Chapter 18 — The Ruthless Slaughterer

The darkness within the echo was a thousand times deeper than the night itself.

Elias felt his soul suspended over an empty, high-dimensional execution ground. Around him, the shattered fragments of stars roared as they collapsed; beneath his feet, the soil of his mother planet disintegrated inch by inch. And upon this grand, despairing stage, the gods high above revealed their truest nature to mortals.

In the past, mortals praised Astra, the God of Light, revering her as the gospel of salvation and protection.

But in the high-dimensional echo recorded by the black box, Elias clearly saw what arrogant and inefficient hypocrisy hid beneath that so-called "protection."

Astra possessed boundless mercy, but her mercy lacked any reverence for the laws of physics. She condescendingly smashed oceans of holy light into Tartarus, believing her divine will alone could soothe the agonizing pain of the planetary core. And the result? That arrogant "gift" was like pouring boiling oil over a festering wound, shoving billions of mortal lives—who could have otherwise evacuated in an orderly fashion—straight into the fuse of an instantaneous explosion!

"Hypocritical... too hypocritical!" Elias roared hoarsely in his heart.

That kind of condescending gift, blind to reality and heedless of consequences, was not salvation. It was poison cloaked in mercy!

Yet, what chilled Elias to the marrow even more than Astra's hypocrisy was Umbra's absolute cruelty.

In the blind spot of the astral echo, the pitch-black law of annihilation acted like an endless, massive curtain, blotting out the entire sky of Tartarus.

When Umbra, the God of Darkness, descended, there was no holy proclamation, no fluctuation of emotion. In her calculated framework, the weeping, begging, and struggling of mortals were no different from the scrap iron and slag swirling in the sky.

She merely raised her hand coldly and drew a red line across the ledgers of the Sanctum.

Then, the blade of annihilation crashed down from ten thousand fathoms high!

RIIIIP—!

The high-dimensional sensory echo approached its most despairing node.

Standing before the ruins of the collapsed shelter, Elias felt as if he had been entirely pulled back to that fatal night thick with the stench of sulfur and exhaust fumes.

"Bro... Brother..."

A faint, tearful call came from beneath a collapsed beam of scrap iron.

Elias's soul convulsed violently!

It was Aira.

The seven-year-old girl, dragging a small leg crushed by scrap metal, crawled out of the shadows, her face filthy. Her hair was a tangled mess, her little face smeared with black ash. Her large, bright eyes, like obsidian, were filled with helplessness and terror at the collapse of this world.

"Aira! Run! Run!"

Elias screamed like a madman in the echo, reaching out with everything he had, trying to rush over and hold his sister.

But a high-dimensional echo was unalterable history. He could only watch helplessly, like a prisoner tied to a stake, as that cruel scene replayed itself.

With a thunderous boom, the pitch-black, ink-like law of annihilation swept down from the sky!

There was no ear-piercing explosion. There was no sky full of blood.

Under the absolutely cold, high-dimensional physical pruning of Umbra, the God of Darkness, the very moment the law of annihilation swept across his sister's body, the binding force of molecules and atoms was instantly stripped away.

Aira had barely taken half a step forward before her tiny body began to weather away, inch by inch, starting from her feet!

"Brother..."

His sister looked at him one last time, her dark, bright eyes filled with reluctance and longing for her brother. Right before her right hand weathered away completely, that tiny palm used the last ounce of strength it had to fiercely shove the broken half of the star-core pendant into Elias's hand.

Poof.

A tremendously faint wisp of dust scattered.

Right under Elias's eyes, less than half a meter away from him, his sister's entire tiny body completely disintegrated into a cluster of freezing, faint stardust that drifted away in the pitch-black death-light.

In this freezing, heartless universe, that little girl who used to press against his back late at night and say "Brother, I'm scared," who would secretly push her only remaining dry rations back into his rough bowl... had completely vanished.

Vanished cleanly, leaving not a single trace in this world.

Only that half of the freezing star-core pendant in his palm, carrying the last bit of his sister's body heat, weighed as heavily as an entire collapsed galaxy.

"Ah... AHHHHHHHHHHH—!!!!"

At the bottom of the physical canyon, Elias completely lost control!

