The Outer Gods exchanged silent glances.
Something was wrong.
They could feel it. Neo’s Divinities weren’t normal.
The Outer Gods made their decision almost at once.
Attack first. Do not let him move.
Without any spoken signal, the space around Neo twisted violently.
A storm of eldritch armies poured out from rifts torn into the void.
The Outer Gods summoned the armies from their worlds to attack Neo along with their armies stationed inside Solar System.
Horrors with too many limbs, beasts stitched from dead stars, constructs of frozen time raced toward Neo and his small force of shadows.
Neo didn’t flinch.
With a thought, the tide of shadows behind him surged forward. His shadow soldiers roared silently and crashed into the Outer Gods’ armies.
Individually, the shadow soldiers were stronger, sharper, faster.
Where one clashed with an enemy, it would tear through it in seconds.
But they were too few. Their numbers couldn’t match the endless waves that the Outer Gods could summon.
Within minutes, Neo’s soldiers began to falter under the sheer weight of enemies.
Neo closed his eyes briefly. His aura expanded.
He used the healing abilties he gained from Pillar of Zone 2 in Tartarus, and combined it with Harmony (Awakened).
Waves of soothing energy wove through the battlefield, latching onto every fallen shadow. Wherever a soldier fell, they rose again, healed fully, their strength restored.
His healing ability, fused with his awakened Harmony Divinity, gave his army something terrifying—endlessness vitality.
His shadow army was vitually Immortal.
To the Outer Gods, it looked like the shadow soldiers couldn’t be killed. Again and again they fell, only to rise and charge once more.
Velgrath’s arms weaved faster, stitching reinforcements from the void. Myzrul’s wings flared, sending down stars to crush the shadows. Vaedrex’s abyss consumed parts of the battlefield, erasing everything it touched. Lurial’s petals spun, casting wide fields of time disruptions.
But the tide didn’t slow.
Frustrated, Velgrath extended one hand, summoning a new force.
The Angels descended.
Blessed with the fragments of the Outer Gods’ own Divinities, these beings shone with cruel light.
They weren’t mindless soldiers like the Void Entities.
Each Angel could tap into their master’s Divinities, and wield shards of the cosmic authority.
The battlefield shifted immediately.
Where shadow soldiers could tear apart horrors, they struggled against the Angels. Blades of unknown energies and beams of collapsing space tore through the shadows’ ranks.
For a moment, it looked like the balance would tip.
Then the space split apart with a crack of dark lightning.
The two figures standing behind Neo moved.
The Death Sword Firmament came first.
It wasn’t a being of flesh, but a mass of dark, crackling lightning shaped like an ever-shifting sword.
It moved with horrific speed, striking down the nearest Angel in a flash.
The Angel barely had time to raise its weapon before being sliced clean in two, its body exploding into particles.
Beside it, a woman followed.
White hair flowed down her back, eyes burning red like dying suns. She radiated overwhelming strength, her very presence warping the battlefield around her.
Tyrant Firmament.
Unlike Death Sword Firmament, she had a true, physical body.
Her strength was nearly at the peak of Stage-3, and her movements were both brutal and beautiful.
In her hands, the Death Sword Firmament reshaped itself, becoming a massive blade of dark lightning.
Tyrant Firmament didn’t speak.
She simply moved.
In a blur, she clashed with three Angels at once.
Their blades met hers, and the shockwave shattered a nearby moon fragment.
Without hesitation, she spun, cleaving through one Angel’s defenses, sending its pieces scattering into the space.
Another came from above, trying to impale her, but the Death Sword Firmament crackled in her hands, lengthening mid-swing to bisect the Angel in one clean arc.
Neo watched calmly.
His eyes were fixed on the Outer Gods, watching their every move.
Another figure emerged from his Cosmos.
A massive worm, longer than entire countries, slithered out.
Its body glistened with translucent layers, showing countless shifting gears and flowing rivers of time inside it.
The Outer Gods frowned.
The worm was no Divinity, yet it was not a normal being. Its existence was impossible to describe.
Beelzebub didn’t waste a moment. It stretched its endless body around Earth, and with a screech, froze the planet’s time.
The blue sphere stopped spinning.
The clouds stilled. The seas stopped churning.
In a single breath, Beelzebub devoured the flowing time of Earth and moved it into Neo’s Cosmos.
Safely tucked away, Earth would no longer be destroyed by the aftermath of the coming battle.
The worm’s eyes turned toward the warzone.
Beelzebub slithered forward, joining Tyrant Firmament.
Together, they carved a path through the Angels.
Tyrant Firmament swung the Death Sword with frightening efficiency, cutting down two more Angels with each movement.
Beelzebub struck with its massive tail, crushing enemies and freezing them mid-air, then devouring their time completely, leaving only hollow shells behind.
In the distance, Mercury cracked and split apart from the shockwaves of their battle.
Venus, already battered from Neo’s first attack, shattered into pieces, debris scattering into deep space.
Not that it mattered.
The planets had long since been corrupted by the Outer Gods’ influence. They were nothing more than dead rocks now.
But the destruction was a reminder—this was no small fight.
The entire Solar System trembled.
The Outer Gods remained still, grim expressions twisting their vast forms.
Even though they were losing Angels they had painstakingly nutured, they didn’t move.
Not because they were afraid, but because they were studying. Watching.
Testing.
They had wanted to see Neo’s capabilities.
Battles weren’t just done with raw powers. One needed to understand the abilities of their enemies and outsmart them in secure a victory.
The Outer Gods had learned this lesseon countless times over their long lives.
And that was why they were watching Neo, studying his abilities.
His Divinities were not passive powers.
They had personalities, bodies, wills of their own.
They fought independently.
Their rarity? The Outer Gods doubted they were common-rarity or rare-rarity Divinities.
And the worst part?
Neo himself hadn’t fought yet.
He stood in the middle of it all, calm, untouched, silent.
The Outer Gods realized that every moment Neo remained idle meant he could still have cards hidden up his sleeve.