Myriad Devils-Chapter 215: The strongest Empyrean
"Ho..."
Anon opened his eyes. That pair of golden suns, encompassed by rings of dark fire, and split by vertical, deathly pupils...
These eyes were even more frightening than before.
Under the weight of an Empyrean’s gaze, and of a creature that achieved pseudo-Supreme mastery, this was a gaze that caused the space within its peripheral vision to suffer under the barrage of slashes and cuts.
He perceived Empyrean Eclipse’s shock, but he perceived more than just that.
If before, there was a strange power that obscured his senses, under his blade soul, this previously imperceptible power was instantly cleaved.
Anon shifted his gaze toward the earth above and in the direction of a spiritual city.
Insignificant...
At this point, Anon was close, too close.
Soon, he would be leaving this world, so such a spiritual city was now insignificant to him. They did not desire a mad ancestor, so the strongest Empyrean would not pay them any heed.
Indeed, the strongest.
The previous strongest was insignificant.
A relic of the past.
Empyrean Eclipse had a pair of peerless-grade divine blades. They caught Anon’s attention, and it was these blades that he would wield from now on.
As for the Empyrean himself?
Anon took a single glance at Eclipse and uttered, "Insignificant."
The Empyrean frowned upon hearing this.
His eyes were already bloodshot, and his breathing was ragged.
He glared toward Anon, not daring to believe, but unable to refuse what occurred before his eyes.
This thing, this anomaly, achieved pseudo-Supreme mastery over the blade. The total time, one hour and three minutes...
"You are no human, no daemon... anomaly, An anomaly!" Empyrean Eclipse muttered this along with several more incoherent utterings.
Then he realized.
This anomaly did not even have a pair of dual blades. To boot, even if he did, this anomaly would only be on an equivalent level.
Realizing this, Eclipse’s eyes showed traces of madness.
Anon saw this and sighed.
"This is why you only have a spark, and this is especially why that spark has died, the light faded, and the flame has been extinguished."
The dual blades strapped to his back loosened with a click and fell into his grasp. Empyrean Eclipse paid little heed to Anon’s ramblings.
His aura intensified, causing the crimson sea to churn with turbulence. He lunged toward Anon with his dual blades.
As they slashed at him, Anon perceived the illusory twin blades behind Empyrean Eclipse’s figure.
These illusory twin blades lunged at Anon as well; however, whether it was these manifested blades or the twin blades in Eclipse’s grasp, cracks had begun to form along their bodies.
Anon was not worried; there was no need to be.
The blades penetrated his flesh, and the following blade apparitions obliterated his figure. Anon, now a blood river, had already appeared on the other side of the battle cloud.
Leaping out of the river, he looked at Eclipse, who instantly perceived his aura and stared toward him in something akin to a stunned silence.
"Though I chose to abandon those grimoires, I’ve already mastered their magic. I’m not like you, who holds so much prejudice that you refuse to learn more, you who limits yourself, your existence, restraining yourself to the limited thinking of mortal existence."
Eclipse’s face cringed with disgust.
He growled under his ragged breaths, "What do you know?!"
Lunging towards Anon, he roared, "As a human, how can you say with pride that you’ve mastered daemonic magic?! I refuse to wield that impure, corrupted magic. I pursue the supremacy of the bladed path! I’ve abandoned everything for the bladed path!"
White glowing patterns etched themselves across the entire battlefield, and under the crushing might of Eclipse’s blades, Anon’s image was shattered when faced against the blade’s might.
"Unfair, your existence is unfair! My whole life. I’ve poured my entire life into the bladed way! An anomaly like you goes against the natural order. Death! I will grant you that." Eclipse cried.
Flashes of white lightning crackled far away from Eclipse, manifesting into Anon’s figure. There was a wide grin plastered across his face, and his deathly eyes glowed with mystery.
"So you’re admitting that you’re only a jealous fool? What humanity? What daemons?! You do not care for any of that. You just wish for others to follow the weaponry path, because it is the only path where you have a sliver of talent."
"And then, when someone appears, a person in possession of much more talent in the weaponry path than you, you can’t bear it, you bestow the title of anomaly, and you strike them down before they can grow! How laughable."
"You are two parts more daemonic than the daemons you despise!"
His words caused Eclipse’s face to twist even more. The twin blades suffered innumerable cracks and were on the brink of shattering.
