A spatial rift tore open as Levi stepped into Chronopolis.
Time itself was frozen.
Light hung motionless in midair, crystallized into twisted shards. Everything stood still, forming a magnificent yet deathly silent tableau.
Levi looked up.
As far as the eye could see—Kangs.
Tens of thousands of them.
They stood atop floating platforms, upon towering spires, guarding every edge of every temporal fissure. Their armors varied wildly in design, and the temporal energy radiating from them ranged from weak to overwhelming.
Yet the expressions in their eyes were all the same—
Cold. Appraising. And hiding deep beneath that… fear.
"Welcome to Chronopolis, Devourer."
A voice echoed from every direction, carrying the tone of divine judgment.
At the center plaza, atop the tallest tower, stood three very different Kangs.
The one on the left wore a dark blue robe, a brilliant imitation Time Stone embedded in his forehead.
The one in the center was covered in pitch-black nanotech armor, a dark violet energy core pulsing in his chest.
The youngest stood on the right, dressed in a white suit, casually flipping a golden coin between his fingers.
"I am the Council's new Prime—Time Lord Kang," the blue-robed Kang declared, his voice reverberating through the frozen air. "You murdered Pharaoh Kang. You slaughtered Death. That blood debt will be repaid today."
"Repaid?"
Levi smiled.
He slowly raised his right hand and clenched at the frozen world before him.
Crack—
Time itself shattered.
Not because it had been forcibly broken—but because the very foundation of its existence had been ripped away.
The stagnant temporal flow collapsed like fragile glass, disintegrating into countless motes of light that were all absorbed into Levi's palm.
When he opened his hand again, the fragments had vanished.
"You seem to misunderstand something," Levi said, his voice terrifyingly calm.
"I'm not here to settle accounts."
His fingers slowly curled into a fist.
An invisible force erupted outward.
"I'm here to hunt."
The instant those words fell, all of Chronopolis shook violently.
The "solidified time" composing the city began collapsing. Countless timelines twisted, shattered, and reconstructed around Levi.
Time Lord Kang's face changed drastically.
"Activate timeline erasure protocol! Remove him from causality itself!"
Twelve colossal devices surrounding the tower activated simultaneously.
Deep violet beams shot into the sky, intertwining into a gigantic net that covered the heavens and descended upon Levi.
This wasn't a physical attack.
It was the ultimate denial of existence itself.
If caught within it, a target's past, present, and future would all be erased simultaneously.
Levi stood motionless, calmly watching the purple net descend.
A mocking smile curved his lips.
The instant the net touched his body, no earth-shattering collision occurred.
It simply passed through him.
As though he were nothing more than an illusion.
Time Lord Kang's pupils contracted violently.
"Impossible! That weapon was designed to erase multiversal tyrant-class entities!"
"That's because," Levi's voice whispered beside his ear despite his body never moving, "I already surpassed that level long ago."
"Multiversal tyrants merely learn how to use their concepts to leverage the laws of the universe."
Levi raised his hand.
Above his palm spun a miniature galaxy, brilliant and radiant, where billions of stars were constantly being born and dying in endless cycles.
"But me…"
His eyes glowed faintly.
"I am the universe."
"Your weapon attempts to alter the causality of this multiverse. But my causality exists only within myself."
"You want to erase my past?"
"Sorry. My history isn't governed by your timelines."
His fingers suddenly clenched.
The miniature galaxy exploded.
But it wasn't merely an energy detonation.
It was the outward eruption of the laws of his inner universe.
Countless sparks containing independent spacetime laws burst in every direction. Each one resembled a miniature black hole, devouring everything around it.
Floating platforms. Towering spires. Temporal fissures.
Anything touched by the sparks was instantly twisted, dismantled, and annihilated.
Hundreds of Kangs vanished into nothingness alongside the solidified timelines beneath their feet.
More Kangs roared as they charged forward.
Time-freeze rifles. Causality severance blades. Dimensional collapse cannons.
A storm of incomprehensible weapons fired simultaneously.
Yet every attack disappeared soundlessly the moment it came within one meter of Levi.
His inner universe formed an absolute domain. Any foreign law or energy entering it was instantly assimilated and dissolved by the laws of his own cosmos.
"Got any other tricks?" Levi licked his lips, disappointment flickering in his eyes. "This isn't entertaining enough."
The next second, he vanished.
Not teleportation.
He had simply erased the concept of space between origin and destination.
He appeared before a massive tower and gently pressed a hand against it.
The Alchemy Laws activated.
The gigantic structure—built entirely from solidified timelines—began unraveling at its most fundamental level.
The countless timelines composing it were refined into pure temporal essence and absorbed into Levi's body.
"So that's how it works."
Levi closed his eyes, savoring the surge of power within him.
"You extracted timelines from countless universes and solidified them into bricks to build this prison."
He spread his arms wide, his voice echoing throughout the collapsing city.
"Thank you."
"Thank you for preparing such a magnificent feast for me."
