Dimensional Keeper: All My Skills Are at Level 100

Chapter 1326  Final Battle - 13

"You have to do something about this attack," the clone said urgently, his voice already fading. "If you do not, everyone dies."

The clone smiled faintly, relief flickering across his face as his body began to dissolve into particles of light and shadow.

"I have done all I can."

Then he vanished completely.

Time surged forward again.

The pause shattered.

The battle resumed.

Max stood frozen for a single heartbeat, the flood of futures forced into his mind still echoing violently in his thoughts, before his gaze snapped back to Mark as time resumed its merciless flow. The catastrophic attack was already in motion, its existence pressing down on reality itself, and Max could feel it approaching not as an object but as an unavoidable conclusion.

"I have to stop this," Max muttered as his fingers tightened around his sword until his knuckles went white.

He understood it clearly now. No ordinary attack would work. No concept bound to the laws of this world could stand against something that erased existence itself. The only way to counter an attack of this magnitude was with something that could not be erased, something that stood above cause, effect, and even time. An attack born from the essence of a Cosmic Path.

But that was the problem.

Max did not have a Cosmic Path.

He was not even close.

"Damn it… think," Max urged himself as his heartbeat thundered in his ears. "What does a Cosmic Path need?"

A direction.

That was the foundation of everything beyond concepts. In the Divine Realm, concepts were merely tools. A Cosmic Path was the will behind them, the direction that allowed laws to evolve endlessly without collapsing into contradiction. But Max had never created one. He had only studied them, only understood their theory through his master's teachings.

The attack drew closer.

Reality trembled.

"What direction do I take my Severing Sword?" Max thought frantically. "Space? No. Space is subjective. If I sever space, then time, causality, and existence itself will remain beyond my reach."

His mind raced through possibilities at terrifying speed.

"Time?" he rejected instantly. "Time is even more restrictive. A blade bound to time will falter the moment something exists beyond it."

Elements were worse. Flame, lightning, ice, darkness. Every element was an expression of reality, not its foundation. Any path formed from them would inherit their limitations.

"I cannot evolve the Severing Sword through any element," Max realized grimly. "That would cage it. That would make it specialize, not transcend."

The power closing in on him was no longer distant. It pressed against his senses like an oncoming end, a final verdict written into existence.

"What does Severing Sword truly represent?" Max forced himself to ask, pushing past panic. "It does not cut objects. It does not cut energy. It does not even cut laws."

His eyes widened slightly.

"It cuts relationships."

Severing Sword did not destroy things. It severed the connection between things. Cause from effect. Existence from meaning. Law from authority.

"That is it," Max breathed.

A Cosmic Path could not be built on what things were made of. It had to be built on what made things exist in relation to each other.

"I should not guide my sword through space, time, or any element," Max concluded as clarity finally pierced through the chaos. "I should guide it through separation itself."

His grip on the sword steadied.

"A path that severs without discrimination. A path that does not care what stands before it. A path that does not acknowledge laws, causality, or existence as obstacles."

The attack loomed, seconds away from completion.

Max raised his sword slowly, his breathing calming instead of quickening.

"I will not walk an elemental path," he said softly. "I will walk the path of absolute severance."

At that moment, something within Max shifted.

It was not power.

It was his emotions.

Max did not know whether he would regret this choice in the future, nor did he have the luxury to consider consequences beyond the next few seconds.

The attack was already descending, reality was already being erased, and hesitation would mean the end of everything. If there was a path to walk, then it had to be walked now.

Throughout his journey, Max had experienced emotions in their most extreme forms. Happiness that felt blinding. Sadness that dragged him into endless darkness. Rage that burned like a storm devouring the sky. Despair that hollowed him out until nothing remained. Love that gave him strength and hate that sharpened his will.

He had never truly liked these emotions, especially after gaining an artificial soul that amplified everything he felt a thousandfold, yet he could not deny the truth. These emotions had shaped him more than any cultivation art, more than any inheritance, more than any law he had comprehended.

Anger never came to him as irritation. It arrived as a raging cloud that consumed reason. Joy was never mild. It burst forth uncontrollably. Sadness did not linger quietly. It crushed him until even breathing felt heavy.

For a long time, Max had seen this as a flaw, a side effect he had to endure. Now, standing before annihilation, he understood something he had never considered before.

Those emotions were not weaknesses.

They were his truest constant.

