novelraw Chapter 249: Defeating The Venerable Once And For All!
Chapter 249: Defeating The Venerable Once And For All!
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The Ancient Celestial Calendar Venerable glanced around with his many eyes, realizing that the dimensional body, his own vessel, had been corrupted and trapped within yet another strange dominion, a realm that Louis had created by inverting a skill he already possessed.
It was a skill that allowed him total movement through space and various realms and worlds, but that, once inverted, allowed him instead to trap himself and his foes within a different space, a dimension born from darkness, an abyss connected to purgatory and the void itself.
Which, for some reason, allowed Mirai to grow stronger, as her powers resonated with this space even better than ever before, although she mostly remained in silence as she watched Louis fight the Venerable in awe.
Just like the Venerable could summon his eyes and his liquid gold ocean everywhere, Louis could now do something similar, summoning giant black dragons made of abyssal void, and also chains made of curses capable of slowing down and weakening his foe.
Suddenly, it became a battle of attrition.
The Venerable grew increasingly furious as his attempts were slowed down and his many extensions of himself were being rapidly suppressed.
Chains and dragons came endlessly from everywhere.
"WHAT A POINTLESS STRUGGLE."
"IT IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR A LOWLY BEING LIKE YOU TO STAND AGAINST ME."
"IF ANYTHING, THIS WILL ONLY MAKE YOUR DEFEAT SLOWER, BUT CERTAIN."
"YOU CANNOT KEEP UP SUCH A POWERFUL DIMENSIONAL DOMINION ON YOUR OWN, CAN YOU?"
"..."
Louis smiled as he swiftly kept stopping the Venerable, analyzing his entire "body" and looking for where he could strike to deal true damage.
If the Venerable was like a Grievance, then it would likely have many hearts he had to destroy.
And why would it be a Grievance? Because its structure and life force were all made of corrupted Fantasium.
All the Venerables, the Five Seats...
They were likely all Grievances themselves.
"Louis!"
"Hm?"
"I can feel them... at least three of them!" Mirai said, her eyes gleaming. "Three hearts! They're over there, there, and there!"
"...!"
Louis's eyes widened as he heard Mirai's words and then she guided his chains and dragons where she had pointed out.
And effectively, there were certain distortions in space where something was being hidden under hundreds of dimensional barriers!
"Those must be its hearts...!"
"Yeah! The problem is, they're all so well hidden! If we only go for one after another, they will regenerate faster than we can destroy them..."
"This entity likely has more than three hearts though... likely eight, or maybe nine."
"T-That many?!"
"I presume it is between a Level 8 to 9 Grievance, beings greater than gods themselves," Louis muttered. "In the classification, Level 8s are called Archive Singers, and Level 9 are Shepherds of Grief. It was a Level 9 Grievance that got my mother back then."
"...!!!" Mirai gasped. "C-Can we even win against such a being?!"
"Mirai... do you think we've remained the same ourselves?" Louis smiled. "Let's fight, until the very end."
"...!" Mirai quickly realized what Louis meant. "Okay!"
Both clashed against the Venerable.
A catastrophic battle ensued.
Seas of gold shaped into thousands of titans of gold, hands, eyes, swords, spears, and axes.
Hammers descended with starlight energy, beams of starlight bombarded them from every angle.
Louis and Mirai maneuvered across such a catastrophic battle.
Mirai slowly began to channel her powers, summoning Hell and the Abyss on her own.
Then, an incredible synergy was born.
FLAAAASH!
The entire dominion that Louis had summoned merged with her as well, and her two gates to the realms that were being born within her.
From them, demons and chaos spirits were being endlessly born, fusing into titanic entities that clashed and then... slowly...
Began to equal the Venerable's endlessly propagating existence.
"IMPOSSIBLE..."
The Venerable's voice trembled with disbelief, the powers of his own Spiral beginning to weaken as the dual spirals of Louis and Mirai, which had also completely awakened their dual nature of madness and hope and become spirals of fate, started to oppress his damaged one.
