Chapter 42: The Zero Point
The battle between a Time Manipulator and an Eraser is not a spectacle of flashy explosions. It is a terrifying display of missing reality.
High above the grey ruins of the Abyssal Layer, I clashed with Agent Zero.
"Erasure Code: Vector 4," Zero intoned, his voice synthetic and devoid of emotion.
He swiped his hand.
A cube of space, ten meters wide, simply vanished. The air, the dust, the light—everything inside that cube was deleted from existence.
If I had been there, I would have been erased.
But I wasn't.
Time Skip.
I saw the deletion in my future timeline via Chronos. I deleted the 0.5 seconds where I occupied that space.
To Zero, I didn't dodge. I simply glitched from point A to point B.
"You are annoying," Zero stated. He raised his black cube—the Box of Erasure. "Your probability of survival is statistical noise. I will correct it."
The Box opened.
Thousands of black needles shot out. These weren't metal; they were solidified Null-Qi. If one touched me, it would delete the body part it hit.
"Ria! Analysis!" I shouted, diving toward the ruins to break line of sight.
"Adversary weapon is a Causality Anchor," Ria reported from the ground, her eyes flashing blue as she scanned Zero. "It targets your 'Name' in the World Log. He is trying to delete your file."
"He can't delete a file that's encrypted," I grinned.
I landed on a rusted monorail track.
The needles swarmed after me like angry hornets.
I didn't run. I turned around.
I held Antakala with both hands.
'Seal 3: Sword Emperor.'
'Concept: Time Lag.'
I slashed the air. Empty space.
Zero, hovering above, sneered. "You missed."
"Did I?"
Zero commanded the needles to converge.
Suddenly, three seconds later, the space around the needles split open.
My slash had "arrived" late.
SHING.
The invisible cut severed the connection between Zero and his needles. The black spikes dissolved into grey mist.
Zero paused. For the first time, his mask tilted in confusion. "You delayed the effect of your attack?"
"I sent it via snail mail," I taunted.
I jumped off the rail. Gravity Seal: 50x Release.
I shot upward like a cannonball, straight at him.
"Die," Zero whispered.
He didn't use the Box. He drew a white dagger.
Arbiter Art: Fate Severance.
He stabbed at my chest. This attack was unavoidable. It was locked onto my heart by fate itself. Even if I dodged, the universe would bend to ensure it hit.
I saw the red line of fate connecting his dagger to my heart.
"Seraphina! Now!" I shouted.
Below us, Seraphina had been charging her mana.
"Demonic Art: Abyssal Swap!"
Violet runes flashed under my feet.
Instantaneously, I was swapped with an object from the ground.
A massive, rusted I-Beam appeared in front of Zero.
CLANG.
Zero's fate-locked dagger stabbed the steel beam. The beam vanished instantly—erased by the attack.
But the attack was spent.
I appeared behind Zero (where the beam had been).
"Tag out."
I kicked him in the back of the head.
Gravity Seal: 100x Impact.
BOOM.
Agent Zero plummeted from the sky. He smashed through a skyscraper, then another, and finally crashed into the street, creating a massive crater of ash.
The Tower of Babel.
While I kept Zero busy, Anya and Old Mo were at the base of the Tower of Babel.
The Tower was a jagged metal spire that pierced the roof of the cavern. The entrance was sealed by a door made of pulsating blue light—a 6th Era Forcefield.
"It won't open!" Old Mo yelled, hacking the control panel with his Qi. "The encryption is mathematical! I don't know the calculus!"
"Math is hard!" Anya agreed. She hit the door with her hammer. BONK. nothing happened.
"Ria!" I shouted from the air. "Hack the door!"
Ria sprinted toward the tower. She dodged debris falling from my fight.
She reached the panel. She extended a data-spike from her wrist and jammed it into the port.
"Interfacing with 6th Era Architecture," Ria's voice went robotic. "Firewall detected. Attempting brute force decryption."
Suddenly, the rubble in the crater exploded.
Agent Zero rose from the ash. His white robes were torn, revealing grey skin underneath. He wasn't human. He was a Construct. A biological puppet made by the Arbiters.
"Enough," Zero rasped. His voice was glitching. "Termination Protocol: Omega."
The black cube in his hand dissolved. It turned into a black liquid that covered his body.
He grew.
He morphed into a ten-foot-tall monster made of void-ooze. He had no face, only a gaping maw.
The Void Walker.
"ROAAAAR!"
The scream shattered the windows of the remaining buildings.
The Remnant Ghosts of the 6th Era wailed in terror and fled. They remembered this form. This was the monster that ate their world.
Zero lunged at Ria. He ignored me. He knew that if Ria opened the tower, he failed.
"Ria! Look out!" Valerian screamed.
Valerian did something stupid. And brave.
He charged.
He raised his golden shield—the one I made from ship scrap.