If he tried to build his Severing Sword upon space, it would be bound by distance. If he chose time, it would be bound by sequence. If he chose elements, it would be bound by form.

But emotions were different. Emotions existed in all beings. They existed beyond laws, beyond worlds, beyond even reason itself. They were not subject to causality. They created causality.

A sword forged from emotion would not care what stood before it.

It would sever gods and mortals alike.

Max took a deep breath.

For the first time in a long while, he did not fight his emotions. Instead, he embraced them fully. Every memory surged through him at once. The joy of growing stronger. The despair of loss. The fury at betrayal. The loneliness of standing alone. The fear of failure. The determination to protect.

Every emotion he had ever experienced since awakening poured into his heart, into his artificial soul, and then flowed outward into his sword.

The blade trembled.

Its color changed, no longer silver, no longer black, no longer gold. It turned dark gray, neither light nor shadow, neither alive nor dead. The space around the sword distorted silently, not cracking or tearing, but becoming irrelevant, as if the blade no longer acknowledged its existence.

"My direction for the Cosmic Path of Severing Sword," Max murmured softly, his voice steady despite the apocalypse rushing toward him, "is Emotion Severing Sword."

And then he let go.

In that instant, Max severed every emotion within himself.

The anxiety of stopping Mark's attack vanished. The fleeting joy of realization disappeared. The sorrow left behind by his clone's sacrifice faded into nothingness. There was no anger. No fear. No hope. No despair. Only clarity.

His sword became empty.

And because it was empty, it could sever everything.

Max stepped forward and swung.

There was no flash. No explosion. No roar.

The slash passed through Mark's world erasing attack as if it were mist. It did not collide with it. It did not resist it. It cut the relationship between cause and effect, severing the reason the attack existed before it could reach its conclusion. The erasure unraveled silently, collapsing into nonexistence as if it had never been formed.

The slash continued forward.

It reached Mark.

And then Mark's body split in half once more.

Not torn. Not destroyed. Severed.

"What?" Mark roared, his voice tearing through the broken skies as disbelief finally overwhelmed his madness. He stared at his divided form, at the clean and merciless cut that had split not only his body but the very foundation of his existence. "How could this be possible?" he shouted, rage and panic twisting together as something he had never anticipated took hold of him.

This time, his regeneration did not surge back instantly.

The two halves of his body trembled as divine light flickered weakly between them. Flesh and power began to crawl toward each other at an agonizing pace, so slow that Mark could feel every moment stretch into torment. Minutes passed without meaningful progress. Then more. He realized with horror that it would take hours before his body could fully recover, and even that certainty felt fragile.

Max's sword had not merely wounded him.

It had severed the law of causality itself.

The invisible bond that connected Mark to the crown, the bond that allowed divine authority to flow endlessly into him, had been cut cleanly.

Cause no longer led to effect.

The crown no longer recognized Mark as its bearer. His immortality, once absolute, had been reduced to a fragile echo struggling to assert itself.

"No," Mark muttered hoarsely, his confidence collapsing. "This is impossible…"

Before he could gather his scattered will, a new presence appeared.

Lucien stepped forward calmly, standing between the two separated halves of Mark's body. The chaos of the battlefield did not touch him. His gaming goggles rested over his eyes, reflecting faint streams of unreadable data, while a simple gaming remote sat loosely in his hand as if this were nothing more than another routine action.

He looked at Mark without emotion.

Then he spoke.

"Permanent erase."

The words were soft, almost casual.

Reality responded instantly.

Mark's two halves began to dissolve, not burning, not shattering, but dispersing into countless fragments of existence that unraveled into nothingness. Divine light broke apart like dust. Infernal energy scattered and faded. The remnants of causality that still clung to him snapped one after another, leaving no anchor, no return point, no future where regeneration could occur.

"Impossible!" Mark screamed as his form unraveled, his voice filled with raw terror rather than rage. "How is this possible? I am immortal! I cannot be killed! I am the god of this world! I should not die!"

His cries echoed briefly, then faltered.

The last traces of his presence scattered completely, erased beyond recovery, leaving no soul, no essence, no echo behind. There was no explosion. No final roar. Just absence.

Silence fell.

Where a god had once stood, only the corrupted crown remained, floating lifelessly in the air before Lucien, its dark red glow flickering weakly as if uncertain what it should exist for now that its master was gone.

The immortal crownbearer was dead.

Forever.