The world was changing. Everyone could feel it, yet most people had no idea what was actually happening. Looking around, everything seemed perfectly normal.
"Boom!"
The attacks unleashed by Zeta and Beta shot toward Fenrir, only to be effortlessly blocked by a crimson beam that erupted straight into the sky from the mysterious magical array beneath him.
"Hahaha, hahaha..."
Fenrir stood where he was, a vicious grin spreading across his face as he watched their attacks be nullified. He raised one hand and pointed at Zeta and Beta.
"Long before your Shadow Garden appeared, we, the Cult of Diablos, were already ruling and guiding this world from the shadows! Both Shadow Garden and Shadow himself are nothing but unnecessary intruders!"
His voice swelling with excitement, Fenrir pointed triumphantly toward the sky.
"Now, let me show you the true power of the Cult of Diablos! Let me show you what the wrath of the Cult of Diablos truly looks like!"
From the cracks in the earth, the crimson energy that had been gathering there erupted into the sky. It transformed into linked chains that pierced the planet's atmosphere, passed beyond this world, connected to a sphere in the distance, and began to pull.
Explosions, roars, collisions, screams. Every imaginable sound erupted at once, yet it was as if someone had pressed a mute button. All that remained in people's ears was a dull buzzing, drowning out every other sound in the world.
"What... is that...?"
Awestruck voices rose almost simultaneously.
Everyone looked up.
A beautiful blue planet had appeared far off in the sky, growing larger at an unimaginable speed.
Or rather, it was getting closer.
"Rumble..."
Loose stones rolled across the ground as the earth beneath their feet began to crack apart and rise into the air.
Even if two planets merely brushed past one another, the destructive force caused by their proximity alone would be beyond imagination.
The clouds were torn apart. The oceans of both worlds surged upward, tilting toward one another. The immense gravitational forces generated by their unimaginable mass dragged the two planets closer together.
A world-ending catastrophe had begun.
"Click!"
A faint sound seemed to echo from nowhere, like the pull of a trigger.
Then gravity as heavy as a mountain descended upon the world.
"Aaaah!!!"
Screams and the cries of beasts erupted from every corner of the globe, reverberating across the world.
The splitting earth swallowed countless living beings. Volcanoes erupted and incinerated everything in their path. Violent tornadoes swept across the land. Raging tsunamis began to drown the world.
Across both worlds, living beings began to lose consciousness.
This...
No.
This was not World Fusion.
Forcing themselves upright beneath the sudden increase in gravity, Beta and Zeta looked across the forest bathed in crimson light.
Or rather, what was left of it.
As red beams continued shooting into the sky from the shattered ground all around them, the two turned toward the culprit responsible for this hellish disaster.
Fenrir.
Both of them had experienced the fusion of the three worlds more than a year ago, so they immediately understood that what Fenrir was doing now was not simply recreating World Fusion as he had claimed.
At the very least, his goal was definitely not a normal World Fusion.
The World Fusion back then had been just as dramatic as this, perhaps even more so. But for most living beings, the true danger had come from the tectonic upheaval after the fusion.
As for the fusion itself...
It had passed in the blink of an eye.
"Aaaah!!!"
At some point, Akane Nishino had been bound tightly by blood-red chains and pinned against the platform. She let out a piercing scream.
"I really have to thank you. You actually brought the world coordinates straight to us yourselves. Otherwise, finding such a suitable world would have been quite troublesome."
Fenrir stood tall, looking down at Beta and Zeta as they struggled to move beneath the increased weight pressing down on them.
He pointed toward the blue planet drawing ever closer in the sky, his face twisting into a savage grin.
"This is the gift that we, the Cult of Diablos, are giving to this world, to Shadow Garden, and to Shadow."
"Starfall."
"What exactly is the Cult of Diablos trying to do?!"
Zeta forced the words out with difficulty.
The sudden increase in gravity itself was not enough to trouble her or Beta.
That was, provided they were nowhere near the center of the phenomenon dragging two planets together.
But here, they were directly enduring the pressure generated by both worlds.
Forget them. Even the two Dragon Gods would be crushed to the ground if they came here.
In fact, precisely because the two Dragon Gods were even stronger, the pressure they experienced would be greater still.
"What are we trying to do? Obviously, we're getting rid of you wild dogs who refuse to stop biting at our heels."
The moment he finished speaking, enormous amounts of blood-red mist erupted from the ground, swallowing the sky before rapidly spreading across the entire world.
