CHAPTER 28: ONE TO RISE ABOVE THE REST

The killing was not chaos for its own sake, but a screening.

As long as the Endless Abyss existed, every creature within it would be forced into slaughter.

They would devour one another, climb over the corpses of their kin, and only the strongest would remain. Such was the law of the Abyss itself.

Its harsh, barren land had no patience for weakness. Food, territory, opportunity,nothing was given freely, everything was seized by force.

That was why Cillian chose to orchestrate this massacre, leaving only a single survivor.

The Abyss did not reward the cunning who hid in the dark and waited, it rewarded the ones who could endure the storm, crush all others and rise above the carnage. That survivor would not only be strong, they would be an unstoppable force.

In the eyes of others, Cillian’s actions would seem extreme, perhaps even mad. To unleash so many powerful demons, only to drive them against one another as though they were insects being bred for venom.

Each of these Original demons, forged by centuries of survival, would have been priceless elsewhere. In another divine world, they could have ruled entire regions, led primitive civilizations, or even become living myths.

But to Cillian, they were nothing more than fuel for the ever growing abyss.

Through the Gates of Time and Space, he gathered them into a barren plane he had carved with his own hand. The land was withered and dry, unnaturally small, and its laws reinforced until they groaned under his will. Unlike the usual layers of the Abyss, there was no poison mist, choking smoke, rivers of ice, or seas of molten fire. It was almost stable, a perfect illusion of balance.

The demons entered warily as their instincts flared. They burrowed, crept low, and scanned their surroundings with a feral caution.

The air here was too calm, too empty. In such silence, even predators felt like prey. But soon that vigilance faltered, not because the environment was safe, but because instinct itself told them there was no escape.

At the center of the plane sat Cillian, cross-legged, his presence like a storm bound in human shape. The air around him trembled as the vortex of the Endless Abyss churned high above, birthing thunder from darkness. His voice rolled across the plane like judgment itself.

"Before you turn on one another, you must understand a simple truth..."

The dark clouds thickened until even demons struggled to breathe.

"I have cleared this plane of all life but you. There is no prey here, no weaker stock to feast upon, the only food you will find is each other."

The wind howled, carrying the weight of his decree.

"Do not dream of waiting out the storm. Do not cling to hope that endurance alone will grant you victory. There is no shelter, and no hidden escape. If you wish to survive, you must fight until all others are gone."

A cold light sharpened his gaze, he knew the demons were not merely brutes. Many were clever, sly enough to endure even in famine, and patient enough to starve out stronger rivals.

But that’s not what he was looking for. He didn’t want those who survived by tricks or schemes, at least not right now.

He was searching for warriors.

A roar tore through the silence. A fire demon, vast as a fortress, swung a lava blade that cleaved into the belly of a serpentine fiend. The snake-bodied horror, crowned with two muscular torsos fused into one form, writhed and shrieked. Each torso bore its own soul. Even as one head fell, hacked away in a spray of black ichor, the other fought on with a savagery that split the ground beneath it.

At last, with its body charred and half-devoured, the serpentine demon lunged, coiling around the fire demon’s burning frame. Scales split, and muscle tore, but with a final thrash, it ripped the fire demon apart and dragged the corpse into its gaping maw.

It howled as it fed, and its ruined flesh began to knit itself together. This was its gift, regeneration, which had carried it from larva to legend. Soon, a new torso would grow.

But it did not rest. Its venomous eyes already turned, filled with hunger and malice, toward another shadow.

And as the first droplets of blood stained the barren winds, as the first trembling notes of fear began to coil in the air, Cillian felt a deep satisfaction.

The Abyss had begun to sing.

A dark figure loomed, a shadow fiend, fresh from its own victory, devouring the shrieking remnants of a howler demon.

The two predators locked eyes, their greed mirrored in one another. Slowly, both stopped feeding. Slowly, both began to prepare.

And as the serpentine demon’s back split open to reveal a flaming head clawing its way out, the shadow fiend’s flesh twisted, reshaping itself with the powers it had consumed.

"How interesting."

Cillian floated above, hand resting against his chin, eyes glimmering with quiet anticipation. His perception swept across the battlefield, and he felt the truth of what was happening below. None of the survivors remained as they had been. Each was breaking through their limits, clawing upward into new forms of power. The strongest among them had already neared the peak of legend. And still, they grew.

A faint smile curved his lips.

"I wonder," he whispered into the storm.

"Who will be the last to stand?"

———————-x———————-

In the principal’s office...

Storm phantoms coiled around Vice Principal Warren like living thunderclouds, fragments of his divine realm spilling into the room. Even a partial manifestation of that storm carried such suffocating pressure that weaker gods would struggle to breathe. Yet Warren himself looked weary. His voice carried the rasp of fatigue as he worked his divine world like a calculating engine.

