Chapter 759: 759

Like it had not been there at all.

The crowd gasped. Children screamed. Soldiers scrambled. But no one could comprehend the scale or the physics of what they had just witnessed.

Somewhere above, Osita’s eyes narrowed. A deafening explosion tore through the sky, shaking the very air. The following shockwave struck the ground like a hammer of pure force, shredding flesh from bone and flattening streets in its path.

The Beast King’s body, unlike Osita’s, could not withstand the assault. It struck the deep hollow left by its own fall, flattening against the earth with a sound that made the world itself tremble. Limbs bent at impossible angles, wings splayed uselessly, feathers and scales sheared apart.

And yet, from that mangled form, the cackling did not cease.

The sound spread, dissonant and mocking, as the Beast King pushed itself upright. Flesh tore, bones realigned, and injuries healed as if nothing had happened. Its body reformed, regenerating with a horrifying, unnatural precision.

At that moment, Osita appeared, anchoring the creature with his domain. With a single motion, he pulled the Beast King back into Aethelgard.

At the same time, flames rose from where the beast king body fell buring away any traces of it left.

The moment it crossed the boundary, everything changed.

The Beast King found itself confined in a room of Aethelgard, its spatial talents gone, its portals disabled. It could not manipulate the environment. Its body, powerful and monstrous, was trapped under the absolute authority of Osita’s Bastion.

From the floor, dark purple flames began to rise, licking upward like sentient tongues, heat coiling in the air. They aimed to reduce the Beast King to ash, to incinerate every trace of its existence.

But it reacted.

With a savage motion, the Beast King tore its own stomach open, revealing the figure of Amina, swallowed whole within its body. The display was grotesque, horrifying, and deliberate, an attempt to provoke, to manipulate.

Instantly, the environment shifted. The room vanished.

The Beast King now stood directly before Osita, before the seething, unyielding form of the Bastion’s master.

"I told you," the overlapped voices said, voice low and lethal, "you have a role. You must play it."

The Beast King snarled, eyes glowing, wings spread. Without hesitation, it lunged.

The two collided midair.

The force of the encounter shattered the space around them. Reality bent, buildings in distant lands shook, and the world of Nana itself seemed to tremble under the weight of their battle.

Each strike tore fragments of the environment apart. Each movement carried the potential to reshape continents.

As Osita and the Beast King tore through the veil separating Aethelgard from reality, their battle no longer remained confined to any single plane.

Every strike, every collision, every sweep of wing or limb reshaped landscapes. Mountains shattered, forests ignited, rivers boiled, and oceans heaved. Entire regions disappeared in the wake of their fight, leaving behind smoldering wastelands and craters that could be seen from space.

No one was spared.

Not a single godling, regardless of race, station, or continent, was immune. The speed and scale of the strikes left no time for reaction. No army could marshal in defense. No protective wards could hold. Every life on the planet of Nana, from the smallest creature to the greatest warrior, found itself utterly at the mercy of two sixth-tier beings, their intentions unknowable, their presence invisible.

People could not see who or what was striking. All they felt was destruction raining down around them, indiscriminate and unyielding. The sky cracked, the earth shivered, and the world itself seemed to scream.

And behind it all, in the shadows of the cosmos, far more was unfolding.

It began when the Dark Gods seized power. Shadows of creation themselves. The Origin Gods sensed the intrusion immediately. For sometime now, they had laid low, watching from the spaces between worlds, their attention fleeting, almost detached, as if the unfolding events were a mere curiosity.

But when the Dark Gods influence crept toward Osita’s kingdom, the amusement faded. Their eyes turned toward the mortal realm. They observed everything, every thought, every heartbeat, every flicker of ambition and fear. Nothing escaped their gaze. Until the equilibrium shifted.

