[Last Episode: [The eight Pillar Kings surged forward as one, and the fight — the first true test of what Ivarak had just built — began.]
Chapter 144, Episode 144
[The Abyss Sea World — Eight Against Two]
[All eight Pillar Kings moved together]
[They surged forward as a single, coordinated wave, every discipline they'd spent ages mastering unleashed in the same breath]
[Lionet Sai tore threads loose from the roots of a thousand timelines at once, hurling them like spears. Hypnos bent the local laws of physics into cages meant to close around anything caught inside them]
Lionet Sai: Let's win this fight!!
[Arthurio called the dead of eight thousand years to rise and swarm. Zarathustra opened the void in a dozen directions simultaneously, each one a mouth waiting to swallow. Storm Vinx became a blur too fast for ordinary sight]
[Luxias crushed the space around the chamber under gravity dense enough to fold stone to powder]
[Ignatius pressed his presence against the mind as hard as any blade could press against flesh. Kato raised towering columns of water, each one aimed with the precision of eight thousand years spent never missing]
[It arrived all at once, a single overwhelming front, the full combined weight of the Sage Pillar's ancient authority]
[Zuvarage and Haschwalth didn't move to meet it]
Zuvarage: Half strength. Together.
Haschwalth: Together.... Our Majesty will break this world
[They raised their hands at the same instant, and the entire assault — timeline-threads, law-cages, risen dead, void-mouths, Storm Vinx's blur, Luxias's crushing gravity, Ignatius's mental pressure, Kato's precision water]
[The Alpharus overruled every attack]
[Every thread lost its authority to exist as a weapon mid-flight. Every law-cage forgot what it had been built to contain. The risen dead crumbled back into dust, severed from whatever command had called them]
Zarathustra: What.....their power just overturned our magic..
Hypnos: Such power... this power far surpasses Voriath himself..
[The void-mouths closed on nothing. Storm Vinx's blur simply arrived into empty space, the two intruders having already decided, in advance, that his approach wouldn't land anywhere useful]
[Luxias's gravity found nothing to crush. Ignatius's pressure reached minds that had stopped being minds the ordinary assault could touch. Kato's water forgot its own trajectory halfway through the strike]
[The chamber went still, all eight attacks dissolved in the same instant they'd converged]
Lionet Sai: That's not possible. Eight of us, together, full strength —
Zuvarage: Was still eight separate things trying to argue with one authority that doesn't negotiate... but overrides any law
[She crossed the distance before any of them recovered, and a single open palm against Lionet Sai's chest sent the First Pillar King skidding the length of the chamber.]
[Haschwalth moved into the others at the same moment —but as one continuous sweep, a strike for Hypnos that scattered his law-cages before they finished forming, a backhand that caught Arthurio mid-summon and unmade the connection to his risen dead entirely, a shoulder into Zarathustra that sent the void-user through a support column]
Haschwalth: The vessel drinks what you throw at it. The more you commit, the more it has to work with.
[He caught Storm Vinx's follow-up strike between two fingers — the Fifth Pillar King's full speed arriving a full second after Haschwalth had already decided where to be — and held it there.]
Haschwalth: You're fast. That was never the question. The question was whether fast means anything against something that's already finished deciding the outcome before you've committed to the attempt... such speed!!
[He released, and Storm Vinx stumbled back, genuinely unable to process how a grip he hadn't seen coming had stopped him anyway.]
[Luxias and Ignatius pressed together, gravity and presence combined into a single, crushing wave, and Zuvarage met it with the same unhurried calm she'd carried since arriving]
Zuvarage: Such Combined effort. Smarter than the rest of them, at least.
[She didn't dodge. She simply stood in it, and the gravity found nothing to compress, the mental pressure found nothing to break, and both Pillar Kings felt, with mounting horror, that their combined technique had simply been declared irrelevant by something that outranked the question of whether it should work at all.]
[Kato, the last still standing with any real reserve, raised his water one final time — not at either intruder directly, but around them, a full encirclement meant to compress from every angle simultaneously]
Haschwalth: Clever.
[He said it with genuine appreciation, and then simply stepped through the collapsing water as though it were mist, the Eighth Pillar King's precision work accomplishing nothing beyond proving, finally and completely, that precision meant nothing against an authority this far above the register it was built to answer to.]
Kato: How strong are these Hyper gods... even us pillars can't match their power.
