Chapter 576 – The One Who Devours the Dead
The tunnels were silent, the last traces of Eihort already burned away. Without lingering, Alex opened a rift and stepped through. The underground labyrinth collapsed behind him as if it had never been.
In the blink of an eye, he was back in the council chamber.
The scrying mirrors that had shown the strange, pulsating tunnels now returned to stillness as the blue light around him faded. The council members stood frozen, silent, their eyes tracking him as he walked to the center of the room once again.
His voice was as calm as ever.
"Next."
Nyx met his gaze. Her violet eyes softened slightly, though her tone remained steady.
"The next one," she said, "is Mordiggian."
A murmur passed through the hall. Even among the Great Old Ones, Mordiggian was different.
"It lies beneath the ruined city of Zul-Bha-Sair," Nyx explained. "Its Law is not like the others. Mordiggian holds the Law of Consumption. It devours the dead. When it stirs, every corpse within reach disappears, drawn into its body to feed its strength. When it is awake, even the dead cannot rest."
Her eyes moved to Alex again.
"When it last rose, its presence wiped entire necropolises clean. Only the living were left behind. It does not bargain, it does not spread madness—it simply feeds."
She let her words hang for a moment, the weight of them settling in the room.
"The seal still holds, but barely. When it breaks, everything dead in that land will vanish into it. If it awakens, the earth itself will become empty of the dead."
Alex vanished from the council chamber without a word.
The air shifted, and in the next instant, he was standing over the ruins of Zul-Bha-Sair. The ancient necropolis stretched out around him—crumbling tombs, shattered temples, and a land that reeked of death.
But the seal that had once held Mordiggian was already gone.
From the broken ground, a massive, shadowy form emerged. Mordiggian. Its body was an amorphous, shifting mass of darkness, with no true face, only the suggestion of a maw that pulsed in and out of existence. The instant its countless senses detected Alex, it recoiled in instinctive terror.
With a low, rumbling roar, it vomited.
From its gaping maw, an endless tide of corpses spilled out—billions of them, an entire world of the dead. Human skeletons, ancient gods, beasts, and creatures from forgotten races, all tumbling into the open air.
The air filled with black mist. Mordiggian exhaled a foul, thick vomit that coated every corpse, and in an instant, the lifeless remains twitched, stood, and turned toward Alex. That black bile granted them god-level strength, each one moving with unnatural speed and power.
The earth shook as a living wall of the dead charged. A sea of god-like corpses rose up, hurling themselves at Alex from every direction, the air and sky full of screaming dead.
Mordiggian did not wait to see what would happen. It wanted nothing to do with Alex directly. While its army of the dead rushed forward, the Great Old One shot upward, away from the ruins, breaking through the air and heading into space.
It thought it could escape.
And then it noticed something wrong.
The space ahead of it blurred.
Alex was no longer on the ground. He had disappeared.
Mordiggian realized too late that it couldn't sense him. The Law of Concealment cloaked not only Alex's presence but also what he was preparing.
Floating silently above the sky, unseen, was a massive orb—compressed magic and Laws fused into a single devastating sphere. It hung perfectly still, invisible to all sight, waiting.
As Mordiggian shot upward, it launched itself directly toward the camouflaged orb. By the time it saw it, it was too close to stop.
Mordiggian's massive, shifting form slammed directly into the hidden orb.
For a split second, the sky was silent.
Then the world turned white.
The orb detonated point-blank.
The explosion that followed was colossal, a blinding surge of fire, lightning, ice, wind, and poison erupting outward, each spell threaded with the strength of every Law Alex commanded. The detonation swallowed the ascending body of Mordiggian and the countless corpses it had spewed, obliterating everything in its path.
As the shockwave began to expand, Alex moved.
High above, unseen, he opened both hands, folding space around the blast. Layers of space magic wrapped around the detonation like a cocoon, compressing its destructive force inward so that none of it could leak into the world below.
The earth trembled, but the barrier held.
Inside the sealed dome, the explosion burned through the army of corpses, tearing apart every reanimated body. Their godlike strength didn't matter. Within seconds, billions of corpses were incinerated, frozen, shattered, and disintegrated.
