Blackout Ascension: Return of Primordial Heir-Chapter 32: Apocalypse

The flames still roared from the restored moment of time.

Dust hit the ground.

Breaths resumed.

Hearts beat once.

But only for three seconds.

Then, Algreth exhaled. It was a ponderous, ragged breath that groaned across the arena. "No... Halt!"

Time exhaustively shattered for the second time. But before, it was a simple, clean halt. Now, it was cataclysmic ferocity.

CRACK-ZZZT!!

The stadium froze, petrified again. The crowd halted clutching their hearts in anticipation and fear. The roaring fire stopped, but the actual shape of the flames had suddenly changed in the meantime the world got unfrozen. It was a skewering wall of heat changing rapidly as if reality simply couldn’t decide how the fire should look anymore.

Solid stone cracked stentoriously with heavy impact in the frozen world, after unfreezing and then again rapidly freezing by Algreth’s desperate command.

The air trembled, vibrating with a low, sickening hum. The world was shrudding now because of Algreth’s sudden anger... He actually used his divine magic in pure anger.

Only two beings moved within the broken fracture of time.

Algreth and Kairos.

The Demon God of Time was profoundly unenthused and he was completely shorn of his stoic facade. His void-black eyes were wide open. Thick, angry veins were visibly bulging on his pale forehead. He looked intellectually and emotionally fractured.

"You degraded my perfect dominion," Algreth hissed, his sharp voice echoing loudly in the dead, grey silence. "The world restarted because you violently interfered with the flow, not because I willingly released it!"

Kairos offered absolutely nothing in return.

Not even a single word, a tiny flinch or a reaction.

He held his silver sword, Asteria, pointed low to the ground. His breath was steady, and his face was looking like a blank mask.

Algreth slowly raised Chronvolr. His pale hands were trembling due to anger.

"My absolute authority rewrites the fundamental laws," Algreth stated, his voice shaking with a terrifying fury that he hadn’t felt in thousands of centuries. "I effortlessly erase ages. I completely collapse timelines. You... you should not be. I WILL RIP YOU APART!"

He ostensibly directed the dark sword at Kairos. "Omni Slash: Timeline Collapse."

Chronvolr rumbled loudly, splitting the arena’s timelines. For a terrifying split second, reality fractured into millions of overlapping, jagged timelines, looking like a cacophonous catastrophe. Countless different versions of reality stacked on top of each other, creating massive, obscured deadly images.

In one timeline, the dark sword cut horizontally.

In another timeline, it slashed vertically.

In another, Algreth stabbed directly forward with intense fury.

In another, Algreth swung three separate times at once.

Thousands of guaranteed killing outcomes occupied the same physical space at the same time. It was a gargantuan, suffocating wall of sharp blades. It was unavoidable and possessed absolute precision.

Kairos just looked at the incoming storm. He didn’t even blink his dark eyes, ignoring the terrifying wall of blades. He didn’t see a wall. He only saw the tiny, microscopic gaps.

He saw exactly one millimeter of empty space where the millions of timelines didn’t overlap, and he stepped forward. He moved slowly and calmly. He simply stepped precisely between the deadly ghosts of the swinging swords. He gently tilted his head to the left just a fraction of an inch to avoid the vertical slash. He smoothly twisted his torso to consummately avoid the horizontal cut.

He walked through the apocalyptic storm of blades exactly as if he knew the future much better than the Demon standing before him, looking with gaze of disbelief.

Algreth’s dark sword with preternatural fluidity passed through empty air in every single one of the million timelines. Kairos leaped lightly and he moved forward like he had already read how the attacks would arrive in this specific fight. He landed quietly in front of Algreth.

Algreth petrified with an unknown gaze in his eyes.

"You... you actually chose the correct timeline? Instantly?" Algreth stuttered, his eyes wide with horror.

Kairos didn’t offer a reply.

Algreth clenched his jaw with a rattling sound. "Fine. If Time won’t kill you... Space absolutely will."

Algreth poised the tip of his dark sword at the crystal floor. "Void Space."

VOOP!!

The grey world viciously ripped and burst wide open. A terrifying, pitch-black void entity rumbled, swallowing the entire arena floor. The broken crystal, the heavy stone, the jagged cracks, and the frozen air... it all wholly vanished into absolute nothingness.

There was absolutely no ground anymore. There was nowhere left to stand. Anyone else should have fallen helplessly and forever into the bottomless abyss. But Kairos didn’t fall, understanding the nature of the attack.

