Chapter 142: The Astral Slayer vs The Ascended Overlord 2

Ethan clawed his way out of the crater, his body battered but still standing. His armor had been obliterated, reduced to fragments that scattered across the battlefield like ashes in the wind. Now, his body pulsed with raw psychic energy, forming a spectral cloak around him. An extension of his will, a fragile but resilient shield against the storm that was Drakor.

Gritting his teeth, he thrust out his hand, releasing a dark psychic wave that spiraled toward his adversary, warping the air around it like a black hole devouring light.

Drakor vanished in an instant, reappearing effortlessly to the side. His golden gaze glowed with amusement, his aura growing denser with each passing moment. Ethan could barely keep up—his energy was draining too fast. The battle had long passed the limits of mortal endurance.

Then, Drakor struck.

A devastating psychic blast tore through the battlefield. Ethan barely had time to react before the energy ripped through his defenses, hurling him into the ground with a force that shattered the earth itself. A shockwave of raw destruction expanded outward, leaving nothing but devastation in its wake.

And then, the Astral Slayer pulsed.

A deep, resonating hum vibrated through his very bones, as though the weapon had come alive. Ethan's mind was filled with a sudden, overwhelming presence. A voice, ethereal and sorrowful, whispering in the depths of his consciousness.

"Embrace them," the voice intoned, distant yet infinitely close.

"The despair of this world. The suffering of its people. Their agony has not been in vain. Let them become your strength."

A flood of emotions crashed into him.

It wasn't just his pain, it was all of it. The sorrow of Kynara's people, their anguish, their defiance against hopelessness. He felt the weight of every sacrifice, every final breath, every desperate cry for salvation.

The grief of shattered families.

The rage of warriors who had fought and died for freedom.

The unbreakable will of a people who refused to surrender to corruption and tyranny.

It overwhelmed him.

His hands trembled. His breath caught in his throat. His mind felt like it was splitting apart beneath the weight of so much suffering.

And yet, it did not break him.

Instead, it became him.

A new energy surged through his veins, vast and boundless. Not just his own, but that of an entire planet. The Astral Slayer shone like a dying star reigniting, its abyssal glow deepening, dark tendrils of energy crackling around it. Ethan's psychic cloak darkened and thickened, no longer just a shield but something more. An extension of Kynara's will.

He staggered to his feet, his body no longer burdened by exhaustion. His gaze locked onto Drakor, and for the first time since the battle began... Drakor hesitated.

A single breath.

That was all Ethan gave.

Then he vanished.

A blur of abyssal blue and black, he moved with speed beyond mortal comprehension, beyond even Drakor's. The overlord barely had time to register the shift in space before the first cut was already upon him.

A searing abyssal glow slashed across his form.

For the first time, Drakor felt it. True pain.

The golden energy shielding him, once untouchable, ruptured like fragile glass. His body lurched backward, staggering against the force of the strike. A cry of agony tore from his throat, a sound foreign, unnatural, impossible.

Drakor had never screamed before.

Yet here he was, his voice echoing across the ruined battlefield, across the war-torn lands that had once trembled beneath his might. He clutched his chest where the Astral Slayer had struck, golden ichor seeping between his fingers. He lifted his gaze wide, stunned toward the figure standing before him.

But he was no longer simply Ethan Walker.

He was an executioner. A reaper made manifest.

The abyssal darkness coiling around his form was no longer mere psychic energy, it was something greater. Something primordial. His very presence seemed to warp the air, bending the battlefield into something unreal. His cloak billowed like a storm of shadows, swallowing the light around him. The Astral Slayer pulsed in his grip, not just cutting, but devouring.

He did not speak.

There was no need for words.

Drakor attacked.

Astral Celestial flames erupted from his body, raging like a newborn sun. Fire that had reduced planets to dust, incinerated civilizations of old in mere moments, now surged toward Ethan in a towering inferno.

It swallowed him whole.

For a moment, Drakor allowed himself to breathe.

For a moment, he thought he had won.

Then the flames died.

The inferno curled away, dissipating into the abyss, leaving Ethan standing untouched. His form, shrouded in the ever-consuming darkness, had not even been singed.

Drakor's eyes widened in disbelief.

Ethan walked through the lingering embers, his movements silent, measured like a specter of inevitable doom. His gaze, locked onto Drakor, was not that of a warrior, nor a hero.

It was the gaze of death itself.

Drakor roared, his golden light flaring to its absolute peak. He struck with everything he had, blows that had once shattered mountains, that had torn the heavens apart. Each attack rippled with the full force of his might, the very fabric of reality bending beneath the onslaught.

But none of them landed.

Ethan was faster.

He wove through the devastation like a shadow given purpose, his every movement effortless, his every step a whisper of finality. Drakor lashed out, desperate, frenzied...

