HPxLOTM: A Wizard's Path to Divinity-Chapter 717: The Application of Dimensions

Deep within the entanglement of the Chaos Sea and the River of Eternal Darkness.

The clone Edward had left behind suddenly shifted from illusory to real. He looked in a certain direction, and in the rapid turn of his thoughts, layer upon layer of illusory doors appeared in succession. In the blink of an eye, the main body and the clone completed their fusion.

Yet almost immediately, those illusory doors were stained pitch-black. Under the erosion of bacteria and plague, they shattered and dissipated at astonishing speed. Cheek stepped out from a mirror, smiling as She looked at Edward.

"Meet again."

She glanced at the "Gate of Light" in the void, which had grown noticeably larger, then walked barefoot across the emptiness as though treading solid ground.

"I really didn’t expect you to give me such a big surprise."

Edward’s expression tightened. He was puzzled as to why Cheek showed no sign at all of contamination or erosion despite being surrounded by the three Sefirot. But the next instant, realisation struck him—

She had already completed her fusion with the Mirrored Original Creator. Although that was still far from the true Original Creator, perhaps She could rely on that terrifying level of existence to resist the pollution of the Sefirot—just like him.

Without hesitation, he flashed to the front of the Gate of Light and tried to Seal the space, followed immediately by consecutive applications of Fooling, while simultaneously triggering an emotional detonation within Cheek using the abilities he had devoured from the Abyss card.

Bang!

Cheek’s body exploded violently, turning into fragments of mirrors. When She reappeared, She was standing inside a mirror, staring at Edward from afar.

"As long as that Gate of Light is destroyed, that’s enough, right?"

It sounded like a rhetorical question. She nodded to Herself.

"Then let’s—"

Before She could finish speaking, Edward raised his hand and slapped Her flat into a jpg. Then he snapped his fingers.

Ancient stone pillars rose from the ground, magnificent palaces manifested, and boundless grayish-white fog surged in from all directions—

Edward had constructed Sefirah Castle.

At that moment, Cheek returned to normal. She abruptly spread Her arms, and the world behind Her suddenly became layered and overlapping, illusory and hazy, as though revealing a tunnel composed of countless mirrors. Deep within that tunnel, a streak of light was rapidly bursting outward, and together with the entire Mirror World, it counterattacked, covering and devouring the Sefirah Castle Edward had constructed.

Under normal circumstances, Sefirah Castle, as one of the strongest of the three Great Sefirot—even if it was fake—would naturally fear no Mirror World. But once the Mirrored Original Creator was involved, that was no longer guaranteed.

Edward made a decisive judgment.

He caused [Space Fragmentation] to rapidly form a miniature black hole. Carrying irresistible gravitational force, it tore and shredded everything around it before swallowing it all in, even affecting the Mirror World behind Cheek.

Immediately after, Edward opened an illusory door leading to the Sun, forcibly grafting a violently erupting solar flare directly onto Cheek and the Mirror World behind Her—

Unfortunately, without the reinforcement of authority, the grafting could only be partial. Its power was far inferior to that of a true solar flare.

With a thunderous crash, the Mirror World collapsed and shattered.

Cheek’s body once again exploded into mirrors. But the shattered fragments immediately converged, rapidly expanding and enlarging. In an instant, they transformed into a gigantic Gorgon, her head writhing with venomous serpents. Countless black tentacles writhed around Her body, each one opening a pair of crimson eyes filled with boundless malice as they stared at Edward.

Then all the mouths opened at once.

"We meet again..."

This time, the one speaking was unmistakably the Mirrored Original Creator.

She slowly spread Her scale-covered arms. The serpents on Her head hissed in unison as they stared at Edward, and an authority capable of petrifying even time and space descended in an instant.

Edward did not hesitate. With a wave of his hand, he opened an illusory door that shielded the entire space. Behind the door lay the profound depths of the starry sky, causing that authority to be diverted in its entirety into the cosmos.

The Gorgon was not surprised.

She slowly extended an arm toward Edward’s direction and gently clenched Her five fingers.

The authority of calamity surged forth, collapsing the massive illusory door first. Then, mountains crumbled, the earth split apart, tsunamis rose, meteors fell, floods surged, blizzards raged, plagues spread—

All manner of disasters erupted simultaneously.

They overlapped, influenced one another, intertwined, and unified, forming a systematic, holistic apocalypse.

Yet just before all the disasters could fully erupt, they abruptly halted.

Instead, they fused together, forming a state resembling "chaos."

Cheek smiled faintly. Curling Her finger, She lightly flicked it in Edward’s direction—and toward the Gate of Light.

In that instant—

The fused apocalyptic disaster skipped the entire process of eruption and manifested directly as its result, detonating instantaneously.

An intense, lethal sense of crisis surged forward. The spirituality within Edward’s body trembled violently.

He did not know whether this strike would be enough to destroy the Gate of Light formed from the Uniqueness of the Door pathway—

But he knew one thing for certain.

He himself would not survive it.

Edward immediately seized the constructed "Sefirah Castle" and hurled it forward as a shield, blocking the first wave of the Apocalyptic Chaos—

—but a fake was still a fake. The moment the two made contact, the constructed Sefirah Castle collapsed with a thunderous crash and was rapidly annihilated.

Edward did not stop moving. He repeatedly slapped toward the Gorgon and the "Apocalyptic Chaos," attempting to flatten them into two dimensions. Unfortunately, the attempt failed.