"When a planet weighing one hundred trillion trillion tons collides with another weighing two hundred trillion trillion tons, the destructive force generated between them is something no living creature could possibly withstand."
"Of course, that doesn't include the beings you like to call Dragon Gods, Shadow, or God-tier existences. They should still be able to escape if they run far enough, so..."
As Fenrir spoke, the blood-red mist had already reached the atmosphere.
There, it spread outward until it completely enveloped the world.
The instant the final patch of sky disappeared, the mist seemed to transform from something intangible into something solid.
Under the terrified gazes of every living creature, the blood-red haze became a dome covering the entire world.
For a brief moment, beneath that dome, even the terrifying pressure and disasters ravaging the planet seemed to settle down.
Well...
Seemed to.
Everyone knows that when an explosive goes off inside a small, enclosed space, its destructive power increases dramatically.
The smaller and more confined that space is, the more devastating the explosion becomes.
From a human perspective, a dome capable of enclosing a planet weighing two hundred trillion trillion tons could hardly be described as small.
After all, even the six supposedly invincible domes of those glass-cleaning aliens were only a few dozen meters tall.
But when compared to a planet with a terrifying mass of one hundred trillion trillion tons and a diameter of 12,756 kilometers, along with another planet three times larger in both volume and mass...
This world-enveloping dome suddenly seemed...
Just right.
"Bwoooom..."
The immense pressure suddenly multiplied several times over and continued rising.
The already turbulent seas began to boil, sending kilometer-high tsunamis crashing across the world.
The thick crust of the earth looked as though someone had pressed down on it from the center and snapped it in half.
Mountains towering into the clouds began to collapse.
"This is our true finishing move. We'll use the immense impact generated by the collision and destruction of two planets, while this mechanism seals both the Dimensional Gap and the entire planet."
"Shadow, Dragon Gods, Gods. Not a single one of you is getting away."
Normally, even powerhouses on the level of the Great Red or the Infinite Dragon God could survive the terrifying force generated by two planets colliding, provided they escaped the blast radius in time.
At worst, they would suffer severe injuries.
But now, with the entire world sealed shut, everyone would be dragged into this catastrophe.
"Do you know what this is? This Philosopher's Stone, formed from the lives and souls of hundreds of millions of people, was prepared specifically for this cage that can temporarily seal an entire world."
"To force two planets into fusion, all you need to do is follow the rules. Start the process and then leave it alone. To avoid becoming cosmic dust, the planets themselves will instinctively pay the price necessary to complete the fusion."
"In a sense, we actually had to go to considerable trouble to turn a World Fusion into a direct collision between two worlds."
That was right.
To someone at the level of a Dragon God, this so-called cage was little more than a slightly tougher sheet of cardboard.
But the problem was the sheer size of the blast radius.
There simply was not enough time to escape.
The brief delay created by this cage, forged from hundreds of millions of lives, was more than enough to keep anyone trapped inside until the end.
"Are you insane?"
Beta and Zeta stared at Fenrir in disbelief.
Neither of them could understand what the Cult of Diablos was thinking.
Even if they hated Shadow Garden, there was no reason to drag two entire worlds down with them.
What could they possibly gain by destroying the world?!
"Insane? We're not insane at all."
"We're creating a wonderful future for every faction in this world."
"Turning the fusion of two worlds into a collision is easy. Reversing a collision and forcing it back into fusion is much harder."
"But it isn't... impossible."
Who could do it?
Shadow-sama!
The question surfaced instinctively in their minds.
And so did the answer.
The moment they realized what Fenrir was implying, Beta and Zeta raised their heads and attacked at the same time.
"Looks like you've figured it out."
"That's right. The only beings qualified to interfere with a fusion between two worlds are the so-called World's Five Strongest."
"According to our calculations, even one of the World's Strongest possesses enough power to interfere with the process."
"If three of them, or perhaps all five, joined forces to push the worlds back into fusion, then even if they couldn't completely prevent the destruction, they could at least preserve this world as it is now."
As for the cost?
Fenrir did not say it aloud.
He did not need to.
The smug smile on his face already gave them the answer.
The price would be the lives of several of the strongest beings in the world.
That was the conclusion the Cult of Diablos had reached after calculating the newly updated data they had obtained recently.
"You refuse to cooperate. You've already exposed yourselves to the entire world, yet you still refuse to step into the open and take the blows meant for us."
"Do you really think Shadow can call himself the guardian of this world?!"
"Hahahaha... The World's Five Strongest? What a magnificent title!"
"What a load of garbage!"
"We'll kill every last one of them in one go!"