The immensely intense grief and despair evolved into boundless, berserk killing intent. The high-dimensional negative energy settling in his blood vessels, stimulated by this, surged out violently like a detonated powder keg!

Crack! Crack!

The blood vessels in Elias's meridians burst one after another. Hot, fresh blood frantically seeped from the corners of his eyes, his nasal cavity, and his lips, dyeing his entire upper torso a blinding scarlet!

"Kid! Calm down! You're going to burn your soul to ash!"

Caleb roared as he charged forward, stretching out his two thick, mechanical iron arms to tightly hug Elias's shoulders, trying to pull him back from his maddened state.

However, the shockwave of high-dimensional negative energy erupting from Elias at this moment was too terrifying!

"Get lost—!"

Elias swung his arm violently, and a pitch-black, violent shockwave of energy blasted outward. Caleb, as sturdy as an iron tower, was actually blasted several meters away by this impact, crashing heavily against the anti-radiation armor of the hover-car and spitting out a large mouthful of blood!

"Caleb! Elias! Please, stop burning yourself!"

Lyra rushed forward, crying. She completely ignored the violent dark energy shockwave capable of stripping mortal flesh, letting the high-energy particles carve bloody gashes into her arms. Crying, she fiercely hugged Elias's waist from behind!

The girl pressed her face against the boy's blood-soaked back. With her trembling hands covered in silver dust, she shakily reached up to touch the bursting, bleeding corners of Elias's eyes and chin. Tears fell like broken pearls onto Elias's scalding wounds.

"Elias... please, look at me... don't let the hate burn you away..." Lyra cried, her whole body trembling. With those hands that usually calculated astrolabes, she recklessly poured all the warmth and care she had left into this boy who was on the verge of collapse.

Under this pure, fiery care, Elias's berserk high-dimensional negative energy actually stalled for a split second.

Yet, amidst the flying scrap iron and the rampaging gravity waves, Elias still swayed and stood up straight again. In his bloodshot pupils, the light that once represented pain and confusion had completely extinguished.

Taking its place was a supreme killing intent, almost despairing, yet cold to the very marrow of his bones!

In the shadows only a few steps away from him.

"Vespera" stood quietly in the howling wind, letting the roaring gravity currents whip at the hem of her clothes.

The high-and-mighty God of Darkness, Umbra, silently stared at this blood-soaked mortal boy panting heavily like a trapped beast.

Looking at the blood continuously bursting and seeping from Elias's cheeks, looking at his body convulsing violently from the excruciating pain, deep in the shadows, Umbra's slender fingers hanging by her skirt actually tightened slightly, uncontrollably.

Those small scenes from the past uncontrollably flashed through the depths of her high-dimensional divine consciousness—

It was the blood that dripped onto her collar when this mortal boy, without hesitation, took off his lead blanket and wrapped it around her during the storm a few days ago; it was his scalding breath spraying through her fingers during their late-night resonance, his hand gripping hers so tightly, refusing to let go.

And at this moment, she had personally pushed this mortal boy who had tried to protect her into the abyss of truth, making him relive with his own eyes how she had ruthlessly and heartlessly erased his sister and his home.

High above, the God of Darkness—for the first time, a tremendously faint, tremendously unfamiliar, yet unbearably heavy sting actually flashed through the very core of her divinity.

It was a secret discomfort that almost disrupted her high-dimensional algorithms. It was the first time in millions of years that the incarnation of annihilation and finality felt an indescribably heavy stagnation before her own masterpiece.

However, she was, after all, the God of Darkness.

That faint trace of discomfort and wavering was forcefully suppressed by her cold, high-dimensional rationality the very next second. She lowered her eyelashes, veiling the momentary ripple in her eyes.

Normally, in the face of this excruciatingly cruel high-dimensional truth, any mortal's sanity would instantly collapse and disintegrate, reducing them to waste material and madmen.

Yet, facing this boy covered in blood, Umbra—having suppressed the stagnation in her heart—felt a certain unprecedented, dangerous pressure from her freezing divine core once again.

That boy hadn't gone mad.

He was bleeding, he was in agonizing pain, but in those eye sockets woven with tears and blood, what burned was not the dead ashes of a breakdown, but... a towering inferno capable of dragging the entire Divine Court into hell!