The Lord of Time remained behind the Mother of the Stars and did not participate in the conversation.
His gaze swept over the Eternal present, his mind racing with calculations— Eternal Dale, though severely injured, still retained his fighting ability; Asmodeus, Lord of Hell, though sent flying by the Chaos Stele, had not lost his combat power; and then there were the newly arrived Ancestral Tree of Life, the World Tree projection, the Ruler of the Abyss, the Goddess of Fate, the Abyss Warden, and the God of War of the Astral Realm ...
Eight Eternal.
Among them, at least the Lord of Hell and the Magic Pioneer possess combat power at the Second-Step Eternity level, while the other five are at the First-Step Eternity.
If the Ruler of the Abyss receives the full support of the Bottomless Abyss, He can also unleash the power of Second-Step Eternity being; it all depends on whether He wants to do so.
at the same time.
In the Void, more auras are approaching—those are reinforcements from other forces. Although they are not Eternal, they are still overlords in their own right, possessing formidable combat power.
The Lord of Time withdrew his gaze and looked at the Mother of the Stars.
"We're surrounded."
His voice was calm, as if he were stating a fact that had nothing to do with him.
The Mother of the Stars did not look at Him; her gaze remained fixed on the opposing Eternal.
"I know."
"How many can you handle?" the Lord of Time asked.
The Mother of the Stars gripped the Chaos Stele tightly in her right hand, and golden patterns emerged on the ancient rock surface.
"All."
The Lord of Time nodded slightly, and a new longsword of time materialized in his hand. Countless timelines were reflected on the sword, and in each timeline, a projection of the Lord of Time was watching the battle.
"Then I'll take care of... the troublemakers."
His gaze passed through the Eternal and landed in the direction of the Immortal Continent.
On that continent, nine Grand Sage were organizing the final defenses; the threads of the Weave were still spreading through the Void, and the light of the Elemental Furnace, though dimming, was still turning.
As long as the Immortal Continent exists, the Federation will exist.
As long as the Federation exists, Dale will never truly fall.
The Lord of Time's form began to blur, preparing to launch another surprise attack on the Immortal Continent.
But this time, someone stood in His way.
The Goddess of Fate, holding the reins of Sovereign of Fate, pointed towards the Lord of Time.
You can't go there.
His voice was crisp and cold, like ice crystals colliding.
The Lord of Time stopped and looked at the Goddess of Fate. A hint of interest appeared in his eyes, which reflected countless timelines.
"Goddess of Fate, do you think you can stop me?"
"You can't even handle the Abyss; you'll need to join forces with the Abyss Warden to fight against the Ruler of the Abyss— "
"Now, you dare to stop me?"
The Goddess of Fate did not answer, but simply pulled the trigger of Sovereign of Fate.
It wasn't firing; it was simply turning the cylinder on the gun.
The sound of the cylinders spinning echoed through the Void, each sound like a Fate choice. The seven cylinders spun through the gun in turn, finally stopping in an empty slot—that cylinder was empty of bullets, but contained something more terrifying than bullets.
"Fate Judgment."
The Goddess of Fate spoke, pointing her gun at the Lord of Time.
"You have existed for too long, so long that your Fate has accumulated to an unbearable weight."
"Now, I want you to bear all of this."
A golden light shone from the muzzle of the gun; that light was not energy, but Fate itself. The fate of every being who has been watched by the Goddess of Fate Fate recorded in the Sovereign of Fate. And what the Goddess of Fate is about to do is to return to the Lord of Time all the branches of Fate that He has ignored, evaded, and severed from His birth to the present.
The Lord of Time's pupils contracted slightly.
He sensed it—those threads of Fate that He had severed, abandoned, and forgotten were being forcibly retrieved from the river of time and reattached to Him. Every possibility He had given up, every life He had denied, became a reality He had to face at this moment.
His body began to change—not a change in his body, but a change in his "existence." His existence became bloated, chaotic, and unstable because it was burdened with too many Fate that were not rightfully his.
Even in the long river of Fate, the Fate belonging to the True Dragon Clan is turning against Him. In a daze, one after another blurry dragon souls are roaring and howling at Him, opening their claws and fangs to launch an attack.
"A decent attack."
The voice of the Lord of Time emanated from the chaos of Fate, yet remained calm.
But Fate, too, is within the bounds of time.
He raised the sword of time, its blade imbued with the law of "Time Reset to Zero." With a single strike, he did not cut the Goddess of Fate, but rather the superfluous Fate that bound him.
Those threads of Fate, crushed by the Law of Time, were severed, abandoned, and forgotten once more.
The Lord of Time's body has stabilized.
