Karl floated in outer space.
Beside him were several enormous metallic fragments.
Inside the Aspirants' bodies, these fragments had looked like mere pieces of armor and hadn't seemed particularly large.
But one couldn't forget just how enormous the Celestials were.
Their bodies were practically like Earth or the Moon enlarged several times over.
Humans could probably establish an entire country on one of their bodies.
That was just how enormous they were.
Naturally, the golden metallic fragments that had seemed tiny inside their bodies were also incredibly large.
Each fragment was probably several kilometers across.
A piece of metal several kilometers in size would undoubtedly be considered a miracle in the human world.
It wasn't that humanity was incapable of manufacturing something that large.
If an entire nation devoted its resources to it, producing an object of that scale would certainly be possible.
However...
Creating metal this durable was an entirely different matter.
This was the first metal Karl had ever encountered that could withstand his attacks.
"Could this really be a creation of the legendary Beyonders?"
"Otherwise, how could it possibly be this powerful?"
Karl wondered silently.
The Beyonders were an extremely unusual race within the Marvel Universe.
They existed in a universe beyond the Multiverse and were an unimaginably terrifying race.
Every member of their species possessed tremendous power.
One could say that, from the perspective of beings within the Multiverse, the Beyonders were supreme existences.
They stood only beneath the great One-Above-All.
They could annihilate virtually anything within the Multiverse with a single thought.
With a mere thought, they could alter reality itself.
In a certain sense, they resembled true gods even more than the gods within the Multiverse did.
Karl had heard that countless gods and divine beings throughout the Multiverse had fallen before them.
They had even killed the Living Tribunal in a single confrontation.
Just what kind of terrifying power was that?
The Living Tribunal was an omniversal-level existence, one of the true supreme cosmic beings of this world.
It possessed power ordinary beings couldn't even begin to imagine.
Yet even an existence that powerful had been completely overwhelmed.
The sheer power of the Beyonders was obvious.
Precisely because of that, creations made by the Beyonders existed on a level that exceeded the imagination of the Multiverse.
Anything originating from the Beyonders was extraordinarily powerful.
If someone from the Multiverse obtained one of their creations, it would be like a primitive civilization suddenly acquiring a nuclear weapon.
The object before Karl was so powerful that he couldn't help suspecting it had been created by the Beyonders.
He simply couldn't imagine anyone else within the Multiverse capable of producing something so terrifying.
Even when subjected to his full power, the fragments showed absolutely no reaction.
None of the fundamental powers he had mastered—not even his terrifying Destruction Origin—could threaten these pieces of metal in the slightest.
Even time itself seemed to lose its power against them.
Karl accelerated the passage of time by hundreds of millions of years.
Yet even that failed to damage the metal.
The golden fragments simply floated motionlessly in space.
Even billions of years seemed incapable of wearing them down.
"It looks like these things really do have an extraordinary origin."
"I'll store them away for now. They might prove useful someday."
Karl thought to himself.
Although he had no idea how to use the metal at the moment, if he discovered a method in the future, he would undoubtedly be able to forge an incredibly powerful treasure from it.
With a wave of his hand, Karl stored the enormous metallic fragments inside his personal space.
What Karl didn't know was just how deeply this action shocked the Celestials who were secretly observing him.
The moment they saw Karl casually put away those enormous golden fragments, the watching Celestials were stunned.
"Am I seeing this correctly?"
"Could those really be the legendary fragments?"
The Celestial Leader could barely speak coherently.
"I'm comparing them against the records in my database."
"There shouldn't be any mistake."
"Those are fragments of the legendary Godkiller!"
The Celestial finally reached a conclusion.
"Hiss..."
"I never thought I would actually witness something like this."
"To think I'd get to see one of those things with my own eyes. I can die without regrets now."
"Exactly. Those are fragments of the Godkiller."
"The weapon capable of bringing down the First Firmament."
Another Celestial beside him sighed in amazement.
In truth...
The history of the war that the Celestials told outsiders had been heavily embellished.
It was the same with legends everywhere: once an unbeatable warrior was gone, everyone suddenly liked to claim they could have traded a few blows with him.
Naturally, the Celestials also polished their own history.
In reality...
During their ancient war against the Aspirants, the Celestials had been thoroughly suppressed.
With the First Firmament backing the Aspirants, the Celestials had barely managed to survive.
And the reason the Aspirants had advanced so overwhelmingly, slaughtering the Celestials with ease, was the existence of the Godkiller Armor.
It was a weapon created by the Aspirants specifically to kill gods.
It could plunder everything within a universe.
In other words...
It was a weapon designed specifically for slaughtering gods.
The Celestials had been utterly routed by it.
Fortunately, internal conflict eventually erupted among the Aspirants.
They began fighting among themselves.
After their civil war broke out, most of the Godkiller Armor's components were dismantled.
Only then did the Celestials gain a chance to recover.
During the final battle, the Aspirants detonated the Godkiller Armor.
The resulting explosion shattered the body of the First Firmament, giving birth to the Multiverse.
That was how the world eventually took its present form.
One could say that the Godkiller Armor had determined the entire course of the Marvel Universe.
An explosion capable of shattering the First Firmament's body was more than enough to demonstrate just how terrifying the weapon had been.
Even fragments of the Godkiller were among the most powerful treasures in the Marvel Universe.
They represented the pinnacle of Aspirant technology.
They were among the deepest secrets controlled by the First Firmament.
Even after all these years, the First Firmament had never managed to create a second Godkiller Armor.
That alone demonstrated just how precious it was.
It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that the Five Great Gods might willingly trade several universes for the fragments Karl now possessed.
Faced with treasures this valuable, the Celestials couldn't help becoming intensely envious.
"Leader, should we take those fragments back from Karl?"
"They should rightfully be our spoils of war."
"If not for those first-generation beings back then, how could the Godkiller Armor ever have been shattered?"
One of the Celestials spoke.
"Have you lost your mind?"
The Celestial Leader glared at him.
"If you want to get yourself killed, don't drag the rest of us down with you."
"Didn't you just see how powerful that human is? If we go there, aren't we simply delivering ourselves to our deaths?"
The Celestial Leader snorted coldly.
"But our relationship with him is already terrible."
"It's not as if he's suddenly going to become friendly with us anyway."
The Celestial replied.
"Idiot."
"I said we shouldn't rob him ourselves. I never said we couldn't tell someone else about this."
The Celestial Leader sneered.
The Celestials beside him immediately understood.
(End of Chapter)
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