It began with Osita. The man who had once walked the line between human and demon faltered. Madness seized him, subtle at first, like a shadow curling around the edges of his mind. But soon, it consumed him entirely. His domain, a reality-warping extension of his will, began to draw all life within the world of Nana into itself. What had happened to Mei and her companion, an isolated, tragic echo now threatened to repeat on a global scale.

Osita’s fractured mind perceived every living thing on Nana as a threat. Every city, every forest, every sentient being was an enemy. And as his perception expanded, so too did the reach of his domain, stretching tendrils of destruction into every corner of the planet.

At that moment, the Origin Gods stirred. The law holding them was lifted. Their world, their creation, was in jeopardy. Action, once unnecessary, became imperative. Yet Roth struck before Osita could fully enact his fatal will, staving off immediate annihilation.

Still, much went unnoticed. Nana’s surface surged to lethal temperatures, oceans boiled, and skies ignited with unearthly storms. Crepuscular, whose patience was thin, readied to snuff Osita from existence entirely. But Osita, by some sliver of fortune reclaimed his mind, which marked his survival. Still the danger was still there.

The escalation resumed with brutal inevitability. Osita’s first fall in his own capital city left untold numbers dead, buildings reduced to rubble, and the very streets soaked in the ash of despair. The magnitude of his act approached the limits set by cosmic law for sixth-tier beings.

It was then that the presence of the Judges began to manifest. Silent, impartial, inexorable, they emerged as an undercurrent of inevitability. Each city that fell, each life extinguished, lent them form and strength. The more Osita and beast king action reflected on reality, the closer they came, their influence stretching across the world like the slow tightening of a celestial noose.

But the Origin Gods sensed yet another force, one their mother had once feared to name. Its emergence was neither sudden, it unfolded with the inevitability, no less formidable than the Judges, no less absolute as it began to assert itself.

Long ago, when they had first been introduced to the laws that bound higher beings like themselves, the Origin Gods had asked a simple, yet dangerous question: what would happen if one chose not to obey these laws? What if a being defied the equilibrium and acted against the balance itself?

At the time, the answer was vague, almost evasive. The Judges were the enforcers of order, the upholders of balance but what protected those who refused to submit to their authority? Who intervened when a being turned away from law and harmony, choosing chaos or ambition over cosmic stability?

Today, the answer became chillingly clear. The Origin Gods learned the name of that counterforce: Dominion. The name appeared in their mind like it has always been then waiting to be uncovered. But a name alone offered no comfort; they had no understanding of what kind of entity it was or entities that served as the opposite of balance. This was a cosmic order their mother had long feared they might ever encounter, one she had hoped to shield them from.

Osita, fractured by madness and due to his demonic heritage, had fallen into the domain of Dominion. By aligning whether willingly or unwittingly with this antithesis of balance, he drew the attention of its champions. The Hegemons, powerful and relentless enforcers of Dominion, emerged in his defense, just as the Judges would have risen for order. Where law and balance might have punished him, Dominion intervened to protect him.

As this was unfolding, the Origin Gods themselves sensed a storm approaching. A response radiated from their mother, Nana, fear permeating even her eternal essence. She had been briefed on this before: the tremors of cosmic-scale conflict, the clash of forces so immense that worlds could unravel in its wake.

The magnitude of the danger became undeniable. If the battles between the Judges and the Hegemons escalated unchecked, what remained of their creation, the world of Nana, the kingdoms and cities, the very fabric of life would be obliterated. Nana’s fear was for everything she had wrought, for the fragile balance that even gods could not easily restore once broken.

And so, even as Osita "fought" for his life, even as Dominion and balance began their inexorable dance of destruction and protection, the Origin Gods prepared themselves for war. They were no longer distant observers.

It was at this moment that Crepuscular acted, and his decision stunned his mother and siblings. Without warning, he shed the trappings of his human guise and revealed his true, godly form, a blazing avian entity, a phoenix whose flames rivaled the light of the sun. His wings spanned wider than continents, his body immense, nearly the size of one of Nana’s moons.