The battlefield froze.
Not because the fighting had stopped, but because something else was arriving. The thousand horrors still swarmed against the Revenants and Mirrored Six, the earth was still split into endless ravines, but every soul—even those without eyes to see—felt it.
The air warped.
And Lucien had already turned his head.
His pale gaze fixed on a point in empty space, long before the first crack tore reality. His aura flared, sharp and cold, as if he'd been waiting.
The tear widened. And from it, the real Outer God stepped forth.
Its size dwarfed mountains. Its presence crushed oceans into vapor. The copy Lucien had fought—the one that had nearly drowned the world in despair—had been nothing more than a shadow.
The god's voice thundered like law being rewritten.
"You thought you battled me, mortal? That was a fragment. A husk. Thirty percent of my strength."
Its laughter was a storm. "And you struggled against that."
Lucien's lips curved into a faint smirk. He didn't flinch, didn't step back. His eyes were steady, cold and knowing.
"Funny," he murmured, his voice carrying against the impossible roar. "Because I already knew you were coming."
The god's mirth cracked, just a little.
Lucien's aura expanded, not in volume but in sharpness. White Revenant mastery thrummed, cutting through the air like blades of silence. His body shifted, light gathering at his fists, his stance loose and lethal.
The others—Ashveil, Kairo, Zarynth, the Mirrored Six—watched from afar, bloodied and exhausted, holding their own against the thousand lesser beings. None dared interrupt. This was Lucien's fight.
The god surged forward.
Its true body eclipsed the sky, its strike a tidal wave of annihilation. The earth below shattered into ash at the mere approach.
Lucien met it.
His heel dug into nothing, his form flashing forward with Phantom Step—he drove his fist upward, pale light exploding, reality cracking like glass around his strike. The collision didn't just boom—it erased sound itself for a heartbeat before the shockwave followed, tearing apart continents, bending the atmosphere into flame.
The god reeled. Not much. But enough.
Lucien landed, his breathing steady. He tilted his head, smirk widening.
"Thirty percent?" His voice dripped contempt. "You should've sent ten."
The god roared and unleashed its true form.
Its flesh peeled back, shifting into endless layers of impossible geometry, a body that bent all logic. Eyes opened across its form, thousands, millions, each staring at Lucien. Its arms multiplied, stretching into infinity, each hand gripping destruction in a new shape—stars collapsing, lightning older than worlds, blades forged from dying dimensions.
It struck.
And Lucien struck back.
His body blurred, slipping in and out of existence with Reality Phase Combat. He bent gravity, redirected beams of annihilation with his palms, turned claws meant to cleave worlds into openings for his counters. Every strike he landed shook its frame, and every wound he received only made him burn brighter as Pain Conversion and Endurance of the White fed his will.
The god screamed in disbelief.
Lucien had no right to be standing. No right to be holding ground against an original body. And yet—he was. Blow for blow. Step for step.
The fight stretched across the heavens. They clashed above shattered worlds, tore through oceans of flame, their strikes warping space until even the stars looked wrong. And still Lucien smiled through the blood dripping down his face, eyes alight with something terrifying.
At last, his opening came.
The god lunged, a spear of condensed eternity aimed at his heart. Lucien twisted, Phantom Step bending him behind its core, his body snapping into stance. Every technique he had learned, every scar he had endured, every death in the White roared through him. His Martial God System pulsed, recording, rewriting, perfecting.
His fist rose. Pale. Quiet. Certain.
"Die standing," he whispered.
He struck.
The blow detonated. A storm of pure white light tore through the god's chest, carving it apart from within. The scream that followed was not rage, not denial—only fear.
The god collapsed. Its body unraveled, its form reduced to motes of fading black fire. Its voice, shattered and weak, echoed one last time:
"You… are the exception…"
And then silence.
Lucien stood, bloodied but unbroken, his aura flickering like a dying sun—and then swelling, consuming, rising higher. The corpse of a god was not just a corpse. Its essence poured into him, raw and merciless.
He felt it burn. Felt himself ascend.
New abilities stirred awake. The death of a god was not an end—it was a theft, a transfer. Lucien could feel the god's dominion—control over existence, over law, over raw divinity—pressing into his veins, bending to his will.
The others, watching from afar, could only whisper the truth as it settled over them.
Lucien wasn't just the Sole Exception anymore. He was something beyond even that.