Each and every crevice, every inch of space, in the planar core chamber, was covered in sunblades. Not only the open space either. The vanguard incarnations…each of them skewered by nearly a hundred blades each. The sunblades simply materialised into their bodies.

The sheer impossibility of that feat boggled her mind. How did Damien manage it?

Uh, well, the simple answer was the Divine Shard.

She knew it was the absolute ruler of this space. She could feel it. It wasn’t Anima, it wasn’t Domain. Simply put, the fabric of reality, and its several layers, bowed down to the Divine.

The fact that the other incarnations didn’t have any sunblades materialised into their bodies didn’t mean they were able to resist. No. The truth of the matter came from Damien. They survived because he let them live to serve as a lesson. For her.

“A million sunblades feels like an extension of your goal. Violence through numbers, dominance through force.”

His words came out of her mouth out loud, though the inflections were different, and the pitch was slightly lower than her normal.

“You can win a lot of fights with it. And a million is not the limit either. Any number is a limit, after all, but as you grow, you approach the infinite. You cannot do that if you focus on the limits.”

Yuriko couldn’t blink since she wasn’t in control, but she would have when Damien launched into a lecture.

Uh, this wasn’t the time for that! But when she looked around, she nearly swallowed her tongue. Nobody else was moving.

Legate Jiro Segawa’s sweat flew from his brow, but the beads were still in mid-air. One of the vanguard incarnations was in mid-jump, something she didn’t notice earlier, and Mum’s mandala was only half formed. The Animus lights were slowly converging, actually, each one forming a runescript word. It was at a pace where she could see the lines twisting and turning to form, which would then flash into a node of light, effectively hiding the words and protecting them at the same time.

The entire mandala’s formation had slowed to a point where she could easily follow the action, but at the same time, highlighted how fast her Mum’s spellwork was. Why, she would need hours to form even a single ring of the mandala considering how dense the runescript lines were!

Oh! That meant time wasn’t frozen. Instead, she and Damien were moving so fast that everything was slow in comparison. Her focus went to the incarnation assimilating the core.

The Watcher’s eyes were glaring at her with animosity and not a small amount of fear. She could see spurts of Chaos erupting from his body, which corrupted the sphere, a rather minuscule portion of it, before absorbing the corrupted part. She could see only a tiny bit of it had been absorbed, while the majority was spat back out, only to be hit by the Chaos again and corrupted.

At the rate he was going, it wouldn’t take that long for the entire core to be corrupted and assimilated in turn.

Damien continued to spout profundities, and only stopped when he realised that none of it stuck to her mind. He broke off with a chuckle, “I guess the secrets are too deep for you.”

‘Yeah.’

“No matter, you will come across them on your path. Now, shall we continue this little demonstration?”

The Divine Shard within them was spinning and shedding bits of itself. It was already a little bit smaller than when they started, and even though all of the ambient Chaos continued to flow towards them, it was not replenishing the Shard. The spontaneously created Ambrosia was gone, too, spent in the creation of this body.

‘Will this…?’ she began to ask.

“No. You will return to what you were before.” He paused. “Well, a little bit better, a little bit more optimised, perhaps. Not much since your physique is not like mine, so it’s better this way.”

He gestured and the sunblades moved from where they were. They converged above his palm, and began to merge. But it was strange, the sunblades should either grow brighter from the increased Radiant energy, or larger from the Animus. Denser for sure, but that was not what happened.

She only got a glimpse of it, but even that little bit made her head spin and her mind twitched with pain. It looked as though each sunblade was in a different layer of reality and they overlapped with each other. But it wasn’t as if they were completely separate. No, there were points where they poked into another layer. Each point was different, and she had the impression that those differences formed a strange array that did so many things she couldn’t even grasp it.

It continued until all one million of the blades were overlaid against each other, and each connection pattern was unique to each single sunblade. To her senses, it was not a million individual swords, but a single one with the power of a million multiplied by whatever effect the array had.

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It was frightening.

The blade’s very presence ignited the air, and it was only Damien’s control, and the Divine Shard, that prevented it from…igniting the entirety of Rumiga and the surrounding Chaos Sea. It had such potency that she could see a growing corona of darkness around the weapon as it sucked in all of the light around it, while continuing to give out Radiance.

She could see the Watcher’s eyes begin to bulge in fear. Each incarnation moved as though mired in thick mud, and desperation lent them wings to fly. Her own side, the two Legates, and Mum, weren’t even able to perceive the threat, and they were still continuing their previous action.

It was glorious.

She couldn’t help but feel excited. This was the future? Her sunblades so potent to rival the actual celestial body? Was it like holding the power of the sun in the palm of her hand?

“No, my dear. It is not that strong. Not yet. The Radiant Sun is much more powerful than you think, and even the real thing, hanging above the Firmament, is but a pale reflection. But for our purposes, this is enough. Or, hmmm, too much, I think.”

Damien’s Will and Intent, which was so massive that it was like the Zarek Mountains to the Aegeas Plains compared to hers, enfolded the sunblade. The heat and corona of darkness weakened and disappeared…or rather, they were contained tightly to their current form.