[Within minutes, all eight Pillar Kings lay scattered across the ruined chamber floor, bruised, breathing hard, their combined full-power assault having accomplished nothing against two beings who had never once needed to exceed half their own capacity]
[Haschwalth rolled his shoulders, the black marks beneath his eyes pulsing faint and satisfied]
Haschwalth: That settles the scale of things.
Zuvarage: Time for the grand finale
Haschwalth, smirking: Let's–
[He raised one hand, gathering something considerably more final — and the air in the chamber shifted before he could release it.]
[A new presence arrived, and unlike anything either intruder had encountered since stepping into this multiverse, it didn't announce itself with power]
[A man stood at the chamber's entrance. Wild, golden hair, long and loose around his shoulders. Deep red eyes, sharp and unhurried, carrying something ancient and faintly amused behind them]
[A high-collared coat the color of old wine, gold trim catching what little light the ruined chamber still held, one hand raised, palm open, in a loose gesture that could have meant greeting or warning depending on how you chose to read it]
[He stepped over Storm Vinx's half-conscious form without particular concern and came to a stop a short distance from both intruders]
[Haschwalth's gathered strike dimmed]
Haschwalth: Who are you...
Ralphasias: My name is Ralphasias.
[He said it simply, the way you'd give a name to someone who had every right to ask for it.]
Ralphasias: I am the Embodiment of World. Time, mostly, though I'll admit the title undersells what that actually covers once you've had a billion years to stretch it.... I always wonder around
[He rolled his neck, loose and easy, and inclined his head slightly toward both of them.]
Ralphasias: And you're the two new Embodiments. Tyranny and Inviolability, if the names reaching me are accurate. Half of Alpharus between you, a vessel built from the Hyper Gods' own absorbed inheritance, and a Nexus your Majesty built with his own hands. That's a considerable amount of weight to hand two freshly minted servants in a single afternoon... am I right??
[Lionet Sai, dragging himself upright against a broken column, stared at the newcomer with startled, genuine recognition]
Lionet Sai: I've heard your name before. Never once confirmed it belonged to anyone real... such presence...
Ralphasias: Most people assume that. I find it convenient and rarely correct it.
Zuvarage: You're a Hyper God???
Ralphasias: I am indeed..
Zuvarage: Then explain why you're standing in the middle of a fight that belongs to eight kings who don't serve you.
Ralphasias: Because I'm not here for them.
[Haschwalth's eyes narrowed, the black marks beneath them sharpening.]
Haschwalth: Then why.
Ralphasias: i am curious. Two new Embodiments, carrying half of something I've never had the chance to properly measure, dropped into my attention in the same week. I don't get opportunities like that often. I wasn't going to let it pass by unexamined just because the opportunity happened to be standing on someone else's battlefield.
Zuvarage: So you came to test us.
Ralphasias: I came to put my hands on you. Curiosity, in my experience, is worthless without proper data, and the only honest way to gather it is directly.
[He smiled, faint and unhurried, red eyes catching something close to genuine amusement.]
Ralphasias: I don't talk much, as a general rule. I find most conversation redundant after the first billion years of hearing variations on the same several hundred arguments. But I like explaining myself when I do bother to act. Feels discourteous not to, when I'm about to put you both through something worth remembering.
[He moved]
[Haschwalth registered the strike landing before he registered Ralphasias having started it]
[Haschwalth skidded back, genuinely startled]
Haschwalth: You're not fast.
Ralphasias: Not really...
[Zuvarage flanked from the side, and Ralphasias caught her strike on his forearm — the impact driving him back half a step, the first sign since his arrival that he wasn't operating entirely without cost.]
Ralphasias: That one had real weight behind it.
Zuvarage: Glad you noticed.
[He pressed forward, a flurry of close, brutal, economical strikes]
[Haschwalth caught one on the vessel's absorbing shell, and felt, for the first time since Ivarak had granted him the inheritance, genuine resistance — the energy fighting the process rather than feeding into it cleanly]
Haschwalth: You built your power not to be eaten
Ralphasias: Took me a very long time. Worth every year of it, apparently, given the company I'm currently keeping.
[He pivoted, catching Zuvarage's follow-up kick on his shoulder and redirecting it with the loose, unhurried ease of someone who'd stopped finding combat stressful several hundred million years ago.]
Ralphasias: You're both exceptional. I want to say that plainly, because I don't offer compliments to be kind — I'm not capable of it, if I'm honest, my honesty tends to embarrass people more than flatter them. Half of Alpharus is a genuinely terrifying amount of power to hand two new Embodiments in a single sitting.
