"I am the Supreme God of Destruction." Malakar said, voice cracking, "Within these hundred thousand years. Civilizations. Planets. Interstellar empires. I've destroyed things beyond counting. I will NOT bow to you."
He meant it. He started building toward self-destruction, the same path Demon Lord Miltonic had taken rather than submit.
But then he stopped, standing on the edge of it, he couldn't take the final step.
Haru told him, "I overestimated you. A God who hasn't truly understood the essence of destruction can't destroy himself when it matters. Bow your head."
Malakar's expression cycled through shame, fury, and exhaustion. His shoulders dropped.
He was about to speak when Skarion's spear came through his back. The blade pierced his divine body and detonated, a precise internal burst that shattered Malakar's Godhead from within.
Divine body, Godhead, artifacts, everything. Malakar collapsed outward in a single explosion of destructive force.
"Malakar." Skarion said pleasantly, "You will be very happy to help me escape. When I'm safely out, I'll be sure to remember you fondly."
The self-destruction of a late-stage Supreme God's divine soul was comparable to a planet's explosion. Enough to tear through Haru's Space-Time seal and give one specific person a very clean exit.
Skarion gripped his spear and looked at Haru through the chaos.
"Today's business isn't finished. One day I'll avenge Malakar."
He turned to run. The explosion was already unraveling the seal. Even Haru couldn't reverse time now without a time-attribute Supreme God Tier Artifact to anchor the process.
What Skarion didn't know was that Haru had exactly that.
…
The watching gods didn't wait to find out what happened. The moment Malakar's Godhead detonated, tens of millions of divine beings turned and ran.
The destructive force from a late-stage Supreme God's explosion would sweep the surrounding star fields, and anyone who stayed to watch would become part of the casualty count.
Native Gods, Castle Lords and Rangers alike fled with everyone else.
"The Lord of Slaughter killed his best friend of tens of thousands of years just to buy an escape window. Tens of thousands of years of friendship, and he used Malakar as a bomb."
"Everyone on that battlefield must be gone. Two hundred thousand Gods from the Great Aetherium, all the million plus Evil Gods, everyone else. Only Supreme Gods should survive such a catastrophe."
"Haru lost everything. The Imperial War is over before it even begins."
"Isn't he a Space-Time Lord? Can't he reverse it?"
"He is at the late-stage, at the same level as Malakar. He needs to be at the peak to pull it off."
The Light Empire's Gods, running alongside everyone else, were privately delighted, "Praise the Lord of Slaughter!"
Someone muttered. The Great Aetherium was crippled, the threat of war dissolved. Skarion had accidentally solved their biggest problem for them.
But then they noticed that the storm of Divine Power didn't arrive. The Gods who'd fled to what they calculated was a safe distance slowed. Stopped. Turned.
There was no shockwave. No expanding destruction. Not even residual fluctuations.
Someone said it first: "Did he… did he actually manage to stop it."
…
They came back and found the first war zone completely different from what they'd expected.
Malakar was alive, his Godhead intact, and his divine body reconstructed. Meanwhile, Skarion's soul was sealed in Haru's hand and the battlefield remained untouched.
"What just happened?"
"Time was reversed! His Majesty reversed time!"
"That's not possible at the late-stage—"
"Look at that bow!"
…
Minutes earlier, Skarion stood in the building catastrophe and waited. The plan was simple: when the destructive force shredded the seal, he'd escape through the gap, return to his Divine Kingdom, merge with its Heart, and become unreachable.
Even a Space-Time Lord couldn't pull a main god out of their own Divine Kingdom which they'd merged with. He just needed the seal to break.
But Haru's face was calm. That was the problem. The initial shock was gone, and what replaced it wasn't panic or fury. Just calm, as if he'd already solved it.
'Can he reverse time?' Skarion thought. 'Impossible. Neither is he a peak Supreme God, nor does he have a time-attribute Supreme God Tier Artifact to anchor the proc—'
Haru raised a dark red bow, which radiated a Supreme God Tier Artifact Divine Aura and then the Abyssal Aura hit Skarion.
"That… that's an Abyssal Artifact!" Skarion's voice came out wrong, "The Sorrow of Time! That's Temerith's natal artifact. How can you wield it?"
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