It was as if everything I had experienced before was an illusion.
Are there any other methods?
The Goddess of Fate did not answer, but a very faint smile seemed to appear at the corner of her mouth.
While the Lord of Time was being held back by the Goddess of Fate, the other Eternal had already launched a siege against the Mother of the Stars.
The Ancestral Tree of Life made the first move.
Her canopy suddenly opened, and billions of leaves simultaneously shot out beams of green life light. These lights were not attacks, but "growth"—they struck the fragments of matter in the Void, causing those fragments to instantly grow into enormous vines that coiled around the Mother of the Stars from all directions.
The number of vines grew exponentially, from one to ten, from ten to a hundred, from a hundred to a thousand, and from a thousand to ten thousand. In less than three breaths, a giant cage woven from countless green vines had formed around the Mother of the Stars.
"Life Cage."
The voice of the Ancestral Tree of Life emanated from its canopy.
"The strength of these vines is equal to the sum of the wills of all living beings."
You can crush matter, but you can't crush life itself.
The Mother of the Stars didn't even glance at the vines.
He simply moved his right hand slightly.
On the Chaos Stele, the golden patterns suddenly lit up—not because they were activated, but because He infused them with more mass. The mass of the stone tablet increased many times over in that instant, and the resulting gravitational field directly tore the surrounding vines to pieces.
It wasn't smashed, but rather stretched, twisted, and torn apart by the gravitational field.
Green fragments drifted through the Void, each one rapidly withering, dying, and turning into nothingness as it drifted away.
"The will to live?"
The voice of the Mother of the Stars rose from the chaos, calm as ever.
"Life is merely a higher form of organization of matter."
Without matter, where can life reside?
He lifted the stone tablet and smashed it against the Ancestral Tree of Life.
The stone tablet wasn't moving fast, but that "slowness" itself was a form of despair—on the trunk of the Ancestral Tree of Life, the annual rings began to spin wildly, each ring calculating the stone tablet's trajectory, trying to find a way to avoid it.
But the stone tablet was too heavy.
So vast that along its path, space, time, laws, and causality were all rendered meaningless by its sheer size.
The Ancestral Tree of Life closed its eyes.
Then, a golden light shone from in front of Him.
The World Tree's Divine Power manifested itself.
The World Tree spread its dense branches, imbued with the surging power of the world, forming a barrier woven from countless branches before the Ancestral Tree of Life. Each branch was a pillar of a world, and each leaf a projection of a universe. The strength of this barrier was equal to the combined defensive power of all the worlds connected to the World Tree.
The stone tablet crashed onto the barrier.
At that moment, the World Tree projection trembled violently, its branches began to break, its leaves began to wither, and the world projections went out one by one.
But the barrier did not break.
It's not because it's stronger than the Life Cage, but because the World Tree's essence has some connection to the Material Dimension — the World Tree is also a guardian of the Material Dimension, only with relatively lower weight. Its branches form the framework of the material world, and its leaves are a microcosm of the material world.
They share the same roots and origins.
The power of the stone tablet was reduced by 70% on the barrier projected by the World Tree.
The remaining 30% penetrated the barrier and struck the trunk of the Ancestral Tree of Life.
A deep crack appeared in the tree trunk, and golden sap gushed out from it, each drop transforming into a burning forest in the Void.
But the Ancestral Tree of Life did not fall.
"The pinnacle of Second-Step Eternity..."
The voice of the Ancestral Tree of Life trembled uncontrollably.
"Truly terrifying."
The Ruler of the Abyss and the Abyss Warden attacked simultaneously.
At this moment, these two arch-enemies did something never before – instead of attacking each other, they joined forces to attack the Mother of the Stars.
Behind the Ruler of the Abyss, the Abyss phantom suddenly expanded until it covered half of the battlefield. There were no laws, no order, no incomprehensible structure in that phantom, only pure chaos and Destruction.
His hands clenched into fists, drawing two massive blades from the Void, formed from Abyss energy, their blades burning with black flames.
"Abyss - Endless Devouring."
He charged toward the Mother of the Stars, slashing out with his crossed blades.
At the same time, the Abyss Warden opened the Black Book.
The sound of pages turning was like a judgment of Fate. With each page turned, a huge rift appeared in the Void. What surged from the rift was not energy, but a "seal"—the will of those extinct dimensions, guided by the Abyss Warden, transformed into countless black chains that coiled around the Mother of the Stars from all directions.
"Sealing - All Realms Return to Silence."
The Abyss Warden's voice was calm as still water, but the Black Book trembled violently in his hand, as if it were under some kind of immense pressure.