He simply stood with a calm and deadly posture on the literal nothingness. Kairos understood the point of view of ’Void Slash’, it didn’t swallow anything. It was simply teleporting them into void dominion, which makes the person opposite to Algreth hallucinate that they were in an abyssal void. So he stood still, as if the fundamental concept of ’ground’ and ’standing’ was irrelevant to his existence. As if he simply decides where he wants to stand.

Algreth teleported, creating a blurry vision in pure panic. He appeared in front of Kairos, then instantly above his head, then right behind his back.

Slash! Slash! Slash!

He swung harshly with his Chronvolr. Each desperate swing actively collapsed massive fragments of space in the dominion.

Kairos blocked each divine attack with perfect, lazy timing, like it was a piece of cake to him. His boots never even shifted a single inch on the empty black void.

He absolutely didn’t waste a single drop of his physical strength.

Algreth teleported, appearing right in front of him again. This time, there was undeniable panic flickering brightly in the crimson dark eyes.

"You absolutely know exactly what I am," Algreth said, his chest heaving with heavy exhaustive breaths. "But I don’t know what you are."

Kairos remained still. Algreth inhaled a sharp breath, ferociously thrusting his Chronvolr high into the air above his own head. "Singularity Collapse!"

A formidable, titanic black sphere rapidly coalesced, looking like a crushing black hole. It bent space, aggressively draining the frozen, grey reality inward. It was a formidable attack known as ’Devourer of everything’: floating dust, dead air, silent echoes, and invisible traces of time.

It descended with a loud rumble onto Kairos.

CRUNCH!!

The massive Singularity completely swallowed him whole.

Algreth exhaled a long, shaking breath, watching the black hole swallowing its prey. "Absolutely nothing survives that,"

Algreth whispered to himself. "Nothing."

SHRIMP!!!

But then... the titanic dark vortex simply faded away into nothingness. Kairos was still standing there. Asteria rested, shimmering at his side. He just had a cold look of certainty resting deep in his dark eyes.

Algreth trembled, taking a scared step backward, his boots clicking loudly on the empty void.

"Why aren’t you bleeding at all?" Algreth whispered, his voice cracking with pure fear. "Why aren’t you physically affected? Why aren’t you expressing anything?"

Kairos took a slow step forward.

THUD!!

Each single step he took made the endless, frozen void tremble in fear.

"RAHHHHHH" Algreth roared in sheer, unadulterated panic. He swung Chronvolr desperately with both of his hands. It was a wild, sloppy strike filled with panic, viciously tearing deep rifts through multiple dimensions, aimed straight at Kairos’s beating heart.

Kairos raised his bare left hand up.

CLACK!!

He casually caught Chronvolr completely with his bare hand. The legendary blade that cut time itself, the terrifying blade that easily erased dragons... stopped dead instantly right against his open palm. It absolutely couldn’t move forward, and it couldn’t even cut his soft skin.

Algreth desperately pulled back, but the dark sword wouldn’t move an inch as if it was struck between a boulder crack. Algreth looked closely at Kairos’s calm face. He realized something terrifying.

"You’re completely controlling the entire fight," Algreth said, taking a shaking breath. "Not with your raw strength... but with your restraint."

"If I completely stop holding back..." Kairos said with a soft voice and absolute calmness. "Everything I actively protect will abandon and disappear."

Algreth stared wildly, visibly horrified, because that wasn’t spoken like a fake, arrogant threat. It looked like a cold, hard fact. You are severely holding back, but you are still this powerful. Algreth thought in sheer panic.

Kairos wasn’t actually fighting Algreth at all. He was fighting desperately to keep his own immense power from spilling out because of his anger and destroying the fragile world he truly loved. Kairos understood the skill ’Conqueror of Time’, he can slit the dimensions and time, if he goes all out then the world will begin to shudder.

SCREEEEE.....

[DEFEAT HIM SOON!]

[CHAIN OF FEAR UNFOLDS!]

Kairos blinked, with a confused thought in his mind. What the fuck is Chain of fear? Is it meant to be a chain name which holds my heart with a rageful curse, sealing some memories? Can I ascend to my prime now?

"Kairos..." Algreth called out, his voice weak. "You are not winning by sheer domination, but you are winning by bounding a limit on your own power."

Kairos’s tone remained quiet. "Ummm... Limit? It’s not like that, I cannot explain further."

Algreth desperately wanted to retreat, because he was genuinely scared. It was the first time in his eternal life he thought he couldn’t defeat someone.

"What are you!?" Algreth screamed in terror.

Kairos did not answer.

He didn’t need to and he didn’t know about that completely. The absolute fear shimmering in Demon God’s eyes was enough.