MIGHT AS WELL BE OP

Chapter 741: Insult

The Second Supreme Monarch almost frowned, his demeanor threatening to collapse beneath the weight of everything he had just heard. His expression, usually as unmoving as an ancient statue, shifted into one of brief surprise before his face returned to its apathetic state. He doubted his ears as he listened to the two Warlords before him, every word they uttered pressing against the limits of reason.

They had just delivered news about the Forsaken Cult purging mission. The mission’s success was not the surprising part; in fact, it was expected. However, the details of that mission were simply absurd, beyond absurd, they were impossible, ludicrous even to imagine.

Null Anthony, the son of the Eighth and Ninth Supreme Monarchs, grandson of the Fifth Supreme Monarch and the Saintess Of The World, had already touched the level of a Planetary Being. As though that alone was not ridiculous enough to shake the pillars of the established order, he had performed a mass resurrection, bringing back to life every soldier, mercenary, adventurer, and citizen within the Blue Planet. And not only that, he had gone further, using Time Magic to reverse the flow of reality itself, restoring every ruin, and every shattered structure the war had left behind.

But it did not end there.

A new being had appeared, one who called himself: The Demon King. And before this being made his entrance, there had been a woman, calm and composed, who arrogantly introduced herself as the 100th subordinate of the Demon King, as if such a title was meant to inspire awe and terror alike.

The Second Supreme Monarch pressed the power button of the device in his hand, instantly turning off the screen. They had not only reported these events verbally, they had handed him the phone and made him watch, through recorded live feeds, everything unfold in real time.

”You may leave,” he intoned, his voice flat, emotionless, as though carved from cold iron.

”As you command, Supreme Monarch,” the Titan and the Dwarf replied in unison, bowing before vanishing instantly from the chamber, leaving behind a silence so heavy it felt like a tangible force.

The moment they departed, the Second Supreme Monarch’s face twisted into a full-blown frown, his expressionless mask shattering, crumbling to dust as though it had never existed. His composure fractured.

He could not believe his eyes and ears. Anthony, the child who was barely any different from a newborn cub in the grand cosmic scale, had touched the level of a Supreme Monarch.

He had watched with his own eyes the battle with Lilith, the so-called 100th Demon Monarch under the Demon King. His mind could not help but revolve around the sudden introduction of this Demon King, this new cosmic player, and Anthony’s unfathomable victory, which spat in the face of everything known and recorded.

’That Demon King must be a clone,’ he thought to himself, seeking logic amid the storm of impossibility.

But no matter how he tried to reason with himself, his mind could not find peace. How had Anthony climbed to that level of strength? How could a mere child resurrect millions? How could he reverse time for an entire planet, threading magic through the veins of existence itself?

The last part was not entirely impossible to him, there were beings like the First Supreme Monarch who could achieve such feats if they truly desired to. But Anthony? At nineteen? The very notion scraped at his pride like a blade dragged across stone.

’Adding a child to the rank of a Supreme Monarch... what an insult,’ he whispered internally, his thoughts simmering like molten metal. To someone like him, it felt as though the title of Supreme Monarch itself had been dragged through the mud, mocked by fate.

Anthony was a mere Major, a soldier who had leaped ranks with reckless abandon, from Private Soldier to Lieutenant in a single day, and from Lieutenant to Major in mere months. And now, now he stood at the threshold of the Supreme Monarchs’ rank as though it were some casual stepping stone. At this point, he might as well rename the entire military after himself.

’That means Vladek is dead,’ he deduced coldly. His tone in his own mind was not of grief but of detached acknowledgement. He had millions of descendants, the loss of one was nothing more than a statistic, a number to be erased, replaced, forgotten.

But then... a darker thought slithered into his mind like a venomous serpent.

If Vladek had fallen to Anthony, then Anthony would no doubt connect the threads back to him. And although he had not known the boy for long, the short encounter they once shared was enough to understand that Anthony was vengeful, the type who did not forget, did not forgive.

And if Anthony had chosen the path of vengeance... then...

The Second Supreme Monarch’s blood-red eyes narrowed sharply at the thought. Without another moment of hesitation, he vanished from his throne room, his departure leaving the entire building chamber engulfed in a lingering mist of blood-red energy, like the remnants of a nightmare.

In the blink of an eye, his figure materialized in outer space, galaxies surrounding him in cold silence. Stars shimmered like distant spectators, planets traced their orbits in eternal cycles, and solar systems stretched endlessly like veins of creation itself. He floated there, unmoving, a Monarch among the stars.

The instant he arrived, a deeper, heavier frown etched itself across his face.

Here, in this exact sector, a planet once floated. A planet that belonged to his lineage, a world where millions of his descendants lived, breathed, and thrived under his silent dominion.

But now... it was gone.

It had either been moved or obliterated. And he was no fool, naivety was a luxury he had abandoned eons ago. He knew with chilling certainty that the planet had been erased, and every descendant upon it slaughtered without mercy.

The cosmic air around him grew cold, unnaturally so, as though even the stars themselves felt the need to freeze in fear.

Without a word, he vanished again.

His figure reappeared within a barren world, surrounded by roiling blood-red mist. Not all his descendants resided on the first planet, some had scattered, pursued personal ambitions and separate lives across other worlds. He intended to summon them, to shield what remained. Anthony could not have erased them all. Not this quickly. He shouldn’t have had the time.

”Come to me,” his voice echoed across the stars, an Originator’s decree that transcended mere distance, resonating like a divine command.

Silence answered him.

Not a single voice responded. Not a single soul knelt. Not a single heartbeat remained.

He did not need to hear the truth spoken aloud, he knew.

Anthony had reached them too.

Reality settled upon him like a cosmic grave. His entire bloodline, which he had meticulously constructed, cultivated, and expanded over countless eras, had been wiped out, not in a war, not in a campaign, not even over months or even years. But within days.

But little did the Second Supreme Monarch know that Anthony had done it in minutes.

A tremor ran through him. Anger began to boil, rising like a primordial storm breaking its chains. He did not suppress it. He let it rise.

And then;

His aura exploded.

A cataclysmic burst of power tore through the barren planet beneath his feet, shattering it into dust and debris with a single pulse of rage. The solar system itself trembled, gravity howled in protest, space writhed and twisted, but it was all in vain. The entire star system collapsed beneath his wrath.

Moons shattered like fragile glass. Suns were snuffed out as if drowned in an unseen ocean. Stars detonated, bursting outward in titanic spheres of cosmic fire and pressure.

”ANTHONY!!!!!”

The Second Supreme Monarch roared in unrestrained fury, his voice a cataclysm that tore through the galaxy itself, a sound not merely heard but felt by the very fabric of existence.