CLANK! CLANK!
Kid Zach heard a noise coming from under the debris, seemingly resembling the sound of a metal rustling against the rocks. He glanced at Erza, who was still crying, then moved his gaze to Zoe, who was awake, but the most oblivious about everything.
He then walked to the debris and tried to push away the big rocks with his small hands. After struggling for a while, Zach managed to push away some debris, and there he saw a sword covered with a sheath.
Kid Zach was captivated by a single glance, and he tried to touch it. But it flew away and landed in Deus’ hands.
Deus grabbed the hilt with one hand and the sheath with the other. He glared into Icarus’ eyes and pulled the sword out from the sheath.
A bright light emerged from Deus’ body that blinded everyone except the kid Zach and the young Zach; seemingly, they possessed the ability to fathom the power of the sword.
Deus’ body, which was heavily injured, returned to its normal state; no, his entire body had changed into something that could only be described as a monster.
When Deus’ pulled out the sword from the sheath, his clothes were shredded into pieces, and he was currently naked with his bottom covered by the ragged piece of clothes.
There were several linings and marks on his body, covering him from head to toe. His hair had turned white, and he had grown an extra pair of hands with sharp claws.
The sheath he was holding suddenly changed its shape and turned into a pure white mask with no holes to see or breathe.
Deus wore the mask, but it was covering his entire face, leaving both Zach confused as to how he would see.
A few seconds later, a third eye sported on Dues’ forehead that was also visible from the mask. And the most intimidating change of all, there was a red Halo on top of Deus that was the size of a hand.
’I will use my remaining life force until I die…’
Deus looked up at Icarus and said, “Say your prayers.”
[Heh! Do you think you can intimidate me with his new form of yours? You are still nothing but a puny pest!]
”We will see who is who!” Deus raised his sword in the air and slashed it in the air.
[Hah! Have you finally lost your mind and succumbed to insanity?! It’s a shame that I wouldn’t be able to enjoy seeing your despair when I kill your—]
SLASH!
Suddenly, Icarus’ body was cleaved into half vertically.
”Huh?” Icarus was dumbfounded, and he watched his body get cleaved into two parts from one of the clones’ eyes.
However, Icarus used one of the nearby clones and absorbed him, regenerating his body back to how it was before.
[Do you truly think you can kill me?! A God?! The second-order Cosmic God?!]
”If you are the second-order, then you surely know the power of the first-order, right?” Lyda commented, who was still holding the sun in her fist.
Icarus’ face turned pale after hearing that.
[Don’t tell me…] he stuttered.
The second order was the second-strongest order of the power infinity. The second-order gods were called Cosmic Gods as they ruled the cosmos such as Sky, earth, moon, sun, and the heavens.
However, there was one more order above them; the first order. And they were called Celestial Gods, who ruled over time, space, and void.
And Lyda was the daughter of time. But she didn’t possess the power of the first-order Celestial Gods, only a mere fraction of the power to control time.
”This world shall know the pain, but before them… you shall know the despair.” Lyda looked at her closed fist and said, “The power of the sun in the palm of my hand.”
Icarus was genuinely scared of Lyda, but he soon realized that Lyda was bluffing after noticing Lyda was struggling to hold the sun in her fist and the cracks on her body were increasing rapidly.
[How long will you hold the sun?] Icarus snickered and said, [Sooner or later, you will have to let go of the sun, or you will perish into nothing. Well, either way, you are all going to die today!]
Icarus raised both his hands in the air and declared, [My mark words, history will be the witness and the time shall testify my great contribution to this world I will make after ending you rebels today. They shall praise me and worship me as their god and I shall grow even more strong, for the everlasting eternity and the power of infinity!]
While Icarus was chanting nonsense, Deus used that chance to get rid of Icarus’ clones, so he wouldn’t use them later to regenerate himself.
ZAP!
With the speed of light, Deus traveled through the sky and slashed 99969 clones of Icarus and only 30 of them remained.
