Chapter 863 A celestial core appears
A karmic backlash was a celestial's worst nightmare.
To become a tier9 individual, one had to gain experience and slaughter hundreds of millions if not billions of monsters to reach that level.
The reason behind monsters being the accepted norm for levelling versus bipedals was because killing a monster accumulated lesser bad karma than killing a Bipedal.
In the end, the higher one climbed the greater their karmic debt to the universe became and to wipe off the said debt they needed to perform several 'good' karma deeds which was the only reason why the celestials installed the universal queen into the universe, as her presence as a governor after the chaos war ensured that one-sided slaughter of mortals by gods to become stronger fast could no longer happen.
As a result, the universe became a more peaceful place to live-in and the celestials received a steady stream of positive Karma.
For Bavuma however, as an individual who had performed countless wrongs but never performed a right, his karmic backlash was terrifying.
Once the flood-gates had been opened and the abyss mages had taken their revenge, everyone who Bavuma had ever wrong was manifested to collect their pound of flesh as the near immortal god had his mana channels destroyed, his powers sealed and his body put through unbelievable pain.
It was a physical, mental and psychological torture of the highest degree which left behind a weak and shrivelled husk of one of the strongest gods in the universe.
" How could I be so stupid? " Bavuma murmured as he wondered how he became convinced that using [ Alter Reality ] on a tier10 barrier was a good thing?
As a God Of Knowledge, he felt extremely stupid to have been fooled by a kid not even a tenth of his age as he grit his teeth in extreme regret.
" Well played… " He complimented as he thought of how Max never explicitly stated that his brother could handle the karmic backlash of removing the barrier but had only ever subtly implied it which led to Bavuma thinking that he inferred the solution himself when he was being led on from the start.
As his soul was slowly devoured by Max's soul vessel, Bavuma slowly faded from existence as his body began to grow translucent.
If he had even a sliver of strength left in his body after experiencing the Karmic Backlash he would have still fought back to the bitter end, however, everything from his constitution to his nervous connection to his muscles was destroyed in the Backlash as he was barely alive as is.
" Max Rajput? I'll remember that name to my grave…. " Bavuma said as his physical form faded out completely leaving behind a soul that was being constantly absorbed by Max's soul vessel.
Drax was performing his duty as a filter and preventing any information from passing alongside the soul into Max's so that Max did not inherit the memories or personality of Bavuma, but because of this stressful process he could not utter a single word and had to focus unilaterally on the task at hand.
" I did it? " Max wondered in shock and disbelief as it looked like he had truly achieved the impossible and won a fight that he was never supposed to?
In an ideal world, someone like Max should never have been able to even scratch the heels of someone like Bavuma, yet overcoming all odds using his life experience and his intellect, he made the impossible possible and defeated a peak tier8 opponent!
It was an incredible feeling as it gave him a massive confidence boost in himself that yes, he wasn't just another tier7 warrior who would forever be inferior to his brother, but was indeed someone capable of overturning the heavens when he reached the end of the road for his journey.
Walking the path of the perfect warrior was not easy, but he knew that if he had not spent the time and effort to understand the fundamentals of chaos energy and called it quits during the tier7 promotion after mastering darkness and void, he would have successfully became a tier7 warrior but would have been killed in this fight here.
Only because he had suffered a small karmic backlash himself did he realise how terrifying altering reality really was and realise how tricking Bavuma into performing suicide was possible.
It was by no means a clean win, he was by no means strong enough to defeat a monarch in open battle just because he managed to defeat Bavuma, however, this win was still extremely important as the EXP and improvements that he was going to observe from absorbing Bavuma's soul was potentially going to save him two decades worth of daily levelling, with the inherited memories and experiences being a added bonus.
When all was said and done, Max expected his strength to improve twofold from what it was when he entered this fight.
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( Meanwhile Rudra )
Once Bavuma's physical body died, all the items that were once stored inside his inventory shot out and scattered around Max's body as a glowing golden core was thrown out as well which immediately caused all the players within the time chamber to tremble and sweat profusely.
" A celestial core! " Odin said as if he were bewitched by the appeal of the object as his hands subconsciously slided towards the core as if wanting to claim it for himself.
" Don't you dare touch it! " Rudra said, as he instantly claimed all the loot and saved it safely within his inventory, leaving a bad taste in Odin's mouth.
For a moment, Odin could not use his brain as the treasure was all that he could think about, but when he returned to his senses he realised that the Celestial Core being thrown out could only mean one thing!
Max had won this fight!
Max had somehow overcome all odds and defeated Bavuma!
But how could that even be possible? How could a tier7 kid like Max defeat Bavuma?
Although Odin could not wrap his head around it, the reality of the matter remained that he had somehow achieved the impossible and defeated one of the strongest individuals in the universe as a newly ascended tier7!
It was an achievement so monstrous, not even Rudra Rajput himself could claim anything similar.