The battle cloud of hundreds of thousands of meters was unable to hinder him and his pursuit, but Anon’s words pierced into the deepest parts of his consciousness.
Back then, the strongest Empyrean wielded daemonic magic. He was a contracted human wielding the power of an apocalypse.
Empyrean Eclipse saw it all unfold before his eyes once again.
He, a native of this world, after over a thousand battles, and mastering his bladed way, nurtured an Empyrean cloud.
Assaulted by the world for refusing daemonic magic, he found himself on a battle cloud that had the strongest Empyrean of the past standing before him.
Against that human apostle, his blades were insignificant.
The human apostle watched him with a pitying gaze.
Such a gaze, from a human who gave up his humanity, infuriated a young Eclipse. In this battle, he attained pseudo-Supreme mastery and nurtured a blade soul that proclaimed...
For transcendence, for eternity, for revenge!
Such a blade soul would not break; it would not waver even in the slightest. Maybe it all began from the very establishment of his blade soul.
Even after attaining pseudo-Supreme mastery, he battled the human apostle for thirty years before a victor emerged.
What strength!
That human apostle did not wish to battle, and even after a young Empyrean Eclipse declined this path of peace, that human apostle had still allowed him to grow beyond true mastery.
Maybe this was why, upon hearing Anon’s first words, Empyrean Eclipse gave Anon time.
Little time, but time nonetheless.
At least, it was enough time for Anon.
The karma from back then weighed heavily in his heart, preventing him from achieving Supreme mastery. He did not give Anon time because he was kind, but to acquire a free conscious after slaying Anon, a young Empyrean Eclipse.
Now, just like back then, the strongest Empyrean, falling to a young Empyrean.
Eclipse chuckled.
"The dimension’s consciousness is so wicked. All I wanted was to achieve the Supreme way, and now, I fall just like he had, back then."
Anon scoffed, "Instead of using me, who achieved pseudo-Supreme mastery in little over an hour, as a whetstone and your foundation to achieve Supreme mastery, you instead lost yourself in inferiority."
"Do not die thinking you were given an unjust end." Anon eyed Eclipse, finding pleasure in this Empyrean’s deplorable state.
"You were flawed from the very beginning."
Meeting Anon’s gloating eyes, Empyrean Eclipse, his body shattering under the rampant energies inflicted into him by a familiar blade pierced into his chest, said, "Do not revel in ecstasy."
"Just as this world got rid of me, it will get rid of an anomaly like you. The primordial drifter is a sick joke meant to destroy the minds of geniuses." Eclipse faded away.
In the end, he still finished with the last words.
Anon chuckled darkly.
He did not seek out a battle of words with a dead man.
He who had been defeated had false ideologies that could not combat the truth. This was the destiny of the defeated.
Still, Anon did not disagree with Empyrean Eclipse’s thoughts, "You are likely correct," he said, "But your world has no hold over a visitor such as myself."
Anon chaotically swung the twin blades.
There were many spiritual thoughts of Empyreans. These were the pieces of their soul that walked on the Earth above.
A new Empyrean did not draw attention; however, an Empyrean that defeated the strongest Empyrean was worthy of interest.
Anon’s chaotic swings cleaved away at the spiritual gazes that pried into this battle cloud.
"You’ve seen everything, so now scurry away. Do not interrupt this Empyrean anymore." Anon’s deathly gaze pierced into the earth above.
His voice, containing the complexities of an Empyrean soul, resounded across the far reaches of the earth, even shaking the spiritual city.
Empyrean gazes swiftly hurried away.
After all, who would save them when they were put against this anomaly, and because they didn’t retract their gaze at the time, he refuses to suppress the resonance.
Someone who so easily slayed Empyrean Eclipse was not to be trifled with.
Anon sighed.
He observed the dual blades in his grasp.
To others, the dual blades, with gems adorning the two pommels, darker than ink hilts, and ruby-colored, fragmented bodies, would appear to be useless weapons.
But for him, this was good enough.
So what if he was shattered?
So what if he broke?
His emotions were forged from a single desire.
Anon’s very existence was built on this foundational desire.
Even if he, Anon Xerxes, was to see oblivion and his will was destroyed, he would claw his way back from hell, reconstruct his will, and continue on his path.
A shattered blade?
It was enough to walk a burdensome path!
Enough for slaughter!
