Chapter Nine
The creatures in the room did not stay stunned for long.
The killing intent pouring off Vastro was enough to rip them out of their stupor. Rage, fear, pride, all of it snapped at once.
They charged him together, power unleashed, holding nothing back.
The collision was violent.
For the first time since the Hell Trial began, Vastro felt pressure.
Not much. Just enough.
But it was real.
The weight crashed into him, shaking his very being, grinding against his soul. Instead of dread, his grin stretched wider. Unnaturally wide.
Finally.
Finally, he had found prey worth the rush.
The mammal had been powerful.
To the others, it must have looked like Vastro had killed him effortlessly, like his will was absolute and unchallenged.
That was a lie.
Vastro had won because the mammal underestimated him.
He fought as if Vastro was still the same man from countless years ago.
The same Slayer he had faced in the Sixth Realm.
That mistake cost him everything.
Vastro never lingered in one place. He grew. He sharpened. He evolved.
Before the mammal could grasp how vast Vastro had become, Oblivion flashed. One slash. Clean. Final.
Head severed. Trophy raised.
The reaction he drew was not just fear, though fear was there. It was something deeper. Defiance.
The mammal may have been the strongest among them, but none of the others were weak.
They were not pushovers. They would not fall to some puny Heltagon. Not to this reckless lunatic of a Slayer.
The next exchange proved it.
Vastro was driven back.
Blow after blow landed. Space warped. Power screamed. He had gone far without relying on his most powerful tools, but the loss of his conceptual law mastery clawed at him now.
Drakkon had stripped some away. The wardens of Hell had taken the rest.
He knew the truth.
His chances of winning were small. Desperately small.
The smile vanished.
His face went cold.
He needed a way through. Not just to survive, but to dominate.
To kill every being in his path until he reached his destination.
"I told you," one of the Primordials roared, voice thick with triumph. "Together, he never stood a chance against us."
Joy bled into the words.
Whoever struck the final blow would claim Vastro's soul. Chain it. Own it for eternity.
They released their auras fully.
The pressure spiked.
Surrounded, Vastro felt his hair rise.
He exhaled slowly.
"Now this is fun," he muttered.
He reached into the chaotic space of the gate itself. Not storage. Not illusion. Somewhere deeper.
When his hand emerged, it was not holding a sword.
It was a shield.
Round. Silver. Heavy.
Its surface was layered with black scales that pulsed faintly, like something alive was breathing beneath them.
Vastro smiled.
Then he crossed the blade atop the shield and struck them together. Twice.
The sound was not metal. It was judgment.
A massive shockwave of energy ripped outward, tearing through the crowd and forcing the rampage to halt. Space buckled. Auras flickered. For a brief moment, even beings of that level hesitated.
Wary.
Then they steadied themselves.
Good, Vastro thought. Let's play.
He charged straight back into the battlefield. One against hundreds. Every single one carrying power that could erase worlds.
Time twisted.
To an outsider, it would have looked like minutes. In truth, they clashed for years compressed into flickering moments.
Blades screamed. Laws shattered. Flesh and concepts were torn apart and reformed in the same breath.
When they broke apart again, Vastro was hurled across the chaotic expanse, crashing into the far end of the unstable space.
The plane itself was collapsing now. Chaos energy flooded the void, violent and unchecked.
None of it slowed them.
What shook them was something else.
They looked around.
Their numbers were still in the hundreds.
That was not what frightened them.
What froze their hearts was the truth they could no longer ignore.
They had started in the hundreds of thousands. Supreme beings. Monsters that could destabilize realms by existing.
Now only hundreds remained.
Two exchanges.
That was all it took.
The thing they were fighting was not a man.
Vastro straightened.
The grin was gone. In its place was a small, stiff smile. Almost gentle.
If not for the aura of destruction around him swelling to an even more dangerous degree, he might have looked calm. Almost harmless.
The surviving beings felt their hearts pound like war drums as they waited for his next move.
But he did not charge.
He did not laugh.
He looked at his hand, studying it, like he had just made a discovery.
Then he raised it.
One finger extended.
He pointed at a creature in the distance. A hybrid of dragon and phoenix.
It was not weak.
Compared to the others, it was among the lesser ones, but its aura still blazed with terrifying intensity.
The moment Vastro pointed, the creature froze.
Instinct screamed.
It tried to block. Tried to move. Tried to do anything.
Too late.
Even if it had known what was coming, stopping it would have been nearly impossible.
The space around the beings shattered. The phoenix-dragon hybrid felt a surge of aura so massive it nearly broke him.
Danger wrapped around him like a vice as he tried to counter, tried to defend, tried to survive.
Dual flames erupted from his body, weaving layers of defense, but it was futile. The attack struck, and the barrier shattered like embers scattering in the wind.
Then, a wave of rainbow-colored energy engulfed him. Time seemed to freeze. In the blink of an eye, the phoenix-dragon hybrid evaporated, vanishing as if it had never existed.
It happened too fast. Too fast for anyone to react.
They only realized one of their own was gone when the emptiness hit. The survivors froze, eyes wide, hearts hammering. This was beyond comprehension.
They hadn't even seen how he died. Not that they would need to. Vastro wasn't cruel enough to show them that much..... at least, not yet.
The space around him rippled violently, far different from any other realm. Cracks appeared, fracturing the surface of reality.
From those cracks, streams of aura erupted, colors and energies colliding in chaotic harmony.
Within moments, the energy around Vastro amplified millions of times over, feeding the black flames licking the Blade of Oblivion. But that was not enough.
The new multicolored energy slowly gathered, forming armor around his body.
Rainbow plates locked into place, a helmet sealing his head, dazzling and terrifying at once.
Beautiful, if not for the suffocating dread radiating outwards, shaking even the strongest among the supremely powerful.
Ragnoth's voice broke, trembling against his usually impenetrable composure. "It… can't be true.
This… this is too much." His molten-black form paled as he spoke. Calm? Impossible. Only a madman could retain any composure here.
Because in Vastro's hands was the purest form of chaos energy.
Energy so destructive that even beings of the Eigh Realm could only handle it in minute quantities, lest they obliterate themselves.
Vastro didn't need caution. He wielded it as if it were nothing, bending an immense torrent of raw power like clay, twisting it, shaping it, using it.
The thought of what destruction he could now unleash crushed hope in every supremally powerful being in the room.
Even the armies of progenitors, beings of unimaginable might, quivered, eyes darting desperately as if seeking a way out.
Vastro only smiled.
The warmth of his grin was out of place here, but no one cared—they couldn't. From his fingertips, a small ball of pure chaos energy pulsed, humming with silent menace.
He stepped forward.
"Come on," he said, voice low, calm, deadly.
"The party isn't over yet."
To be continued.....