The Mother of the Stars merely shifted slightly to the side in the face of these two simultaneous attacks.
His right hand still held the stone tablet, but his left hand was free.
His left hand was raised, with his five fingers spread.
"Matter - Absolute Defense."
The moment His five fingers spread open, the Void before Him began to "solidify"—not by freezing, but by increasing the density of matter itself to its extreme. Every atom in the air was compressed to its limit, and the gaps between atoms were completely eliminated, forming an absolute barrier composed of "matter without gaps".
The Ruler of the Abyss's twin blades slashed at the barrier.
The giant blade shattered, scattering fragments of black Abyss energy in all directions.
The sealing chains of the Abyss Warden are entwined around the barrier.
The chains snapped one by one; the vanishing dimensional will was utterly useless before the barrier.
"Your attack is still within the realm of matter."
The Mother of the Stars withdrew her left hand and grasped the stone tablet again.
"So, it can't hurt me."
He raised the stone tablet and smashed it against the Ruler of the Abyss.
Along the trajectory of the falling stone tablet, space collapsed in patches, time fractured in segments, and cause and effect twisted in clumps. The Abyss phantom of the Ruler of the Abyss began to shrink under the crushing weight of the stone tablet—not because His power had weakened, but because the stone tablet's mass was too great, so great that even the state of "chaos" could not be maintained.
The Ruler of the Abyss gritted his teeth and suddenly dodged to the side.
He moved aside.
But the Mother of the Stars ' gaze shifted in another direction the instant she dodged.
The Goddess of Fate is always at war.
His battle with the Lord of Time continued. Although his attacks had limited effect on the Lord of Time, they were enough to restrain the Controller of time and prevent him from destroying the defenses of the Immortal Continent.
After the Ruler of the Abyss and the Abyss Warden were defeated, the focus of the battlefield shifted back to the Mother of the Stars.
The seven Eternal — Dale, the Ancestral Tree of Life, the World Tree Projection, the Ruler of the Abyss, the Abyss Warden, the God of War of the Astral Realm, and the Goddess of Fate —surrounded the Mother of the Stars.
Seven Eternity Law of different attributes intertwine, collide, and resonate in the Void.
The Mother of the Stars stood in the center, holding the Chaos Stele, her eyes, formed from nebulae, slowly sweeping over each of the Eternal.
"Seven against one."
His voice was eerily calm.
"You think you can win like this?"
Dale did not speak, but silently gathered pure white magical light.
Golden sap still seeps from the cracks in the crown of the Ancestral Tree of Life.
The barrier projecting the World Tree is now riddled with cracks.
The Abyss phantom of the Ruler of the Abyss was still trembling.
Burn marks appeared on the Abyss Warden's Black Book.
The wounds of the God of War of the Astral Realm are still bleeding.
And the Goddess of Fate—
He stood to the right of Dale, holding the hem of his golden gown in his left hand and grasping the Sovereign of Fate in his right, the muzzle of his gun pointed at... the Mother of the Stars.
Everyone thought that the next shot from the Goddess of Fate would be aimed at the Mother of the Stars.
Then, He pulled the trigger.
The gun barrel spewed not golden light of Fate, but rather—
Silver-white magical blood.
The bullet pierced Dale's chest.
The body of the Eternal, the Magic Pioneer, stiffened abruptly. He looked down at his chest—a fist-sized hole, golden Flame of Fate burning at its edge. It was no ordinary wound; it was Fate itself declaring its sentence upon him: Your Fate ends here.
Dale's body began to sway, and pure white light of law leaked wildly from the wound, like a punctured balloon.
"You..."
Dale raised his head and looked at the Goddess of Fate.
The veil of the Goddess of Fate fluttered slightly under Her gaze, revealing the face behind it—still blurry, still hazy, but those eyes were now exceptionally clear.
There was no guilt, no apology in those eyes, only a cold, calm calm that came after the mission was accomplished.
"You are a person of the Earth Mother Goddess."
Dale said, enunciating each word clearly.
The atmosphere in the Void suddenly froze.
The canopy of the Ancestral Tree of Life trembled violently, the eyes of the World Tree projection became incredibly sharp, the Ruler of the Abyss muttered something under his breath, Abyss Warden's right hand slammed onto the cover of the Black Book, and flames of rage ignited on the God of War of the Astral Realm's blade.
And the Mother of the Stars smiled.
That wasn't the resonance of a stellar flare in the universe, but just a very soft, almost inaudible laugh.
But there was a long-lost joy in that laughter.
"Well done, Fate."
The Mother of the Stars said.
"Now, it's your turn."
He raised the Chaos Stele and aimed it at Dale had already been severely Goddess of Fate.