Lord of the Truth

Chapter 2501 Break-1

Mid Sector 90—The Starfield Adjacent to the Buffer Zone

"It seems your master has truly gone mad." Asteron spoke calmly with his own tongue, maintaining his composure on the surface, but his heart was trembling violently within his chest.

The sight of that overwhelming golden power was terrifying in itself, and for some inexplicable reason, he could actually feel its presence from nearly ten entire Sectors away. The fact that such power could make itself clearly felt across a distance of that magnitude was already enough on its own to prove the sheer power and frightening intensity Lord Robin possessed.

But breaking the buffer zones established by the Executioner? That wasn't merely difficult in Asteron's eyes; it was nothing more than a dream.

Even the Cosmic Elder himself had been unable to do anything about them, while the Archon and the Ruler of Chaos had never approached them either. Over the countless years since their establishment, the buffer zones had ceased to be something that anyone seriously considered changing and had instead become an established reality carved directly into the very fabric of the universe.

"...Your master is even more arrogant than the rumors claim, and even more prideful than the stories told about the Ruler of Chaos. In all the life I lived before the first catastrophe, I have never seen anyone driven by arrogance and the pursuit of glory and status more than him. But today, in front of everyone watching him, he has allowed that arrogance to possess him excessively and diminish his own worth. In a childish fit of anger, he babbled about something impossible as though merely saying it aloud could make it happen... Once this outburst finally subsides and everyone sees the result for themselves, he will lose his prestige forever, no matter how powerful he actually is."

"Don't speak about Lord Rob— No, don't speak about His Excellency the Breaker that way!" Arkail angrily pointed a finger directly at Asteron, his confidence still burning after everything he had just heard. "If the Breaker says something, he does it. You'll see for yourself with your own eyes. Those buffer zones will crack apart, and passage through them will become saaaafe!!"

Arkail shouted with absolute confidence after the rousing speech he had just heard, sounding as though there wasn't the slightest doubt in his mind, but at the same time, he deliberately left himself a small way out in the event of Robin's inevitable failure to actually accomplish what he had just proclaimed before everyone.

In any case, even if breaking the buffer zones was impossible, that tremendous power they could feel all the way out here, despite the enormous distance separating them from Robin, should at least be enough to—

Rumble

Arkail immediately swallowed the rest of his thoughts... The ground beneath him suddenly seemed as though it were being pulled out from beneath his feet, while the sky hanging above him began to change at the same time, and the distant stars themselves started moving at a strange, unnatural speed.

Then—

Crack

Before Arkail's bewildered eyes, the distant black space stretching toward the east suddenly transformed into something resembling an enormous visible wall. It remained completely colorless and possessed no obvious physical surface, yet somehow, despite that, it could now be clearly distinguished from the ordinary blackness of space surrounding it.

That enormous wall, which had stood there as an unquestioned part of the universe, began to crack.

Crack Crack

"....!!!" Asteron immediately turned around, giving Arkail his back without another word, then began retreating rapidly with a terrified expression spreading across his face until he had unconsciously moved almost all the way back to Arkail's side.

Craaaaaaaaaack

Mid Sector 1—Tyrant Galaxy

"Huh?" Antares, who had been carefully analyzing the tremendous amount of momentum continuously pouring out of Robin's body in astonishment, immediately smiled in disbelief when he heard those words, as though what had just reached his ears was simply too ridiculous to take seriously. "Has that child finally gone mad? Just because he has some excess momentum pouring out of him, he thinks he can do what the Executioners do? What does he even know about the Law of Nothingness that the Executioner used to—"

Rumble

"....!!" Intares suddenly lost his balance and nearly fell backward, only managing to stop himself at the final moment by quickly widening his stance and firmly planting his feet beneath him. "No..."

His eyes slowly opened to their absolute limits as the disbelief on his face rapidly began to change.

What was happening around him wasn't merely another tremor like the one that had swept through the universe moments earlier. The previous tremor had occurred because that terrifying amount of momentum had permeated deeply into the fabric of Universe B-14's Spacetime, causing the surrounding structure itself to react to the sheer quantity of power passing through it... This time, however, there was something fundamentally different about what he was feeling.