Even as a Tier 0 Spiralwalker and also a Level 10 Grievance, after Oberon fought against him and damaged him so severely that the damage even spread into the Fantasium Dimension, he was still incredibly strong.
"I MIGHT HAVE BEEN DAMAGED BY YOUR GUARDIAN..."
"BUT I AM STILL THE SEAT OF OBSERVATION AND JUDGEMENT, THE ANCIENT CELESTIAL CALENDAR VENERABLE!!!"
RUMBLE!
The entire dimension shook, Louis and Mirai vomited blood as giant cracks spread through the entire dimension, but the two of them held it together, pushing the cracks to heal rapidly again.
"FOR HOW LONG DO YOU PLAN TO PROLONG THE INEVITABLE?"
"If you're so sure of your victory, then why are you so nervous?!"
Mirai roared, unleashing her monstrous power and fifty percent of her original strength, combining them and becoming a giant chaos demon, pushing her palms forward and shattering countless golden giants and annihilating many eyes.
At the same time, her army kept on growing after she transformed, her Spiral resonating with Louis, as both the Spiral of the Ashen Wyrm and the Spiral of Entropy seemed to be constantly rotating with one another.
"...?!"
The Venerable had never seen such a phenomenon before, his eyes wide open in disbelief. He quickly began pushing his power even further, multiplying his existence as much as he could everywhere at once, spreading himself as pure data.
This was the power of his Spiral; the Spiral Louis was already beginning to realize.
The Venerable he was fighting was likely an unseen boss of the game that never appeared in the main story.
A Tier 0 Spiralwalker, so called Beyonders.
And that Spiral was...
"He is the Tier 0 Deity... the Beyonder of the Spiral of Justice Enforcer, the opposite of Malevolent Plotter!"
However, it was also perfectly possible that this deity didn't just govern over one Spiral but many... Louis could also feel faint traits of the Spiral of the Mind Bender and the Spiral of Alternate Paths.
Justice Enforcer specialized in ruling, defending, and manipulating fate, while also enforcing justice upon others, forcing their fates and rewriting them ultimately.
Mind Bender was about creating illusions, manipulating minds, brainwashing, expanding one's mind and dividing one's consciousness, expanding it endlessly.
And the Alternate Paths Spiral was related to traveling between dimensions, conquering dimensions, creating dimensions, and more.
All three of these Spirals... seemed to create the Seat of Observation and Judgement, the Ancient Celestial Calendar Venerable!
An "Ultimate Being" within the Sinners Academy cosmology, a mere legend...
And perhaps the other Seats were the same.
"SO YOU HAVE FIGURED OUT THE ORIGIN OF MY POWER? IT DOESN'T MATTER."
His voice resonated everywhere, as he manifested pure light across the dimension.
Fate itself worked against Louis, forcing him to grow weaker and commit mistakes.
His grasp onto the dimension he had created weakened rapidly, beginning to fragment and shatter apart.
At the same time, the dimensional body of the Venerable began to oppress his own and that of Mirai.
"Louis...!"
"It's not over yet...!"
TRUUUM!
The dimension was about to shatter, as a giant shockwave struck them both, pushing them into the bottom of the dimension and pressuring them with almighty power.
"IT SEEMS THAT THIS IS AS FAR AS YOU COULD GO."
Louis's transformation into the Fallen One finally stopped as the pressure of the Venerable was simply too much. His draconic energy started to hit rock bottom, and he was now compensating it using his own Fantasium from the 50% of his power he could channel.
His incarnations began to appear, rotating around his body and fusing with him, molding themselves into metallic, ancient-looking armor to reinforce his strength. Their abilities all channeled at once, as Louis attempted to fight back.
His psychic powers manifested, fusing with all his cultivation methods!
Even at 50%, if he combined everything...
