Chapter 150: I Am Him.
Ikaris's hand descended just as Saleos's skull finished forming, and him, her, and the entire Zola-Prime was enveloped in a singularity that burst from the top and bottom like pillars, reaching the ends of reality in an instant, and then that thin pillar began to slowly swell and expand.
"Where can we go?" Arla asked, but the system seemed stumped as she stared at the approaching reality-ending power.
"There is nowhere we could go that would protect us from something like this, aside from myself who exists beyond reality, anything else which is touched by this terror will be erased, as she had stated."
"What are we supposed to do then?" Dina gestured to the fluctuating mass as it began growing, rapidly expanding, but right after they had all resigned to their fate and the pillar was directly in collision with the moon, it vanished, leaving absolute emptiness where Zola-Prime had once been, while the moon itself with the absence of the planet began a unnoticeably slow drift toward the closest star.
"That is a wrap." Ikaris spoke from their side, sitting on the ground and panting, holding the stub of her missing arm with a wince as her features returned to the human form she used to hide behind and her skin and eyes stopped glowing.
"Ikaris, are you okay?" Dina spun and fell next to her, casting [heal] on her arm, but the tissue didn't even budge. "Can you heal yourself?" She asked again.
"Not at the moment, no." She shrugged and chuckled.
"I exhausted all of my Arkadian mana at the start of the fight, the Atlan mana within me has been completely mixed with my divine power, and on the topic of divinity-" Ikaris stopped talking when a crack appeared across her cheek, excluding white energy as if she was about to explode next to them, and while the other gods slightly retreated, Gabriell and Gadriel approached fearlessly while Arla knelt on her other side and tried healing her as well.
"Indeed, I may have pushed it just a bit too far." Ikaris raised her good hand and sealed the crack seamlessly, but as soon as she lowered her hand three more appeared across her cheek, and a much larger one openned up in her chest.
"W-what are we supposed to do?"
"In the end you could not even manage two thirds of your own power." The system took a seat on the ground in front of Ikaris conjuring a transparent golden tourniquet. "Allow me to suspend you, if this continues you will shatter as I had warned you before." She reached forward, and Ikaris's closed her eyes with a soft smile and accepted as she started getting wrapped from her arm.
"We could have found another way," Dina shook her head seeing more cracks appear beneath the tourniquet while the system rushed to complete her task, until just her head remained, with a single pole off light escaping her left eye that had completely caved in revealing pure divinity on the inside.
"I disagree that there was another way," Ikaris looked up, as the tourniquet stopped at her neck.
"He needed to be destroyed completely, for that to work, he could not be Incinerated, and even something as broken as Cosmic Scream did not work, my only option aside from this was to completely discard this body entirely and run wild in my pure form, the potency of my divine power lacked the necessary oomph to finish the fight safely, and he would have just kept coming back." She explained, and Dina scrunched her nose.
"Why didn't you do that; run wild I mean?"
"It had to be done in this way, I am sorry-"
"Without her body to retain her soul she would disappear, or more accurately, her divine power would disperse and her consciousness would return to where it originally came in pieces." System wrapped Ikaris's mouth and continued all the way up to the top of her head, leaving no crevice uncovered.
"The only thing I can do is suspend her in time and hope that Master Vestic can help her when he returns."
***
"That was hard to watch." Sol floated beneath a great black that distorted stars as far as the eyes could see in a great arc that seemed to encompass everything.
"I wanted to help her; to step in and end it like I usually do, but with this victory I can rest assured that her grudges with demonkind have been completely settled, even if her body is in shambles, her heart feels at peace." He looked down at the system next to him, and she stared up conflicted.
"Please do not take too long, I can never comprehend or dream to match her power, there is a limit to how long I can contain Goddess Ikaris's vessel before she breaks and shatters the dimension I have suspended her in; and I need not tell you but in the case of her divinity escaping unchecked, it would be the end of this current reality, it could possibly trigger another origin-class event."
