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615 Facing Horror

Horror was furious. In front of him, billions of his subjects floated away lifeless. The same beings that had accepted his gift, and that had devoted their lengthy lives into doing anything he desired.. They were all dead. Killed by the actions of a single man, who single handedly brought an end to his empire of domination and rise to power.

The same young man that was now grinning at him with a satisfied face. A smirk he had instinctively wanted to rip off his face with his own hands.

Naturally, the reason why Horror was enraged had nothing to do with grief, for he had no positive feelings towards the members of his army. His loss was immense, but it was ultimately detached from his emotions. His army of champions was but an object to him, one he valued greatly for its efficiency in conquering universes for him.

He was now a King without an army.. Ruler of dust. His domain had many more beings that would gladly take the place of those who had died, but for such a loss to be recovered, it would take eons. His rise in power had, in all intents and purposes, been halted indefinitely.

Other than the loss of efficient free labor, the aspect of Horror had found one more thing infuriating. And that was his own weakness. He had seen the threat to his champions form in front of his eyes, and yet, he had been too slow to stop it. But, alas, such weakness was a reality for the domain of Horror. His power derived from the production of horror within a universe, meaning that the moment the aspect descended upon a newly opened universe, he would be at his weakest.

The fact that that universe was newly opened, reflected heavily on how primitive its native life was. And that was the reason why the aspect of Horror was so weak. This universe must not have had too many advanced civilizations capable of spatial exploration. Planets inhabited by small insects and tiny lizards would not offer much in regards to the production of the power of horror, for that was a byproduct of sentient life.

Had this encounter occurred in one of the universes within his domain, Horror regretted, he could have erased Roley’s existence with the blink of an eye. Snuff him out of reality before he could even react. And yet, there he stood. Watching the young man that had escape his powers with eyes of murder, as he basked in the glory of surviving a deity’s judgement.

While the aspect of Horror thought of all the ways he could destroy Roley, however, the latter had not exactly come out of the encounter in one piece.

At some point, between the restoration of the formation, and its destruction, Roley had taken an immense amount of damage. Such damage, however, was not inflicted to him by the aspect of Horror, but by the orb that was engraved within his arm, which had not stopped vibrating for the entire time.

As he looked down on it, Roley discovered that his body was not faring too well. The skin of his hand had, at some point, become translucent, allowing him to see as the immense complexity of the essence of space caused havoc through his veins and muscles.

At the edges of the pocket that contained the treasure of primordial spatial essence, cracks had started to form, as the skin dried out. If seen from close enough, his skin resembled soil that, under the oppressive rule of sunlight, had been brought to infertility. What was worse, however, was that these cracks were spreading fast.

In just a few moments the cracks had reached to the lower part of his fingers, and a second later, they had covered his entire hand. At which point, the cracks started to reach his bones.

Roley did not dare roll his fingers into a fist. His hand was about to fall apart, and he knew that the slightest movement could be all it took for that to finally happen. Instead, the majority of his attention went to withstanding the pain he was feeling. A feeling that, he reckoned, could be comparable to putting his hand into a meat grinder.

The remainder of his focus was fixed on his thoughts, which he desperately used to make use of the Elemental System. Yet, soon enough, his brows furrowed at the failure. “What is happening? I am asking for a way to kill the aspect of Horror, but nothing is appearing.” Roley lamented in his head, in hope that Dewah could hear him.

Soon enough, a voice resounded in his head. A voice that, to his dismay, was not there to relay good news. “What do you expect?! There is a limit to the system’s power! You may be using one of Destiny’s gifts, but that is far from being enough to face a whole other aspect of existence!” the Elementalist responded with a matter-of-fact tone.

That was a notion Dewah had been forced to familiarize himself with for the past thousands of years. The systems were not omnipotent. Their only usefulness lay in their abilities to read fate, and to grant powers capable of changing one’s destiny.

Their biggest weakness, all the champions of Destiny knew, was their inability to work against entities who operated outside of the rule of fate.. The aspect of existence. And that included aspects in the making, also known as Iewah’s spawn, for those were the wielders, or at least soon-to-be holders of powers of existence.

Had a champions’ system been able to operate over other aspects of existence, none of them would have ever had to experience their kind’s persecution, and the multiverse would have seen the rise of thousands of new aspects of existence. But that was not the case.

Disappointed, Roley put his murderous ideas aside. He was quite the decisive person, and he knew not to linger too long on a lost cause. Yet, he had a new goal. One formed by a revelation he had dug out from Dewah’s discouraging words.

According to the former champion of Destiny, he wouldn’t have been able to form plans that affected another system wielder or aspect of existence. But he never said anything about people affected by those entities’ powers. A notion he had only considered a theory, since the system had allowed him to free himself from the power of Horror, but whose confirmation brought him relief.

Under the murderous gaze of the aspect of Horror, Roley requested for a plan that would allow him to free his people, and soon enough, an answer came.

As he read through it, he felt ecstatic.

It had turned out that freeing someone from such an entrapment was much more simple than freeing oneself, as long as the rescuer himself was free. So without thinking too much about it, he channeled the power that was wreaking havoc in his arm, and teleported away.