RUMBLE!
"RAAAAHHHH!"
Louis started overlapping his false dragon form with his true dragon form, becoming larger and stronger.
His Fantasium aura surged, expanding his domain!
"...?!"
The Venerable was left speechless as Louis channeled even more of the power he didn't even know he had!
This entire time the Venerable had been fighting believing Louis only was a dragon with such powers, not that he was also a Spiralwalker.
And...
Of so many Spirals!
Then...
"Inverse Pandora: Shattered Hope..."
Seeing how Shattered Hope wasn't affecting the Venerable enough, he inversed it, completely changing its power into something else entirely.
A curse-like power that overflowed with the brightest light, despite being as malevolent as darkness.
"Ignited Despair!"
FLUOSH!
The bright light of despair shone across everywhere, reaching his foe.
While Shattered Hope made Louis's presence slowly shatter enemies' hope, self-esteem, determination, and sense of purpose, causing stat decay, nightmares, status conditions, and temporary ability loss, the inversed version was different.
In that moment, the monstrously strong, calm and expressionless Venerable...
"NNNGGH?!"
"A-AAHHH!"
"AAAAHHHHHH!"
"AAAAAAEEEGGGHHHH!"
"KUAAAAAHHHHH!"
Completely lost his mind!
His stats and power skyrocketed however, instead of weakening him.
But that was fine, the amount of despair he exuded made it so Louis started to absorb it with his own Spiral skills.
Ashen Frost power surged endlessly, growing so strong Louis manifested an entire Ashen Frost Realm around him and Mirai.
"W-What?!" Mirai was shocked. "A-Another insane skill! Louis you're full of surprises!"
"And I am not even done yet..." Louis smiled. "Inverse Pandora: Ashen Frost!"
Inverse Pandora didn't work on his skills anymore; it expanded to everything he had.
Thus, Ashen Frost was inversed!
FLUOSH!
FLAAASH!
And what was the opposite of Ashen Frost?
"Radiant Ember!"
White-gold flames surged everywhere, the frost exploded, then compressed around the dimensional body of the Venerable as he screamed in agony, disbelief, and despair.
"AAAAAAGGGHHHHHH!"
The more he despaired, the more the flames grew in power, burning his existence and even his very Spiral.
At the same time, what was the Venerable seeing that made him go so mad?
Ignited Despair ability made it so he constantly saw in repeat all those he had caused despair.
And as a Venerable that had pruned countless timelines and killed quintillions...
It was such a massive amount of information and suffering that even this ancient being was completely broken.
He started hitting himself, using his own power to damage his own soul and spiral.
"GAAAAHHHHHHH!"
"I WON'T...!"
"I-I...! WON'T...!
"AAAAAHHH!"
"NOOOOO!!!"
He screamed in fury, attacking Louis and Mirai as both pushed back constantly.
It felt like a battle that lasted years, even though it had only been minutes.
"EAAAAAHHH! EEEAAAAGGHHH!"
Until...
The Venerable started tearing himself apart, dropping giant black inky pieces of gold out of his body, slowly regaining his composure.
"A TRICKY ABILITY... BUT... BESIDES MY SCREAMS, YOU CANNOT... PROVOKE ANYTHING... ELSE... FROM ME!"
"BEGONE ALREADY!"
"YOU ARE NOTHING BUT A REMNANT OF HIM! YOU WERE ALREADY DEFEATED! STOP STRUGGLING... STOP ATTEMPTING TO RETURN OVER AND OVER AGAIN!"
"THE HEART OF TIME YOU STOLE FROM MASTER... RETURN IT!!!"
Louis and Mirai had no idea what he was speaking about, but they were already on their last.
Louis had completely run out of all energies and so did Mirai.
Their bodies were slowly burned into ashes.
Indeed.
It was never going to end in a victory.
But...
They did their best to make him suffer as much as possible.
Leaving him very weakened and desperate.
