frontal charge meant taking every attack hurled from within that eye head-on. And Wang Yu did exactly that. The Chariot braced his body, letting him forgo all control over anything except the power of the night beneath his feet. That alone was enough for him to touch anything.
The formless strikes hammered into him, each blow filled with terrifying force. His tough flesh split under the assault, blood opening in sharp lines across his skin. Wounds closed almost as quickly as they formed, only to be torn open again—but even that could not halt his advance. Shielding his head with both arms, he charged forward without hesitation over the platform Avia shaped with the power of the night as he rushed toward Sulla's position.
In front of Wang Yu, that abyssal force capable of crushing all void energy was reduced to nothing more than an ordinary physical impact. The Chariot erased its special nature, forcibly converting it into something his body could simply collide with.
As he closed in on Sulla, Wang Yu flung his arms wide, letting the invisible blades slice new wounds across his face. Then, suddenly, he swept both hands outward. His palms clapped together, detonating the high-energy blood between them. A fan-shaped shockwave burst forward, roaring toward Sulla.
For a moment, it dispersed the attacks that should have struck Wang Yu, yet had been stripped bare by the Chariot's power. Wang Yu's legs tensed. His strength surged. One stomp shattered the five-layered platform beneath him, forged of the divinity of the night, and he vanished from sight.
In the void overhead, Wang Yu drove his mangled shoulder straight into the eye forged of void energy. The Chariot's power caused this brute-force collision to land with full, unmitigated power.
Force rippled through him like a shockwave. The abyssal shell around Sulla split apart to reveal the original body within. Its face was alarmed, with no trace of its original calm.
Wang Yu's fist crashed into Sulla's face. The blow was blocked by a pair of crossed arms, but the Chariot's power caused those arms to twist grotesquely. Bones shattered, fracturing inch by inch.
He stomped on another foothold that flared into existence above them. Using that rebound, Wang Yu drove Sulla downward, forcing him deeper into the void.
"You... How can you possibly... wield power that... opposes the void?!"
Sulla's voice was almost hysterical. The void he spoke of was distinct from the one that most mortals knew.
"Maybe," Wang Yu said, almost offhandedly, "it's because I'm an invader too."
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