Chapter 503 Kingdom of Null
Conversations that used to light up his face with animated expressions have become monosyllabic exchanges. He no longer engages with enthusiasm, and his voice has lost its vibrancy. It quivers with fatigue, and his words seem to hang in the air, heavy with the weight of his disillusionment.
"Everything is already over. They've planned it all."
"Hey! You piece of shit!" Orion furiously slammed his hands on the table, knocking over the priceless set of tea. His hands reached out, grabbing the man by the collar, yet nothing worked. He was but a limp corpse losing its ember of life. "What happened to you..."
"You have no idea what is about to come."
At that moment, the first servant of the primordial beings, the first angel warrior, the first fallen angel, the first demon, the first demon king, the first demon lord, the first traveler of time... was nothing but a toy whose time had run out.
...
(Present Day)
"Who gave you the coordinates?" Lucifer asked. "I'm sure I remember declining your offer."
"Nobody did."
"Huh?"
"I predicted where they would end up. Leviathan isn't stupid enough to send us to a place that could be potentially favorable to all fights. He also wasn't stupid enough to underestimate us and match us against somebody who we could potentially win against... there was also the fact that I believed he would match us against our Masters... well, except for two people."
"Then why ask me in the first place if you could predict everything from the beginning..."
"Because-" Lucifer immediately cut the anomaly off.
"Because it's better to be 100% sure than have a prediction...? Huh? Stop bluffing dick head... you're just trying to act confident when you know 100% that you're finished. I know that saying of yours is a creed... but I know everything you've predicted. Everything is within my calculations."
"I don't see why a toy needs to think so hard..." Orion's expression went cold while his fingers laced over to form a web.
"Throne World..." Both men announced in unison, their emotions swaying the grafts of natural expression amongst their faces.
"Kingdom of Null."
"Prison of Time Unlocked: Expulsion of Heaven, Wrinkle of Hell."
At that moment, the teacher and the student were equal. Kingdom of Null, an entirely recreated throne world branching out from Orion's previous throne world: Chaos Hole. While training with Jormungunder and under the strict gaze of the serpentine king, Orion encountered a force on one of the very last floors. A force that took a physical form so innately strong that it threw him off of the seemingly infinite flight of steps.
Chaos. A primordial force. Though it was diluted to a percentage only represented by placing an infinite number of zeros behind a decimal place, it was still strong enough to break and crack every bone in Orion's body. Numerous times in fact. And if it wasn't for him having such a special race, being a Chaos Incarnate, he would have been entirely wiped from existence.
Nevertheless, he fought and fought against this intangible yet tangible force again and again. Numerous times he had given up and descended the stairs to seek help from his many masters that he had encountered on the way up, but unfortunately, they couldn't do much but provide heaps of encouraging words.
So then, you must be wondering, how exactly did he overcome this... well, he didn't. He used what he knew best and exploited his surroundings to his advantage. By making a deal with Jormungunder, he received a piece of advice that allowed him to see further than what was humanly possible.
"I thought I witnessed everything your throne world has to offer... I guess not."
From behind Orion, an abyssal portal tears open, giving birth to a world of darkness, void, and chaos. This malignant rift, in reality, pulses with malevolent energy, pouring forth an unending torrent of obsidian shadows that unfurl like a cursed tide.
The darkness, thick and impenetrable, oozes from the portal like an inky spill, devouring the light and life in its path. It defies all known laws of nature, clinging to existence with a hunger that seems insatiable. The air itself grows heavy with its oppressive presence, making it difficult to breathe as it wraps its tendrils around everything in its reach.
The void emanating from this rift is a yawning chasm of nothingness, a stark absence of all that is known and tangible. It devours sound, leaving only an eerie silence in its wake. Any attempts to comprehend or fathom its depths are met with an overwhelming sense of existential dread.
Chaos seeps from the portal like a formless, ever-shifting miasma. It twists and distorts the very fabric of reality, creating grotesque and surreal shapes that defy reason. Time itself becomes a malleable construct, as the boundaries of cause and effect blur within this nightmarish realm.
The contours of the figure, the man who stands before this rift, remain shrouded in obscurity as if deliberately cloaked in the shadows. His presence is an enigma, a harbinger of the unspeakable horrors that spill forth from the portal he commands.
As the world of darkness, void, and chaos continues to pour out of the portal, it infects its surroundings like a plague. It creeps across the landscape, leaving nothing untouched. Buildings crumble, organic life withers and rots, and the natural order of things dissolves into madness.
The relentless onslaught of this eldritch abyss paints a bleak and surreal picture, where the laws of reality hold no sway. It is a manifestation of pure malevolence, an entity that hungers for the annihilation of all that exists. As it spreads, it leaves behind only desolation, emptiness, and the echoes of a world once filled with life and light.
Emerging from the churning abyss of darkness, void, and chaos, the colossal palace gradually solidifies, its eerie presence taking form amid the tumultuous shadows. This unsettling edifice is a monument to the unsettling and malevolent forces that have shaped it, defying the laws of architecture, sanity, and reality.
The palace's architecture is a nightmare collage, an unholy fusion of discordant styles and maddening design. Its towering spires seem to reach for the heavens only to be swallowed by the abyss below, their tips enshrouded in a perpetual fog that swirls and shifts in an ever-changing dance. The walls are jagged and irregular, hewn from an abyssal stone that seems to writhe and breathe with a life of its own. Nightmarish reliefs carve scenes of torment and suffering, etched by hands that have long since lost their grip on reason.
Symmetry and order are foreign concepts within these cursed walls. Hallways twist and wind in impossible, vertigo-inducing angles, leading to chambers that defy spatial logic. Ceilings stretch upward into the abyss, disappearing into a void that offers no solace. Floors plummet into unfathomable depths, creating an unsettling sensation of standing at the precipice of a bottomless chasm. The palace is a labyrinth where up and down, left and right, lose all meaning, and the very laws of geometry are contorted to a sinister purpose.
As the palace continues to materialize, it inherits the malevolent properties of the abyss that birthed it. The walls seem to exude a darkness so profound that it swallows light and sound alike, rendering the bravest souls hesitant to approach. Within the palace's oppressive depths, shadows writhe and coil, taking on grotesque, ever-shifting forms that appear to whisper forbidden secrets to those who dare to listen.
The air inside the palace is heavy with dread, each breath tinged with a sense of impending doom. Whispers of anguish and despair reverberate through the labyrinthine corridors as if the very walls retain the anguished cries of those who have wandered here before. Reality itself becomes a treacherous, shifting landscape within the palace's confines, where the laws of physics, time, and causality twist and distort at the behest of its malevolent design.
Intricate runes, pulsating with an eerie, rhythmic glow, adorn the walls and floors, tracing a language known only to the darkest of sorcerers. These runes evoke an ancient, eldritch power that permeates the very foundation of the palace, hinting at the unspeakable rituals and maleficent energies that have shaped its existence.
This unholy citadel stands as a manifestation of the abyss's darkest desires, a domain of unrelenting despair and torment that defies comprehension. It is an abomination to both sight and reason, a blasphemous monument to the twisted will of its enigmatic master, who lurks in the darkest recesses, wielding the chaotic power of the abyss to shape this malevolent palace of eternal darkness and unending dread.
"This is the result of sacrificing part of my soul to that fucking snake... my most powerful move and a skill that has never failed to kill somebody... a world of null. Well, to be exact, it's a world just before the concept of null. I'm almost there... and I believe this fight will help me reach it."
