Lord of the Truth

Chapter 2504 A Complete Universe

Mid Sector 110—

"No..."

Helmor left his planet—no, he left his entire galaxy behind—and rushed straight into the depths of space, surrounded from every direction by a gray aura of Destruction that continuously helped him destroy and disperse the violent waves of energy crashing toward him.

Yet even with that protection, he wasn't completely spared from what was happening. "Ugh!" Even as he desperately tried to steady himself while constantly looking around, his body kept lurching uncontrollably left and right, upward and downward, unable to maintain a stable position for long. Even if he could protect himself from the chaotic energy that had been trapped within those regions for millions upon millions of years, there was simply no way for him to protect himself from the violent disturbance spreading directly through the Spacetime fabric itself.

But Helmor didn't seem to care much about his unstable condition, as he continued advancing without stopping and repeatedly struck space before him until he finally reached the buffer zone between Mid Sectors 110 and 111.

...Or rather, what used to be one.

The scene before him had changed completely. There was no longer any trace of that solid space that once marked the end of the Sector, separating it from everything beyond and effectively creating small, isolated universes within the greater universe.

At that moment, however, Helmor didn't merely see empty space where the buffer zone had once stood; what he saw before him was an almost unimaginable sea of riches...

The violent disturbances and fractures that had shaken everything around him had completely subsided, and what followed in their wake was instead a calm, vast wave composed of primordial energy and cosmic dust.

"No..." Helmor muttered once again as he stared at everything spreading before him.

That primordial energy would gradually spread among the planets once more, flowing toward them and nourishing them while continuously raising the natural energy levels within them, and this alone would increase the number of exceptional children born upon those planets, the occurrence and activity of natural phenomena, and many other events that would eventually raise the capabilities of each planet's inhabitants as a whole.

As for that enormous amount of cosmic dust, it was the debris produced by compressing an astonishing 90% of the universe's total space inside a prison of Nothingness. Naturally, not every planet, star, and celestial body caught within that terrifying process had managed to survive intact; an enormous number of them had been destroyed under that compression, and of course, the inhabitants of all those destroyed planets had died along with them and ultimately turned into cosmic dust as well.

That cosmic dust would rain down upon the existing planets and celestial bodies throughout the coming years, gradually settling upon them and transforming them into something of a higher standing than they had ever originally been supposed to become.

Every handful of that cosmic dust, formed from celestial bodies and living beings and compressed for seventy million years, would transform into rare materials the moment it descended upon the planets, whether it arrived as countless tiny particles or larger meteorites. Or perhaps great quantities of that dust would gather together over time and eventually form super planets and numerous galaxy seeds throughout the coming period.

Speaking of super planets and galaxy seeds...

Helmor's eyes opened to their absolute widest as his attention shifted beyond the primordial energy and cosmic dust spreading everywhere before him.

Regardless of the primordial energy and cosmic dust that had already begun spreading throughout the surrounding space, there was another, even more astonishing sight lying directly behind them...

After the walls of Nothingness were broken and the immense compression was finally released, the portion of space that had been cut away from the universe began to return. A full 90% of the universe's missing space was beginning to reveal itself once again.

Helmor could clearly see the Spacetime fabric merging with those enormous new sections of space being revealed before his eyes, connecting with them while continuously expanding in an astonishingly smooth and natural manner.

Of course, he could also clearly feel the terrifying Transcendent momentum permeating the process, forcibly making the Spacetime fabric behave rationally and complete the merging in such an impossibly perfect manner instead of allowing those enormous sections to collide with one another and produce devastating explosions.

And among those vast new expanses of space that were now returning to the universe... there were celestial bodies.

There were suns and planets scattered throughout those newly revealed expanses, and there were even entire galaxies clearly visible within them.

Perhaps many of those celestial bodies and galaxies had been destroyed during the original compression and sealing process, but every single one of these buffer zones was nine times the size of an entire Sector. If a single Sector contained five galaxies, then one buffer zone alone would contain more than forty... Even if twenty of those galaxies had been destroyed during the process, all the others would still be there.