At the center of it all, Mordiggian's vast, formless body writhed violently, unable to withstand the overwhelming force. The Laws imbued into the blast—Strength, Fire, Ice, Darkness, Poison, Earth, Concealment, Wind, Sleep, Parasites—ripped it apart from every angle.
The creature collapsed, its entire essence unraveling. In the brilliance of the explosion, Mordiggian was erased.
When the light finally faded, there was nothing left. Not a single corpse. Not a trace of Mordiggian's presence. The ruined city of Zul-Bha-Sair stood silent beneath, untouched by the battle thanks to the barrier Alex had created.
The last fragments of Mordiggian's essence dissolved into nothing, and the billions of animated corpses disintegrated into ash. Within the barrier, the silence that followed was absolute.
Then the system's familiar chime echoed in Alex's mind.
Level Up!
Gained Levels: 136,492
Unused Stat Points Acquired: 682,460
New Law Acquired: Law of Consumption
The translucent window appeared before his eyes, displaying his new stats:
Name: Alex Elwood
Level: 847,056
HP: 7,034,360
MP: 3,517,360
STR: 703,446
END: 703,436
AGI: 703,426
INT: 703,472
WILL: 703,320
Unused Stat Points: 682,460
Laws: Mana (3%), Ice, Fire, Web, Poison, Darkness, Strength, Concealment, Wind, Earth, Sleep, Parasites, Consumption
He selected Distribute Evenly.
The surge of power was like a star collapsing inward. The space inside the barrier warped as the new points poured into him, and the floating fragments of the destroyed corpses were pushed outward by the sheer pressure.
Updated Stats:
HP: 7,716,860
MP: 3,858,560
STR: 771,686
END: 771,676
AGI: 771,666
INT: 771,712
WILL: 771,560
Unused Stat Points: 0
The window faded away. The barrier around the battlefield still shimmered, containing the last traces of energy from the explosion. Within its bounds, there was only Alex—calm, silent, unmoving.
Alex opened his right hand, and the shimmering walls of space that had contained the explosion collapsed silently. The energy within dispersed like mist, leaving the ruined city of Zul-Bha-Sair untouched and eerily silent beneath him.
Without another glance, he stepped forward. Space folded, and in the blink of an eye, he was once again standing in the center of the council chamber.
Every eye turned to him. None of the gods spoke. None of them needed to ask whether Mordiggian still existed. The silence of the scrying mirrors had already answered that question.
Alex's calm voice echoed in the still air.
"Next."
Nyx met his visor without hesitation. "Aphoom Zhah."
The name carried a chill through the room.
"It lies sealed in the frozen wastelands of the far north, older even than the ice itself," Nyx explained. "It is called the Cold Flame, and it carries the Law of Lightning. Unlike the storms of Ithaqua, Aphoom Zhah's lightning is not born of clouds. It is pure energy, unbound, capable of splitting mountains with a single strike."
Her voice became more serious. "When it awakens, it becomes a storm of light and cold flame. Its speed rivals the wind, and its lightning will pierce anything it touches. Be prepared—if the seal is broken, this battle will be fast."
She looked at him closely, then added, "You will need to be faster."
Alex said nothing.
The moment Nyx finished speaking, he vanished, leaving only the faint shimmer of folded space in the chamber.
In the next instant, he stood at the top of the world. The polar ice stretched endlessly in every direction—a land of pure white, frozen and silent under a sky of pale blue. The cold was absolute, but the seal he was looking for was close.
Beneath the ice, deep in the heart of the glacier, the pulse of an ancient presence throbbed like a buried storm. The seal of Aphoom Zhah was there, its strength fraying after countless ages.
Alex pressed a hand to the ice. Mana spread outward in a vast web, runes and circles crawling across the frozen landscape as he began setting the teleportation array, ready to move the entire battlefield into space.
Even before he finished, the ice cracked.
A surge of lightning erupted from below, splitting the ice apart with blinding flashes. The ground trembled as something vast and cold forced its way upward.
The seal broke.