Fenrir made his grand declaration.
And the Cult of Diablos truly had the right to say it.
They had already sealed the world.
Destruction was imminent.
And now they had given the World's Five Strongest two choices.
The first was to shield the world from disaster, paying an enormous price, perhaps even their lives, to save it.
Maybe they would survive.
The second was to do nothing.
Then the two planets would be destroyed, and the unimaginable force generated by their destruction would drag them down as well.
The Cult of Diablos had even accounted for the possibility that God might suddenly win a resurrection match and return.
So they had held nothing back.
They had gone all-in, preparing this killing move on a scale capable of eliminating all five of the World's Strongest.
The worst possible outcome was that not a single one of the World's Strongest stepped forward to take responsibility, and the two planets were destroyed along with everyone on them.
That was fine.
At the very least, the Cult of Diablos would finally shake off Shadow Garden, the wild dog that refused to stop biting at their heels, along with Shadow, the strongest being in the world.
They would not lose anything.
The second-worst outcome was that the five World's Strongest stopped the destruction and Shadow survived.
Even then, he would certainly pay an enormous price.
That would become the Cult of Diablos's opportunity.
A better outcome would be for all five of the World's Strongest to die while still failing to completely prevent the world's destruction, merely slowing it down somewhat.
That would greatly reduce this world's value for exploitation and development, but it would still be acceptable.
The best outcome, of course, would be for the destruction to turn back into World Fusion while all five of the World's Strongest died in the process.
The other factions would also be severely weakened, allowing the Cult of Diablos to press its advantage and finish them off.
"Do you see it?!"
"That is the other world bringing destruction upon this one!"
Fenrir pointed toward the sky.
The continents of the approaching planet were already faintly visible.
His face twisted into a manic grin.
No matter what happened, as long as the Cult of Diablos did not end up with the absolute worst possible result, they would win.
A small win.
A huge win.
An overwhelming win.
Lose?
There was no losing.
Only winning!
Yet as Fenrir laughed wildly, there was one thing he had overlooked.
Or perhaps a certain "Seeker of Truth" had deliberately left it out.
The amount of power needed to kill several of the World's Strongest referred only to the base destructive force produced by the collision of the two planets.
It did not account for how much that force might be amplified inside a sealed space.
If that factor were included...
The resulting power might increase several times beyond the original estimate.
"ROOOAAAR!!!"
From one of the enormous rifts tearing across the heavens, a gigantic crimson body burst forth.
Dragon blood sprayed through the air as it screamed in agony.
But the instant it entered the physical world, the overwhelming pressure crushed it downward, sending it plunging into the sea.
"Aba... aba..."
Collapsed on top of her daughter, Ophis's eyes spun like mosquito coils.
She ignored Asia, who was shouting frantically beside her, and simply lay motionless atop her daughter, who was sprawled on the ground in exactly the same state.
"Aba... aba..."
"Buzzz..."
"The Library," which Cid had thrown into the room, erupted with intense Holy Light.
Its crystal-clear gems flashed again and again.
Yet no matter how brightly they shone, the light could not extend more than a few meters.
In the end, it could only fall helplessly silent.
Sometimes, being the strongest was not necessarily a good thing.
Because they were the strongest, they stood out more than anyone else within the world.
And because they stood out so clearly, most of the pressure naturally fell upon them.
"Ah... only the first one has appeared so far."
"The others really are selfish. They'd rather let the world be destroyed than come out and stop it."
"But... it looks like Shadow really does think of himself as this world's guardian."
"He actually plans to be the only one to step forward and stop this apocalypse."
"How laughably arrogant..."
Fenrir's smug, mocking voice rang in their ears.
Beta and Zeta had barely managed to launch an attack before the pressure of the two worlds crushed them to the ground, leaving them unable to move.
But at that moment, both of their eyes widened.
They felt it.
Even though they could not see it.
Even though an immense distance separated them.
Even though overwhelming pain wracked their bodies.
Everyone felt it.
A presence of unimaginable magnitude was rising from the ground at incredible speed.
Its destination was...
The exact point where the two planets were about to collide.
Beta and Zeta barely managed to roll over.
There was no need to look around.
At this point, even a blind person could have followed the sensation in their heart and perceived that overwhelming presence on the distant horizon.
Against the vast blood-red sky, the black figure looked infinitely small.
And yet it seized every gaze and overwhelmed every other presence.
It drew a single black line across the heavens, broke through the blood-red cage sealing the world, and reached the atmosphere at the exact center between the two planets...
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