When he reappeared, he was standing in the midst of the sleeping armies. Specifically, in the area where the strongest of the elementals were grouped up.

With the new power he yielded, Roley took a hold of the space that surrounded the comatose elementals, and with a flick of his intact wrists he ripped it off its hinges, detaching it from the rest of the universe.

“NO!! SPARE US, PLEASE!”

“.. we did nothing wrong.. We just want to live..”

Screams and whimpers could suddenly be heard, as the elementals started waking up one by one.

One spatial elemental in particular, after being rescued, saw the appearance of the lord of the Elementals, who was holding his small and fragile-looking figure in between his hands. “My Lord-” he muttered, still confused by what had just happened.

“Free the others! Isolate the space around them!” Roley commanded before to all the spatial elementals he had just rescued.. But then, more screams were heard. This time, however, the screams did not accompany a rescue.

Roley turned towards the source of the screams, and immediately noticed the aspect of Horror, holding a transparent silhouette in between his pointy fingers. His glossy eyes, however, were not aimed at the figure, but on Roley himself. The scream became more and more acute as the fingers squished the suffering figure, until finally, moments later, the transparent silhouette gave out, and like a mirror, shattered in thousands of pieces.

Roley froze in place.

At the sight of one of the elementals dying, the aspect of existence noticed the production of a few small orbs of horrific essence being formed by Roely’s body. A scene that caused his cracked lips to retract, showing hundreds of sharp teeth exposed into what Roley could only guess was a satisfied smirk.

Before Roley could say anything, however, the body of the aspect of horror began to enlarge. His horns, already enormous, became the sizes of mountains, as his head became as big as a continent. His gargantuan hands, now capable of obscuring the entire battlefield, came down onto the army of sleeping elementals.

“NOOO!” Roley yelled as the enormous hand came down crashing with a muffled crunching sound.. Reaping tens of thousands of lives at a time. Then again.. And again.

Initially, Horror had only wanted to repay Roley’s favor. He had realized that the two armies were probably at war before his arrival, and that the two stronger individuals he had seen were likely to be their leaders. But it was only after Roley freed a number of elementals, that he understood which ones were his men.

As he killed the first of many, however, Horror discovered that Roley was not like other champions of destiny, and that the death of his people was a true fear of his. So much so that their death had triggered the production of his own power.

Knowing this, the aspect of existence went on a killing spree. He wanted to cause as much suffering as he could before killing Roley once and for all, so he waved his hands over and over again, gobbling millions with single chomps of his grotesque mouth..

But then, he suddenly felt that something was wrong.

A feeling he had never experienced before.. One that sent shivers down his gargantuan spine, and that formed bumps on his grayish oily skin. For the first time, Horror felt threatened.

As he turned around, the almighty creature noticed the lone figure of Roley. He was floating behind him, holding an arm stretched in his direction. The arm, however, was not whole. Where was supposed to be an elbow, a wrist and a hand, was now a vortex of elemental powers, and where his palm should have been, only a transparent orb that slowly processed these elements remained.

A foot away from the orb, a second sphere had started to form, connected to the first by a thread that poured condensed primordial essence into at an impossible rate.

This forming orb was the source of the threat Horror was feeling.

As this orb became whole, and smooth, it left Roley’s reach, and slowly approached the aspect of existence. Its power was immense, as it left cracked space in its wake.

At the sight of it, Horror felt that he could not avoid it. Full of the power of primordial space, the orb was targeting him, and nothing could stop it from approaching him. Without too much time to react, the only thing Horror could do was to resume his original smaller shape, and condense all the power he had gathered into his hand. He then joined his fingertips together, merging them into a massive drill which he then sent to meet the attack at full force.

At the moment of impact, both Roley and Horror had expected the orb to explode, but it didn’t.. Instead, it started to shrink.

Already small in size, the orb of power soon collapsed on itself, leaving behind something that left Roley horrified, and led Horror in a world of bliss.

Where the orb of power had collapsed, a similarly-sized sphere of collapsed space had appeared. One that soon after started to grow in size, shattering what it touched in one moment, then collapsing it the other.

With horror Roley looked at what he had done. He knew that unless someone versed in the essence of space was there, the hole would keep growing uncontrolled, eventually bringing the universe to an end.

Panicked, he turned to look at the primordial treasure in hope that he could use it to close the hole, but soon realized that he couldn’t, for it was now detached from his body, ending the temporary connection his system had allowed him to form.

Horror, on the other hand, was enjoying the expression on Roley’s face. One of pure panic and desperation. In a moment he disappeared, and reappeared behind him. His oily arms embraced the young man, and his hand grabbed his chin. “Look at what you have done.. The fault is all yours.” Horror whispered in his ears as he forced him to stare at the growing hole.

As the hole reached a few feet in diameter, right in front of their eyes, something odd happened.

From what could only be defined as a bottomless pit of nothingness, something had slowly come out of. The body of a human, curled in a fetal position.. Seemingly hibernating.