And then the Astral Slayer struck again.

A second wound tore through his ascended form.

Then a third.

A fourth.

Every strike ripped away at him, unraveling his stolen power.

His divinity was crumbling.

The battlefield trembled beneath the weight of his undoing. The sky itself seemed to darken, mourning the fall of the self-proclaimed god.

Drakor gasped for breath, his vision blurred, his once-maniacal laughter long since vanished. His hands trembled as he pressed them against his wounds, golden ichor dripping like molten stars onto the war-torn earth. His knees buckled.

And then he looked up, and saw Ethan standing over him.

Still. Silent. Absolute.

The harbinger of death had come for him.

For the first time in his existence, Drakor Krenna knew fear.

Drakor stumbled back, his golden aura flickering, dying. His breaths came in ragged, uneven gasps. His limbs trembled, weak. So unbearably weak.

He shouldn't feel pain.

He shouldn't even know fear as an ascended divine.

And now, he was drowning in both.

Above him, Ethan stood, his abyssal aura shifting like the black tides of oblivion. The Astral Slayer pulsed in his grip, its dark radiance devouring the last remnants of light around them. The air itself seemed to retreat, bending away from him. It was as if the world knew, recognized, that Ethan was no longer simply a man at this exact moment.

He was judgment.

Drakor snarled. His golden radiance flared one last time, burning with desperate fury. He could not fall. He would not fall.

With a final, desperate cry, he lunged.

And Ethan vanished.

A flicker, nothing more than a whisper of motion.

Then, Ethan was upon him.

A feint. A blur of abyssal blue and black. The Astral Slayer flashed toward Drakor's side, forcing the overlord to react..

To overextend.

That was his end.

Before Drakor could recover, Ethan surged forward.

One strike.

Perfect. Absolute. Unstoppable.

The Astral Slayer pierced straight through Drakor's core.

For a single heartbeat, the world held its breath.

Drakor's eyes widened. His mouth opened, but no words came. His golden aura stuttered, flickering like a dying flame.

Then the battlefield erupted.

A shockwave of raw, uncontained power exploded from Drakor's form, tearing through the land, fracturing the sky with an earsplitting howl. The air trembled. Space itself convulsed, shuddering beneath the weight of his collapse.

Drakor staggered, his once-mighty form reduced to little more than a husk. The golden ichor that had once flowed through his body as divine essence now dripped from his wounds in sluggish, pitiful streams. His limbs trembled as though the very weight of existence had become too much to bear. His vision swam, his thoughts unraveling like frayed threads.

And then, he fell.

His knees struck the shattered ground, the impact sending another wave of pain coursing through his fading body. His golden radiance, the celestial light that had once illuminated battlefields and reduced entire civilizations to ash, flickered like the last embers of a dying flame. His breath came in ragged, uneven gasps. His fingers twitched, desperate to grasp at power that was no longer his to wield.

Through blurred vision, he looked up and met the black vortex eyes of his executioner.

Ethan loomed over him, his silhouette framed by the swirling abyss of his own power. The Astral Slayer pulsed in his grasp, its abyssal glow no longer simply light. It was hunger, a consuming void that had feasted on the essence of a god and remained unsatisfied. The psychic cloak that wreathed Ethan's form shifted and coiled, the very air around him warping as if reality itself was uncertain whether he was man or force.

For the first time in his existence, Drakor Krenna did not see himself as the superior being.

He saw death.

The finality of it settled upon his shoulders like an iron weight, suffocating and undeniable. He had seen his fate before, whispered by the visions. But never did it show him falling here. Never by the hands of something that should not have existed.

His lips parted, his voice a fragile whisper against the howling wind.

"I saw it..." His words trembled, thick with blood and something close to wonder. "I saw the path beyond divinity in my visions..."

His body shuddered, the last of his stolen power abandoning him. His once-magnificent wings of golden flame had crumbled into dust. His armor, once impervious, was shattered beyond repair. And yet, the pain in his body was nothing compared to the agony of what he had lost.

His mind clawed at the vision he had pursued for so long. The ascension beyond gods. The breaking of all limits. The transcendence of all mortal and immortal beings alike. It had been within his grasp, an inevitability, an absolute truth.

But then, him.

Ethan Walker.

A being who should not have been. An irregularity that defied prophecy, shattered fate, rewrote reality with the stroke of a blade.

Drakor's bloodied lips twisted in something that was neither a sneer nor a smile. His failing eyes held Ethan's as he rasped his last breath.

"But you..." His voice was weaker now, barely audible over the whispering void that encircled them. "You were not meant to exist in this world..."

