Chapter 83: Butterfly Effect.
Vilgax smiled beneath his mask, his unsightly visage twisting into a morbid expression.
In another situation, he would have been shocked that his façade— one he had carefully built over years of lies and decite—had been exposed… but it didn't matter.
They were at the end, after all.
Sickly green tendrils began emerging from beneath his robes as his body slowly expanded, reaching a titanic height of fifteen feet.
His robes tore apart, and his mask finally fell off with a heavy thud, sending a chilling sound through the devestated landscape, and as it did, his terrifying presence, which had been dormant for so long, grew unfathomably vast and became far more terrifying then before.
Ben's eyes, or whatever Ultimate Echo Echo had instea, widened in shock and fear as he floated back slowly.
"No... This isn't right..."
His voice trembled as Vilgax's will washed over him, nearly crushing him through sheer existence alone.
Vilgax in the original world was a great tyrant, having been turned from a Transcendent noble creature into a Great One due to Dagon's influence...
A great tyrant was a walking catastrophe, however it was still mortal and it could still be killed...
That was the exact reason why Ben had felt confident enough in confronting vilgax in the first place.
That had been Ben's greatest advantage—his knowledge.
He had known what would happen, when it would happen, and how to prepare. He had entered this nightmare more prepared than anyone could have been.
But nothing could have prepared him for this.
Vilgax's deep green body had turned pale green, and his tentacles had dark marks all around them, while his eyes were deep pools of crimson full of hatred for all things holy and divine...
It was almost as if ben was standing Infront of dagon's avatar itself...
And in a sense, he was not wrong in that regard.
Because Vilgax had evolved, He was no longer a Great Tyrant...
He was a Cursed Tyrant.
A true profane god...
"Did you think your meddling would go unnoticed by us?"
Vilgax took a step forward, and as he did, the earth quaked.
No, the entirety of the Beast Realm was shaking, with reality itself coming apart at an alarming rate.
Behind him, the two remaining Forever Kings stood motionless.
"But I must thank you, Ben Tennyson. Your reckless actions within this dream have aided md and my lord a great deal. Now we know how to survive—how to thrive—where our counterparts in the real world failed. Through you… and the one inhabiting your dream body… we will escape."
Ben staggered, his mind spiraling as everything suddenly slipped beyond his control.
'No, no, no, no... It's not supposed to go like this...'
He could understand that his actions had changed some things in the nightmare, but how could Vilgax evolv from a great tyrant to a cursed god in such a short amount of time?
It was something so nonsensical that ben had not even considered it, back when he was devising his grand plan.
Then it suddenly clicked...
If Dagon could elevate him once…
Then what was stopping him from doing it again?
However, before Ben could dwell on the idea, Vilgax took a step forward, and the entire world was engulfed by darkness, not the True darkness that the daemon of the underworld once wielded, and not the shadows of the god of death either.
Instead, it was a sickly purplish darkness, wrong and disgusting... A world of corruption, free of divinity...
"You are alone, child. There is only darkness for you and only doom for your people, for I am the herald of the harbinger of the void, and we are beyond strength, beyond concepts, and beyond the primordial gods themselves. We shall sail to a billion worlds beyond this dream, until every light in the vast cosmos is extinguished."
The terrifying unholy will turned into a murderous one, and suddenly there was nowhere to go. Nowhere to escape.
Ben found himself in a hopeless situation, unable to do anything, not because he was scared but because He could not move, he could not transform, and he could not even breathe...
Vilgax's will forbade it.
All he could think about in this moment was the irony of it all...
He had wanted to regain his life through this nightmare, but in his foolishness, he had come to his doom.
Perhaps that was what he deserved for what he had done to that boy...
However, just as he was about to be crushed, a crack of radiant white light broke through the dark world, and the cursed will of Vilgax was met with another equally terrifying, yet infinitely purer, will.
The net of cracks expanded through the world of profanity, shattering it entirely until the world returned to what it once was, free of corruption.
Ben briefly saw the silhouette of Sir George, standing there clad in full plate armor, holding Ascalon in both hands, standing firm and strong against the cursed deity.
Calmly, he looked at Vilgax.
"You say he is alone, creature, but you are mistaken."
His voice reverberated through the world, carrying a Divine presence behind it.
"He has me."
And with that, the world exploded into chaos as Vilgax and George launched at each other, their terrifying wills clashing together and expanding through the entire world, making it so that all beings in existence, no matter how weak or small, could feel the catastrophic clash of their battle.
In one moment they were there, and in the next, they were nowhere to be seen.
George seemed to be matching the cursed tyrant, no doubt thanks to Ascalon.
So much so that Ben could not even see them anymore; all he could see was the destruction their battle was bringing to the planet.