A massive, coiling shape burst out, its body wreathed in pale, blue-white flame that did not burn but froze. From within the cold flame came arcs of lightning, striking outward in all directions, cutting through the air in a lattice of blinding lines.
Aphoom Zhah had awakened.
The instant the seal shattered and Aphoom Zhah burst upward, Alex activated the completed array.
Blue light surged across the ice, and in less than a blink, the entire polar region around the seal vanished from Earth, pulled through a tear in space.
The frozen wasteland and the newly freed creature reappeared in the emptiness of space, far from the planet, surrounded by nothing but stars.
Alex didn't waste a moment. The very second they arrived, he struck. He teleported in front of Aphoom Zhah, his fist already drawn back, every Law he possessed burning across his arm as he drove a blow aimed at its head.
But he hit only empty air.
In an instant, Aphoom Zhah blurred and vanished, leaving a trail of blue-white lightning. It moved with a speed unlike anything he had faced so far—the Law of Lightning had turned its entire body into pure movement, faster than even Ithaqua's winds.
Arcs of pale lightning flashed around him, forming a shifting storm of light. Alex didn't hesitate. He invoked Time Magic, slowing everything around him to crawl. At the same time, the Law of Wind wrapped around his body, pushing his speed to the edge of what the laws of motion could handle.
He pursued, striking again and again, teleporting to every trace of its movement.
Every time, he was close—so close that his fist cut through the faint afterimage of its form. But he missed by fractions of a second. Aphoom Zhah slipped through every gap like a living streak of lightning, always just ahead, the cold blue glow flashing through the black.
It wasn't stronger than him.
It wasn't tougher.
But in speed, for the first time, something was just out of his reach.
Chapter 577 – Catching Lightning
In the black expanse of space, Aphoom Zhah's pale lightning flickered like veins of blue fire across the void. Each movement left afterimages so bright they looked like cracks tearing through reality itself.
Alex stopped chasing. He floated in the stillness, his visor tracking every streak of lightning.
Chasing won't work.
He extended one hand, and mana began to spread out around him in all directions. Instead of moving himself, he folded space, layer upon layer, creating a shifting lattice of invisible paths around him.
At the same time, he used Time Magic, but not on the creature—on the battlefield itself. Every microsecond, space and time bent into a web that he controlled.
And then, he added another layer.
The Law of Wind.
The currents of space twisted. Instead of trying to outrun Aphoom Zhah, he created an artificial storm—a funnel of wind and gravity that dragged every movement toward a single point.
Aphoom Zhah blurred past again, moving like a thunderbolt. This time, when its lightning body passed into the distorted space, its path bent.
For the first time, it hesitated.
Alex moved.
He wasn't faster than lightning, but his trap made lightning come to him.
In less than an instant, he teleported directly to the bent path and struck.
Aphoom Zhah's speed carried it straight into the distorted layers of space.
For the first time, its perfect movement faltered. The bent web of time and wind pulled at its path, dragging it slightly off-course.
In that instant, Alex was there.
His fist was already descending, layered with every Law he commanded.
But just before impact, Aphoom Zhah twisted its body into pure lightning, slipping through the smallest gap in the folded space. The punch missed by a fraction of a second, cutting through empty blue fire.
Even so, the effect was undeniable. Aphoom Zhah came to a stop several hundred meters away, lightning still crawling across its body, its shape wavering like a flame.
It realized something it had never experienced before.
It wasn't moving freely.
Every time it tried to dart forward, its path bent just slightly, as though invisible hands were shaping the battlefield. The void around it felt heavier, slower, and less predictable.
For the first time, Aphoom Zhah hesitated.
Its lightning flickered as it looked toward Alex, an awareness sparking in its ancient mind: if it kept moving in this web, eventually there would be no gap left to escape through.
Aphoom Zhah's body pulsed violently, arcs of cold blue lightning lashing out in every direction. It had realized the danger of staying inside this distorted battlefield and now tried to shatter the trap by flooding it with raw energy.
