Global Gods : Skill-Resonance Awakened

Chapter 392: Panic in The Real Void

While Sunny was blissfully weaving the threads of hundereds of multiverses into his soul and Allegra was beginning her century long physical metamorphosis in the God-Maker Realm, the atmosphere in the Real Void had shifted from frantic to utterly bewildered.

In the shimmering halls of Lady Sansa's palace, the aura of the Beyonder's presence had suddenly disappeared. It was as if a dark cloud had been scoured from the sky by a sudden, violent wind.

"Father, the Beyonder is gone," Sansa said, her voice steady despite the adrenaline still humming in her veins.

She looked at her father's face, which was etched with the lines of a century's worth of worry accumulated in a few hours.

She knew that while she had negotiated for a year of time, the heart of a father does not sit still. To Samson, every second his daughter's world was under siege was a second he spent imagining her ruin.

"What?" Samson's voice was a low boom of disbelief. Without waiting for a second word, he cast his gaze toward the coordinates of Sansa's inner world.

While no one, not even a High Royal, could peer into the specifics of another's soul-space without permission, the Aura of a beyonder was a loud, unmistakable stain on the void.

Samson reached out with his senses, feeling for that vibration. He found nothing. The space around the bubble was clear, vibrating only with the healthy, rhythmic pulse of Sansa's own life-force.

He let out a breath he seemed to have been holding since the crisis began, his shoulders finally dropping from their defensive hunch.

"Your Gods are truly exceptional, Sansa," Samson said, his voice thick with a mixture of pride and genuine shock. "They managed to neutralize a Beyonder, a race that the High Court considers an existential peer to our own strength. To do so without external intervention... it is unheard of."

"It is only because of your teachings, Father," Sansa replied with a soft, melodic chuckle, masking the frantic beating of her heart. "I only applied the principles of resilience you instilled in me."

"Heh! If that were true, my own inner world wouldn't have required my direct hand the last time a minor scavenger breached the veil," Samson countered, his eyes shining with admiration. "Your lifeforms are special, Sansa. They possess a spark I haven't seen in ages."

He paused, his brow furrowing as he looked at the shrunken size of her inner world.

"However... I noticed a discrepancy. Even after the Beyonder's aura vanished, thousands of multiverses within your bubble have been... removed. It's as if they evaporated into thin air. Was this the final spite of the creature? Did it consume them before it fell?"

Inside Sansa's mind, her thoughts accelerated to a thousand times their normal speed. She was a High Royal, and her brain functioned like a quantum engine.

In a fraction of a second, she simulated a hundred different excuses. If she blamed the Beyonder, her father might worry that the creature was still alive in a different form and dive into her world to finish the job. If she blamed a spatial anomaly, he would call for a team of professional Nihilum members to inspect her soul-core.

She couldn't tell him about Cosmos. Not yet. To reveal her nephew now would trigger a cascade of questions she wasn't ready to answer; questions about his origins, his forbidden bloodline, and why she had hidden this Chosen One from the family for so long.

She looked her father in the eye, choosing the only path that remained: the truth, wrapped in a veil.

"Father," she said, her voice filled with a quiet, burning conviction. "I cannot give you the details of those lost multiverses right now. But I ask you to trust me. It was not the doing of the Beyonder, nor is it a loss that harms me. On the contrary... what happened to those worlds is the foundation of my future. It is a beneficial evolution."

Samson looked at his daughter for a long, silent moment. He saw the fire in her eyes, a resolve that reminded him painfully of her mother.

He didn't see the shifty gaze of a liar; he saw the guarded secret of her daughter. He walked toward her, his heavy, warm hand patting her head with a tenderness that made her throat tighten.

"I believe in you, my daughter," Samson whispered, pulling her into a brief, protective hug. "Whatever you are building, do it with pride. Your father will always be the shield at your back."

Sansa smiled, a genuine ray of warmth breaking through her anxiety. But then, her ears twitched. A cold, familiar presence was approaching the door. Her smile didn't fade; it sharpened.

"Oh! Verion," she said as the door slid open. "You can return to your dark rifts now. The problem is solved. The Beyonder has been... taken care of."

"Really?" Verion's voice was like silk stretched over a razor. He walked into the hall, his eyes immediately darting toward the space where Sansa's inner world was tethered.

Like Samson, he probed for the Beyonder's signature. When he found only the clean, violet hum of a healthy bubble, his pupils contracted into thin, reptilian slits.