It was almost as if they were transcending the very concept of time...
'their wills... they are using it to transcend the concepts of time to try and outrun one another... How terrifying...'
Truly, did his realm have to produce such monstrous individuals?
And they were definitely not the only ones...
There was him, for example, Kevin, Gwen, his grandfather and grandmother, who were both Supremes, the Forever Kings... And...
"Focus," the Supreme Dragon said, pinching Ben with its claw to snap him out of his daze. "We don't have the luxury of watching."
Confused, Ben suddenly locked eyes with the two approaching figures...
They were the two remaining Forever Kings...
The seat holder of Heart, Sir Enoch,
and the seat holder of Blood, Sir Cyrus.
They wore their usual attire: enhanced Forever Knight armor with long capes flowing in the wind, with sir Enoch wearing a slightly darker armor and a helmet-mask fusion that hid his entire face.
But something was wrong... They were moving too robotic, as if they were being puppeteered by a novice puppeteer...
And most importantly, Their eyes was glowing sickly green. no doubt from Dagon's influence...
However, something was strange... Ben was not sure what it was, but he was unsure about killing them...
It definitely was not because of guilt or anything sentimental, as he felt nothing but satisfaction when he killed the seat holders of Sun and War, Sir Connor and Sir Patrick.
It was also a strange feeling, like an instinct telling him that killing them was a bad idea, a very bad one at that.
However, before he could try to comprehend it fully, his vision was suddenly shattered as the world flipped upside down.
The seat holder of Heart had used his ability on him.
—————
Not far away, Hugo lay in a crater, leaning against the decapitated head of a fallen Titan, which was a common sight in this hellish battlefield.
He had detransformed, reverting back to his human form, having been left bare naked after his clothes had been obliterated.
Nothing the [Asura] attribute couldn't fix, with the beautiful silver armor covering his body like a second skin, which it technically was.
However, what it couldn't fix was the pain he was feeling in his soul...
[...Your Omnitrix is overflowing with power.]
[Your Omni-Core is taking shape.]
His evolution into a Titan had started due to the accumulation of soul fragments that he had received. Under normal circumstances, this would have been a blessing, but now... It was a disaster.
Hugo had the opportunity to become a Titan a while now, via the Spirit Body ability to generate soul fruits capable of granting fragments... so, in theory all he had to do was eat one thousand apple and he would become a Titan, However, he had avoided doing so due to the fact that becoming a Titan was too dangerous for him right now.
His soul had already been wounded since his death in the Forgotten Shore, and the fact that he had Formed his Tyrant and Terror cores in less than a year had already pushed him to the brink.
He doubted his soul would be able to withstand a seventh core, at least not without a price...
The overwhelming amount of soul essence gained by devouring the souls of thousands of creatures filled his Omni-Cores, then it was expelled violently into his soul and begun rotating at an impossible speed.
As the soul essence condensed into a single star, something began to change in Hugo...
His self... His soul and his presence, all three of them were growing... Not only in raw power but also in mass.
Hugo felt himself becoming vaster, terribly vast. Unfathomably vast.
His consciousness expanded at once, nearly driving him insane from the suddenness of it all. Before, he had experienced changes when forming new cores, but it was never like this and never this... Overwhelming.
It felt as if there was a whole world within his soul now, with his soul maze expanding to match the size of his soul.
As for his presence... it was not quite like a Transcendent's being... No, it was far more dominating, as if he could simply shrug off the laws of existence at his whims and wishes.
And as his presence expanded, his senses, which had always been heightened by his attributes, increased even further.
They did so at the worst moment...
For Hugo felt everything.
He felt an uncountable number of creatures dying in agony, being torn apart and infected with corruption, he felt the call of the nightmare from the hundreds of gates, which had already started spreading throughout all of America, and then he felt it...
Ancient beings seeping into this world, each more terrifying and harrowing then the next... However, one of them stood out.
It was beyond anything Hugo had ever encountered, beyond the terror of the crimson spire and beyond even the skinwalker... Beyond even paradox.
Thankfully, there was another presence besides it, this one less powerful yet it was vast enough to contain the will of the profane creature, which was undoubtedly a cursed one... Saving Hugo from being gazed by it.
"Gods... I'm actually in the same nightmare as a cursed one..."
Hugo wondered if he had actually entered a fifth nightmare instead of a mere second one.
[Your Omnitrix is complete.]
The process had finally ended; however, the Spell added something else which surprised Hugo.
[Your Omnitrix has formed its final core and has been completed.]
[Do you wish to evolve it?]
—————
Author's note:
Sorry for the messy upload schedule, I have exams.
Anyway, new omnitrix design soon. Drop your suggestions, and they better be omniverse inspired (not ultimatrix)