Dark, ethereal roots burst from the emptiness beneath Neo's feet.
They shimmered in and out of existence, half-spiritual, half-physical. They didn't just grow—they devoured.
They were Ethereal World-Devouring Roots Neo took from the Protector of Floor 1.
The roots lashed outward with terrifying hunger, sinking into the fabric of the Outer Gods' Worlds.
The effects were immediate.
Velgrath's void-threads began unraveling. Myzrul's stars flickered and dimmed. Lurial's gears jammed, unable to spin properly.
"What is this?!" Myzrul shouted, reeling back.
The roots writhed and dug deeper, feasting on the Divinities and Concepts that formed the Outer Gods' Worlds.
Their once-mighty Worlds, so vast and terrifying, began to decay from the inside.
Dark blue flames erupted around Neo. They roared up into a towering inferno of pure devastation.
Neo raised his free hand. A sphere of dark blue fire condensed above his palm. It pulsed with an intensity that set even the distant stars trembling.
He controlled the flames and wrapped them around his sword.
Alarms rang in the Outer Gods' mind, but they were slow to react.
Neo used the technique, he had created just now.
Divine Swordsmanship Tenth Form: Endflame Cleave
The flames exploded outward, washing over the battlefield like a tidal wave.
They didn't burn like normal fire. They devoured. They tore apart energy, concepts, laws—anything unfortunate enough to exist in their path.
The Outer Gods screamed.
Velgrath's silky threads burned to ash.
Myzrul's lattice shattered.
Vaedrex recoiled, entire chunks of his body eaten away.
Lurial tried to hide behind her clockwork prison, but even that began to melt under the onslaught.
The effect of World Ender Flames was far stronger than Ethereal World-Devouring Roots.
Neo had expected this.
When he had fought High General Baryon Flamejaw, creator of the World Ender Flames and Protector of Zone 4, these flames had nearly destroyed his 'Eternal'.
It hadn't made sense at the time.
But now, Neo understood.
The World Ender Flames wasn't an ordinary Concept of Fire.
It was on the verge of ascending into a Divinity.
That's why his Eternal had not been able to stop it properly.
With the Ethereal Roots eating away at the Outer Gods' Worlds, the World Ender Flames consuming their defenses, and the Death Sword Firmament in his hand, Neo launched himself into battle.
The first target was Velgrath.
Neo appeared above the Weaver in an instant.
His sword slashed downward, cutting through the collapsing void-threads.
Velgrath tried to weave more defenses, but the roots had weakened him too much. His body unraveled, thread by thread, as Neo carved him apart.
Velgrath's scream faded into nothingness.
The Shepherd of Stars roared, pulling collapsed suns into his body, trying to explode himself in one final act of defiance.
Neo used the fourth stance of his swordsmanship along with Pseudo Gap.
The blade split apart into countless mirrored reflections, each one cutting through a different sun.
Myzrul's self-destruction failed.
Neo appeared before him and drove his hand into Myzrul's chest.
The World Ender Flames detonated from within.
Myzrul's body imploded, folding into a single collapsing point before vanishing.
Vaedrex, full of rage and desperation, attacked Neo while his focus was on Myzrul.
He opened his Maw of Silence wide, unleashing a pulse of erasure meant to wipe Neo's soul clean from existence.
Neo cleaved the Outer Gods' Divinity with his Tenth Technique.
Then, Neo pointed his sword at Vaedrex's massive head.
A single word left his mouth. "Burn."
A line of dark fire shot from the sword's tip.
It pierced through Vaedrex's skull.
The Maw of Silence let out a final shudder before it collapsed inward, a black hole dying without a sound.
Only Lurial remained.
Her gears froze. Her body trembled. Her instincts screamed at her to flee.
Without hesitation, she tore open a portal to escape again.
Her clockwork powers twisted the fabric of space to make the portal stronger and faster. It nearly succeeded.
The Chains of Hell and Ethereal Roots snapped upward like hungry vipers.
They wrapped around the portal, tearing it apart. Lurial turned to run, but Neo was already there.
She raised her hands to surrender. "Wait—!"
Neo's expression didn't change.
The dark blue flames engulfed her.
Lurial's scream was short.
The flames ate through her mechanical body and her clockwork Divinity alike. She didn't even have time to beg before she was devoured completely.
When it was over, silence fell.
The battlefield was unrecognizable. Broken stars, crumbling voids, shattered time-gears floated around them like debris after a dying storm.
Yaleth approached carefully. He eyes never left Neo. He looked at the devastation, then at the white fire still burning quietly around him.
"Thank god, I didn't think of betraying you just now," He chuckled softly. "It would've been a disaster."
Despite his words, Yaleth never had any intentions of working with the four Outer Gods who came here.
They were stupid, and drunk on their power.
The only reason they chased Yaleth was because they heard his weapons were powerful.
Rather than them, Yaleth would choose Neo, who was against Eternals, any day.
Neo turned towards him.
His gaze made Yaleth shudder.
They weren't friends, but partners born out of necessity. Neo would have killed Yaleth if he did not need the secret of True Soul Weapons and Demons.
His cold eyes made Yaleth understand that truth.
Neo lowered his sword, letting the white flames fade slowly.
"W-well," Yaleth spoke up. "Since you completed your first battle of this level, you should be getting it soon."
"The access to Universal Codex System, and the Path of Power created by the Heavenbreaker Cole Calloway," Yaleth said.
Neo waited for a few seconds, but nothing happened.
"I-It will come soon. Before that why don't you clean this place, and take those guys' memories to find the teleporters they used?" Yaleth advised.
He sighed when Neo finally looked away.
The Firmaments and the Shadows had defeated the Eldritch armies.
Neo praised them before sending them back away.
Then, he used Time Dissonance Spell to create an orb of distorted Time. He used it to revert the time of solar system and fix all damage their battle did.
As for the stars and planets outside the solar system, they were too far to be affected by Time Dissonance Spell.
Neo took out earth from his Cosmos, and put it back where it was.
Since Beelzebub had devoured a lot of time of the world, it would be a while before time would start flowing at Earth again.
After making sure Neo had fixed everything, he turned to the corpses of the Outer Gods, and their Eldritch armies.
For a moment, he felt overwhelmed.
He still remembered reading the despair stricken Arthur in the novel Son of Zeus. These Outer Gods had sent a lot of their soldiers into earth through the cracks in Sky Barrier.
Arthur had lost almost all his friends. Barely anyone was left alive.
The whole continent was engulfed in pain and misery.
But that would never happen now.
Neo had destroyed that future with his own hands today.
He had defeated the Outer Gods.
'Sigh, why am I becoming sentimental now. Let's just devour these corpses and see what I can get from them.'