Chapter 48: Return to battle.

The angel, overwhelmed by anger, lunged at me.

Without hesitation, I transformed my lower body into a serpent and entwined him entirely in my reptilian rings of death.

Wretched! he screamed, as his body convulsed.

Sata: I warned you. You have absolutely no chance against me.

As I had glimpsed in Erasa's visions, she would one day resort to an absolute weapon of destruction called kami. A weapon that strikes directly the most nonexistent forms of the chōshinku. A brilliant idea: entities like this angel, trapped in my rings of death, are often only illusory forms, simulacra of their true essence-some dream their presence, others project distant echoes-no... angels themselves operate with existential self-regulation... no matter.

Take beings who dream: their dreamlike form can interact with our reality, attack us… but their true source remains out of reach, often in a higher state, elsewhere, inaccessible.

Thus, if one strikes this dream, nothing collapses.

But I… I had found a way to weave silk around the dream itself. I had guided this silk toward the angel's true essence. And I had reached it.

He was frozen. Trapped. A rat in a snare.

I devoured him.

After this experience, and after absorbing the angel, a new thirst overwhelmed me. A divine thirst. I wanted to embody the very image of God.

By consuming him, I had obtained all his powers. Absolutely all. He was, as I suspected, a powerful entity. Troublesome… but useful. For now, I too am powerful.

This form you see of me is no longer truly me. It is only a reflection, an echo, an empty body endowed with a falsified source. My true self? It is now in a state beyond this world, unreachable. Yet, this shell retains all the powers I have acquired, as well as all my knowledge of the real.

But enough talk of power. I simply wanted to walk… to relax a little.

As I moved through the forest, a howl suddenly pierced my mind. A voice. A scream. A distant call…

I closed my eyes-and I saw him. A boy, lost in a future so distant it seemed unreal. Who was he? I created a breach toward this voice…and plunged into it.

Several timelines were revealed to me, already surpassed, erased. I observed.

Sata (thoughtful): Who is this? Why do my senses force me to listen to these howls?

Advancing into the future, I witnessed the disappearance of a goddess with long ebony hair.

Sata: It's strange, I cannot see her clearly nor name her…

Then, I saw the birth of humans shaped according to her will and authority.

Sata: The killer men, satsujin otoku…

Among them, some would one day equal the gods in power.

Sata: Bakuzan… Sakolomé… Bakuran… Salomé…

One of them had reached such power that he could even challenge the gods.

Sata: Sakolomé…

I suddenly stopped, pensive.

Should I kill them? Was it necessary?

Sata: No… Sakolomé will strengthen his link with the divine. He will become a threat. He is certainly a reincarnation of Adam… I must eliminate him. Quickly.

I followed the echo of the screams, crossing ages. I finally reached the precise moment when they resounded.

The howls came from a house about a kilometer away.

Sata: Perfect.

The frustration inside me turned into anger. Like mythical beings, my emotions shape my energy, imprint my aura.

The sky darkened, and rain poured down in torrents. I rose into the air, overlooking the dwellings. The windows shattered from my mere presence.

Dogs howled. Infants cried. Humans staggered… a simple effect of my existence.

And suddenly, a voice:

Where do you think you're going like that, demon?

A god?

Sata: You want me to eliminate you, don't you?

Hahaha… HAAAAAAAAAAHAHAH!

Sata: What are you laughing at?

Believing you can eliminate me is laughable. It's impossible. Leave now.

Sata: And if I refuse?

The god facing me furrowed his brow. He looked like a child, certainly… but I knew: he was a god. Dark, short hair. Absolute confidence.

Sata: Wait… Who are you?

I am Goth. Also called the Canceller. Goth the Primordial. God number twenty-five. Like all primordial gods, we are just to creatures… but ruthless when necessary.

Sata: A primordial god…?

Goth: You heard me well. If you do not provoke me, I might show mercy.

Sata: You think you scare me?

Goth: Then we agree.

Sata: What…?!

Gone? No. He had just appeared before me, his hand gripping my face. Blinding pain. He was about to crush my skull. How could he hold me despite my spatial expansion?

Goth: I am in a merciful mood today. But be vigilant.

He then dragged me by the face through dimensions. Too fast. He transcended space and time, always pulling me… My face, my entire being, humiliated.

He suddenly released me, then struck me violently in the stomach.

I regained my senses: this place had changed. Had we been transported elsewhere?

No. We had returned to my era.

Sata: Where are we?

Goth: I brought you back to your time. You are not from the future. I have been watching you for a while. Stay quiet if you want to survive.

Sata: Who are you to spy on me?!

Goth: I am a god. I know. I see. I am not as vulnerable as those minor gods you annihilated.

Minor gods… so there must be others, superior… He spied on me without my noticing. He immobilized me despite my powers…

He is dangerous.

Sata: Shut up… HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

I launched a frontal attack. But… my body did not move.

What was happening?

Goth: You have devoured many conceptual beings. What if I locked you in a metaconceptual sphere? You could do nothing. That will be your punishment.

He materialized a tiny purple sphere and pressed it against my forehead.

Divine lightning coursed through me.

Sata: HYYAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!

The pain was unbearable.

Goth: I will return in thirty billion years. Maybe you will have changed… For now, farewell.

And he vanished.

I was trapped. My spatial expansion was useless. The seal even reached my source. Imprisoned… irreversibly.

How to escape? How?! HOW?!