Yuriko glanced at the Divine Shard. It had already lost a quarter of its volume. Damien had a couple of minutes left, probably.

She wanted to swallow convulsively. She wanted to cry. But tears would not flow. Instead, she listened. To his words, to his wisdom. For after this, she would not hear them again.

They walked leisurely towards the vanguard incarnations. Though they had been stabbed by a hundred sunblades, they were still alive. The holes in their bodies, actually it seemed like they were more holes than body, were already starting to heal over. Radiant energy at the Colligia level was not enough for permanent harm, not with one supported by a higher level Ennoia. At least until Damien slashed with the sunblade.

The blade struck the incarnation’s left shoulder and carved diagonally, exiting just beyond the hip. It was casual and careless. It would not have killed a Chaos Lord, though it might leave them wounded. Incapacitated for a while, anyway.

Instead, as soon as the blade left the body, it simply ceased to exist. There was a slight puff as the bone, skin, flesh, and blood vaporized. But even the resulting excess was pulled into the sunblade and used as fuel to keep the Radiant fires going. It was a refinement to her methods so advanced that she couldn’t help but gape. It was the Trinity Cycle encompassed within the Radiant rather than a separate part of it.

The Trinity Cycle was a cobbled together runescript pattern and it was painfully obvious even while showing its potency.

Damien smirked, “Destroy, Harvest, Channel. Isn’t that just Radiant energy?”

‘Oh.’

“You have no need to cultivate disparate powers. Radiant encompasses all.” He tilted his head, then added, “Well, that is the end goal, but walk your path, child. You will not reach the end walking another’s.” A repeat of an earlier sentiment, but one the dying man thought was the most important.

Two thirds of the Divine Shard remained.

The plane, the Chaos Sea, and the dreamscape were rejecting its presence. The Shard alone was not enough to exist, and she was no God Monarch. Its power was spent holding it in place, but it alone cannot bear the weight of the Myriad Planes and the World.

Slash! Slash! Slash! Slash!

The remaining vanguard incarnations, including the duplicitous one of the Legate, were cut and poofed out of existence. The Watcher’s countenance paled. There were six circle incarnations left, and Damien strolled towards the nearest one.

Slash.

Dust. The circle incarnations struggled to move, but their actions were comically slow.

It was only now that she noticed Legate Segawa’s eyes turn towards her. They were slowly widening in surprise, and his jaw began to fall. Yuriko would have giggled at the sight.

Slash.

Poof!

Four left, then it would only be the one inside the core sphere.

Half of the Divine Shard left.

Eh? The Chaos Duke was starting to move faster. Damien, hurry up!

She could feel his smile widen. “Patience, child. Everything is within my control. Though he is attempting to ascend, he cannot do so in time to oppose me. My presence here means that he has failed.”

Slash!

Slash!

Slash!

The door was closing. A third of the Divine Shard left, and the restriction of the World grew stronger. The Watcher’s remaining circle incarnation lunged towards the sphere, hands reached out to touch the core. A single finger was closing in while Yuriko looked on nervously.

Damien stood still and leisurely twirled the sunblade.

‘Damien!’

“Oh, ease up a little, Yuriko. Live a little bit. Enjoy it. You don’t have to push so hard, and know that single-minded focus, while powerful, will eventually turn brittle.”

The circle incarnation’s finger touched, and body began to phase into the planar core.

Slash!

Poof.

Only the fingertip made it through, but it looked like it would still affect the core.

‘Damien! You careless, perverted old man!’ she yelled.

“Ah, don’t worry about it. Part of the core is already lost. That little finger won’t do a thing.”

They were moving slower. She could see Legate Segawa straightening up. She could feel Mum’s mandala was almost complete. She could see Legate Brygos gasping for breath. She could see the woman’s insides starting to fill in. She had turned her body into crystal, eliminating the vital points, but Yuriko knew that process had a time limit. The talisman of healing, and perhaps a cube of regeneration, worked to return the woman to good health, but it was slow. Yuriko thought she was out of danger, as long as Damien finished things.

The God Monarch strolled up to the sphere, and stroked the edge with a finger.

The incarnation…or perhaps the only body the Watcher had left, was near apoplectic with rage. He spat out, “I will return. And you will never see him again.”

“So be it,” Damien said with equanimity, “But…you will never return.”

His grin was vicious. He gestured with the sunblade but did not plunge it into the core. Instead, he beckoned and Fri’Avgi came to his hand. “Nothing quite like a tool made specifically for the task.” He hummed softly. “Third form, please.”

And Fri’Avgi’s disparate parts combined and shifted. Instead of the edgeless greatsword, or the floating six blades, the artefact’s large blade split into three blades surrounding a central needle.

“Goodbye.”

Damien slashed the planar core…

He slashed the core?!

It split into three parts and exposed the Chaos Lord within. Then he stabbed Fri’Avgi into the incarnation. The Duke barely had time to yelp, then, his body was sucked into the red gem at the crossguard so fast that there was an audible slurping sound.

Then, of course, the plane shattered.