The Heavens split, a rain of dark gold flames falling from above as Ryu's scales continued to grow. In a moment, it felt as though he had become a true demon, his eyes losing any separation between whites, iris, and pupils as it plunged into the pits of hell.
Black flames surged around Ryu's body as his black soul seemed to swallow up everything.
<Divine Chaotic Annihilation> appeared in the skies above, but the size was unlike anything anyone had ever seen before. It was as though a sun as dark as night had appeared amidst the swirling skies, taking into it the falling dark gold flames with a naked abandon that cared for nothing and lusted for everything.
The corpse of the Horned Devil was suddenly sucked into the looming black sun, dancing with sparks of dark gold.
A flash of red bathed the ground below as the corpse was shredded to pieces. Its bones had once been as sturdy as the densest earth and its flesh was as hardy as the strongest metals. And yet, it was minced into pieces, a strong gravitational pull tearing it apart.
Ryu's soul bulged a small measure before it compressed down again. It was hard to tell, but it almost seemed as though its body had become even a tinge blacker, something that should have rightfully been impossible.
However, the swirling ball of darkness didn't seem satisfied in the slightest, its slow rotation suddenly giving a strong pull.
The Demon Kings had been ripped from Ryu's control after his soul sunk into the pits of the Valkyrie's judgment. But, before they could even think of paying back Ryu for what he had done to them and laying waste to the whole of the Shrine World, they suddenly found their bodies being pulled in, inch by inch.
Bits and pieces of the Ash Treants enormous body was being torn inch by inch, flying into the ever looming black sun.
The other Demon Kings dug in their heels, fighting against the oppressive might that threatened to reap their lives. However, the first to collapse was the Wrath Knight.
It and its horse flew upward, followed soon after by the Shadow, and then the Skeleton King.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
The skies thundered as they rained down powerful strike after powerful strike, but it was to no avail. This time, their bodies were shredded before even coming within a kilometer of the swirling star of black. The bits and pieces of what were formerly part of the strongest bodies in all of Sacrum orbited three rounds before being sucked in.
One after another, the Demon Kings, rulers of their Realms, feared by all, were sucked in.
"HUMAN!" The Fire Giant's final roar could no longer even cause the skies to quake. In this world, Ryu was the arbiter of all that was.
Ryu's soul pulsed once again, his body growing past two meters and shooting up to three.
His claws lengthened, his horns curled menacingly, his scales rated a violet darkness that seemed far closer to black than it could ever be to blue, purple or pink.
His Dragon Soul was fueled by his fury, his eyes pulsing with the qi of the Black Vein Spirit Seeking Lilies until it felt as though he could see through the whole of the world.
He didn't step through Heaven's Gate. Heaven's Gate came to him, gracing him with its light and causing his power to surge, rising to levels it had never seen before.
In that past, Ryu could peek a few hundred years into the future. However, back then, he hadn't even stepped into the Cosmic Grades, let alone having fully unsealed his Pupils. So, the question was, how many years into the future could he step into now?
Usually, when the Mysteries of Heaven and Earth Pupils were fully unsealed, the maximum number was one million. One million years. Or, more accurately, a single year shy of that number.
However, Ryu seemed to want more, he seemed to dig deeper, a violet chaotic force digging through the depths of his bones, clawing into his marrow, severing and reforming his nerves, even increasing the number of folds in his brain itself all to accommodate what his eyes needed as though even the Origin Flame wasn't enough.
One million wasn't enough. Ten million wasn't enough. A billion wasn't enough.
Give me a trillion. Give me the power I will hold a trillion years from now. Give me back what you've taken from me and much more than that. Give me everything!
Ryu's enraged roar had long since come to a stop. However, it continued to echo through the skies, pulsing throughout the veil of the Heavens and howling toward the peak of Existence itself. It announced his presence to all that was, all that had been, and all that would ever be.
When the Gates finally washed over Ryu, his cultivation seemed to become muddled.
Mistress Holy Wing stood explosively to her feet, her throne shattering to pieces and her eyes opening wide. Without the slightest hesitation, her palm flipped over shattering a seal.
The ground began to rumble, a not so distant piece of land beginning to split open as the hidden land of the Martial Gods opened up to the world. However, Ryu didn't even spare this change a single glance, looking down at his large, black clawed hands.
He could feel the shift in his meridians, the change to his soul, the surging power of his body. He could even feel a shift in his eyes, a small but subtle transition that he couldn't quite understand.
Even now, he had no way of comprehending his power. He had no frame of reference, no ability to wrap his head around the concepts of what he could and should be able to do. And, truthfully, his very own Mysteries of Heaven and Earth Pupils seemed to be confused as well.
The future was a tangled mess. The further into it you went, the more exponential the change in variables became and even the sheer number of variables themselves rose to a quantity that was impossible for even Ryu to comprehend. The complexity made even the Silver Star Visualization nothing more than a joke.
To try and extrapolate out so far was nigh impossible. There was a reason why Ryu's previous uses of Heaven's Gate could never account for the fortuitous encounters he would run into, or sudden waves of comprehension he could have. It could only give him a linear path ahead, a best fit line for what might happen years from now.
Ryu's gaze shifted through the land, taking his eyes away from the change to his hands.
"<Reverse>…" He said softly.
<Reverse> was a lesser form of <Fate Reversal>. While the latter manipulated reality, the former only observed it. Ryu wanted to see with his own eyes what had happened 900 million years ago.
His mind reconstructed everything, taking into account every variable, every shift in the wind, every scratch left on the earth and even the scratches left on the earth beneath it to reconstruct the image.
Even as others scrambled to figure out how to deal with him, he only continued to watch.
He watched as the allies of his people backstabbed them one after another. He watched as the home he had known for a lifetime was razed to the ground. He watched as his grandparents joined hands to put up a final stand, giving their lives to give his mother and what remained a final chance.
He watched as his mother, now alone and without anyone to support the weight on her shoulders, roared into the skies, using the last of her strength to connect with the Ice Shrine and freeze everything over, ready and waiting for the day her husband and her son would return.
Ryu didn't really need to watch these things. His grandmother had already explained them all to him. However, he still wanted to see it all with his own eyes.
Ryu seemed to have been thrown over the peak. His rage had reached a point where he didn't even know how to express it any longer, leaving a gaze that was dull, an expression that was placid, and a body that didn't move an inch, let alone tremble.
His gaze shifted, landing on Elena who stood dozens of kilometers away. Seeing her broken limbs and bleeding body, it was hard to tell if his expression changed at all.
However, his hand reached out.
"<Fate Reversal>"
He grabbed at the air, calling a mass of darkness and blood to form in his palm.
The Sky Gods that had begun to surge out of Martial God's hidden world all froze, their expressions warping.
Reversing Fate was one matter. It was hard to wrap your head around, but so long as you had another target, it was a simple shift, like pouring a cup of water from one into the other. But, what Ryu had done was the equivalent of a mortal forcing water to hover in the palm of their hands.
He suspended Fate itself above his palm as though it was a plaything. But… That was only something a Perfect Sky God could do!
Suddenly, the ball of mass in his hand doubled in size.
Fate didn't like being attached to nothing. The more time it spent in such a state, the more twisted and violent it became, and the more difficult it was to control.
The ball of Fate doubled in size again.
From a Fate of broken arms and internal bleeding, it had become something much darker.
Ryu's gaze slowly shifted from the floating ball in his hand to the Sky Gods that practically blotted out the skies with their sheer number.
He had the hand out, his horns sparking with black lightning as his forearm pulsed.
The mass of Fate shot forward at a speed that couldn't be tracked with the eye, appearing amidst the Martial Gods in an instant.