The storm expanded with terrifying speed. Bolts of lightning split across the void, hundreds of them, slashing through the layered folds of space like whips. Each strike exploded, showering the empty dark with waves of light. For a moment, the entire area looked like a living star, flashing and flickering in chaotic rhythm.
But Alex was already moving.
He didn't flinch, didn't even try to dodge.
Instead, he used the lightning itself.
Every arc of energy that crashed toward him was dragged into his web of folded space. The violent storm, instead of tearing the battlefield apart, only bent it further, feeding the trap he had created.
In that instant, Aphoom Zhah understood it had made a mistake.
Alex reappeared directly in front of it. There was no afterimage, no delay—just sudden, perfect presence.
This time, he didn't aim for where it was.
He aimed for where the trap forced it to be.
The punch connected.
The blow landed squarely in the center of Aphoom Zhah's pale, cold flame. The Laws layered into the strike—Strength, Fire, Ice, Poison, Darkness, Wind, Earth, Sleep, Parasites, Consumption—ignited all at once.
The impact didn't just hit. It collapsed the lightning body inward, scattering the storm around it into fragments of blue sparks. Aphoom Zhah's speed advantage was erased in a single, devastating strike.
Aphoom Zhah's form crumpled inward from the blow, its body scattering into arcs of blue-white lightning that sputtered weakly in the void. Before it could reconstitute itself, Alex was already moving.
He teleported directly above the collapsing storm.
His second strike came down like a falling star.
This time, he poured everything into the attack—not just raw strength, but every Law he had mastered.
The Laws of Strength and Consumption amplified his physical force,
Wind and Lightning bent the void to speed the punch,
Fire and Ice tore apart the structure of the creature's body,
Poison sank deep to corrupt its essence,
Darkness and Concealment hid the strike until the last instant,
Sleep and Parasites weakened its ability to resist,
and the Law of Mana held it all together, condensing the power into a single, perfect point.
The punch landed with an impact that made the stars tremble.
The compressed blow drove Aphoom Zhah downward, smashing it against a chunk of ice torn from the polar ground that floated nearby. The cold flames around it burst outward, flickering out like a dying aurora. Its lightning body split apart into a million sparks, scattering helplessly through the void.
The remnants of the creature writhed for only a moment before dissolving, its Law unraveling as its consciousness was crushed.
Aphoom Zhah—the Cold Flame—was dead before it could move again.
The last fragments of Aphoom Zhah's lightning body dissolved into harmless sparks, leaving only the silent void. The storm was gone. There was no cold flame, no roar of thunder—only stillness.
Then came the familiar sound in Alex's mind.
Level Up!
Gained Levels: 52,600
Unused Stat Points Acquired: 263,000
New Law Acquired: Law of Lightning
The transparent system window appeared before his eyes:
Name: Alex Elwood
Level: 899,656
HP: 7,716,860
MP: 3,858,560
STR: 771,686
END: 771,676
AGI: 771,666
INT: 771,712
WILL: 771,560
Unused Stat Points: 263,000
Laws: Mana (3%), Ice, Fire, Web, Poison, Darkness, Strength, Concealment, Wind, Earth, Sleep, Parasites, Consumption, Lightning
Without hesitation, he selected Distribute Evenly.
Power coursed through his body, radiating outward, creating ripples in the stillness of space. The shattered chunks of polar ice drifted away as the airless void trembled around him.
Updated Stats:
HP: 8,242,460
MP: 4,121,560
STR: 824,246
END: 824,236
AGI: 824,226
INT: 824,272
WILL: 824,120
Unused Stat Points: 0
The system window closed, and the void was silent once again. Alex stood still, surrounded by the frozen remnants of the battlefield.
Alex didn't linger. The moment his status settled, he folded space around himself and stepped through. The frozen battlefield, the shattered ice, and the fading sparks of Aphoom Zhah disappeared behind him.
In the blink of an eye, he stood once more in the center of the council chamber.
The gods didn't speak. By now, they knew better than to ask if he had succeeded. The silence in the scrying mirrors told them everything. Still, there was something different this time. Even the oldest beings in the chamber seemed reluctant to meet his gaze.
Alex's visor turned toward Nyx. "Next."
