Tartarus’s figure turned into a blur that stretched towards Neo.
His lance of Death aimed at his skull.
Neo’s vision blurred—no, it expanded.
In the span of an instant, he saw three futures.
Two ended with his body torn apart and his soul disintegrated.
But there was one—just one—where he survived.
Neo seized it.
He used All-Shadow to enter that future.
Timelines twisted, and Time Elementals went out of control.
Neo felt a great amount of resistance ripping his body apart.
He throttled his All-Shadow to full power and continued to activate it.
The short Timeline created by his Blessing merged into the main Timeline and overwrote it.
The scene around Neo changed abruptly.
A large scar ran over his abdomen. It had failed to leave a deep wound.
“What was that?” Tartarus frowned and looked at his hands. “What did you do?”
Neo didn’t respond.
He was having a hard time standing straight, and a pounding headache continued to ram into his head.
The energy within his blood vessels was exhausted. It made him feel as if acid was flowing in his veins.
His muscles screamed, his lungs burned, and he had lost half of his energy reserves.
World Energy. Energy for his Demigod Core. Infinite Mana from the Moon.
And still, it wasn’t enough.
He burned his Will to create a homogeneous amount of World Energy again. Infinite Mana flooded into his reserves.
But it was a slow process.
Generating World Energy took time, and while the Moon’s Mana was theoretically infinite, he could only receive a fixed amount of it per second.
Tartarus pressed the assault.
Shadows erupted from the ground, taking the form of razors that slashed at Neo from all angles.
He saw the outcomes again—every path led to his dismemberment.
Except one.
Neo used All-Shadow.
The short timeline merged into the main timeline, and the world around Neo changed instantly.
His breath came ragged, his Intent vision was barely a few meters in a diameters.
He had lost his hand.
The blessings churned, trying to regenerate his arm, but there was no energy to use.
“I see. So that is what you are doing,” Tartarus said.
Neo’s danger sense screamed.
He barely caught sight of Tartarus’ palm opening before a sphere of condensed Death and Darkness detonated at point-blank range.
There was no time to react.
No futures to choose.
The explosion consumed him.
Pain unlike anything he had felt before ripped through his body.
His skin cracked, his bones shattered, his soul trembled on the brink of collapse.
But he remained standing. He had to. He refused to fall there.
A deafening crack split through the battlefield. The dome of Darkness imprisoning Zera and Elizabeth shattered.
Tartarus’ attention flickered toward it.
Neo saw the futures again. The sight—
“No. Don’t come out!”
Tartarus moved before Neo could stop him.
He reached out. His Death fused into Zera’s Void, and the two elements twisted into something different.
Chaos.
Tartarus coalesced the Chaos into a spear of swirling destruction.
He hurled it straight at Elizabeth. All of it happened in an instant.
Elizabeth’s eyes widened. She raised her hand to reverse time.
But the Chaos infected her element. Her power failed.
The spear pierced her chest. Chaos exploded within her body, and it consumed her.
Her body began to disintegrate, erased from existence itself.
“Elizabeth!”
Neo’s scream tore through the battlefield.
Elizabeth coughed blood.
Instead of trying to reverse time again, she looked at him with pained, yet serene eyes.
She smiled and opened her mouth to speak.
But before words could come out, she faded away.
Neo froze for a moment before his battle instincts kicked in.
He used Shadow to mimic the River of Time and rewind time.
However, he lacked the energy to do that.
His nerves burned, and he felt like thousands of sizzling needles were being stabbed into the pores of his skin.
He began to devour himself to sustain the mimicked River of Time, and when he was successful, the mimicked Time Elementals refused to help him.
He forced his thoughts into their mind and bent their will, but each moment he wasted meant he had to use more energy to go back in time—energy he didn’t have.
Zera moved.
Before Tartarus could press the advantage, Zera released her World within the Darkness Sanctuary and detonated it.
A colossal explosion of Void erupted from her, ripping through the Sanctuary of Darkness.
Reality shattered, and the Nightmare World flickered back into view, cracked and damaged.
Tartarus clicked his tongue, unfazed by the destruction. His darkness surged forward.
Zera didn’t hesitate.
She burned her Core.
Void flared violently, and a brilliant abyss consumed her form.
She was no longer holding back or conserving energy. A portion of the Nightmare World, already damaged from previous battles, was obliterated in an instant.
An opening.
She turned to Neo. Her hand transformed into a giant deformed mass of flesh.
It hit Neo like a truck and threw him out of the Nightmare World through the opening.
Neo tumbled through the endless abyss. The tiny black hole had cracked, and it revealed Tyr’s Nightmare World within it.
‘Don’t worry about Elizabeth and me. We are witches. We will reincarnate.’
Zera’s voice echoed in his mind.
‘So focus on protecting yourself.’
The cracks in the Nightmare World began to repair on their own.
The last thing Neo saw was Tartarus’ darkness swell and consume half of Zera’s body in a single bite.
Then—nothing.
Neo was gone.
Tartarus stood alone. His gaze was fixed on the cracks in the Nightmare World through which Neo had escaped.
For the first time, he scowled.
“He escaped.”
He raised his hand, and manifested his River of Time.
Just then, the remaining half of Zera’s corpse began to release a sizzling noise.
It transformed into a deformed mass of flesh that defied logic. Reality warped around it, and just looking at it would kill a low ranked being.
The deformed mass of flesh grew in size endlessly.
The void emanating from the corpse distorted the River of Time, and rendered him unable to go back.
Tartarus’ lips twisted.
The longer he took, the more difficult it would be to go back.
“Fine, you won this time.”
He let go of his River of Time, and focused on stopping the endless deformed mass of flesh from destroying Tyr’s Nightmare World, and this Tartarus’ body – one of the Pillars – along with it.