Chronopolis itself responded to his will.
The ground split apart. Buildings collapsed. Endless frozen timelines broke free from the ruins as rivers of light, all surging toward Levi like streams returning to the sea.
"Stop him! Deploy the Exterminator Legion!" Time Lord Kang roared hoarsely.
The earth burst open.
Thousands upon thousands of jet-black mechanical Kangs emerged from underground, their metallic bodies gleaming coldly.
Perfect war machines.
The Council of Kangs' ultimate force for conquering and exterminating civilizations.
Levi looked at them, excitement flashing in his eyes.
"Perfect timing. Let's test a new toy."
He raised his hand.
Complex black runes appeared in his palm—the manifestation of the Anti-Life Equation.
The runes intertwined with the domination frequencies derived from Mother Box technology, transforming into an invisible wave that swept across the battlefield.
Every mechanical Kang froze instantly.
The red lights in their eyes flickered violently as their core logic systems were forcibly rewritten.
Three seconds later, every Exterminator unit turned in perfect unison and aimed their weapons at their former masters.
"Temporal-law encryption at the protocol level is meaningless," Levi said calmly, seeing straight through Time Lord Kang's horror.
"Your laws are merely complicated equations."
"But the Anti-Life Equation…"
A smile appeared on his face.
"…is the final answer that ends all equations."
He snapped his fingers.
A sky-covering barrage of energy beams formed a web of death, instantly swallowing hundreds of Kangs before they could even react.
The plaza became a slaughterhouse.
And it still wasn't over.
Levi could feel the Phoenix Force inside him crying out in exhilaration.
"Enough."
A whisper.
Golden-red flames exploded from his body.
Driven by his Concept of Greed, the Phoenix Fire had gained entirely new properties.
It no longer merely burned matter and energy.
It now burned concepts themselves.
The flames swept across the battlefield. Every Kang touched by them screamed in agony.
They could clearly feel the very foundation of their existence—their endless ambition to conquer—being physically torn from them and ignited.
What made a Kang a Kang was precisely that boundless conquering will shared across all timelines.
And now that ambition itself had become fuel.
Fuel that made the Phoenix Fire burn even hotter.
Countless golden-red sparks flew out from the Kangs' bodies, merging into the flames before flowing into Levi.
The Kangs stripped of their ambition did not die.
They collapsed to the ground, hollow-eyed, like puppets whose souls had been removed.
They were still alive.
But they were no longer Kang.
For the first time, true fear appeared in Time Lord Kang's eyes.
"Retreat! Everyone retreat!"
He turned and fled alongside Black Armor Kang and the young White-Suited Kang, rushing toward a portal deep within the tower.
But they slammed directly into an invisible wall.
Space itself had been completely sealed.
Levi walked leisurely through the ruins, his right hand loosely clenched.
The entire dimension of Chronopolis was now under his control.
"I told you already."
His voice echoed directly within the minds of every surviving Kang.
"This is no longer your territory."
Step by step, he approached the three council leaders.
With every step, the ruins beneath his feet transformed into pure temporal energy and were absorbed into his body.
"This…"
His eyes gleamed coldly.
"…is my hunting ground."
Time Lord Kang's eyes turned bloodshot.
He formed seals with both hands as the imitation Time Stone on his forehead released its final burst of light.
"Time Reversal!"
The entire battlefield began rewinding.
Ruins reconstructed themselves. Dead Kangs revived. Everything reverted toward the moment before the battle began.
Yet Levi simply stood within the torrent of reversing time like an eternal reef against an endless sea.
"Useless."
He raised his hand.
The raging current of time automatically split apart around his palm.
"My time has long since become independent from your river."
His fingers closed gently.
The reversing torrent exploded instantly.
Time Lord Kang spat out a mouthful of blood as the imitation stone on his forehead shattered completely.
Faced with absolute despair, a savage resolve appeared on his face instead.
He neither fled nor resisted.
Instead, he bit through his tongue and spat a mouthful of blood into the void.
"Council Protocol Article Seven—Core Member Sacrifice Authorization!"
His voice became hysterical.
"Using my existence as a beacon, awaken the One Who Remains!"
"One Kang may die—but the Conqueror can never be erased!"
His body began collapsing.
Every timeline, memory, and fragment of power he possessed compressed into a blinding signal beacon.
The beacon shot skyward, forcibly tearing through Levi's spatial lockdown before vanishing into the cracks between the multiverse.
Levi stopped walking.
The shadow of the Phoenix circled behind him in the air as he gazed with interest at the place where Time Lord Kang had turned to ash.
"The One Who Remains…"
He smiled.
And his smile was filled with anticipation.
"So the main course is finally arriving?"
He turned his gaze toward the only two survivors left—
Black Armor Kang and White-Suited Kang.
Standing amidst the ruins, their faces were pale with absolute terror.
"Now then," Levi asked with a smile,
"before dessert arrives…"
"Do either of you have any last words?"
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