"Don't worry, I don't think I'll be taking too long here." Sol looked up at the great nothingness above himself again and the billions of thin and stretched stars that were being simultaneously swallowed by it. "Though, inside of this place, time is a bit weird." He stared.
"The centre of the universe...!" Sol stopped resisting the pull and began getting sucked in so fast that his very image began to distort and stretch like strings and paper.
"Are you sure this is the best approach, can you guarantee escaping this entity!?" System asked, remaining on the outside of the sphere while Sol vanished.
He didn't hear her, the sounds were gone, and all light disappeared with it, thrusting him into another space completely.
**
"Godslayer, you dare to enter my domain, has your memory fragmented with your vanquished soul, have you forgotten who I am?" A voice reverberated around his body and through his head, and Sol shuddered upon hearing it at how creepy it was.
"Origin... no, Void." He spread his hands stopping his momentum in an instant and watching as the streaks of light he had been zooming by stood still. "I never imagined after hearing about you that I would end up in your presence so soon, that too with the goal of destroying you." Sol released a breath of mana and watched it freeze in place after a few feet of travel.
"I'm still tripping." He chuckled and then looked deeper into the darkness as a great eye of gold and crimson opened and stared directly at him.
"How exactly do I even do this, I can't outright attack a black hole, it eats energy, the only other option is to destabilise it and make it raidly disperse, but that's also a "no", I'm not trying to destroy the universe, and destroying this thing will do just that." Sol mused, scratching his chin while the eye which spanned the size of hundreds of thousands of galaxies stared up at him.
"My goal is to kill the root of all my problems; you, Void."
"It is impossible, I have spent most of time making myself indistinguishable from Origin, I am the great Void, child of darkness herself, there is no power in existence that can-"
"I mean, the first Godslayer kicked your ass didn't he?" Sol interrupted him. "I don't see why I couldn't rip you out of the consciousness of Origin itself."
"Origin has long been extinguished, only I VOID remain, I cannot be killed, I cannot be removed, I am indomitable, I am-"
"A lot more talkative than I imagined the aggressor against Ikaris would be."
"Ikarissss...." Void's massive pupil shrunk as the eye approached. "The divine that survived when the others shattered and died; a stain on my great name." He stared at sol continuing to close the distance rapidly.
"What great name, literally, nobody outside knows you even exist, as far as time and the passage of time itself goes, the Godslayer defeated you and you ran with your tail between your legs; Void, history knows you as a wounded dog."
"And yet I am still here, more powerful than I ever was before, staring at that same entity who is now much weaker, much more weaker than he was before!"
"Ah, I'm not sure what kind of power the lunatic before me had." Sol snapped his fingers and Void's rapid advance halted when he thought he was going to be attacked, leaving the Godslayer chuckling and holding his stomach.
"..."
"It doesn't matter if you're stronger than me, honestly; answer me this Void, did you ever manage to harm the godslayer even once?" Sol asked, staring at the obvious panic in the great eye beneath him.
"Since I awakened this power I've had the sensation of complete indestructibility, a sense that I am utterly untouchable, I've had this feeling before, I've been strong before, but when I completely inherited these powers everything felt meaningless before me, pointless in their entirety, like I could tear down anything and everything with the casual ease of thought."
"You are mistaken, after I kill you, your soul will join me and I will make you lament forever conscious within my presence!"
"Except you can't kill me, can you?" Sol stared while his eyes began glowing and his hair flared like fire.
"I am the emissary of Beginning itself, before coming here I made darkness my bitch, did you even notice that?" Sol's expression became comically jovial as he began laughing out loud. "The Godslayer; even though nobody has said it themself, is the most powerful being in existence, isn't it?"
He stopped laughing and looked down running his fingers through his hair and grinning. "I get why nobody told me, aside from Ikaris who knew me personally, they tried relentlessly to prevent me from gaining strength, because they didn't trust my intentions I am the absolute peak of power in every reality."
"I am Him."