The ruins of the grand hall.
Logan clutched his chest, breathing heavily. The tense and anxious battlefield had been pierced by Ghost King's single arrow. An expression of urgency flashed across his face as he reached out and shouted, "Watch out!"
He had already done his absolute best. Even his Ultra Beast State had been knocked out of him.
Just as Logan's warning left his lips, Titusz was already hurtling toward Zoran's true physical, his fingers forming the Flash Spirit seal.
The distance was less than ten meters. For the colossal Ultra Beast God, ten meters took only a fraction of a second, faster than the blink of an eye.
And in that exact moment, Ghost King's cold eyes finally landed on the Snow Empress.
Everything was proceeding according to his meticulous design.
The other otherworldly visitor was locked in a life-or-death struggle with Hades, so they didn't need to be worried about for now. As for Zoran and the Snow Empress, Zoran had Titusz launching a sneak attack. Ghost King trusted Titusz's power; that Flash Spirit strike should take away at least the majority of Zoran's life, even if he possessed a Nebula Body.
Zoran was about to be weakened, and as for the Snow Empress...
Ghost King broke into a grin. As for the Snow Empress, she still had him.
Thus, with both sides suffering heavy mutual destruction, the moment for him, Ghost King, to rise to power had finally arrived!
"All-Evil Calamity..." An evil, dark-red glow manifested within the palms Ghost King held tightly behind his back.
Just as Titusz was about to succeed, a trace of joy surfaced on the Snow Empress's face, her output of hetero-energy surging.
Ghost King had also locked his sights onto the Snow Empress's true body.
How utterly perfect!
Ghost King couldn't suppress a slight tremor of excitement in his heart. This was the absolute best calculation he could make given the current state of the battlefield. With the arrival of the two outsiders, he had been forced to alter his initial master plan.
The two Nebula Bodies would engage in a mutual slaughter, allowing him to reap the spoils as the fisherman. Once the high-tier combatants were all dead, he would naturally become the strongest entity in this realm.
Within his line of sight, Titusz's Roaring Tiger God was brandishing the blinding white radiance of the Flash Spirit, crossing the ten-meter gap to press down upon Zoran's body.
With the Snow Empress pinning down the Nebula Body, this attack was utterly impossible to counter. If Zoran dared to split his focus, the Snow Empress's Snow White Radiance would strike him head-on, and the resulting damage would be far more lethal than his Flash Spirit.
It was an open trap, a calculated maneuver where the victim knew the ending yet remained completely powerless to stop it.
"I've got him!" Titusz's face lit up with triumph as the Roaring Tiger God pressed forward with the Flash Spirit.
Yet in the very next instant, his expression of elation transformed into sheer terror.
He had indeed closed the distance, but the Roaring Tiger God felt as though it had stepped into an entirely new realm of existence.
In an instant, an infinite, crushing pressure bore down upon him from above.
He mustered every ounce of his hetero-energy to resist, but found himself helplessly pinned face-down against the ground, completely out of control.
The blinding white light of the Flash Spirit flickered and died out.
"How is this possible?!" Titusz cried out in shock.
He poured every bit of his remaining strength into the resistance, but under the terrifying weight, the Roaring Tiger God disintegrated into scattering points of light that simply vanished.
He could only manage to force his head upward, locking eyes with Zoran's utterly placid gaze.
A faint, unreadable trace of amusement flickered in the depths of the opponent's eyes, as if mocking his utter ignorance.
Even Logan, standing off to the side, froze, staring in blank confusion at the pinned Titusz.
The man couldn't even maintain his Armor form anymore; his armor shattered into fragments as he curled up helplessly on the earth.
Yet at this very moment, the person experiencing the most absolute, bone-chilling terror was someone else entirely.
Ghost King.
His All-Evil Calamity had already been unleashed.
"No! How can this be?!" Ghost King panicked.
Nevertheless, the dark-red evil light fell relentlessly upon the Snow Empress's body.
Accompanied by a piercing, miserable shriek, the Snow Empress was forced to extinguish her Snow White Radiance, failing even to sustain her Nebula Body.
Her hetero-energy plummeted to rock bottom in a single breath, leaving her pristine white robes stained with blood.
"Why?!" The Snow Empress's eyes filled with raw fury and incomprehension as she glared daggers at Ghost King.
Victory had been within arm's reach; she could never have imagined that her own White Tiger Clan Elder would turn his blade against her.