He was still trying to solve the formula Principal Everheart had uncovered while observing Cillian’s Endless Abyss.

"I found two errors," Warren said at last, his storm-touched eyes narrowing. "Or rather, two fatal flaws. Anyone who tries to apply this so-called low-dimensional formula will see it collapse the instant it touches that world. It isn’t stable, it’ll destroy itself, so this formula is near worthless, did you find anything?"

Elara stood opposite him, her star-lit realm hanging in the air as a brilliant map of constellations. For a moment, her silence was heavy.

Then she sighed, and shook her head as her eyes opened, not as the usual stars, but as black holes.

"I’ve found the same," she admitted quietly. "It’s not just you. My calculations collapse at certain points as well, I thought I’d caught the tail of the Endless Abyss, but each time it slips through my fingers... as though it’s mocking me. Every adjustment and change of variable, still the same error, the same blank wall. It refuses to be seen."

Warren gave a tired smile. "I didn’t expect even you to be deceived by that boy’s world. Perhaps Cillian is more interesting than I thought."

But Elara only shook her head.

"New divine realms are always strange, but the Endless Abyss is worse. It doesn’t follow patterns. Its core is hidden, and only Cillian himself could understand it. If he understands it at all, that is. Many of us, when we first shaped our domains, did so through chance and desperation and sometimes through pure luck. There are gods who built worlds they themselves cannot fully comprehend. Even I..." she paused, her face shadowed. "Even I suspect I never understood the sea of stars I birthed. Not entirely."

Her words trailed into silence.

Warren coughed and waved his hand, scattering a phantom thunderhead. "Luck or not, it still takes effort. I didn’t stumble into my storm realm by accident, hard work is what really matters, not fortune." Then, as if embarrassed, he changed the subject. "Do you plan to keep staring into that Abyss of his? Hunting for a formula that may not exist?"

Elara closed her eyes. "Not now. I must stop. The longer I gaze at the Endless Abyss, the more I feel it staring back. As if it senses me, there’s a gloom in it that seeps into my soul, the same weight I felt before I awakened the full depths of my own power. I fear if I linger too long, it will begin to reject me outright."

Warren froze. For someone of her level, nearly touching the Star Gods realm, to confess fear? That was no small thing.

"...You mean the Abyss itself is pushing you away?"

"Yes." Elara’s voice was low, almost uncertain. "It feels alive. As though my sight offends it."

Warren took a sip of tea conjured from his storm-realm and leaned back. "Then leave it for now. The laws of a world so complex cannot be forced. Oh, that reminds me—do you recall the drop of mythical blood I gave Cillian? I finally remembered where it came from. It was taken from a long-ruined Secret Realm, the corpse of a creature so ancient even its name was almost lost. They called it..."

————————x————————

Deep within the Endless Abyss itself, the killing went on.

A Glen demon collapsed in silence, every drop of blood drained into the maw of a legendary blood fiend. Its body fell lifeless, now nothing more than fodder. Of the hundreds who had entered this trial, fewer than a hundred remained.

Again, the words echoed.

"Continue..."

The whisper was not a voice, but a command carried in the wind of the plane.

Snap.

A serpentine behemoth coiled around another giant, its countless maws devouring the shrieking demon alive until nothing was left but bones cracking between its teeth. Now fewer than twenty remained, and every survivor had clawed to the peak of legendary.

Again the word came.

"Continue..."

And the Abyss obeyed.

A roar split the air as two titans clashed. One was a nightmare of flesh, a black toad-bodied demon studded with fanged maws across its hide, its waist bristling with tentacles that could strangle steel. Opposite it rose the four-headed monstrosity of the serpentine demon, each head vomiting fire, venom, lightning, and frost, its lower body coiled like a serpent that had devoured half the Abyss.

The ground shattered beneath them as they fought, each blow was a cataclysm and each successful strike ended in gore.

And still, they fought.

They fought for months upon months, and at last , the serpent won. Mangled, with less than a quarter of its body left, it tore the twelve hearts from its foe one by one. Hearts stolen from a dozen legendary demons, even with its mangled state it ate slowly, as if it was the greatest delicacy.

"...A victor?"

Cillian descended, expression calm, and his eyes unreadable. Before him, the mutilated serpent lowered itself like a servant before its king, waiting for judgment. From within his robes, Cillian drew forth the prize: a single drop of mythical blood, glowing like liquid dawn.

Even reduced, it was vast, like a mountain of crimson light.

The serpent shivered, and humbled itself, obedient. Cillian studied it for a moment, and for once, there was something like admiration in his gaze.

"This is yours," he said.

The blood fell.

And as the serpent drank, its strength surged, as its natural evolution exploded, like it was skipping steps, Its body swelled, and its broken flesh knitting as if reborn.

But then decay began to set in.

The serpent’s body convulsed, its triumph already unraveling, as its flesh began rotting from the inside out.