The silence lasted only a breath.
Then the world broke.
The Outer God moved, not with speed but with inevitability—like gravity itself had chosen a new direction. Its strike wasn't a fist but a collapse, an implosion of pressure that erased stone, air, and light in its path.
Lucien stepped into it. His body blurred, Phantom Step bending distance, and the void crash slammed into the afterimage of where he'd been. He reappeared at the creature's flank, his heel driving upward.
The impact boomed like a planet's core cracking. The god's massive frame staggered, space shivering from the kick. Lucien landed lightly, a faint grin tugging at his lips.
"Didn't expect that to hurt, huh?" His voice was cool, mocking, his pale aura crackling around him.
The god roared—not in pain, but in insult.
It answered with an arm sweep that tore a continent-sized scar across the land. Mountains folded, seas boiled, yet Lucien was already in the air, spinning. His fist glowed faintly, pale-white energy spiraling along his knuckles.
He struck down.
The punch collapsed gravity in a dome, hammering the god into the ground hard enough to bury its form beneath miles of shattered terrain. Dust and energy spiraled upward into the heavens.
The other Revenants and Mirrored Six froze mid-battle, even as they fought the thousand horrors around them. For a moment, all eyes were drawn to that crater.
But the Outer God was not still.
It surged back, rising like a mountain that refused to die. Its claw swept across reality, and this time Lucien didn't dodge. He planted his feet.
The impact slammed into him. The world bent inward. And yet—he held. His arms crossed, pale light flaring brighter. His body screamed with the weight, but the Endurance of the White answered. Memories of being torn apart, consumed, shattered endlessly in the White rushed through him. He had survived worse. He always had.
Lucien's smirk widened, almost cruel. "That's it? That's your peak?"
He shoved.
And the god's attack collapsed backward, its own energy folding against itself, forcing it to retreat a half step—something it had never done in its eternal reign.
The air shuddered with silence, disbelieving.
Lucien straightened, pale aura sharpening into arcs of white flame around him. His every breath hummed with controlled destruction. He raised one finger, pointing directly at the Outer God.
"You said I was an insult to your order." His voice cut through the fractured heavens. "Good. You'll remember me as the mistake that tore it all down."
The god struck again, and this time Lucien met it head-on. Reality Phase Combat flared to life, his body slipping between layers of existence, letting him intercept strikes from impossible angles. He ducked under claws that erased air itself, drove a knee into its chest, then flickered out of sight to hammer its skull with a spinning kick.
Every blow he dealt wasn't just force—it was pain conversion, the agony he'd endured twisted into raw empowerment. Every time the god landed a glancing strike, Lucien only grew sharper, faster, stronger.
The battlefield had become their arena.
The ground no longer existed. The sky was gone. There was only Lucien and the god, tearing reality apart with every collision. His techniques were endless: strikes that bent gravity, palms that shattered space, feints that looked casual until they caved in divine armor.
At last, he stopped. Not because he was done—but because he wanted the thing to understand.
Lucien stood over the god, boot planted on its chest, aura flaring like a dying sun. His grin was feral, eyes gleaming with something both mocking and inevitable.
"You wanted me to end today?" he said, voice low but carrying across the battlefield. "Sorry. I don't die. I multiply."
The Outer God's scream shook creation itself.
And the fight was far from over.