A tremor passed through him, his body convulsing as the last remnants of his strength bled away. His fingers, once curled into fists that should've went on to crush galactic empires, twitched uselessly. His once-commanding presence was no more than a whisper in the wind.

"You... ruined it. My life's work...."

And with those final words, Drakor collapsed.

The moment his body struck the ruined earth, the last vestiges of his golden energy dispersed into the air, rising in silent tendrils like lost souls set free from an eternal prison. His once-magnificent form, a being who had held the stars in his hands, withered and crumbled, reduced to nothing but a lifeless husk.

Silence fell over the battlefield.

The battlefield stood frozen, their weapons forgotten, their war meaningless in the presence of what had just unfolded. They had come to witness a battle.

Instead, they had borne witness to the fall of a celestial.

And at the center of it all, Ethan stood alone, the abyssal glow of the Astral Slayer still pulsing in his grasp. The harbinger of death. The executioner of a celestial. The force that should not have been.

And yet, he was.

The battlefield lay in ruin.

Where once the sky burned with celestial fire and the ground trembled beneath the fury of gods and warriors alike, now there was only silence. A suffocating, eerie stillness that hung over the broken land like the weight of history itself. The echoes of battle still reverberated in the minds of those who had survived, but the storm had passed. The reckoning had come.

And yet, Ethan was not done.

His body screamed for rest, every muscle frayed, every nerve ablaze. The Astral Slayer pulsed weakly in his grip, its hunger sated but its toll unbearable. The weight of what he had done pressed upon him like an unseen force. Drakor was dead. The war was ending. But remnants of the Black Sun Syndicate still remained, scattered across the battlefield like dying embers of a once-consuming fire.

He could not allow them to rekindle.

Summoning the last remnants of his strength, Ethan took a slow breath, his battered frame straightening. The Astral Slayer trembled in his grasp, the abyssal glow flickering, uncertain. He closed his eyes, feeling the scars of the battle, the energy coursing through him. Both his own and the stolen echoes of Drakor's fallen might.

One last time.

The air itself seemed to hold its breath as Ethan raised the blade.

Then, he released it.

A shockwave of abyssal energy burst from his form, rippling outward like the final cry of a dying star. It surged across the battlefield, a tidal wave of raw power that swallowed everything in its wake. The scattered remnants of Drakor's forces, those still clinging to a war that was already lost, were caught in its path. They crumbled beneath its weight, their weapons disintegrating, their very will to fight stripped away.

The ground trembled as the northern stronghold, Drakor's last sanctuary and the heart of his syndicate, was obliterated in an instant. Walls that had withstood the coalition's siege shattered like brittle glass. Towers that had loomed over the battlefield like silent sentinels collapsed into dust.

And then, at last, the Resonance Amplification Device....the cursed machine that had held countless souls in its grasp, warping their minds, twisting their fates was no more. Its structure ruptured, its power source overloaded, its hold over the battlefield completely severed.

A final, shuddering explosion sent its remnants scattering into the wind.

Then, finally...silence.

True silence.

No battle cries. No roars of defiance. No desperate last stands.

Only the wind, carrying away the ashes of war.

Ethan's grip on the Astral Slayer loosened. His fingers, once locked around the hilt with unshakable determination, went slack. The blade, now dim, hung at his side, as if even it could feel the toll of what had transpired.

The strength that had carried him through the battle. The fire that had burned within him, that had made him more than a warrior, more than a man....was gone.

The moment it had served its purpose, it had left him.

His body wavered, his vision swaying. The battlefield around him blurred, the ruined land, the broken towers, the fallen enemies melting into indistinct shapes. His breaths came in ragged gasps, his chest heaving as exhaustion crashed down on him like a tidal wave.

He had done it.

The war in Kynara was over.

Drakor was gone.

The Black Sun Syndicate, shattered beyond repair.

Ethan took a step forward, but his body refused him.

The world tilted-no, it was he who fell. His knees hit the ground first, then his hands, the dirt beneath him cool against his burning skin. His fingers clawed at the earth as though trying to anchor himself, to hold on just a moment longer. But there was nothing left to hold on to.

Voices. Distant, but growing louder.

His allies.

They were coming for him. Rushing toward him. Calling his name.

But their voices were muffled now, drowned beneath the steady drum of his own slowing heartbeat.

Ethan forced his head up, just enough to see the sky above.

The endless sky. Once clouded by the storm of battle, once streaked with fire and lightning and blood. Now, it was open again, vast and infinite. The smoke of war still lingered, but it was fading. The echoes of battle still hung in the air, but soon, they too would be gone.

He had given everything, he thought with a smile.

And now, at last he could truly rest with a peace of mind since coming to this universe.

His vision darkened.

The last thing he saw before unconsciousness took him was that sky. Boundless, unbroken, and free just like Kynara.