"I am the Prince of Aerthos! You shall not pass!"
Zero's massive void-claw slammed into Valerian.
CRUNCH.
The shield buckled. Valerian's arm broke. He was thrown backward like a ragdoll, coughing blood.
"Valerian!" Lyra screamed, casting healing light.
But he had bought Ria two seconds.
"Access Granted," Ria announced.
HISSS.
The blue forcefield died. The blast doors of the Tower of Babel slid open.
Inside, a blinding white light shone.
The World Heart.
Zero shrieked. He turned to enter the tower.
"Oh no you don't," I said.
I was floating directly above him.
My eyes were spinning gold. Chronos was overclocking.
"You like erasing things?" I asked.
I held Antakala vertically.
I poured every ounce of my Void Qi into the blade.
'Seal 3: Sword Emperor.'
'Ultimate Art: The End of Time.'
I dropped.
I didn't slash. I stabbed downward.
I used Time Skip to accelerate my descent to relativistic speeds.
I became a black meteor.
THOOM.
I impaled Agent Zero through the head, driving him into the ground.
The impact created a shockwave that cleared the ash for a mile.
Zero thrashed. "You cannot kill me! I am Eternal! I am written in the Code!"
"I'm rewriting the code," I whispered.
I twisted the sword.
Concept: Devour.
My sword didn't just kill him. It ate him.
It sucked the Void Essence out of his construct body. The black ooze swirled into the blade.
Zero screamed—a sound of digital corruption—and then dissolved into static.
"User Deleted," I said, pulling my sword out of the empty ground.
The Heart of the Machine.
Silence returned to the Abyssal Layer.
I rushed over to Valerian. Lyra was already healing him.
"My arm..." Valerian groaned. "It feels like jelly."
"It's broken in three places," I diagnosed instantly. "But you blocked a Rank-6 attack. Not bad, Prince. You have a spine after all."
Valerian smiled weakly. "Did we win?"
"We won," I nodded.
I walked into the Tower of Babel.
The team followed.
In the center of the room, floating in a magnetic containment field, was the World Heart.
It didn't look like a crystal or a core.
It looked like a Micro-Star. A ball of compressed fusion energy, surrounded by rotating rings of data.
"The 6th Era," Old Mo whispered, tears in his eyes. "The Age of Technology. They tried to build an artificial sun to ascend the heavens. The Arbiters destroyed them for their arrogance."
I walked up to the Micro-Star.
The heat was intense, but my Supreme Yang Body absorbed it.
"This isn't just energy," I analyzed. "It's a CPU. It contains the knowledge of an entire civilization."
I looked at Ria.
Ria was staring at the star. For the first time, her face showed pure longing.
She was a construct. This was the pinnacle of her kind.
"Ria," I said. "Do you want it?"
Ria froze. "Master? This is a World Heart. It contains enough energy to elevate Chronos to the next stage. Consuming it is logical."
"Chronos is full from the Academy Pool," I said. "He needs to digest."
I pointed at the star.
"But you... you are running on outdated hardware. You nearly crashed analyzing Zero. I need a stronger maid."
I stepped back.
"Take it. Consider it a promotion."
Ria looked at me. Then she looked at the star.
"Acknowledged. Initiating System Upgrade."
She walked into the magnetic field.
She reached out and touched the star.
FLASH.
Blinding white light filled the room.
The star liquefied. It flowed into Ria's mechanical veins. Her silver hair turned into flowing fiber-optic cables of light. Her skin repaired itself, becoming harder than diamond. Her eyes shifted from blue to a piercing Gold.
The tower shook.
The download was complete.
When the light faded, Ria stood there. She looked mostly human now, but her aura was terrifying. She radiated the power of a Peak Soul Transformation expert.
"Upgrade Complete," Ria said. Her voice was smoother, more human.
She looked at her hands.
"Designation Updated: The Machine Goddess."
She looked at me and bowed deeply.
"Thank you, Master. I have downloaded the Archive of the 6th Era. I now possess the blueprints for..."
She paused.
"...Everything. Airships. Railguns. Orbital Lasers."
I grinned.
"Orbital Lasers? Now that's what I'm talking about."
I turned to the team.
"Pack it up. We have the loot. We have the data."
"And the ghosts?" Seraphina asked, pointing outside.
The ghost army was waiting, kneeling.
"We take them too," I said. "Ria, can you store them?"
"Affirmative. I can upload their consciousness into my sub-servers. They will serve as the AI crew for Fortress Eternity."
"Perfect," I clapped my hands.
We walked out of the tower.
Agent Zero was dead. The 6th Era was reclaimed.
And now, I had an army of ghosts and a Machine Goddess.
"Aethelred," I looked up at the rocky ceiling, imagining the palace far above. "You sent an assassin. I'm bringing back an apocalypse."