For the first time since she had appeared, there was a slight pause before she spoke. Her violet eyes stayed fixed on him, and behind their calm surface, a trace of shock flickered. Each return was faster. Each kill was certain. She had expected this—but the speed, the precision, the sheer inevitability of it was beginning to unsettle even her.
Finally, she exhaled quietly. "The next ones," she said, "are the last before Cthulhu."
Her gaze sharpened. "Zhar and Lloigor."
Murmurs spread through the hall. The twins. Always spoken of as one, always together.
"They are sealed beneath the land of Mnar," she said. "They share a single power. A single Law. The Law of Light. Unlike Cthulhu or the others, these two move together, their strength magnified by each other's presence."
Nyx's voice grew colder.
"The Law of Light may sound simple, but it is not like the light you know. It burns, sears, and pierces through everything. It leaves nothing to hide behind. When they awaken, everything around them is revealed. Even those who rely on concealment or darkness cannot escape."
Her eyes met his once more. "Together, they are nearly as dangerous as Cthulhu. And if you face them, it will be like fighting one being with two bodies."
Chapter 578 – Light Against Darkness
Alex vanished from the council chamber as soon as Nyx finished speaking.
Space folded, and when it straightened again, he stood above the land of Mnar. The terrain stretched endlessly, a wasteland of cracked earth and ancient ruins buried under sand. The wind was dry, and the ground beneath his feet pulsed faintly with the presence of something vast beneath it.
The moment he appeared, the earth split.
Two enormous forms rose from the deep fissures: Zhar and Lloigor, the twin Great Old Ones. Their bodies were serpentine and coiling, each made of a translucent, luminous mass that looked more like living light than flesh. Their shapes shifted constantly, like creatures made from the sun itself.
They did not hesitate.
The moment they emerged, the Law of Light erupted.
The world around Alex turned to blinding white. Waves of burning illumination flooded the battlefield, tearing across the sand, vaporizing the air itself. The attack was pure and absolute, leaving nowhere to hide.
Alex raised his hand.
From his palm, darkness spread.
The Law of Darkness erupted around him, a field of pure shadow that collided with the burning white. Light and darkness struck against each other, twisting and devouring one another. The brilliance of the twins was swallowed, and Alex's shadow was torn apart, each force erasing the other.
The battlefield became a void of clashing opposites—blinding white and endless black, canceling one another out until neither side could advance.
The clash of light and darkness stretched across the land of Mnar, tearing the horizon in two.
On one side, the blinding radiance of Zhar and Lloigor.
On the other, the deep, devouring shadow of Alex.
The air trembled. Sand and stone lifted into the air, reduced to dust where the opposing Laws collided. The ground was a wasteland of blackened cracks and glassed rock, but in the center of it all, Alex kept walking forward.
Each step was steady, unfaltering. The brilliance of the Law of Light couldn't pierce him, and the darkness he had unleashed consumed every flare before it could touch him. Every pulse of their twin Laws that lashed at him evaporated against his own shadow like water striking stone.
Zhar and Lloigor coiled around each other, their luminous bodies shifting, their combined Law pouring out like a sun trying to burn the world itself. Yet as they looked down, they saw Alex—unmoving, unaffected—closing the distance.
They roared, the vibration of their twin voices cracking the ground. Twin beams of pure light struck him directly, concentrated to a needle point, bright enough to melt through mountains.
Alex didn't slow.
The Law of Darkness wrapped around him, folding the light inward, swallowing it whole until nothing remained. Every attack they launched was consumed before it could leave a mark.
By the time Zhar and Lloigor realized it, he was already within reach.
In a single step, Alex was upon them.
The brightness around him folded inward as he teleported directly into the space between the two massive, coiling bodies. Before Zhar or Lloigor could react, his fist was already moving.
The first punch drove straight into Zhar's body. Every Law he possessed surged into that blow—Strength, Darkness, Fire, Ice, Poison, Wind, Earth, Consumption, Sleep, Concealment, Lightning—all condensed into one devastating strike. The massive serpent-like form of light convulsed, bending under the impact. Cracks of darkness spread like spiderwebs across its luminous surface, its Law of Light recoiling from the overwhelming force.