Zuvarage: You're stalling.
Ralphasias: I'm talking while I fight. There's a difference, though I understand why it looks identical from where you're standing.
[The exchange escalated, Haschwalth and Zuvarage pressing together now, the coordinated rhythm the eight Pillar Kings had never once managed to find — and Ralphasias met both of them at once, fluid, economical, genuinely, repeatedly testing the edges of what half an Alpharus could actually do]
Haschwalth: How does raw martial skill keep pace with this????
Ralphasias: My power is simply irrelevant... that's how I can frame it for you
[He caught a combined strike, held the position one full, straining second — and was forced, finally, visibly, to give ground.]
Ralphasias: There it is.
Zuvarage: You're losing.
Ralphasias: I'm behind. Temporarily. I'd ask you to appreciate the distinction, but I suspect it's becoming less meaningful the longer I keep making it.
[Haschwalth pressed the advantage, a strike that would have ended the exchange decisively against anything less — and Ralphasias caught it on crossed forearms, the impact driving him back a full step, genuine strain finally crossing his expression]
Ralphasias: That one actually hurt.
Haschwalth: Good.
[Zuvarage closed from the other side, and for one genuine moment it looked as though the fight might end there — Ralphasias caught between half of Alpharus and the full weight of the vessel, pressed from two directions at once.]
[Then he simply wasn't there.]
[He reappeared several meters back, breathing harder than before, a thin line of blood at the corner of his mouth, both hands raised in the loose, unbothered gesture of someone acknowledging a conclusion rather than conceding a defeat]
Ralphasias: That's enough data.
Zuvarage: You're retreating.
Ralphasias: I'm choosing not to continue a fight I've already learned everything I came here to learn from. You can call it retreat if it satisfies something in you to frame it that way. I won't argue the point — arguing feels like wasted motion, same as most conversation.
Haschwalth: You held against half of Alpharus. For as long as you did, nothing I've encountered since receiving it has managed that.
Ralphasias: I'd be lying if I claimed I expected to hold that long. Which should tell you something about how seriously you ought to be taking your own continued growth from here forward. Half of something that large is still considerably larger than most things in this cosmology have ever had to answer to.
Haschwalth studied him, genuine, careful respect settling into his expression.
Haschwalth: Join us.
Ralphasias: No.
Haschwalth: You're strong enough to matter. Ivarak would value someone capable of standing this close to even a fraction of what he carries.
Ralphasias: I'm certain he would. I'm equally certain I have no interest in serving anyone, regardless of how generous the inheritance on offer happens to be. I didn't spend a billion years refining what I am just to hand the decision of how to use it over to someone else's throne.
Zuvarage: Then why intervene at all, if not to help the Pillar Kings and not to join our side.
Ralphasias: I already told you. Curiosity. I came, I put my hands on both of you, I confirmed what half of Alpharus actually feels like from the inside of an exchange rather than secondhand rumor, and now I'm leaving before the lesson costs me more than it's worth to keep teaching it. I don't choose sides in wars that aren't mine yet. When this one becomes mine, you'll know it the moment it happens.
Haschwalth: That's not a flat refusal of everything.
Ralphasias: It's a refusal to join. It's not a refusal to watch.
[He turned, unhurried, and the air around him began, slowly, to thin — not a teleport exactly, closer to the specific, gradual fading of someone choosing, deliberately, to stop being fully present in this particular moment of time]
Ralphasias: Tell your Majesty I said hello. And that I'll be watching, with considerable interest, to see what the two of you grow into once that inheritance finishes settling properly into you both. I suspect it'll be worth the attention.
[He smirked, the expression carrying genuine, tired amusement underneath the exhaustion of the fight, and vanished entirely — no residual trace, no lingering presence, nothing to prove he'd ever stood there at all beyond the bruises he'd left behind on both of them.]
[The eight Pillar Kings, still scattered across the chamber floor, watched the empty space where he'd been with a mixture of relief and genuine, bewildered confusion]
Lionet Sai: He didn't finish the fight.
Kato: He got what he came for instead.
Lionet Sai: Apparently that was always the only thing he came for.
[Haschwalth stared at the space Ralphasias had occupied, something complicated settling behind his black-marked eyes]
Haschwalth: That was unexpected.
Zuvarage: Very.
Haschwalth: He held against half of Alpharus. I felt him straining by the end, genuinely — but he held, longer than I expected anything short of Ivarak himself to manage.
