Chapter 382: Mind Games and Death! III

Power had layers, like sediment deposited by the slow passage of time.

Achilles possessed terrifying strength for an Empyrean Star Nexus Transcendent, his foundation built on assimilations that defied understanding!

But he remained, fundamentally, a being of that realm- his stellar heart unmodified by the exotic materials and processes that transformed others into Stellar Genesis Embodiment entities.

He simply filled it with starlight and Space-Time, which terrifying in itself!

King Edmond had undergone that transformation, had fed rare stellar matter to his inner star until it became something beyond.

The difference in their base power should have been insurmountable, the gap between levels that typically determined the outcome of conflicts before they began.

But Achilles had never been constrained by what should be possible.

He was the Ninth Adrastia Emperor King!

Space-time bent around him like armor forged from forces of reality.

Ruptures opened in the fabric of existence itself, creating barriers that displaced incoming force across Space-Time boundaries.

His outstretched palm faced the approaching black moon with the calm certainty of someone who had already seen this moment play out across multiple Continuum Visions!

The first contact sent waves of agony through his enhanced physiology. His palm split open as skin and muscle separated under the crushing influence of the Regulation of Carnage, entropy seeking to unmake him at the cellular level.

Blood, starlight-infused liquid that blazed with its own inner radiance, flowed freely from wounds that should have been fatal to any being below his level of evolution.

But Achilles made no sound. Did not flinch. Did not acknowledge the pain that would have driven lesser beings to madness.

Pain was information.

Pain was a signal that told him he was pushing beyond safe boundaries, venturing into territory where survival was not guaranteed!

And in this moment, that signal carried the weight of absolute necessity.

This pain was worthy.

This suffering served a purpose that transcended personal comfort or safety. Every torn cell, every ruptured blood vessel, every screaming nerve ending was the price of power…power that would protect everything he held sacred.

The black moon continued its relentless approach, but now it was being drawn into his palm rather than simply colliding with it. The Regulation of Carnage fought his assimilation with the fury of a storm, reality itself seeming to resist the absorption of something so fundamentally destructive!

But he devoured it nontheless!

BOOM!

Above the battle, the void erupted with a roar that transcended sound, a vibration that traveled through space and struck every consciousness nearby.

The White Smith Star had found her prey.

She moved through space like a living catastrophe, her augmented form blazing with the concentrated fury of a pulsar pushed beyond its natural limits!

In her hands, quite literally, she held the bisected remains of the Elder Crimson Shroud Vortex….a being that had terrorized entire Worlds and a few Planes of the Star Seas, reduced to thrashing fragments in her grip.

The sight was both magnificent and horrifying. She had torn through the creature’s defensive layers as if they were paper, her enhanced strength allowing her to physically grip and rend matter that should have been beyond the reach of any individual, regardless of their power level.

Around her, stellar white and purple energies raged, the manifestation of a pulsar’s death throes compressed into the space around a single being.

At the center of the Elder Shroud’s massive form, she had located what she sought- the augmented star that served as its heart, its source of power, its essential core!

The crimson sphere pulsed with malevolent beauty, containing within its nuclear energy the accumulated strength of years spent consuming lesser beings.

Without ceremony, without mercy, she tore it free from its organic housing.

“OOOH!”

The dying creature’s agony resonated across spatial barriers, its remaining consciousness experiencing the equivalent of having its heart ripped from its chest while still alive.

But the White Smith Star paid no attention to its suffering.

She opened her mouth…not the human mouth she appeared to possess, but something that expanded beyond the normal constraints of anatomy. The crimson star disappeared into depths that seemed to extend into pocket dimensions, her augmented physiology capable of processing stellar matter as easily as ordinary beings consumed food!

Just as easily!

This was the truth of the Star Seas, laid bare in all its terrible simplicity.

Stars devoured other stars.

Entities grew stronger by consuming the essence of their defeated enemies!

Power flowed from the weak to the strong in endless cycles that had persisted since the first conscious beings learned to manipulate stellar forces.

Achilles watched the accomplishment of one of his primary objectives with grim satisfaction.

The Elder Crimson Shroud Vortex had been the apex predator among its kind, the being whose eventual arrival in Ethemia would have spelled catastrophe for every living thing in his home plane.

Now it was dissolving into component particles, its death throes sending ripples through the local Shroud hierarchy that would follow its death soon enough.

The threat that had haunted his daughter’s visions was being eliminated in real-time, carved away from the timeline like a cancer excised by a skilled blade!

Around the dying Elder, smaller Crimson Shrouds fled in every direction, their confidence shattered by witnessing the destruction of their leader.

Their Empyrean Stars…the nuclear hearts that powered their existence dimmed with terror as they realized they were no longer apex predators but potential prey for something that could kill their most powerful representative with casual ease!

The White Smith Star floated through this field of retreating enemies like a queen surveying her conquered domain.

Her eyes blazed with predatory satisfaction as she drifted toward Achilles, her augmented senses cataloguing the destruction she had wrought with obvious pleasure!

“And now,” she called out, her voice carrying weavings that made nearby space-time ripple with sympathetic vibrations, “all that remains is you, Edmond! Haha!”

Her laughter was a sound that belonged in the hearts of dying stars, beautiful and terrible in equal measure!

She was at the peak of her life right now!