Without pausing, Alex pivoted.
In his other hand, magic condensed into a sphere the size of his palm. Space bent inward around it as elemental magic, lightning, fire, ice, and poison were compressed into a miniature star, reinforced by every Law he controlled. The orb pulsed once, then he thrust it directly into Lloigor's body at point-blank range.
The moment the orb touched its target, it detonated inward.
The explosion was silent, contained by Alex's control so that none of the destructive force escaped. Inside Lloigor's body, however, it was chaos. Fire burned through its core, lightning shredded its form, ice froze its essence, and the venom of the Laws corrupted it from within. Lloigor's luminous body split apart from the inside, its light scattering like glass.
Both twins howled, their voices shaking the ground of Mnar, but Alex's presence didn't waver.
Zhar twisted in pain, its luminous body flaring wildly, while Lloigor's entire form was tearing apart from the explosion inside it. But Alex didn't give them a chance to recover.
In the same instant, he teleported slightly above them, his hands opening wide.
He brought both fists down at once.
The Law of Darkness wrapped tightly around his arms, suppressing their Law of Light so it couldn't protect them. Every other Law surged in harmony: Strength for force, Consumption to devour their essence, Fire and Ice for destruction, Lightning and Wind for speed, Earth for weight, Poison to corrupt, Sleep to weaken, Concealment to make the strikes undetectable until the last instant.
Both fists struck their cores at the same time.
The impact was like two stars collapsing. The bodies of Zhar and Lloigor bent inward, their light twisting violently before shattering.
Their twin roars cut off at the same moment as the brilliance of their forms scattered like shards across the void.
When the light faded, there was nothing left of them but drifting fragments of pale radiance, dissolving into nothing.
The system's voice rang out in Alex's mind.
Level Up!
Gained Levels: 72,400
Unused Stat Points Acquired: 362,000
New Law Acquired: Law of Light
A glowing status window appeared before him:
Name: Alex Elwood
Level: 972,056
HP: 8,242,460
MP: 4,121,560
STR: 824,246
END: 824,236
AGI: 824,226
INT: 824,272
WILL: 824,120
Unused Stat Points: 362,000
Laws: Mana (3%), Ice, Fire, Web, Poison, Darkness, Strength, Concealment, Wind, Earth, Sleep, Parasites, Consumption, Lightning, Light
He distributed the stat points evenly.
Power flooded through him, shaking the entire expanse of Mnar. The cracked ground below shifted as the energy settled into his body.
Updated Stats:
HP: 8,956,460
MP: 4,478,560
STR: 895,646
END: 895,636
AGI: 895,626
INT: 895,672
WILL: 895,520
Unused Stat Points: 0
The land of Mnar was silent. Zhar and Lloigor—the last of the Great Old Ones before Cthulhu—were gone.
The moment Zhar and Lloigor's light faded completely, Alex didn't pause.
He opened a rift and stepped forward.
The fractured land of Mnar, the drifting fragments of light, all of it vanished behind him.
In the next heartbeat, he was back in the council chamber.
The entire hall fell silent.
The scrying mirrors still showed the aftermath in Mnar: a dead, quiet wasteland where, just minutes ago, two Great Old Ones had risen together. Now, there was nothing left of them.
For a long moment, no one in the room could even speak.
The realization slowly sank in—in such a short time, he had nearly erased all of them.
One after another, unstoppable, and faster with each battle.
The faces of gods, immortals, and beings older than history were pale. Some of them, who had faced these creatures in the distant past, knew what it had taken to seal just one. And here was a single man, returning from the land of Mnar as if he had gone for a short walk.
But the one most shaken was Nyx.
Her usual calm, her indifferent tone, her playful gaze—everything she had shown until now shattered.
Her violet eyes were wide open, fixed on Alex as though she were seeing something that should not exist.
She didn't say a word.
Even her breathing seemed to catch, as if she had momentarily forgotten what it was.
For the first time since she appeared, Nyx's composure was completely gone.
Chapter 579 – The Last Name
The silence in the chamber stretched unbearably long.