He then once again used [Grafting], trying to graft this apocalyptic chaotic power into the starry sky. Yet he quickly discovered that without the reinforcement of authority, the grafting ability could not be completed in full.

He tried to raise an illusory door again, but it shattered violently before it could even take shape.

At that point, only one method remained.

Behind Edward, enormous and illusory gears roared into motion, rotating clockwise. His aura expanded explosively in an instant, completing the reversal from Sequence 1 to Sequence 0 in the blink of an eye.

He rapidly finished assimilating the information of Sequence 0. In the fleeting instant before the "Sefirah Castle" was completely annihilated, a phantom, separated "layer" flashed through his eyes.

Everything around him seemed to be overlaid with a richly colored, hazy, illusory projection—

Only Edward himself and the Gate of Light (the Uniqueness) were different in colour, standing out in stark disharmony from their surroundings.

"!!!"

At that very moment, the Apocalyptic Chaos arrived in full.

It erupted almost directly against Edward and the Gate of Light, pressed right up against their "faces."

There was no violent explosion, no dazzling effects, not even a sound—

This was not because it lacked power, but because it was so overwhelmingly powerful that it destroyed sound, colour, and even the image itself.

Even a true god, if struck head-on by such an attack, would likely suffer severe damage.

Yet Edward, standing at the very centre of the apocalyptic chaos, suffered not the slightest harm.

This was the new ability brought about by Sequence 0—

A further application of dimensions.

Edward could isolate himself—or a target—from the current space and time.

Put simply, Edward and Cheek, along with Her attack, were no longer on the same "layer" at all, unable to interfere with one another.

Once Cheek’s attack ended, Edward returned to the original dimension. He extended a hand and gently pressed toward the Gorgon.

She immediately felt the surrounding space collapse rapidly, while time was stretched infinitely. In the blink of an eye, She was about to be trapped inside a perfectly rectangular "space."

In Edward’s eyes, the Gorgon had already vanished.

What appeared before him was merely a book, its cover depicting the Gorgon.

Compared to [Dimensional Reduction] at Sequence 1, which leaned more toward the physical level, the [Dimensional Reduction] of Sequence 0 had already risen to the conceptual level.

With a wave of his hand, Edward caused the Gorgon’s book to flip rapidly—

—but it flipped from back to front.

Each page was densely packed with text, accompanied by illustrations.

As the book continued to flip backwards, the illustrated Gorgon constantly changed. First, She reverted to Cheek before merging with the Mirrored Original Creator. Then the transformation continued.

After a long stretch of pages, Chik’s appearance and temperament suddenly underwent a subtle change—

Though only a slight change, She was no longer an existence symbolising "ultimate yin beauty."

In other words, She had fallen from the throne of Sequence 0 to Sequence 1.

This was the true essence of the [Regression] ability.

It treated any target as a book whose pages could be flipped at will. It was far more than merely causing a temporary drop in Sequence or forcing actions to regress.

Once the book was fully flipped backwards, it would be regarded as erasing that person from the timeline entirely.

Of course, such a terrifying ability demanded an equally terrifying price.

Whether a true Sequence 0 could endure it, Edward did not know. But he himself was fundamentally still only Sequence 1.

In that instant, his spirituality and an enormous amount of vitality were completely drained. If he continued, even the best possible outcome would be nothing more than a mutual destruction—one-for-one at the absolute limit.

So Edward hesitated.

Though it lasted only a single instant, Cheek—or rather, the Mirrored Original Creator—seized the opportunityand leapt out from the book’s dimension.

She stared in shock at a woman-shaped statue seemingly carved from white bone that had separated from Her body—a Sequence 1 Beyonder characteristic.

"What kind of ability is this?!" She cried out in alarm.

Then, Her expression abruptly turned cold.

"It’s nothing more than a form of control over dimensions and time. Once we become the true Original Creator, we’ll naturally be able to do this just as easily."

"But I’m only Sequence 1 now—how am I supposed to fight Him?" Chik muttered.

"Heh. You are you, and I am me. You’re Sequence 1—but I’m not!!"

The moment the words fell, She once again transformed into the gigantic Gorgon.

With every movement, various apocalyptic disasters surged forth once more. What She wielded was still the core authority of the Demoness pathway—the superior authority of "Apocalypse," capable of skipping all processes and acting directly upon the target, returning all things to chaos and reverting them to the primordial state.

"I’d like to see how you dodge this time."

This outcome was completely beyond Edward’s expectations.

He had never imagined that Cheek’s fusion with the Mirrored Original Creator was not a complete unification into a single entity, but rather the coexistence of two "individuals."

Sequence 1 Cheek, combined with the status and power of the Mirrored Original Creator, was actually not much weaker than before.

Edward grit his teeth and stamped his foot.

Without another word, he decisively grabbed the Gate of Light (Uniqueness) and—under Her stunned gaze—teleported away instantly.

If I can’t beat you, can’t I at least run?!

———

In the Astral World.

The moment Edward emerged, he was struck by a spine-chilling aura head-on—

It was the contamination and erosion of the Outer Deities from the starry sky.

It was the omen of the end of the world.

When he looked up, he saw the distant sky dominated by that hideous rift.

On the other side of the rift, pairs of eyes stared out. Fingers hooked over the edges of the breach, tearing at it as vast Outer Deity bodies were forcibly squeezed through.

This overwhelming shock hit Edward head-on, leaving him frozen in place.

Only a single thought echoed in his mind:

"I’m cooked."

———

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