Chapter 590: A Battle Between Gods
"Alright then, I guess there will be no deal today," Mauriss said, as—
reality fractured.
It did not shatter with a bang or scream or thunderous pulse of mana, because what followed was not an attack in the traditional sense. It was a denial of linearity, a rejection of how things were supposed to unfold.
The star-crystal table was whole, and yet already splintered. Su Ren was seated, and already standing. Helmuth was still at Kaelith’s side, and yet his Axe had already filled the space where Su Ren’s throat once was. All cause and effect bent inward, folding like parchment caught in divine fire.
In a single breath, three ancient gods moved, and the universe struggled to keep up.
Mauriss didn’t rise. He appeared, lounging midair, an echo of himself lingering in his chair while his true form blurred across dimensions. With one hand, he plucked Su Ren’s name from the fabric of the moment, and with the other, he reached into Su Ren’s future and tried to crush it before it could bloom.
Helmuth exploded forward, not through space, but through intent, his clenched fist crashing toward Su Ren with the weight of a thousand unspoken battles.
Chains unravelled around his forearms like snakes given freedom, each strike coiling and recoiling through skipped frames of time, leaving behind only the shockwave of their arrival.
Kaelith didn’t speak, nor raise a hand. He merely looked at Su Ren and removed the moment in which Su Ren would have dodged.
Su Ren gasped as the floor no longer existed beneath him. Then again, maybe it never had. His divine barrier collapsed inward like glass melting under starlight, and his own essence screamed in a tongue older than creation, calling forth shields made of will, of bloodline, of memory itself.
He blinked, once. Mauriss was in his shadow.
He blinked again. Helmuth’s chain was wrapped around his ribcage, not yet pulling, not yet tightening, but already committed.
"Traitors," Su Ren muttered, divine blood leaking from the corner of his mouth as his form flickered between states of light and mass. "You dare..."
But before he could finish, Lu Han moved.
He didn’t rise.
He stood in all directions at once.
Space reoriented itself around his will, restoring shape to the shattered floor and time to the broken sequence.
His robes fluttered in every direction, as six of his shadows surged outward, each one intercepting a different thread of Mauriss’s entropy, canceling it before it reached full manifestation.
Yu Kiro’s eyes snapped wide, his wrath igniting a golden sphere around the table as he invoked a Domain of Stillness that briefly froze Helmuth’s advance mid-strike.
Du Trask stood at last, his clumsiness gone, replaced by a scowl as he raised a single hand and whispered a command.
The sound did not travel, but reality obeyed, and the chain around Su Ren’s chest vanished, as the Gods Of The Great Clans did their best to support him in battle.
"What is the meaning of this Lord Kaelith? I thought you had outlawed Gods fighting against Gods or has that peace already shattered?" Mu Shen asked, as Kaelith only responded by retrieving his father’s Origin Metal Daggers, which made his intention loud and clear.
"Seriously? You fools seriously think you can take on the six of us together as just three of you?" Su Ren asked, his tone mocking, as he retrieved a weapon of his own, and assumed a proper battle stance.
"Three of us? Nonono... We are not just three, Lord Su..... We also have the support of the turncoat amongst you!" Mauriss replied, as at that moment Du Trask suddenly changed sides and burst towards Su Ren in what was the ultimate betrayal.
"YOU COWARD!" Lu Han said, as he chased after him through countless Entropies, however, it meant that he himself could no longer focus on Kaelith, Mauriss and Helmuth for the time being.
Du Trask’s betrayal tilted the battlefield instantly, as if his choice had shifted the axis of the universe itself.
The moment he changed sides, balance dissolved.
Mauriss let out a wild laugh, one that echoed forward and backward in time, as if mocking not just the present, but the very idea that the outcome could have ever been different.
Lu Han vanished in pursuit, his presence peeling away from the main fight like a shadow split from its source, and in that moment of his absence, the frontline crumbled.
As that was exactly the opening that Kaelith needed.
He moved not with speed, but with authority, stepping across laws that once governed reality. Every footfall rewrote cause and consequence, as the Origin Dagger hummed in his palm, vibrating with primal malice.
Su Ren countered Kaelith as best he could, however, in terms of skills he was completely outmatched.
Although Kaelith was not as powerful as Helmuth, nor as cunning as Mauriss, he was the most complete fighter of the three, just like his father the Timeless Assassin used to be many millennia ago.
"I am not going down today!" Su Ren said defiantly as divine runes surged across his skin, his bloodline roaring with all the weight of the Su Family’s celestial ancestry.
His spear glowed with cosmic intent, as he pushed back the several domain restrictions Kaelith had tried to place on him, only for him to be tied down by a dozen more as Kaelith weaved realities faster than he could tear them down.
*SHUA*
At this moment, seemingly out of nowhere, Kaelith managed to cut him.
Only once.
A shallow nick across the shoulder, so clean and fast it barely disrupted Su Ren’s stance.
Yet he staggered.
Not from pain, but from shock.
Because for the first time since he became immortal the wound did not automatically close.
Not even a flicker of divine regeneration stirred.
His body recognized the blade. Not as metal. Not as mana. But as origin, as the first and last truth, something not meant to be survived.
"You... brought that cursed blade to this fight?" Su Ren whispered, voice trembling in disbelief, as his left hand pressed to the wound, only to feel the divine tissue around it unravel further with each passing breath.
Kaelith said nothing.
He simply advanced.
Su Ren leapt backward, trying to gain space, but space refused to respond.
Despite being embroiled in a tense battle of his own, Helmuth assisted Kaelith in the hunt, as his pressure folded the battlefield around them, while Mauriss twisted his sense of direction, making forward feel backward and safety feel like suicide.
Yu Kiro and Ru Vassa both lunged to assist, but Mauriss split the moment they arrived, shattering their unity with temporal echoes that struck them in four different timelines at once.
Ru Vassa recoiled, blood trailing from a cut across her eye, while Yu Kiro’s wrath sputtered as the gods were forced into defense.
Kaelith reached Su Ren again.
This time, Su Ren met him fully, spear flashing in a celestial arc, calling upon thousands of years of refined technique, power, and ancestral might.
Every strike had the weight of a supernova explosion behind them.
But Kaelith did not parry.
He simply let the Origin Dagger move.
And every time it moved, something about Su Ren faded.
A memory. A pulse. A possibility.
And when the final strike came, Kaelith didn’t slash or stab. He placed the blade into Su Ren’s chest, slow and precise, like returning a puzzle piece to where it had always belonged.
There was no scream. No final roar. Only silence, as Su Ren’s heart, divine and burning, shattered inward and extinguished itself.
For the first time in 2,200 years, Kaelith killed a god.
And as Su Ren’s lifeless form collapsed into starlight, the Ancient Pavilion groaned around them, as if the very laws that held the universe together had been betrayed.