The Epic Tale of Chaos vs Order

Chapter 2045: Azazel’s final move

The Scarlet King and the True Depravita of Sloth lunged at one another, eyes burning with unshakable determination as they prepared their final moves. Just as they were a heartbeat away from impact, Cain acted.

"Eleventh Gear!"

His heartbeat thundered like a war drum, bursting with overwhelming strength that made the void tremble and cracked the fabric of the universe around him. The shockwaves spread outward, rippling all the way to the Everstrife Empyrean World, expanding across every single continent. It was as if the bells of destiny themselves were ringing—the sound of victory rising above the storm.

The Scarlet King’s energy surged. His body ignited. His very soul accelerated. Cain marched forward, every step collapsing space, his finger driving into Azazel’s chest, piercing through layers of flesh, muscle, and bone on its way toward the heart.

But just as Cain was about to reach his target and win this war, Azazel’s eyes glowed with determination and purpose. The True Depravita of Sloth revealed his final card.

The energy he had once used to move his body backward in time now activated again, but this time, instead of retreating, Azazel hurled himself forward in the flow of time.

For a fraction of a nanosecond, Azazel literally leapt into the future. The act nearly annihilated his soul, shredding the essence of his existence, but it was enough. That brief temporal jump gave him the position he needed.

His fist connected with Cain’s forehead.𝙛𝓻𝒆𝒆𝒘𝙚𝓫𝙣𝙤𝒗𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

In an instant, Cain’s body, energy, soul, and even his will turned gray. Every motion froze. His entire existence became a statue of stasis, sealed in a single moment of time.

"I... won."

Azazel could barely believe it. He had pushed himself harder than ever before, broken every limit, conjured armies, subdued an eldritch horror, and sacrificed even his path home. And now—at last—the Scarlet King stood frozen, utterly at his mercy. A smile tugged at his torn lips.

But then his eyes dropped.

His pupils widened in disbelief as he noticed the gray fingers embedded in his chest. They had stopped mere centimeters short of his heart. He had halted them before they could kill him, but to his shock, they began to glow.

Black starlight, carrying the essence of nihilism, intertwined with white flames of entropy. A reaction that should have been impossible now ignited inside his chest.

"BOOOOOM!"

The arm of the Scarlet King exploded, not from destruction but from inevitability itself, which expanded inside the True Depravita of Sloth. The fusion of Nihility and Entropy tore into being, a cosmic inevitability that returned all existence to void. Azazel’s chest was ripped open. A hole the size of a head yawned where heart, lungs, and organs had been moments before.

Azazel froze. His body trembled. Shock and horror filled his eyes as he looked down at the devastation within him.

"CRACK!"

Unfortunately for him, the damage was so immense that Cain’s temporal stasis shattered. The Scarlet King’s body and mind broke free.

With a bloody grin, Cain’s left hand flashed forward like a spear.

"SPLAT!"

His fingers pierced through Azazel’s skull, splitting the brain right in the middle. Heart gone. Spine shattered. Brain sundered in two. It was the kind of damage that should have killed anyone—even the Scarlet King himself.

But the True Depravita of Sloth was not "anyone."

His eyes glowed crimson, filled with the red light of his Master. His hands shot forward, clutching Cain’s skull, his fingers digging into flesh like hooks. The color drained from Azazel’s body, flowing through his hand and into Cain’s head.

The Scarlet King and the True Depravita of Sloth froze.

Neither moved. But this did not mean the battle was over. It had simply shifted to a new battlefield.

Inside Cain’s Soul Dimension, the phantom of the Primarch of Conquest Leviathan manifested. The flesh and energy of Leviathan had already fused with Cain’s body in reality, but here what stood was the embodiment of willpower, memory, and personality—a core fragment of Cain’s existence.

Which was why it was horrifying to see a twisted mantle spreading inside its flesh. Beginning at the legs, it crept upward, wrapping like chains of shadow and corruption, moving toward the chest.

Cain’s phantom form appeared immediately in the Soul Dimension’s sky, eyes sharp, watching as the corruption spread across Leviathan’s. And then—two eyes manifested within the mantle.

Azazel’s eyes.

The True Depravita’s gaze was filled with endless rage and hatred as he glared at Cain.

"I know about the golden entity in your Soul Dimension. Legion told me." His voice dripped with venom, trembling with madness. "But it doesn’t matter. I am one with the core of your consciousness and personality now. Go ahead, destroy me! If you kill me here, you’ll destroy pieces of your own mind. You’ll cripple yourself! You’ll live the rest of your life as a half-brained idiot. That will be my victory."

Azazel’s usual composure, his detachment, were gone. What remained was raw desperation and fanatical resolve. Even in the face of death, he sought to fulfill his mission. His willingness to sacrifice himself to drag Cain into ruin revealed a level of determination that was both terrifying and awe-inspiring.

Cain’s eyes narrowed. He knew the words were true. If Apex unleashed his wrath and burned Azazel out, the backlash would destroy fragments of Leviathan as well. The damage to Cain’s mind and personality would be catastrophic.

But instead of worry, a smile appeared on Cain’s face.

"You think I walked into this blind?" Cain’s voice was steady, even calm. "I understood the vulnerability of my soul long ago. I knew an entity like you, born of negative emotion and psychic force, would try to exploit it. That’s why I came prepared."

Azazel’s eyes narrowed. Confusion flickered.

Before he could comprehend the meaning behind Cain’s words, the eyes of the Primarch of Conquest Leviathan began to glow.

A silence, vast and immeasurable, swept across the Soul Dimension.

Then a force burst outward. It irradiated every corner of the Soul Dimension, focusing all its devastating might upon Azazel’s spirit.