The council members—all of them—were staring at Alex, but none dared to speak first.
The scrying mirrors had gone still, showing nothing but the empty wasteland of Mnar.
One after another, their faces reflected the same thing: disbelief.
Odin's single eye narrowed, but for once, no words came.
Zeus, who was never silent, simply sat with his hand over his mouth.
Freyja's lips parted slightly, a quiet breath escaping her as if she'd just realized something she hadn't wanted to admit.
A few of the younger gods looked at each other nervously.
"Zhar and Lloigor… together," one whispered. "And he—"
The words died there.
Every immortal in the room had seen the twins rise before. They knew what those two meant. And now, they were simply gone.
No one dared to look at Nyx directly, but all of them felt the weight of her reaction—the shock from someone who, until this very moment, had been unshaken by anything.
In the middle of this silence, Alex stood, unmoving. His visor faced straight ahead, waiting. He did not explain, did not ask. He just waited.
Finally, after a long, strained moment, Nyx moved.
Her violet eyes lowered, just slightly, as if to steady herself. When she raised them again, there was no trace of her usual playfulness. Her voice, when it came, was quiet.
"There is only one left," she said slowly, each word deliberate.
"Cthulhu."
The weight of Nyx's words settled over the council chamber like a shroud.
Before she could continue, a deep, rumbling voice broke the silence.
"Under Atlantis."
All eyes turned to Surtr. The flames surrounding his massive frame flickered low, steady, as he stared directly at Alex.
"That's where it sleeps," he said. "Cthulhu lies beneath Atlantis."
Poseidon, seated at one end of the table, nodded grimly. His normally calm, confident expression was strained.
"I've already evacuated everyone," Poseidon said. "No mortals remain there. Even my soldiers have been pulled back. When that seal breaks, there will be nothing left of Atlantis."
Surtr's burning eyes never left Alex. "Its awakening has been stirring for centuries. The tides, the storms—you've felt them, haven't you? That's all Cthulhu dreaming."
Nyx added softly, her voice regaining a fraction of its usual composure. "This will be different from the others. Even with all the power you have now, this fight will be unlike any battle you've faced so far. Cthulhu has two Laws—Space and Dreams. They make it unpredictable."
She paused, studying Alex's still figure. "If you defeat it, there will be no more."
Alex didn't speak.
The moment Nyx's final words faded, he stepped forward. Space folded around him, and he vanished from the council chamber.
He reappeared deep beneath the ocean. The weight of the sea pressed down from every direction, but he was untouched as he walked across the seafloor. Ahead of him, the shattered ruins of Atlantis lay silent. The city was empty, abandoned as Poseidon had promised. No sound, no movement—only the stillness of a world long drowned.
Beneath those ruins, Alex felt it.
The seal.
This one was different from all the others. Layers upon layers of divine power wrapped around it, far stronger than anything he had encountered so far. It pulsed faintly, like a heart slowed almost to stillness.
Cthulhu.
Even in sleep, its presence was enormous, vast as an ocean, yet it did not stir. Unlike the others, there was no shaking of the earth, no cracking of the seal. It was not easily awakened.
Alex studied it for a moment. The gods of that age had feared this one more than the rest—so much so that they had bound it with a seal so strong that even now, it slept on, its awakening likely still far in the future.
He considered it and came to a decision.
"That's fine," he said quietly to himself.
Raising his hand, he traced circles into the ocean floor. Mana spread out, runes cutting deep into the seabed. The array grew wider and wider, extending across the ruins and deep beneath them.
The instant the last line connected, he activated it.
In a flash, Atlantis vanished from the ocean.
The city, the seal, and the slumbering form of Cthulhu itself were all transported far into the empty black of space.
When the light faded, the ruins hung silently in the void. And still, Cthulhu did not wake.
The pulsing beneath the seal remained slow, steady, as though it would take centuries more to rise.
Alex stood at the center of it, silent, looking at the massive seal floating before him.
Chapter 580 – The Arena in the Void
Alex stood in the silent black, the ruins of Atlantis floating beneath him, the seal still unbroken. He watched it for a long time, the slow, steady pulse of Cthulhu's dormant presence radiating from within.
