SSS-Tier Extraction: From Outcast to Overgod!-Chapter 102: A Battle of Wills

Malakor’s face contorted with rage. His calm, confident mask shattered, revealing the raving lunatic beneath.

He had expected fear, doubt, or at the very least, a little bit of respect for his cosmic power. Instead, he got boredom. It was the ultimate insult.

"You dare mock the voice of the Schism?" he shrieked, his mind-voice now a sharp, painful spike. "You are an insect, a creature of rigid, pathetic order! I will show you the glory of chaos! I will break your mind and unravel your soul!"

He threw his arms wide, and the chaotic energy of the Monolith surged into him. The ground beneath Ryan’s feet suddenly turned soft and rubbery, like he was standing on a giant trampoline.

It buckled and warped, and a dozen thick tentacles made of black, corrupted rock erupted from the earth, whipping towards him from all directions.

Ryan didn’t flinch. He simply stomped his foot. "Impose: Stability."

A wave of pure, orderly energy radiated out from him. The rubbery ground instantly became solid, unyielding stone again. The rock tentacles froze in mid-air and then crumbled into dust, their chaotic energy completely neutralized by his simple command.

From behind him, in their protective circle, his team watched in awe.

"Did he just... tell the ground to stop being weird?" one of the Sanctuary Wardens whispered, her eyes wide.

"I think he did," Zara replied, a slow, admiring smile spreading across her face. This was a level of power she had never conceived of. It wasn’t just technology or magic; it was a fundamental command over reality itself.

Malakor, furious that his first attack had been so easily dismissed, tried a different tactic. He focused his psychic power, weaving a new, more potent illusion.

The world around Ryan dissolved. Suddenly, he was no longer in the corrupted valley. He was back on the "Odyssey," but it was a dark, dead version of the ship. The lights were out, and the corridors were filled with the still, silent bodies of his friends.

Scarlett lay nearby, her face pale, her eyes empty. Emma was slumped over a console, and Zara was sprawled on the floor, her datapad shattered beside her.

<This is your future, little Lord, Malakor’s voice whispered, filled with triumphant poison. This is where your path leads. Everyone you try to protect, everyone you love... they will fall. It is inevitable. Your struggle is meaningless. Surrender to the sweet peace of despair.

The illusion was perfect, designed to strike at his deepest fears. But Ryan’s mind, fortified by his "god Shaper" status and his immense Spirit stat, was a fortress.

He looked at the fake, dead body of Scarlett, and he felt a surge, not of despair, but of cold, hard anger.

"You’re not very creative, are you?" Ryan said, his voice dangerously calm. He raised his hand and snapped his fingers. "Impose: Truth."

The air shimmered, and the dark, horrifying illusion shattered like a pane of glass. The dead ship, the bodies, the despair. It all vanished, leaving him standing once again in the ugly, corrupted valley, facing a very shocked-looking Prophet.

"H-how?" Malakor stammered, taking an involuntary step back. "No one resists the Gaze of Inevitability! No one!"

"Here’s a tip," Ryan said, taking a slow, deliberate step forward. "If you’re going to create a fake version of my friends, at least get the details right. Scarlett would never let her hair get that messy."

This casual, almost playful dismissal of Malakor’s ultimate psychological attack was the final straw. The Prophet let out a true, animalistic scream of pure rage.

He abandoned all attempts at cleverness and mental tricks. If he couldn’t break Ryan’s mind, he would break his body.

The chaotic energy of the Monolith swirled around him, a vortex of dark power. He ripped a huge, jagged boulder from the ground with his mind and hurled it at Ryan.

At the same time, he commanded the very air to turn against him, forming invisible blades of cutting wind that shot towards Ryan from all sides.

It was a full, desperate assault.

From her position behind Ryan, Scarlett watched, her heart pounding. Her devotion to him was absolute. She trusted him completely, but seeing him face this storm of power alone was agonizing.

Her hands gripped her pistols so tightly her knuckles were white. She had to stay back, to guard the others, to trust in his strength. It was the hardest thing she had ever done.

Zara, seeing the complex, chaotic energies swirling around the Prophet, felt a surge of inspiration. She couldn’t fight like Ryan, but she could help. She quickly recalibrated her last functioning drone, no longer trying to scan the enemy, but to counter him.

"I can’t stop his power," she muttered to herself, her fingers flying across her datapad. "But maybe I can disrupt it." She created a simple, repeating frequency, a pulse of pure, orderly data.

She programmed the drone to broadcast it, creating a small "zone of stability" around their defensive circle. It wasn’t much, but it helped to shield the injured Wardens and the wavering Scarlett from the worst of the ambient chaotic aura.

Her admiration for Ryan’s raw power was now tempered by a fierce desire to support him in any way she could. It was a feeling she was beginning to recognize as a form of worship.

Ryan stood in the center of the storm, a calm island in a sea of madness. The giant boulder flew towards him. He didn’t even try to dodge it. He simply raised his hand. "Extract!"

The boulder, which had been hurtling towards him at the speed of a cannonball, suddenly slowed and then stopped dead in mid-air, just a few feet from his face.

All of the energy of its movement flowed into him, a warm, tingling rush. With a casual flick of his wrist, he sent the now-harmless rock tumbling to the side.

The invisible blades of wind hit his body, but he had already used his power again. "Impose!."

He had commanded the air molecules of his clothes and skin to simply hold together more strongly. The blades of wind, which should have sliced him to ribbons, felt like little more than a strong, annoying breeze.

The duel of wills had become a duel of fundamental forces. Malakor, using the raw, untamed power of chaos, threw everything he had at Ryan.

He made the ground spit fire. He summoned swarms of shrieking, shadowy bats. He tried to crush Ryan under a field of intensified gravity.

And Ryan countered it all with calm, simple, and impossibly powerful commands.

When the ground spit fire, he imposed "cold." The flames froze into brittle, icy sculptures.

When the shadow-bats swarmed him, he extracted their "animating chaotic essence." They dissolved into harmless, drifting smoke.

When the gravity tried to crush him, he simply imposed "lightness" on his own body, standing perfectly still as the ground around him cracked under the immense pressure.

It was becoming clear who was winning. Malakor was drawing on a huge, external power source, the Monolith. But it was wild and inefficient. He was like a man trying to put out a candle with a fire hose.

Ryan, on the other hand, was using his own power with the precision of a surgeon. His every move was efficient, powerful, and perfectly controlled.

Malakor was screaming with frustration, his long hair flying wildly around him. He was throwing tantrum after cosmic tantrum, and nothing was working.

Ryan, on the other hand, hadn’t even broken a sweat. He just kept walking forward, one slow, steady step at a time, his face a mask of calm disappointment.

He was no longer just defending. He was advancing. And with every step he took, the Prophet of Chaos seemed to shrink, his power and his confidence crumbling before the quiet, unstoppable advance of pure, ordered will.

Follow current novels on (f)reew𝒆bnovel