Zuvarage: A billion years of pure refinement, applied to whatever the Embodiment of World actually grants beneath the surface of it.
Haschwalth: I'd like to know what that actually is. 'Time' feels like an undersell, the same way he said it was.
[Zuvarage was quiet for a moment, turning something over carefully.]
Zuvarage: If half of Alpharus barely edged him out—
Haschwalth: Then a full Alpharus, in his hands, might rival Ivarak's own.
[The thought sat heavy between them, and neither said anything further about it for a long moment.]
[Zuvarage finally turned back toward the eight Pillar Kings, still gathering themselves across the ruined chamber floor]
Zuvarage: This realm has seen what it needed to see. We're finished here.
[Lionet Sai, bruised, breathing hard, carrying what dignity remained to a First Pillar King even in defeat]
Lionet Sai: You'll return.
Haschwalth: Eventually. Our Majesty decides when.
[He opened a rift back toward the World of Space, and the two of them stepped through together, leaving the Sage Pillar's eight ancient kings scattered, humbled, and genuinely unsettled by exactly how far beyond them this new threat had already grown — and by the stranger who had, for a few brief minutes, proven there was something further beyond that still.]
[The World of Space]
[Zuvarage and Haschwalth stepped through the rift]
[Ivarak was still working]
[Slow process. Five Embodiments to rebuild]
[He looked up anyway]
Ivarak: Report.
Haschwalth: Eight Pillar Kings. Full output. We used half power between the two of us.
Ivarak: Outcome.
Zuvarage: Decisive. They never got close.
[Ivarak nodded once. No surprise there. Expected result.]
Ivarak: And the interruption.
Haschwalth: You already know.
Ivarak: I know a name reached me. I don't know what happened.
[Zuvarage laid it out. Clean. No padding.]
Zuvarage: Ralphasias. Showed up mid-fight. Said he wasn't there for the Pillar Kings. Said he came for data on us specifically.
Haschwalth: He held against half my Alpharus output.. able to go toe on toe with the Alpharus
Ivarak: For how long.
Haschwalth: Long enough that I don't have a clean answer. Minutes. Felt longer.
[Ivarak set down whatever he'd been working with]
[Full attention now]
Ivarak: Describe the engagement. Everything. I want specifics, not impressions.
Zuvarage: He is a martial skill first. Pure hand-to-hand, no obvious ability layered over it at the start. He read our approach angles before we committed to them.
Haschwalth: Then something underneath that. Felt like time, but not the version everyone else runs. Felt like he'd already finished the fight before we started it, and was just letting the motion catch up.
Ivarak: Did he name anything..
Haschwalth: No skill names. No activation words. He said he doesn't talk much, then talked the entire fight.
[That got something close to a dry look from Ivarak. Almost amusement. Gone fast.]
Ivarak: That's him... what an interesting Hyper god
[Ivarak stood and walked to the edge of his throne platform. Looked out at nothing in particular — which, for him, usually meant he was looking at something nobody else could see]
Ivarak: I'm pulling his thread.
Zuvarage: His timeline... what he can see current timelines??
Ivarak: Alpharus reads causality. Every decision he's made, every branch he could have taken — I can see the shape of it if I look long enough.
[He looked.]
[A while passed. Neither subordinate interrupted.]
[Ivarak's expression didn't change. But something in the room did. Pressure building, then stalling out. Like hitting a wall that wasn't supposed to be there.]
Ivarak: That's new.
Haschwalth: Problem?
Ivarak: His thread doesn't hold still. I reach for the branch point where he decides something, and the branch has already moved by the time I arrive at it.
Zuvarage: He's reading you reading him.
Ivarak: Possibly. Or his relationship with cause and effect simply doesn't match the standard model closely enough for Alpharus to get clean purchase. Either way — I can't manipulate what I can't properly locate.
[First time either of them had heard him admit a limit out loud.]
Haschwalth: So he's an exception.
Ivarak: He's an *open question.* Different category. I don't like open questions I didn't create myself.
[He turned back to them.]
Ivarak: Did he give any indication of allegiance.
Zuvarage: Said he doesn't pick sides in wars that aren't his yet.
Ivarak: Then we leave him alone. For now. Pulling at a thread that won't hold still just teaches him more about how I move. Not worth the trade.
[Back to the throne. Back to the slow work.]
Ivarak: Go rest. Both of you did well today.