He looked at Samson, his face a mask of suspicion. "Elder Samson... I was under the impression we were to move as a unit. Did you decide to act alone?"

"Don't look at me like that, young man," Samson replied, a smug grin appearing beneath his glowing mustache. "I didn't lift a finger. My daughter's lifeforms handled the threat while we were busy debating in the hall."

Verion almost choked on the thin air of the palace. His mind reeled. He had guided that Beyonder personally. He knew its powers.

For Cosmos to kill a Beyonder was a feat that defied every law of the Real Void. He turned his gaze to Sansa, his expression shifting into a hollow, practiced mask of congratulation.

"Incredible," Verion whispered, his voice dripping with fake honey. "Truly, my beloved, you have nurtured a miracle. I would dearly like to know the details of the combat. Perhaps I can train my own Demon Gods to emulate such efficiency."

Samson, oblivious to the hidden daggers in Verion's words, simply patted his daughter's shoulder one last time. "I will leave you youngsters to your celebration. Time is a great healer; perhaps this victory will bring you two closer."

With a final nod, he vanished into a ripple of white light.

The moment Samson was gone, the temperature in the room dropped thirty degrees. The mask fell from Verion's face, leaving behind a cold, lethal arrogance.

"Enough games, Sansa," Verion ordered, his voice echoing with the authority he used on his demon slaves. "How did that mongrel Cosmos manage to kill a Beyonder? Who helped him? Did you smuggle an artifact from the Royal Armory into your world?"

Sansa leaned back against a marble pillar, crossing her arms. She let out a long, loud laugh that echoed through the silent hall.

"I don't believe I am obliged to give you a single scrap of information, Verion. And besides... shouldn't you be more concerned with your own world? Didn't you feel it? The snapped thread of Discord?"

She tilted her head, her eyes sparkling with amusement. "Your favorite creation, the Lord of Discord... he's dead, Verion. Or as close to dead as a Lord can be. What are you going to do now that your best guard dog has been turned into stardust by a mongrel?"

Verion's face turned a violent, bruised red. The aura of the Demonic Realm flared around him, causing the floorboards to crack and hiss. "Do not be so confident, Sansa," he hissed, his voice trembling with suppressed rage.

"Even if he slew that beast and humbled Deimos, it changes nothing. The bubble is still a cage. I will have his head, and I will have yours, the moment the Court looks away. He is a fluke. And flukes are eventually crushed."

He turned on his heel, his cape snapping like a whip as he stormed out of the hall, his breath coming in ragged huffs of fury.

"Heh... we will see," Sansa whispered to the empty room. But as she stood alone, her smile faltered. Verion was the monster who had engineered the death of her sister and her brother-in-law. His threats were not empty; they were physical weights.

She maintained her amused expression for the sake of the walls, but inwardly, she was already praying for Sunny to grow faster.

While the royals bickered, the Old Freaks of the High Courtroom, the ancient elders who spent eons observing the balance of the Real Void, were going through their own cycle of shock.

"Those two are exceptionally efficient," one elder whispered, leaning over a pool of scrying water. "They resolved such a big crisis in less than an hour. Verion and Samson are a formidable pair."

"And yet, look at the displacement," another elder noted, pointing to the flickering dots on the map of Sansa's world.

"Thousands of multiverses have still vanished. I suspect the Beyonder's hunger was more ravenous than we initially estimated. It must have consumed those worlds before it was struck down. We should note this as a failure of our early detection."

But as they spoke, a new ripple appeared on the map. In the silence of the bubble, another multiverse suddenly flickered and vanishedz, the unmistakable signature of a beyonder eating or destroying a multiverse.

The courtroom went silent.

"Wait," the Head Elder said, his eyes widening as he leaned forward. "Is the Beyonder not dead? How is it hiding its aura while still feeding? This is impossible!"

"Perhaps it is a secondary infection?" another suggested, his voice rising in panic. "A parasitic Beyonder?"

"No conclusions yet!" the Head Elder commanded. "We wait for confirmation from Verion and Elder Samson. If the displacement continues, we may have to quarantine the entire bubble."

They didn't know that the parasite was currently sitting on a throne of violet starlight, laughing as he integrated his newest prize.

Sunny had no idea he was causing a heart attack in the highest levels of the Real Void; he was too busy enjoying the taste of a thousand new multiverses.