"PERISH!!! ANNIHILATION RAY!"
While holding hands and then hugging one another, Mirai and Louis disappeared into ashes, smiling while tears fell from their eyes.
BOOOMMM!!!
And...
That was it.
Silence.
At long last...
Silence.
"Haaa... Haaa... Haaaaah... Uugh...! M-My Spirals…! All three of them...! The Beyonder Spiral Authority...! It's shattered beyond measure, that elf and then this damn remnant...!"
The Venerable was gasping for air, exhausted.
No, more than exhausted, it almost felt like he had barely won!
This made him incredibly perplexed and above all, irritated.
"No... I must remain calm... I am his eyes... I will... continue my purpose no matter what... I have won... now, I can relax... slowly recover and... consume what has been left behind."
He closed his eyes and smiled confidently; it was finally over.
He looked into the far white void through his dimensional body, his master's presence seemed to have arrived from where he was, higher within reality.
"Master... I have taken considerable damage. But I have managed to defeat the last remnant completely. His Heart of Time, however... I believe it was destroyed."
: : Has the child not escaped to Limbo? : :
"Limbo? I made sure he couldn't go through my Spiral of Paths. His soul had nowhere to go and it has been completely annihilated."
: : Will its soul not regenerate? : :
"With the Heart of Time gone... it will not regenerate either."
: : I lack the Heart of Time. : :
"Yes, master... I apologize. I shall sacrifice myself to forge a new Heart of Time for you once this is done."
"After all, it's dangerous if you don't have power over Time anymore..."
He continued speaking with someone that only manifested as a faint white silhouette, staring at everything with golden eyes and long white eyelashes.
But then.
That eye widened in disbelief.
: : Fool, he is not dead! : :
"...?!"
"Inverse Pandora: Devourer of Time."
TRUUUM!
"Creator of Time."
In that moment, the Venerable's very time was distorted beyond recognition.
And...
CRAAASH!
"Kuuuaaaggghh?!"
The Ancient Celestial Calendar Venerable vomited blood and his own soul fragments.
As Louis's claw pierced his back, tearing through his hearts in a single motion.
Each of his hearts...
One after another!
BOOOM! BOOOM! BOOOM! BOOOM! BOOOM!
"A-Aahhh! W-Wh...?!"
"What's happening?!"
"Why?!"
"How am I dying?!?"
"Eh? Eeeeeh?!"
"MASTER? MASTER!!!"
His connection to his master was instantly lost.
And he fell into an endless abyss.
BOOOMMM!!!
In that moment, when he finally fell somewhere else, he found himself reduced to his original form, a young, handsome Chinese man.
No longer was he a great being of gold and numbers, completely reduced to his original appearance.
"W-Wha...?!"
His eyes widened as he suddenly recalled what Louis had "skipped".
A giant white scaled claw piercing his chest.
Louis was not dead.
He had somehow inversed the power to devour time, creating time.
But how did that even lead to him... defeating a Venerable?
No... it wasn't just that.
In that time he created and manipulated, many things happened.
Things he could only perceive as all his hearts exploding at the same time.
Even though... it took him some time to find them all.
But within that manipulated "created time", it was possible for him to rearrange the events so they all happened at the same time.
Shattering his nine Fantasium hearts in an instant!
"A-Ah... No this is impossible... his power level... it was way below mine! How... How is this... Nnngghh?! Guuaaaaggh!"
The Ancient Celestial Calendar Venerable vomited blood everywhere, gasping for air as he realized he had returned to his original vessel, his true body he had sealed into a pocket dimension before his ascension.
And then... two figures loomed before him.
A giant white dragon of radiant white, with eight angelic, feathered wings with golden eyes, four limbs, three muscular arms and two hind legs, five tails, each one with a golden weapon as the tip, and, despite his chimeric appearance, still only one head, although he now had thirteen eyes, six lined side by side, with the thirteenth being a larger one between the twelve.