"This is good," he thought.
"It's still asleep. That gives me time."
He raised his hand, and space around him rippled. Through that ripple, he called upon the materials he had left in storage—the countless resources and constructs built during his time in the World Frontier fortresses.
One by one, massive structures began to appear:
Bars of reinforced metal, stones forged from the hearts of mountains, constructs made from rare materials that carried mana better than crystal. They came from all across the world he once ruled, teleporting directly into the void around him.
In the silent dark, Alex began to build.
The ruins of Atlantis were lifted and locked into place at the very center of the structure. Around it, layer after layer of reinforced walls began to form, linked by spells so strong they vibrated like living things. The prison was built not just to hold something—it was an arena, vast enough to contain a battle that would shake the stars.
Every section was crafted with one goal: to interfere with the Law of Space.
Runes appeared on the walls, their light faint but unwavering, binding themselves into the structure. These seals blocked teleportation, folded space into narrow corridors, and disrupted instantaneous movement. Any attempt to escape or warp would be redirected into the trap itself. Even for someone who controlled the Law of Space, these barriers would make it impossible to simply vanish.
When the final layer connected, the whole arena spread across hundreds of kilometers, a fortress of metal, stone, and spellcraft hanging silently in the void. In its center, beneath him, the seal containing Cthulhu still pulsed, untouched.
The arena expanded further, far beyond the ruins of Atlantis, far beyond the scale of the fortresses he had built before.
By the time Alex finished, it stretched to a size that rivaled Jupiter.
This was not an arena of walls—it was an arena of open void, but enclosed by a seamless, invisible barrier that spanned the entire structure. Its surface shimmered faintly, bending the light of the stars, but from the inside, it was clear and endless.
Around the inner circumference of that barrier floated enormous constructs, each one shaped like a black Saturn, their rings gleaming like obsidian. Hundreds of them drifted in perfect formation, equidistant, and their purpose was twofold.
First, they anchored the barrier, holding it firm against anything that tried to break through. No attack, no distortion of space, could tear the enclosure open while they stood.
Second, they were engines of interference. Each of these black Saturns radiated a continuous field of runes and Laws that disrupted the fabric of space. They tangled the pathways of teleportation and cut the flow of the Law of Space itself. Inside this barrier, no escape was possible. Even an entity that controlled space perfectly would find itself cornered.
The result was a vast, hollow arena—a prison built not with walls, but with gravity, runes, and the interference of countless engines, all focused on keeping one being contained.
At the very center, far below Alex, the seal of Cthulhu still pulsed. Slow. Silent. Dreaming.
Alex floated in the vast silence of the arena he had created, the barrier stretching far beyond sight. His gaze lowered to the pulsing seal at the very center. Even asleep, Cthulhu radiated a pressure unlike anything else he had faced.
"This won't be enough," he murmured. "I need something it won't expect."
He opened a storage rift, pulling out a device he had designed long ago but never used.
It was small—only a few meters wide—but the core inside it pulsed with terrible energy.
An ion bomb.
Unlike ordinary weapons, this one wasn't built with just technology. It was a fusion of spells, circuitry, and Laws. He had combined the Laws of Fire, Lightning, Ice, Wind, Strength, Darkness, Sleep, Consumption, Poison, Earth, Light, Parasites, Concealment, and Mana into one device, shaping them into a single function: to collapse anything caught in its blast into raw, unresisting matter.
This bomb was made for Cthulhu.
He descended toward the seal, careful and deliberate, and attached the ion bomb to the structure just beside the core of its bindings. Its runes sank into the surface, fusing seamlessly so that it became part of the seal itself. To anyone else, it would be invisible.
Then, with one last gesture, he linked it to a trigger—not his, but the seal's.
The moment the seal began to break, the bomb would detonate automatically.
This way, Cthulhu would be hit before it even fully awakened.
As Alex rose back into the sky above the ruins, the faint pulsing of the seal continued. It hadn't begun to stir yet. The arena was silent, but now, it was prepared for what was coming.