Those galaxies and celestial bodies had remained buried amid vast quantities of primordial energy and cosmic dust for all those countless years, untouched by a single human hand digging through them and excavating their riches, and without the fangs of the Plague constantly gnawing away at them and consuming whatever they could find... Every single one of those planets, after remaining in such an untouched state for so long, could easily and without the slightest exaggeration be called a super planet.

The number of galaxy seeds that had previously been considered rare throughout the universe must be in the dozens now, perhaps simply waiting among those newly revealed expanses to be discovered!!

"No, no, no..." Helmor advanced slowly through space, his eyes constantly moving from one sight to another in complete incomprehension, as though his mind was still refusing to fully accept what he was seeing before him.

Of all the information he had gathered throughout the years from the Transcendents and their followers, and among everything he had managed to learn from those beings about matters far beyond the knowledge of ordinary creatures within the universe, he had never once heard of an Executioner's punishment being forcibly lifted after it had already been imposed.

Such a thing simply did not happen, at least not according to anything he had ever heard or learned.

"...?!" Then Helmor suddenly looked in a certain direction, downward from where he currently stood, and there his eyes began darting around in growing horror as a terrifying possibility entered his mind. "Could it be?!"

Robin Burton hadn't merely destroyed the buffer zones within the Mid Belt and released the enormous regions trapped inside them; he had completely removed this punishment from the structure of the universe itself, erasing its presence instead of merely breaking apart the few buffer zones Helmor could currently see.

Even the buffer zones throughout the Young Belt were undergoing the exact same phenomenon at this very moment, showing that what was happening wasn't restricted to the Mid Belt at all.

"No, no, no!!!" Helmor raised his voice as the full meaning of what he was witnessing finally began settling into his mind.

Today was a catastrophe in every possible sense of the word, and for Helmor and those standing on his side, there was no other description that could possibly fit what had just happened.

Robin Burton hadn't merely turned the people of the universe against them, he had raised the overall strength and potential of the entire universe at once and removed one of the worst restrictions that had been limiting everyone within it. Now it was merely a matter of time before the universe truly regained the strength expected of a Class-B universe after declining for so long that it had nearly fallen to the level of an unclassified universe.

And all of this had happened right under their eyes, directly beneath their noses, openly and in plain sight of everyone throughout the universe!

Here, of all places, in the universe that witnessed more external interventions than any other and possessed enlightened individuals who understood far more than ordinary inhabitants ever could, something of this magnitude was actually allowed to happen?!

What would their patrons do to them once they found out what had happened here?

"Robin... Burton!!" Helmor ground his teeth fiercely, the name leaving his mouth one syllable at a time as the implications continued piling up inside his mind.

That ten-year grace period... Had Robin taken those ten years precisely to prepare himself in silence and then strike them with a devastating blow like this when the opportunity finally arrived?

Now, even if Robin took a step back after everything he had done and openly announced that he wouldn't fight for the universe, their mission had already become dozens of times more difficult than it had been before today.

Now, even if Robin tried to flee later and slip away from the pressure closing in around him, he had already used a ridiculous excuse like his own children doubting him to destroy the very foundation they had spent millions upon millions of years building upon, while simultaneously planting seeds of doubt within everyone's hearts.

Their...

Their mission was finished, completely ruined by what had just happened before their eyes, and along with that mission, their happy days were finished as well.

Hum Helmor calmly thrust one finger toward the east, channeling Destruction through it to create a turbulent communication channel extending in that direction.

His face immediately contorted when he noticed just how easy the process had suddenly become compared to before, now that the buffer zone separating those regions was no longer there to stand in the way.

Then he opened his mouth and spoke through the newly established channel, "...Intares, I realize now that I was wrong, just as you told me. That grace period was a trap and completely useless. What do we do now?" Then, before he could simply wait for an answer, an ugly thought suddenly crossed his mind and made his expression change once again. "...Intares... you're still inside the universe, right?"

<...> It took several long moments before the reply finally came through the communication channel, <...Wait. The broadcast isn't over yet.>