CHAPTER 278: CHAPTER 278 CONTAIN

And behind them...

Something darker stirred.

Something vast. Patient. Ancient.

Something that had waited for the exact moment when the Ancient One’s guard would drop.

The multiverse’s new god—Riley—was only seconds into his reign... and already under siege.

"I just got here," he whispered bitterly. "Give me a minute to breathe, damn it."

But the attack had begun.

The realm trembled as the vanguard breached the boundary, sending shockwaves through spacetime.

Planets rippled. Stars flickered. The sky bled light.

A storm was coming.

And Riley, for all his newfound power, would have to decide—would he fight to protect this throne? Or abandon it like the one before him?

Either way, there was no going back now.

"Let’s test this," Riley muttered, his voice low and steady as he stepped forward.

The space around him shimmered, folded, and warped like water pulled down a drain.

In an instant, his form vanished from the heart of his dominion and reappeared at the very frontlines of the conflict.

He stood now on a fractured platform of ancient stone, floating high above the borders of his realm, suspended over an endless battlefield where reality itself seemed to be crumbling.

Below and around him stretched an ocean of monstrosities—an army of chaos that defied description.

Some were colossal titans, blotting out the distant stars with wings made of living fire.

Others were serpents forged from shadows, slithering between dimensions.

And still others took on vaguely human shapes—warped, broken, twisted caricatures of men—eyes glowing with mindless hunger.

Riley’s gaze swept across them.

Their numbers were infinite. Their rage unending.

But he wasn’t afraid.

Not yet.

He raised his hand.

There was no incantation, no dramatic speech.

Just a thought, sharp and precise, channeled through the boundless power now anchored in his soul.

And then—

BOOM.

The explosion was instant and all-consuming.

The air tore apart with a deafening roar as divine energy surged outward in every direction.

Time fractured at the epicenter.

The laws of physics buckled, twisted, and screamed.

Light itself was shredded into ribbons as the wave of destruction expanded in a perfect sphere of annihilation.

The monsters never stood a chance.

They were reduced to ash, then to atoms, then to nothing at all.

Whole segments of space were erased, leaving behind only silence and the raw black of the void.

Trillions of creatures—each one a horror born of some ancient malice—were wiped out in a single blow.

Riley lowered his hand, exhaling softly.

For a moment, the battlefield was calm.

Still.

Empty.

And then—

It began again.

The darkness churned.

The void trembled.

One by one, the monsters returned.

First in scattered patches. Then in waves. Then in surging floods.

Within seconds, they had completely repopulated the battlefield.

Their shapes were familiar, but different—stronger, more refined.

Where once their bodies were crude and monstrous, now they moved with unsettling coordination, adapting their forms as if remembering the way they died.

And most terrifying of all—the power that radiated from them had grown.

Riley’s eyes narrowed.

"In a single breath..." he whispered. "They evolved."

He clenched his jaw, a faint flicker of unease passing over his face.

Then, realization set in. He understood now.

This was not a normal enemy. This was not a war that could be won through force.

The Ancient One hadn’t left because he was too weak.

He had left because he had tried everything—and nothing worked.

"It’s really no use," Riley muttered bitterly, watching as the tide of monsters surged again, clawing at the borders of his realm.

He remembered now—fragments of the Ancient One’s memories that had passed into him during the succession.

The attempts. The strategies. The desperate experiments.

Pure destruction? Useless. The beasts absorbed it.

Divine light? They bent it into armor.

Time manipulation? They adapted across timelines.

Dimensional erasure? They returned from places that should not exist.

There was no tactic the Ancient One hadn’t tried, no weapon he hadn’t forged, no law of the universe he hadn’t broken in search of a solution.

And in the end, he had learned the cruel truth:

These monsters thrived on opposition.

They fed not on flesh or magic, but on conflict itself. On defiance. On the will to resist.

Every attempt to destroy them gave them more fuel—more meaning.

The moment Riley struck them, he had already lost the first battle.

He could feel it now, in the very air—the subtle shift in their attention.

The way they knew he was watching. How they seemed... excited.

