Chapter 817 : The Cosmos

Inner Realm, Divine Battlefield.

Within this shattered and chaotic space, the clash of divine powers raged on. After several reversals of fortune, a brief stalemate was broken again, and the tide began to shift overwhelmingly toward one side.

Scorching molten iron cooled. Rising steam condensed into water. Endless barrages of artillery were swallowed whole by insatiable maws. Reinforced steel and iron were torn asunder by blackened fangs and claws.

Nourished by the Blood Chalice's nectar, the Wolf God and Serpent God erupted with unprecedented strength. Under the rampage of blood tides and devouring fangs, the steel-forged defensive line collapsed piece by piece. The situation had become dire.

Faced with the onslaught of the Gluttonous Wolf and Abyssal Serpent, even Beverly, hailed as the strongest subordinate god, struggled to hold her ground. Though she relied on her overwhelming production capacity and adaptability, constantly reshaping her divine body to forge specialized weapons to counter the Afterbirth deities, her rate of transformation simply could not keep pace with the Wolf and Serpent’s explosive growth. Often, by the time a new weapon was forged, the enemy had already evolved beyond it—rendering it obsolete before it could even be fired.

To stop the attack, Beverly had no choice but to shift entirely to a defensive posture. She generated wall after wall of steel fortresses between herself and the gods’ powers. Though the god of Stone had nigh-impenetrable defenses, even these were broken layer by layer under the furious onslaught. The factories working at maximum capacity could not rebuild as fast as they were destroyed.

"You’re finished, Forge..."

The Wolf God sneered.

With that, the final wall of steel was shattered. An uncountable number of bloodwater serpents and shadow wolves broke through the metallic skies and surged toward Beverly’s mechanical planetary body, covering its surface with claws and blood tides. They were poised to completely engulf, tear apart, and devour it.

But just then—something unexpected occurred.

A kaleidoscopic light of prismatic brilliance pierced through the layers of reality. It shone through the crimson sea and the darting wolf shadows, casting its glow onto the iron world. The serpents and wolves bathed in this dazzling light began to shimmer, their forms tinged with strange hues.

Under this illusionary brilliance, the battlefield—so terrible and cruel—suddenly took on a dreamlike quality. And it wasn’t just metaphorical. The monsters began to lose their solidity, becoming translucent, distorted—until they touched the iron ground and popped like bubbles.

“Illusion… Dream?”

The Abyssal Serpent, incarnated as a sea of blood, paused. It turned its gaze toward the source of the rainbow light. The blood sea that had once filled this ruined space was now becoming a sea of bursting bubbles. From the fading froth, white mist spread outward—and in the depths of that mist, the multicolored light grew brighter.

Within that radiance, a pair of vast, illusionary wings slowly unfurled. Countless symbols of different colors and shapes flowed across the wings in constant motion. That prismatic light came from there.

Between the wings was a blurred figure—a silhouette impossible to define. It had antennae-like structures, long flowing hair, and a skirt that swayed elegantly like a tail. Insect? Human? Perhaps both. Perhaps neither.

"Heh… You’ve finally arrived."

Seeing the seven-colored brilliance and feeling its utterly different divine nature—so unlike the other two evil gods, or even herself—Beverly exhaled in relief. The reinforcements she had long awaited had finally arrived.

Beyond steel, blood, and beasts—a fourth divine force had now entered this war-ravaged realm. Unlike the heavily materialized gods before, this one was utterly different.

Obeying the command of the Night Sky, the newly born Butterfly God had left the realm of darkness to intervene in this war that would decide the fate of the world.

…

Thanks to the Butterfly God’s arrival, the tide of war in the inner realm began to shift fundamentally. And though the material realm saw improvement as well, the situation was still far from resolved. The crisis was not yet over.

In the depths of space, the flesh planet—twisted, malformed—continued to grow. It had already swelled from the size of a terrestrial planet to that of a gas giant, but it still wasn’t enough. Fed by overwhelming vitality, the planet's rate of growth only continued to accelerate.

Across its surface, countless mouths opened and closed. Eyes rolled wildly. Thick tentacles lined with fangs and blood-tied cords grew from the crimson earth, reaching far into deep space. Alongside them, clouds of green plague mist, shaped into strange monstrous forms, spiraled through the air—supporting the tentacles in their attack.