Perhaps the others would fail to determine exactly what was happening around them or understand the true nature of the disturbance spreading through their surroundings, but him...? Impossible. With what Intares could perceive and the position he occupied, there was no possibility that he would mistake something happening on such a scale.

His planet.

No, it wasn't limited to merely his planet. His entire galaxy...

Its speed had suddenly increased without the slightest warning, and the entire galaxy had begun moving through space as though some unimaginably enormous force had simply kicked it from behind and sent it forward.

"No... no, you didn't dare..." Intares muttered unconsciously, the disbelief in his voice rapidly giving way to something far more serious, then with a wave of his hand, he immediately opened a spatial rift overlooking the first buffer zone.

Craack

An enormous crack had appeared along the length of the hidden wall before him. No, after taking in the scale of what he was seeing, it would be more accurate to say that a crack stretching across the entire universe had split open, and enormous stellar tempests had begun pouring out of it without restraint.

Nebulae, cosmic dust, stellar embryos, clusters, colossal galactic winds, and gravitational waves erupted from that crack with terrifying speed and force, all of them rushing outward together as though they had been trapped and compressed inside an enormous balloon for an unimaginable length of time, and that balloon had finally been punctured, allowing everything accumulated within it to escape at once.

And this wasn't happening from only one direction—

The buffer wall between Sectors 1000 and 1 had broken open, while at the same time, the buffer wall between Sectors 1 and 2 had broken as well.

Both of those broken buffer walls were now pouring everything that had remained trapped and compressed within them for seventy million years directly into Sector 1 at this very moment.

And this wasn't an isolated phenomenon restricted to Sector 1 either; the exact same thing was happening throughout every Sector in the universe right now... The buffer zones had split open from both sides, pouring their accumulated contents into every Sector like countless enormous balloons simultaneously emptying their entrails into the regions surrounding them.

All those strange components rushing outward together, all those violent winds and immense quantities of cosmic dust, began exerting enough force to make the very fabric of Spacetime itself ripple... The Sector itself began visibly heaving up and down under the disturbance, compressing inward before expanding outward again.

The Sectors could withstand this for now because of their enormous size, and because the cracks tearing through the buffer zones were still relatively small when compared to the sheer scale of the Sectors themselves.

But if this continued for much longer...

"That reckless madman!!" Intares roared furiously as he finally grasped where this situation was heading. "He'll destroy the universe! He'll destroy the universe with all of us still inside it because he thinks he's an Executioner or a Transcendent who can simply remove the buffer zones just because he wants to!!!"

Whoosh

Intares immediately swept up his rings and every possession he had within the throne room without wasting another moment, then pulled out a strangely shaped circular spear and tightly grasped it. "I need to leave immediately."

Then, whoosh, with another movement, he opened a second spatial rift overlooking a barren cosmic desert, one that faced directly toward the End-of-the-World Wall, otherwise known as the shell.

Finally, before leaving, he cast one last glance toward the broadcast that was still running, toward Robin, who was still standing there and continuously pouring out enormous quantities of momentum as though he had no intention of stopping, and released a heavy breath. "Hmph, the Seer must be thrilled with his successor. The cycle is over. If those cracks remain open for another minute without closing, the entire cosmic system will collapse along with everything inside it. If they continue gradually expanding at this rate, the collapse will happen in less than a minute, and if he suddenly closes them, the resulting waves will destroy half the universe anyway."

Then he turned his gaze ahead toward the distant shell, his decision already made as he prepared himself to leave. "...I hope that bastard will accept me. I ended the cycle early for him, even if only indirectly... Heh~"

Krsssssssssssssssh

"Argh!" Intares suddenly lost his balance once again as another disturbance struck him, forcing him to steady himself. "What happened this time?!"

Then he quickly turned his head and looked toward the spatial rift he had opened overlooking the buffer zone, focusing his attention on what was happening there.

His eyes opened to their absolute limits as he finally saw what had happened.