Deus didn’t waste his time talking to Icarus or pay attention to his talk. Lyda was almost out of time, and he wanted to kill Icarus before that.
The remaining 30 clones landed on the ground in front of Erza, who was alone with kid Zach and Zoe. But the moment they landed, they disappeared because Deus killed them before they could even land properly.
The result of his speed and damage was delayed because he was too fast to be visible to one’s eyes. And even the young Zach, who was watching everything with a painful expression on his face, was also unable to comprehend Deus’ power.
At first, Zach wanted to wake up from this memory that was worse than a nightmare for him, even when he was seeing it from a different perspective, but after knowing that it was Deus who placed the mark on him, he no longer wanted to leave.
Sure, it was agonizing for him to watch, but he knew that there must be a reason why Deus wanted Zach to see this. Maybe he simply wanted to record his last moments for Zach, so he could see them with his eyes when he grew up, or perhaps, he had something else in his mind.
There was no way of knowing that, but at least, he could see it from his own eyes.
[Okay. Perhaps I was wrong. Maybe this new look truly made you a monster. But that changes nothing. You can’t do anything to me, literally!]
Once again, Deus ignored everything Icarus was saying and went to attack him, but it was too late.
Deus was blinded by the bright light coming from the side, and when he gazed at it, he saw the light of the sun was emitting from the cracks in Lyda’s body.
”It can’t be…”
Lyda had run out of time. The cracks on her body widened as the intensity of the light grew even more.
”Deus…” Lyda looked at Deus with an apologetic look on her face and said, “I am sorry.”
Soon after that, Lyda’s body exploded into pieces and the sun had once again dominated the sky.
[Ahahahahaha!] Icarus laughed like never before. [Stupid bitch! She had precious powers, yet she wasted them in saving some puny worthless lives!]
Deus and Xie Lua were devastated after seeing the death of their friend, but they didn’t have time to grieve or mourn. They must not let Lyda’s sacrifice go in vain and end Icarus.
[I will end this before you pull another petty trick!]
Icarus created 100,000,000 of his clones, and they immediately created plasma balls.
[I don’t care if I blow up this entire planet! I will do anything and everything to kill you all! You dared you to anger the Sun God!]
The entire sky was covered with Icarus clones, who had also conjured plasma balls in their hands. The entire world was watching that, and it looked as though the sun itself had descended to earth.
”Xie Lua…” Deus called out to Xie Lua without taking his eyes off Icarus.
”What…?”
”Take Erza and the kids, and fly away as far away as possible.”
”It’s too late for that! What are you planning to do?!”
”Just what a husband should do for his wife, what a father should do for his children.”
Deus joined his four palms together, with his thumb, index finger, and middle finger open, and the other two fingers closed.
”Now go!” The red Halo from Deus’ head turned into small ten rings and covered Xie Lua.
Then he closed his third eye and opened all the three eyes together as he uttered, “Domain… expansion…”
The earth, sky, and everything in between were engulfed by a black and red black hole, that devoured the very space itself.
A few seconds after that, the black hole disappeared with Icarus and his clones, Deus, and Xie Lua.
Deus managed to save Xie Lua using his ten rings, but the kid Zach assumed she had died too, and that’s why he was surprised when he learned Xie Lua’s identity.
Erza sobbed with tears in her eyes while hugging Zach and Zoe. But Zoe, who knew another, wiped Erza’s tears with her small hands and said, “No cry… mama…”
Kid Zach, who realized that he had just lost three of the most important people in his life, couldn’t help but burst into tears.
He rushed where the debris was at the top and saw Deus’ sword and mask— that was originally a sheath— lying beside each other. And next to that, there was a small ring, which Erza wore for ten years and later used to summon Xie Lua.
The sun had set, and the sky had turned red with red clouds and many multicolored auroras in the sky.
That day, the third impact ended.
===
Author’s Note- Finally. I was so nervous while writing this arc, and anxious, wondering whether I will be able to pull this or not. Hopefully, I executed it quite well.
Thanks for reading!
