Bro, I'm not an Undead!

Chapter 1141: Mors, Serene Grace (1)



When Caxellac had said that he knew all about the Null Verse, at least its most important bits - which barred things like the Null Remnants - he had not been lying. This knowledge did not come with the package of his Authority. It was something he had attained because of his search for power and niche skills over the millions of years he had been alive before rising to stand at the peak of the Null Verse.

Along with all this knowledge came the mastery of different forms of Null Life Essence.

There were nearly endless variations of Null Life Essence, and Replicus, even before reaching the Fourth Tier of power had been privy to some of them.

It seemed, as the Warmoth's Progeny discovered, that there was a great significance in simply knowing how to make your innate, basic Null Life change its traits to match those of some of these other odder forms of Essence.

Replicus' curved glowing eyes bulged as the Null Devil King uttered:

"Mors, Serene Grace... Erudite."

Immediately, the Warmoth's Progeny activated [Maximum Neutral], coating his body with it, and retrieved Beyrmir and his new host. They bled into him as though it were the most natural thing ever.

Replicus seemed to have done this in a very timely fashion because, all of a sudden, around Caxellac's badly damaged and transmuted body, an invisible sphere of influence exploded outward at a treacherously concerning speed.

Everything caught within it was turned... tranquil.

The splashing of the ebony sea's waves stopped and it, as a whole, rested. No sound came from it. Nothing within it made a sound.

The wind was made to turn silent and still as well; one would think it did not exist at all.

This shattering influence carried over to Edagon and drowned it all in silence and stillness - in serenity.

All moving figures on the continent lost their voices and even the finer, more complex details about them, the sparking of their nerves, the twitching of their muscles, and all was forced shut - forced to relax.

The bounding influence then rushed further and reached the boundary that Actuass had made using Brunt Divide; the evidence of his decision to split Aigas. This was where the shocking influence of tranquility stopped. If not for this, it would have expanded further to touch upon Opungale and perhaps even Feinheath.

Surprisingly, despite its uncompromising nature, this ovular influence failed to touch a certain, fourth continent on Aigas located to the far West - Amanas. Somehow, its influence was restricted from bounding further.

But this was of no concern to Caxellac.

The range of his Serene Grace had been established and that was all that mattered.

And thus... he began.

Replicus, feeling the immense strain on his mana reserves because of how much [Neutral Maximum] was clashing, rather losing, against Caxellac's influence, was smitten aghast when he saw a soul rise from Caxellac's body.

It was vast, wide and brilliant.

There was grace to it, a sharpness and regalness that put Actuass' expanded and deformed soul to shame despite it, in its final state, having been larger.

'What is this...?' Replicus asked.

Despite Caxellac's soul leaving his body, it still stood firm and a myriad of different-coloured Null Life Essences exploded from it one by one in tremendous volumes.

As this occurred - within fractions of time even Replicus wasn't sure he could denote - what looked a twisted vortex of dark, slender tree branches crookedly formed behind Caxellac and started to widen and expand at a treacherous speed!

As soon it towered sixty meters above Caxellac's body and soul, Replicus felt himself start to float upward.

'This feeling...' he thought. He recognised it immediately, not because of what it was, but because of what it lacked.

Gravity had left the chat.

An odd sense of loss then smote Replicus. It was as though he existed nowhere fixed within reality; a truly uncomfortable feeling indeed.

Time had been erased within the whole of Caxellac's range.

And a moment later, the air, ambient mana, the strands that formed shapes and builds were also undone such that Replicus watched the foundation of Aigas get torn apart.

Maybe it was because he now knew how a Blessing felt and estimated how much more impactful a Rule would feel by comparison that he managed to tell that the Rules that kept Aigas afloat were being shredded one by one!

One of his phantoms, manifested as a copy of him beside the original, unseen by anyone other than Replicus, caught sight of the entirety of Edagon turning into a net of glowing, innumerable strings that unravelled and whipped out like some kind of severed, taut rubber bands!

With a poof, it was all gone!

Replicus didn't even know how to react to this.

What had happened to everyone on Edagon then?

Where they deconstructed, reduced to nothing but strands of vague, divine string?

Dark thoughts poured into Replicus' head, but they only got worse.

He soon realised that this was...

This was all just a prelude to the real attack!

A telling sign was the growing vortex of twisted, bark-like material. It started to change form, each individual branch of it - of which they were too many to count - adopted a meaningful shape that constantly contorted and twitched.

Replicus saw one that looked like a field of odd, thorny roses of red tartan.

He thought he saw one shift into a mass of figures that looked a lot like Caxellac - pale, pasty and dark-eyed - all of them knit together like some twisted doll.

He also saw...

...!

He also saw a figure that looked suspiciously familiar even though he was certain he had never seen it before. It was gigantic, or rather, it looked so, its size limited by its portrayal on the branch of the vortex. It looked like a vast, impressively chiselled humanoid rippling with gold and grey for its ceramic skin tone and vast volumes of fur respectively. It had massive limbs, all latched with humongous, heavy-looking bracers that spilled torrents upon torrents of what looked liquid, lightning, shimmering in yellowish-red. Two tusks nearly twice as large as its whole body brutally tore from its wide maw, and in that moment, as Replicus gazed at it in a stupor, it gave a silent, but impactful roar.

This... This had to be the Colossus Warmoth, Replicus imagined!

It had to be it!

Well, he was only half-right.

None in the current time within Serenity's Treasure had met the Warmoth, but few pieced together records from old times and produced an image that suggested a portion of its full appearance. This was what Replicus saw emerge behind Caxellac.

This was to say, this was what Caxellac recalled and imprinted in his very being as am idoliser

of the myth-like legend.

Everything manifested on the branches was all the things that made him, him.

As the set of branches continued to ripple out and grow, towering higher and higher... Serenity's voice suddenly came to Replicus.

"Brace yourself, Skullius," she said warningly. "This next part is what may erase you from

this world, permanently."

Replicus didn't need telling.

He already felt it.

In the next instant, it was though he was squeezed into a ball by the immense pressure that followed. It hardly seemed as though the Warmoth's Progeny had enough mana to sustain his life through [Neutral Maximum], and this was all before he felt a litany of effects, too many to count at first, bombard him all at once!