MIGHT AS WELL BE OP

Chapter 476: Avatar

The Chakram Of End hovered silently in the void, her breath a whisper upon the stars.

Scars marked her near-perfect form, but they vanished within moments, as though the very wounds feared to linger upon her flesh.

Blood traced languid paths down her body, her eyes veined with crimson fury.

Her garments and hair, once pristine, were now soaked in the hue of her own lifeblood.

Across from her, Xezural stood, or rather, endured, in an equal state of ruin.

Shadows pooled around him, his blood as dark as the void, staining the space where he floated.

Their battle had raged for over a day, a continuous clash that defied exhaustion.

Even the war erupting across the military base had stretched into its second day.

A conflict of this magnitude could not be resolved in mere hours, it demanded days of bloodshed. The last total war had endured for seven.

Xezural’s spear trembled faintly in his grip, resonating with the tension in the air, as he fixed Sylmira with a gaze as cold as ice.

Though neither he nor Sylmira bore any visible wounds, for any injury that surfaced was instantly healed, the damage ran far deeper.

Internally, their essence had been struck, and harm at that level was not so easily mended.

Beings of their caliber had no need for conventional regenerative abilities; their bodies naturally restored themselves, undoing physical harm in an instant.

But an assault on their very essence, the core of their existence, was another matter entirely.

”Just surrender the Crown, Chakram Of End. We both walk away alive. Your soldiers live. You may have lost the cause, but at least you preserve their lives”

Xezural’s voice cut through the void, glacial and unfeeling.

At their level, fatigue was almost a foreign concept.

They could wage war for days without the faintest trace of exhaustion.

Their stamina bordered on the infinite, and their vast reserves of energy hinged not on sheer volume, but on mastery, on the precision of their control and the artifacts they possessed.

”We may survive this moment”

Sylmira replied calmly.

”But with that artifact in play, a far greater carnage looms. Better that we perish with this base than watch every military stronghold fall in a single sweep”

She had seen the records on the Severed Crown of Echoes. She didn’t need a prophecy to understand the devastation it heralded, entire Blue Planet, trillions of lives, would be erased as though they never existed.

Though she had ordered the Severed Crown to be delivered to Zhyravel, she remained uncertain whether it had reached him.

Still, her calculations told her it had. If it hadn’t, Xezural would have already received confirmation of the mission’s success, and vanished without another word.

Demons on Xezural’s level were far from mindless brutes. They did not wage war for the sake of bloodlust or chaos, such primal urges were beneath beings of their stature.

The restraints that bound lesser demons no longer applied to them; they had transcended those instincts.

They moved only when absolutely necessary.

After all, existence, in all its complexity, still intrigued them.

And even for entities of their power, the toll of battle was steep; wounds to their essence could take decades to fully mend.

That was why they always sought negotiation first. Only when diplomacy failed did they unleash the full weight of their wrath, and when that happened, carnage was inevitable.

”I don’t understand why you lesser races are so hopelessly stubborn”

Xezural said, his voice laced with disdain.

”You possess the power to shape various lives, and yet you shackle yourselves with duties, protection, loyalty, devotion. Such meaningless chains”

His spear pulsed with violent energy, vibrating with growing intensity, as though urging him to abandon the hollow conversation and return to what he did best; Devastation.

”To this day, I’ve never understood why demons insist on calling every other race ’lower’”

Sylmira said, her voice composed and steady.

”But I suppose it doesn’t matter. If you felt anything beyond your own self-interest, even a fragment of love, perhaps you would understand”

Her chakrams spun with a serene grace, orbiting her like sentinels, their silent motion seemingly fixed upon Xezural’s spear.

The two locked eyes, their gazes cold and intense.

Around them, the remnants of annihilation bore silent witness, shattered fragments of planets drifted through space, the dying roar of collapsed suns echoed faintly, and broken asteroids floated in the void, a solemn testament to the scale of their destruction.

”You leave me no choice Miss Chakram Of End”

Xezural’s voice carried the weight of finality. He raised a hand, and an orb shimmered into existence within his palm, then, without hesitation, he crushed it.

Sylmira’s expression shifted instantly, a deep frown forming as unease stirred within her.

She didn’t know what Xezural had just activated, but she was certain of one thing, it could not be good.

Then her frown deepened.

Her head snapped to the side, eyes narrowing toward the military base.

She had felt it, a disturbance within her protective dome.

Something had breached her perimeter.

Her instincts erupted, Spiritual Energy flooding from her core as her lips parted as she shot forward with rocketing speed.

Zeroframe Shift

Another voice followed in perfect harmony.

Abyssal Drift

Suddenly, Xezural materialized behind Sylmira, his spear wreathed in Intent as it descended in a lethal arc toward her chest.

Sylmira’s response was instantaneous, her body twisted with fluid precision, her chakram enveloped in Intent as it collided violently against the spear.

A torrent of Intent exploded outward, shredding everything caught within its devastating path.

”GET OUT OF MY WAY!”

Sylmira roared, voice raw with defiance.

But Xezural did not flinch, he simply replied,

”You chose this path, Chakram of End”

Just beyond the military base planet, a shimmering dome of Spiritual Energy encased the planet like an impenetrable shield.

This was the protective barrier the Chakram Of End had maintained for centuries.

On the planet’s surface, a lone figure lay dormant. Suddenly, its eyes snapped open with razor-sharp clarity, and it rose with deliberate purpose.

It was Xezural, or, at least, his avatar.

Sylmira had deliberately drawn her battle with Xezural away from the planet, knowing that the devastation wrought by their attacks would annihilate not only the planet itself but also the sacred dome shielding it.

”It’s fortunate I have prepared for this over millennia”

Xezural’s avatar intoned, without hesitation, he brought out a black brush from his space ring and began inscribing intricate runes across the planet’s surface.

Within moments, a sprawling tapestry of ancient symbols blanketed the entire planet.

Over the millennia, Xezural had been covertly inscribing countless runes across the surface of the military base planet.

The Chakram Of End should have sensed this, her dome allowed her to perceive everything within its bounds.

Yet, Xezural would never undertake a project spanning thousands of years if he couldn’t circumvent her vigilance.

What the avatar was completing now were merely the final runes. Xezural had deliberately stationed his avatar on the planet’s surface for this very day.

The orb he had crushed earlier was the key, it roused the avatar from its long slumber.

The brush in the avatar’s hand vanished into his space ring, which he then removed and shattered.

With a snap of his fingers, the runes flared with a sinister dark light before detonating inwardly, ripping through the military base planet.

A cold smile curved across Xezural’s avatar’s face just before it disintegrated into nothingness.