He had enormous jaws with razor-sharp golden fangs, his jaws massive enough to stretch below his neck, making him look aberrant and monstrous. In his chest there was a massive yellow-red-azure eye staring at him, surrounded by jewels.
The dragon's pristine white body was decorated with molten gold everywhere, and jewels of pristine color.
Behind him gleamed several circles composed of several compressed divinities and divine abilities merged together.
The Venerable instantly recognized this power, Ascendancy Laws, powers that the Venerables from Yggdrasil had to forge to ascend in power.
And Louis... already had one?!
Before Louis's true dragon form, which had ascended to a level beyond anything, now that he was a Rank 8, and could even use 100% of his original power.
All of his cultivation methods, spirals, and his Qi cultivation levels overlapped and merged with his dragon evolution.
Everything became one, ultimately crystallizing with his dragon heart, as it awakened an ancient relic that the Venerable had thought was destroyed.
"T-The Heart of Time!!! You have it?! How are you...! How were you aware of its existence?! It is a Multidimensional Treasure! Your mere perception of the world could never..."
CRASH!
"AAAAAGGGHHHH!"
The Venerable screamed as a giant golden claw impaled his back, his guts exploding everywhere as his eyes trembled while he gazed at Louis in disbelief.
"Indeed, I have it. While you were fighting "us", we had left divided fragments evolving in a separate dimension. That entire fight you went through? All to distract you. Our other halves died though... but they died doing what they knew was right."
"Their sacrifice was not in vain, as you are now dead," behind Louis, another gigantic figure stepped out.
A giantess with eight arms, eight wings, ten tails, three heads, and a size as gigantic as Louis, easily surpassing five hundred meters of length.
A crown of flames blazed above her head, and her demonic horns grew upwards and majestically.
Her skin was red, but parts of it were also dark gray and blue, showing golden flame-like tattoos spread across her naked body covered in flames and chaos.
Each of her arms held a giant demonic and chaotic weapon, and her wings were each different and chimeric, the largest being a pair of decaying butterfly wings.
Above all, their evolutions triggered something beyond.
As all of their powers emerged, when they evolved, their spirals also advanced.
"I-Impossible..." the Venerable's face showed disbelief. "T-Tier 4...?! TIER FOUR?! H-HOW...! T-THIS MAKES NO SENSE!!! YOU'RE REMNANTS! ERRORS! YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO DIE!!!"
"I am very intrigued about this whole thing you've been yapping about this entire time," said Louis with intrigued eyes. "As you can see we've evolved a lot, but we still have no idea about this entire thing..."
"We destroyed your nine hearts and ate them," Mirai said with a ruthless voice. "Your spirals are ours as well, as you can see."
"...!!!"
The Venerable felt immense fear as he saw Mirai rising three hands, revealing three spirals, the ones he had forged with all his effort!
"W-WHY?! HOW?!"
"It wasn't hard to kill you after you were left so weakened."
"You lowered your guard. I admit, fighting you head-on at full power might have not been so easy... we could've lost."
"But it all went according to our plan."
"..."
The Ancient Celestial Calendar Venerable realized, at that very moment...
That he had been completely played by beings that weren't even a tenth of his age.
And that "variable" all began with HIM.
That fairy, that crystallized consciousness that Louis's previous life had left within his reincarnated soul.
Oberon.
Or rather...
The true identity of Louis's past life.
Loki, the Primordial God of Yggdrasil, the God of Tricksters and Chaos.
A being that the Dragon King had vanquished with the help of Loki's siblings, Thor and Baldr, who sacrificed themselves to kill him.
Little did the Dragon King know that Oberon had planned to reincarnate!
But... why?
Why did his consciousness only trigger this timeline?
Then he realized.
"The Heart of Time... the original didn't have it! It... awakened him?! So that was the variable?!"
"Original?" Louis asked.
"Speak, reveal what you know! What's going on?" Mirai asked angrily.
