Chapter 135: Ch 135 : A Final Gift, A Gaze Across Time
The cosmos held its breath. Adam stood surrounded by the last remaining of his people, a king preparing to die with his kingdom. The pleas of his followers to flee were a distant echo; a king does not run. His gaze was fixed on Deimos, a fire of pure, unyielding resolve in his eyes. He would fight until his last breath.
"This is getting boring," Deimos sighed, he sounded like an overpowered villan killing civilians. He raised a hand, preparing to deliver the final, killing blow, to extinguish the last great light of the old Gods.
But then, a pure, brilliant light tore through the void. It moved with a speed that defied the laws of the cosmos, a streak of impossible grace that placed itself directly between Adam and his doom.
It was Freya. She had arrived, and she took the full, devastating force of Deimos’s attack.
A gaping hole appeared in her stomach, and divine blood, shimmering like liquid starlight, gushed forth like a fountain.
"Freya... why did you...?" Adam’s roar of anguish was cut short. A powerful, irresistible force, born from Freya’s dying will, enveloped him. Both his main body and the fragment of his soul were pulled, dragged from the battlefield into an entirely new reality.
"Survive, my love," Freya’s voice was a soft whisper that echoed directly in his soul, a final, heartbreaking gift. "This realm is the first and last gift of mine to you. Its name is the Realm of Advancement. Use it well, Adam."
With those final words, her body, as if it were a pane of shattered glass, dissolved into a billion motes of fading light.
As if answering her final wish, a cosmic symphony began. The bodies of all the Gods who had fallen in the great war began to twitch. From their silent forms, their most prized possessions, shimmering pills of immense power, divine artifacts that hummed with ancient energy—rose into the void and shot like falling stars towards the new realm, a final inheritance for the future.
The six other Demon Lords moved to intercept the treasures, but Deimos held up a hand. "Let them go," he commanded. "There is a restriction on this realm. A God cannot enter it without that goddess’s permission. Now that she is dead, the door is sealed to us."
"At least my curses can enter," Maledictus purred. With a flick of her wrist, she sent a single, SS-Grade curse, a thread of pure malice, hurtling into the Realm of Advancement. It struck the already half-dead form of Adam, a final act of spite. "I couldn’t use a more potent curse, as it would not have been able to pass the restriction," she explained. "Still, with his condition, he should die in a few hundred thousand years."
"Not bad," Deimos acknowledged. The battle was won. The great discord was over. The torrent of power that had been flooding into him slowed to a trickle.
But then, the cosmos itself seemed to sigh in appreciation for his masterpiece of chaos. A new wave of pure, law-bending power washed over him, and his aura became even stronger than before.
From the River of Time, Sunny watched this final, tragic act, and a killing intent so pure and cold erupted from his soul that the very river around him seemed to freeze.
"Who goes there?" this voice was not from the present. It was from the past. Deimos’s head snapped up from his victory, his gaze piercing through the veil of a million years, through the fabric of time itself, and locking directly onto Sunny’s soul.
"What?!" Sunny screamed internally. This was just a projection, a memory! How could he be seen? How could he be attacked?
There was no time to think. Deimos swatted at the air in his direction, and reality itself began to tear apart where Sunny’s soul floated. Sunny didn’t hesitate. He plunged deeper into the chaotic currents of the River of Time, fleeing from a ghost that could somehow touch him.
"It isn’t time to fight you yet," Sunny said aloud, his voice shaking with a mixture of rage and shock. "But don’t worry. You will die one day for sure."
A slow, malicious grin spread across the face of the Deimos from a million years ago. "I am waiting, then," his voice echoed across time.
He can even hear me, Sunny thought, a profound chill settling into his being. He finally understood. He knew their tricks, their weaknesses, but he was facing an enemy whose power defied the very laws of reality he was just beginning to comprehend.
He decided not to risk another look at Deimos and instead turned his attention to the newly created Realm of Advancement. But as his soul approached it, a shimmering barrier blocked his path.
"Is this restriction applied to me, too? I am just a soul!" Sunny cried out in frustration. If the entry is denied, then he will chose another path. He would watch its creation.
He dived back into the river, traveling to a time before the final battle. He saw Freya, a being of breathtaking beauty and power, at work.
At first, the process was fascinating. She was like a divine weaver, taking entire worlds and sewing them together like clothes. But the process was slow, painstaking. As centuries passed in a blur, it became boring, and Sunny skipped ahead, searching for something to understand this restriction.
Suddenly, he saw her pause. She held a small, crystalline object in her hand, a token that pulsed with a gentle, inviting light. "Oh, Adam," she whispered to herself, a conversation of love across a distance of multiverses. "This token is for you. When I finally visit, you can have it. With it, you can enter this realm anytime you wish."
She flew to a specific, hidden valley within the new realm and placed the token within a stone altar, concealing it from all but the most determined eyes. Sunny burned the location, the shape of the valley, and the look of the altar into his memory. He had found it. The key.
With his mission accomplished, Sunny pulled his soul from the River of Time. The journey had been costly. Four trillion faith points had vanished—a small fraction for the journey itself, but the acts of pausing, playing, and fast-forwarding history had drained his reserves. And the single, terrifying glance from Deimos had cost him the most. But the knowledge was worth it.
"Nova. Mammon," Sunny’s voice echoed through the minds of his two most powerful demigods. "You have a duty to perform."
He sent them the location, the image of the valley, the vision of the token. He wasn’t worried about demons finding it; Freya was the Goddess of Restrictions, and her final work would be unassailable by lesser beings.
Immediately, the two demigods began their journey. Nova tore a rift in space, stepping directly through reality, while Mammon dissolved into the shadows, traveling through the endless, silent Void.
"Sister Nova," Mammon’s voice echoed through their private connection, "what do you think this treasure is, that the Master himself has asked us to find?"
"I do not know," Nova replied, her own voice filled with a sense of profound purpose. "But it must be something special. Master has never asked us to find something like this before."