"Goddamn parasites..." Riley whispered.

The pressure was mounting. Inherited power crackled around him like a storm held back by willpower alone.

He could flatten entire universes in a blink.

He could split reality in half. But none of that mattered.

Because they would come back.

Stronger. Smarter. Evolving every time.

Riley stood motionless at the edge of his realm, arms crossed, eyes cold.

Around him, pieces of broken reality drifted like glass shards suspended in slow motion.

The monsters gathered again, howling silently in the dark, waiting for him to strike once more—to feed them.

But he didn’t move.

Not yet.

"So this is what broke him," he muttered, thinking of the Ancient One.

A being who had ruled existence itself... and who had eventually lost the will to fight a war with no end.

A war that punished victory. A war that turned strength into weakness.

Now it was Riley’s turn.

And unlike his predecessor, he had no intention of giving up just yet.

"...There has to be a way," he said, more to himself than anyone else.

"If they feed on force, maybe the key isn’t power... but denial. Maybe they need me to fight."

He glanced up, a dangerous light in his eyes.

Riley stood at the very edge of his dominion, where his power still held sway, and peered into the churning void beyond.

The line between realms was thin here—barely a shimmer in the air—but his instincts screamed like alarm bells in his soul.

Do not cross.

Every fiber of his being warned him that stepping past this invisible boundary would be a death sentence.

No dramatic battle, no glorious last stand—just instant, absolute annihilation.

He wouldn’t leave behind even bones. Not even a speck of dust to mark where he fell.

They were waiting for him.

The creatures beyond hungered for that one misstep.

He took a slow breath and stepped back. Force won’t work, he reminded himself.

Power just feeds them. There has to be another way.

Perhaps a tool the Ancient One had used. Or something he hadn’t dared to use.

Riley closed his eyes and reached into the depths of his divine authority, searching for something buried, something locked away.

And then, softly, he spoke.

"Sunny... come out."

The name left his lips like a whisper, but the effect was immediate.

The void shuddered.

A wave of silence passed over the horde surrounding his realm.

The monsters—all of them—froze.

Not just paused, but completely stopped, like time itself had been severed.

Even the smallest flickers of motion—the twitching of wings, the flicker of flame, the glint of eyes—ceased as if the entire battlefield were suddenly frozen in place.

The silence deepened.

Then, from the furthest, darkest corner of the gathered swarm, something began to move.

At first, it was hard to make out.

And then it emerged—shambling forward with slow, deliberate steps.

It was... a monkey.

A sickly, thin creature with matted gray fur clinging to its emaciated frame.

Its limbs were long and wiry, bent at odd angles, and its eyes glowed faintly with a dull, yellowish light.

There was an eerie intelligence behind those eyes—ancient, knowing, and terrifyingly calm.

It looked fragile, almost pitiful, like a creature that should have died long ago.

But even as it stepped forward, the countless horrors around it remained still, as if afraid to move.

Riley’s gaze didn’t waver.

"So," he said quietly, "you’re still alive, Sunny."

The monkey blinked once, slowly.

And then it smiled—a thin, crooked smile that didn’t quite reach its eyes.

"You ask dumb questions, Riley Mason. Or should I call you Ancient One now, after taking the mantle of that pathetic coward?" Sunny hissed, his voice as sharp as broken glass and twice as jagged.

His words cut through the void, mocking, contemptuous, and laced with something deeper—something venomous.

A resentment that had existed long before Riley had ever been born.

Riley didn’t flinch.

He stood unmoved at the edge of his realm, eyes fixed on the emaciated monkey that stared back at him with far too much knowing in those dull, yellow eyes.

The aura that rolled off Sunny wasn’t explosive or aggressive like the beasts surrounding him—it was worse.

It was still. Measured. Like a predator so ancient it no longer needed to roar.

The things Sunny knew—shouldn’t be possible.

He spoke with certainty of Riley’s realm, his actions, the old mantle passed down, the crumbling weight of the Ancient One’s legacy.

It wasn’t just knowledge. It was intimate. Deep. Like an all seeing that never sleeps.