Could his loyalty of one hundred thousand years have all been a grand act?
Betrayal.
A blood-soaked, unforgiving word.
With her body ambushed, the Snow Empress crashed to the ground, hanging on the brink of death, presenting a tragic and desolate sight.
Ghost King held nothing back; his entire intent had been to kill the Snow Empress in a single blow. After all, he himself possessed the hetero-energy of five black holes and was fully capable of summoning a Nebula Body, he had simply kept it hidden away until now.
Meeting the Snow Empress's glare of fury, Ghost King was himself thrown into confusion.
In his meticulous calculations, he should right now be tasting the sweet fruits and joy of absolute victory.
He had calculated every single variable.
Yet, there was only one thing he had failed to account for.
"The outsider!" Ghost King gritted his teeth, his gaze snapping toward Zoran.
He had never imagined that Zoran's body would possess such terrifying counter-power.
This completely defied everyone's understanding.
"Why? Why, Elder Ghost King?!" Titusz, pinned flat against the ground, finally noticed the strange anomaly unfolding nearby and muttered helplessly, utterly lost.
Ghost King lowered his head. Everything was unraveling.
Suddenly, he burst out laughing, a laugh tinged with the reckless defiance of a master plan laid bare.
Kicking the broken form of the Snow Empress aside with deep disgust, he sneered with utter contempt, "Idiots."
Turning his scorn toward the crushed Titusz, he spat, "You're just the same, a complete, utter fool. Heh, you don't even know who it was that killed your own sister, how utterly pathetic!"
"Sister? Pamela?" Hearing that name, Titusz began to tremble violently.
"That's right, Pamela, that freak!" Ghost King laughed with the air of a maniac. "She was murdered according to my own grand scheme. But when it all comes down to it, the one who truly killed your sister was none other than yourself. You killed her with your own hands!"
"It was you!" Titusz's eyes turned bloodshot as he mumbled uncontrollably, "It was you... You were lying to me the whole time, lying to me..."
Zoran lowered his gaze, sparing a cold glance at Titusz before extending a hand and pressing downward with casual indifference.
Titusz's white figure, along with the ground beneath him, sank deep into the earth.
With another flick of his wrist, a massive sphere formed from compacted stone erupted upward, sealing Titusz tightly within its core. Blood stained the corner of his mouth as he hung suspended, completely immobilized.
Indeed, aside from a certain degree of raw power, this individual was quite literally hopeless in every other aspect.
Refusing to trust his own flesh and blood, he had chosen instead to put his faith in a stranger, never even bothering to seek out the truth of the matter.
The stone sphere floated silently in mid-air as Titusz drowned in a terminal wave of regret.
Across the space warped by Netherworld gravity, Zoran locked eyes with Ghost King. As long as a single Nebula Body remained stable and active on the field, Ghost King's petty conspiracies were destined to collapse into total failure.
Ghost King had some ability; he was even capable of summoning a Nebula Body.
Yet compared to truly peerless powerhouses, his personal strength fell woefully short.
"Do you know what you miscalculated?" Zoran asked, looking down at him. "Knowing full well that I am an otherworldly visitor, you still insisted on viewing me through the lens of a native local. That was your first failure."
True physical form possess no power? Extremely fragile? Who on earth told you that?
Zoran smiled faintly.
His gaze swept briefly across the dying form of the Snow Empress on the ground, lingering for a mere fraction of a second before dismissing her entirely.
"You speak endlessly of love, yet you blindly listen to a single-sided narrative. As a leader, that is your second failure," Zoran scoffed coldly.
Finally, his eyes settled squarely on Ghost King. "It's your turn, loser."
"Soul Startling Nebula!" Ghost King trembled uncontrollably, tears of blood threatening to spill from his eyes as a hundred thousand years of plotting crashed down around Zoran. Hatred and fury warred within him.
A dark-red Nebula Body slowly climbed up around his frame as he prepared to make a desperate, final gamble, betting that Zoran's heavy battle with the Snow Empress had left his power depleted.
"Nothing more than a stray dog by the road." For the despicable, Zoran couldn't be bothered to waste words.
Before the Soul Startling Nebula could even fully manifest, he willed his Nebula Body to extend a single finger and press downward.
Bradley let out a piercing, agonized shriek.
The surging power was snuffed out by a single touch.
The Soul Startling Nebula died before it could even be born.
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