[In the Depth of Elsewhere]
[Ralphasias walked]
[He found her at the edge of a dead star system. Sitting on what used to be a planet's core, now just a slow-cooling husk of rock and memory]
[Long hair. Blue, purple, pink, one white streak up front. Red-and-gold katana across her lap, resting like she'd forgotten it was a weapon at all]
[Meltryllis didn't turn around]
Meltryllis: You're bleeding.
Ralphasias: A little.
Meltryllis: That's new for you.
Ralphasias: Everything's new today, apparently.
[He sat down next to her. No formality. Old friends don't need it.]
Meltryllis: How long's it been.
Ralphasias: Long enough that I stopped counting on purpose. You know how I get.
Meltryllis: You always stop counting right before something important happens. I've noticed the pattern.
Ralphasias: Coincidence.
Meltryllis: Sure it is.
[She finally looked at him. Studied the bruises. Read them the way you'd read a report.]
Meltryllis: Those marks. Alpharus-shaped.
Ralphasias: Half of it, apparently. New host.
Meltryllis: He's handing out his own power now.
Ralphasias: Two new Embodiments. Tyranny and Inviolability. Fresh mint, still settling into the vessel.
[Meltryllis exhaled. Slow. The kind of exhale that means you already suspected something and just got it confirmed.]
Meltryllis: He's awake, then.
Ralphasias: He's been awake. Been quiet about it. Quiet's worse
Meltryllis: You fought them.
Ralphasias: Tested them. Different thing.
Meltryllis: Winner?
Ralphasias: Nobody. I got my data, they got bruised egos, everyone walked away with something.
[She almost smiled at that. Almost.]
Meltryllis: You're being careful.
Ralphasias: I'm always careful. You know that about me.
Meltryllis: I know you're careful when something actually scares you. You weren't careful the last time Voriath made a scene.
Ralphasias: Voriath was predictable. Angry, ambitious, running on inherited grief. Easy shape to read.
Meltryllis: And Ivarak isn't.
Ralphasias: Ivarak built the thing Voriath couldn't hold onto. Built it, gave it away, watched what it did to someone else's hands. That's not grief. That's a controlled experiment.
[Meltryllis was quiet a moment]
Meltryllis: The two new ones. The Embodiments.
Ralphasias: Tyranny's efficient. No wasted motion. Zuvarage, if you want the name.
Meltryllis: I know Zuvarage. Old service record. Loyal a long time before any of this.
Ralphasias: The other one's new. Haschwalth. Mortal, until recently. Chaos Universe guild background.
Meltryllis: A mortal, carrying half of Alpharus.
Ralphasias: Carrying it well, too. That's the part that bothers me.
[She picked up on that immediately.]
Meltryllis: You don't get bothered.
Ralphasias: I get bothered rarely. Today qualifies.
Meltryllis: What's your read.
Ralphasias: He's not rushing. That's the whole read. Ivarak built an army, reclaimed the Nexus, minted two new Embodiments, and he still hasn't moved on anyone directly. He's letting the board fill itself in.
Meltryllis: Waiting for Leo. For Isaac.
Ralphasias: Waiting for everyone. Letting them grow into something worth the trouble of fighting properly. That's not impatience. That's planning on a scale most of us stopped being capable of a long time ago.
[Meltryllis looked out at the dead star system. Thinking.]
Meltryllis: The boy ended Voriath. Him and his friend together.
Ralphasias: I heard.
Meltryllis: He's building something real. Not just power. A structure. People who'd actually follow him somewhere.
Ralphasias: Ivarak's noticed the same thing. Probably noticed it before either of us did.
[Meltryllis stood. Dusted off nothing in particular — habit, not necessity]
Meltryllis: So what do we do.
Ralphasias: Watch.
Meltryllis: That's it?
Ralphasias: For now. I don't pick a side in something I haven't finished reading yet. Neither should you.
Meltryllis: You know I don't take orders from you.
Ralphasias: Wasn't an order. Was a recommendation. Billion years, remember. I've seen what happens to people who commit early
[She considered that. Let it sit.]
Meltryllis: Fine. We watch.
Ralphasias: Good.
[A pause. Comfortable. The kind two old friends can sit in without needing to fill it.]
Meltryllis: You'll tell me if that changes.
Ralphasias: First person I'll tell.
[He stood too. Looked out at the same dead star system she'd been staring at.]
Ralphasias: Something's coming. Bigger than Voriath ever was. I don't know the shape of it yet.
Meltryllis: Then we find out the shape of it together.
Ralphasias: Works for me..
To be continued....