Then, the expansion space seemed to adapt. Slowly. Too slowly… I focused all my concentration on the seal. I meditated on these divine discharges, feeling their rhythm. I absorbed them into my being until they became docile.

They were no longer hostile. They flowed within me as if I were their origin.

The pain ceased.

My source was free too. I made the purple flashes in the sphere disappear.

Only an empty prison remained.

Then, using spatial expansion, I tamed the sphere itself… and in the blink of an eye, I escaped.

From then on, everything had changed.

No creature of existence could reach me anymore. I had inherited Goth's powers.

I felt invincible.

I now sought other opponents… beings capable of challenging me.

For millions of years, I rose among the absolute deities. Nothing was unknown to me. Nothing could destroy me.

I took the form of Medusa, a humanoid and serpentine shape, devouring god after god, sealing others-turned to statues, eternally frozen.

I manipulated them, provoking wars and cataclysms.

Now, I sought only one thing: supreme pain. That of others. Why? What does it matter…?

This world had rejected me. I wanted to be forgiven. I begged the gods. They sent me their angels, like a plague.

So I became that plague. Unrestrained. I had a pure existence of Viraya-no longer a mere reflection-I am a Virayene entity.

[End of Sata's story - Return to battle]

Sata: Perfect. I now know what I must do…

She declared, facing Apollo.

Apollo: Wh… What?

Sata: You see… My consciousness does not reside in what you call "existence." It infinitely surpasses it. It is the ultimate. It contains my true self-a self to which no one has access. My consciousness is my origin. My consciousness is absolute. My consciousness… is.

Suddenly, silence fell. Not a word. Not a breath. Sata seemed to fade.

But the next instant, a surge of aura burst from her body, now totally freed from all constraint. She began a transformation. Her eyes opened-blood red-and a cry rang out, tearing the air.

Sata: You, the god… You will be the first of a long line to fall. A lineage of assaults against the Primordial Gods!

The power emanating from her was so phenomenal that even Apollo was shaken.

Apollo: What irony… If you had been a flower, you would have been magnificent. But no, you are a storm. And your strength… it is colossal. You would have made a precious ally, Sata.

Her hair whipped by the wind, born from the uncontrollable flow of this divine energy.

Sata: HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!

Her body cracked, shattered, then transformed. A hideous and sacred molt. She became a serpent, growing, again and again, until covering the skies.

Apollo: Dissociated beings can thus be blessed with such power… My God… How generous you are, to offer so much even to the rejected.

The gigantic serpent was sin incarnate. The ancestral reptile of the Garden of Eden. Satan himself.

Apollo: I remember now… Satan. What a privilege to cross paths with one of Lucifer's impostors.

Satan: Silence. And prepare to disappear.

His voice, deep and cavernous, seemed to resonate from the depths of ancient darkness.

Apollo: So, this is your true form… And you will finally reveal the powers linked to the sin you embody.

Satan: This form… is the only true gift Lucifer has granted me. Detached from all other suffering. In this state, I am invincible. I collect the sins of anyone and feed on them. I am sin. And all that flows from it. In this form, I am all-powerful.

Apollo: I see…

At first, I thought I was facing a simple "Spatial Expansion," a flashy name I thought was just a stratagem of speed or distance; but as soon as the fight began, I understood the name lied by modesty. With every assault, it was the very scene of the confrontation that disintegrated: my blades struck the present moment, and it was already sealed elsewhere-in an imperceptible outside, as if history crumpled, was thrown out of reach, then rewrote itself without any rupture remaining.

I saw her detach from the thread of time, slip into a margin of reality I had never suspected. She did not move: she extracted herself, unfolded into parallel layers, then returned as quickly as a poorly stored memory. My senses, my spells, my causalities collided with a moving void; I sought a body, found only stubborn absence-a breath of expanding universe swallowing every attempt to circumscribe it.

Then I understood: her technique was not escape but unanchoring. From a simple intuition of the universe, she had fashioned a getaway outside the very moment, a protrusion toward other realities from which she returned intact, as if nothing-really nothing-had ever happened. Faced with this cascade of inaccessibilities, I could only acknowledge the obvious: one cannot fight what escapes the definition of "here."

Then, she has now become sin itself…

Then Satan opened a huge maw, as wide as a planet. Apollo summoned his spear, ready to fight.

Satan versus Apollo. One was a titanic monster, the other a tiny point. Apollo, tiny to the point of seeming nonexistent…but of divine density.

Satan: Resistance is useless. You cannot hold out indefinitely!

The assaults followed in cosmic tumult. Yet a strange phenomenon disturbed Apollo's mind.

Apollo (thought): Why… Why does my spear have no effect?

Satan: Nothing… Nothing can defeat me. It surpasses the imaginable!

Apollo: We shall see about that!

He concentrated his energy, dashed like lightning. Satan tried to snatch him with his gaping jaws, but Apollo, agile as a shooting star, dodged.

He landed on the colossal serpent's back and plunged his spear into its spine.

Apollo: Source Destruction!

Satan's monstrous body cracked with fiery fissures, radiating light and fire.

Satan: AAAAARRRRRGGGHHH!!!

But Apollo did not stop. He ran, his spear still embedded, tearing serpent flesh. Satan turned and bit the god's back.

Apollo leapt, then plunged his spear into the beast's eye. Satan howled, struggling violently.

Apollo: Your mistake is believing your size elevates you. But in this fight… my smallness is my greatest strength!