Chapter 15
Sincerely, if Vastro had been given a choice, he would never have chosen the final gate of Hell.
Facing himself at the ninetieth gate had already been beyond taxing. The only reason he survived was pure wit and the Law of Chaos, a law he had barely managed to comprehend.
Without those two, his defeat would have been swift and absolute, his fate sealed as a slave of Hell for all eternity.
But that would not happen.
He would make sure of it.
If he had any say in the matter, Vastro would have rested. Not even to heal fully, just to recover a fraction of his essence.
If the ninetieth gate had been that daunting, then the last gate had to be far worse. The thought alone made a headache bloom behind his eyes.
Despite defeating his peak self, the situation was far from favorable.
No matter how he looked at it, he was doomed.
That realization alone would have made even the purest and highest beings stagger in dread.
But Vastro was far from normal. Under the crushing weight of his circumstances, instead of breaking, he grinned.
A mad grin.
He chuckled softly and raised his gaze to the massive double door at the end of the silver path.
Who cared if the odds were against him?
When had they ever not been.
He had broken them every single time.
Maybe this was worse than before. Maybe the odds were higher. But how would he know if he did not step forward himself.
Fueled by madness and resolve, Vastro swung the door open and stepped through.
He expected annihilation.
Endless abominations. Sacred beings radiating dominion over existence itself.
Monsters standing at the ninetieth tier of cultivation or higher. Usurpers.
Executioners.
Things meant to erase him instantly.
It would have meant a quick death.
Instead, he was met with something far more unsettling.
There was no army.
No gods.
No horrors.
Beyond the door lay a vast chamber, stretching millions, perhaps eternal, miles in every direction. No walls. No ceiling. No visible end.
Vastro stepped in, taking in his surroundings. The door behind him vanished without a sound.
He did not turn back. If Hell excelled at anything, it was surprise.
His twelve senses rose to full alert.
Minutes passed.
Nothing.
No energy signatures. No laws. No concepts. No life.
Nothing at all.
The moment the thought settled in his mind, the chamber itself began to distort.
Reality thinned.
Space warped.
And then, impossibly, the chamber began to become nothing.
Vastro mind short circuited.
Even beings at his peak could not turn something into nothing. Energy could not be erased. No matter the quantity, purity, concentration, or alteration through the conceptual laws of existence, energy could not simply vanish.
It had to be transformed.
Reorganized.
Reborn into another form.
Yet what stood before him was not transformation.
It was erasure.
True nothingness began to spread.
And it was coming for him.
Yet what was totally and absolutely impossible was exactly what was happening.
All the energy around his body when he stepped into this place was gone. Not destroyed. Not disrupted. Not banished.
Simply gone.
As if it had never existed.
The sheer scope of what he witnessed locked Vastro in a trance, if only for a fraction of a second. He recovered quickly. In his extremely long life, the fact that he had never seen or heard of something did not mean it could not exist.
He steadied himself and assessed the situation.
He reached for his existence core.
There was nothing.
He could not sense past the outer shell of his body. No power. No energy. No might. No aura.
Nothing.
Then the truth struck him like a piercing tribulation.
If his theory was correct, he was in far greater danger than he had realized. If everything in this place was becoming nothing, then his own existence was already being erased.
With no way to fight the impending doom, Vastro began to move.
He walked faster.
Then he leapt.
Then he ran.
A full sprint through the vast nothingness, pushing with everything he had left. His steps tore faint ripples through the emptiness as he moved forward.
His condition worsened.
He could no longer feel his hands. He did not need to look to know they were gone. Reduced to nothing. His torso followed, dissolving piece by piece. Then his neck. Then more.
There was no time here. No past. No future.
Only nothingness.
And the being trapped within it was becoming nothing as well.
Soon, Vastro lost his legs. The running stopped.
Sincerely, he came to terms with it.
This was hopeless.
Through a life of conquest, domination, and endless war across worlds and universes, nothing had prepared him for this kind of battle. A battle with no enemy. No concept of victory or defeat. Only emptiness.
Only erasure.
As his existence began to waver, even his thoughts started to fade. With the last remnants of his mind, a question surfaced.
What was the point of it all?
All the fighting. The blood. The struggle to be reborn faster than the last. Was it to return to the Eighth Realm again? To paint a world that had rejected him in blood and dominance?
As awareness slipped away, Vastro tried to pull himself together, but even his will was falling apart. Only a few specks of thought remained.
With those final fragments, one name surfaced.
Drakkon.
The one who had given him the greatest comfort in his life.
And the one who had brought him the greatest pain at its end.
His best friend.
No matter how much Vastro searched his memories, he could not find a reason for Drakkon to betray him. Drakkon was already the second strongest usurper in the realm, standing at the peak of the ninetieth tier of cultivation.
Why betray him?
The more he thought, the clearer it became.
Drakkon had always desired absolute control over everything. While Vastro was wild and untamed, Drakkon was calm and precise. Controlled.
If there was one thing Vastro believed with certainty, it was this.
Drakkon wanted to control existence itself.
But such power was impossible at the ninetieth tier.
Unless he went beyond it.
Suddenly, everything clicked.
Drakkon did not betray him to seize the Eternal Realm.
He betrayed him because Vastro was an anomaly.
An obstacle.
A variable that could hinder his ascent beyond the ninetieth tier.
Beyond the limits of existence.
Toward the Beyonder Realm.
A realm no one had ever reached.
To be continued....