"Heh... Heheheh..."
But the Venerable decided to have the last laugh.
"You think I will become your prisoner? That I will be interrogated by you?!"
"..."
"..."
"I will end my life right here and leave a message to my master! Once it reaches him upon my death, he will know everything and he will send them all to-"
"Soul Sealing."
"W-Wha- Aaaaaggghhh!"
The Venerable screamed as his entire soul was sealed inside of a floating golden box Louis summoned with his powers.
"Looks like it would be dangerous to leave him as he is," said Mirai.
"Yeah, let's devour his corpse," Louis nodded.
Both divided the true body of the Venerable and devoured it using their spirals, leaving no trace of him.
As long as his soul wasn't liberated, the message would not reach his master.
However, that also meant Louis couldn't free his soul to eat it or read its memories, it would have to remain forever sealed...
Well, for now.
"We're done here..."
"We are."
"I am glad we got there barely in time to defeat him..."
"The Heart of Time helped the most..."
The first skill Louis had awakened upon evolving into his new dragon form was called "Heart of Time", and it seemed to amplify all of his time magic and time-related abilities by a thousandfold.
With this immense power, Louis amplified time creation, using the created time to manipulate a bubble of time, setting up events through time and then rearranging them.
In this stopped time, and while completely weakened, the Ancient Celestial Calendar Venerable was unable to retaliate in time, and all nine of his Fantasium hearts were destroyed and eaten.
At the same time, he fell into their fantasy realm in his true form, where they tore apart his spirals by force, and yet he was tough enough to remain alive.
And the rest... well, it was history.
Even then...
"It was a narrow victory..." Louis sighed. "If we hadn't sacrificed half of our own selves..."
"Indeed... technically, we did die..." Mirai sighed. "I feel a little bad... those half souls we left behind... were completely annihilated."
"Let's live for them," nodded Louis.
"Yeah..." Mirai lamented, holding his hand.
Both exited the fantasy realm forming within Louis's heart, which had now expanded into a fantasy sea across his very existence.
They arrived in the Immortal Mountains once more, which was now expanding endlessly, merging with Louis's inner fantasy sea.
The spiritual realm dungeon the Ancient Celestial Calendar Venerable had created was still there, like his own dimensional body corpse.
Louis quickly refined it into a soul treasure and a familiar at the same time, gaining a new and powerful weapon, a living dimensional Venerable corpse.
Once done, both breathed a sigh of relief.
"Let's return with everyone... I'm glad we didn't call for their help, that monster would have turned them into gold..." Mirai sighed in relief.
"Yeah," Louis nodded. "Let's return."
Both quickly flew through the skies, flying above the repair zone where the spaceships were being put together and then into the Heavenly Golden Palace.
To the inhabitants of the Immortal Mountains, it was as if immortals from legends themselves had suddenly descended from a higher plane.
FLASH!
They were two bright stars, one red, the other gold, and as they slowly revealed their true forms, everyone was shocked and awed, filled with disbelief.
"W-What?!"
"What is that?!"
"D-Dragon?!"
"A dragon!!!"
"A giant demon with multiple arms!"
"W-Who are they?!"
"Venerables?!"
"What's happening!"
As everyone panicked, there was one man that didn't seem afraid at all, his red eyes gleaming with fascination as he looked at the giant, intimidating and almost alien-like white dragon.
"My Lord! You have returned! Your form...! W-What?! I am...! I am in awe! You...! You have turned into a dragon?! My Lord! I am so happy for you!" Louis fell to his knees, crying tears of joy as he worshiped Louis as a god. "You are a god! A god among gods! My true and only king!"
Seeing him acting so fanatically and revealing the identity of the white dragon, everyone gasped and quickly knelt.
"Lord Louis?!"
"Emperor Louis!"
"He has returned as a god!"
"Worship him!"
"Kneel and worship him right now!!!"
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