The tentacles aimed toward a region of space where thunder roared.

In the darkness of space, facing the Mother of Chalice and Plague Vulture’s joint attack, Dorothy responded calmly. She summoned bolts of enormous lightning, shattering the plague-born constructs and severing the rampaging tendrils.

The tentacles flailed wildly, baring gaping maws that devoured the lightning. Dorothy’s fingers trembled, and she unleashed a web of spiritual threads—latching onto the tentacles and forcibly shutting their mouths.

But the moment the threads connected, curses of blood and infectious pathogens surged toward Dorothy along the lines. Yet as they neared her, they were warped by invisible threads of fate. The most unlikely possibilities unfolded: spontaneous collapse, sudden death. The threats crumbled before they could touch her.

Around the tendrils, blood serpents spiraled rapidly to disturb Dorothy’s domain—but she answered with stories of drought. Manifesting the fear of drought from within her story world, she conjured gaunt, malformed monsters, each a physical embodiment of drought. These entities infused Dorothy’s divine power with new forms, drying up the swirling blood torrents entirely.

Now advanced to Gold-rank, Dorothy’s control and understanding of her Revelation divinity had deepened tremendously. She was able to resist the Mother of Chalice’s assault—but just barely.

Before her advancement, she had nearly been defeated by the Mother’s emergence. Now, she could mount a defense—but no effective offense. And mere defense could not sustain the current balance. As the Mother’s descent into the material realm continued to accelerate, her growth became unsustainable. Dorothy would not be able to hold her back much longer.

Indeed, the stalemate quickly broke once again. As the Mother of Chalice’s power intensified, new forces poured into the divine battlefield. Sudden mutations erupted across the flesh planet.

Bulbous blisters began to swell all over the planet’s surface. When they burst, they released strange new monsters, which rapidly matured and flew into the battlefield above.

Some were heavily muscled and covered in crackling spikes of lightning. Others were spindly, with dozens of long arms ending in thin fingers trailing phantom red threads. Still others were fat and bloated, vomiting out blood-ink that transformed into all manner of grotesque new beasts.

Through battle damage and devouring, the Mother of Chalice absorbed fragments of Dorothy’s divine power, using them as seed-data to birth a new army of offspring—each tailored with counter-abilities.

And with their appearance, the situation turned sharply.

The spiked monsters diverted Dorothy’s lightning. The many-armed creatures tangled her spiritual threads. The bloated beasts swallowed her mythical constructs whole.

This new generation of targeted offspring suppressed Dorothy’s power severely. Once they entered the field, the balance tipped rapidly—in favor of the Mother of Chalice.

“This is… not good…”

Dorothy frowned grimly as she watched the shifting battlefield. As some of her drought monsters were swallowed up, massive blood serpents surged toward her—aiming to break her into pieces with sheer force.

Dorothy prepared to reallocate her power to mount an emergency defense.

But then—another change occurred.

Light.

A beam of pure, brilliant golden light pierced the blackness of space. It flashed before Dorothy’s eyes, and the oncoming blood serpents were engulfed completely—vanishing without a trace as the light faded.

“You’ve come!”

Dorothy’s heart surged with relief.

She immediately turned toward the source of the radiance—and sure enough, she saw what she had expected all along.

On the far end of Dorothy’s gaze, in the boundless reaches of space, a golden radiance hovered and shimmered. Looking closely, one could make out a more solid form within that hazy glow.

It was—a golden ship, a majestic ark!

Its entire body was sheathed in gold, adorned with inlaid white gemstones. The ship was impossibly long—stretching for hundreds of kilometers. It tapered to a sharp point at the front, widened through the midsection, then narrowed again at the rear—shaped like the tip of a golden spear, but one over a hundred kilometers long.

Across its massive hull, countless magnificent structures rose—layer upon layer of temples, cathedrals, arenas, and great avenues, vaster than any city. At its heart, the architecture echoed the grand style of the Third Epoch’s Empire of Light. In the center of this vast construction stood a resplendent golden palace, and rising from within it like a mast was a towering white-gold spire—the ship’s bridge.

Countless golden, block-shaped illusory runes were stacked together, forming one massive rune ring after another. These rune rings encircled the ship from prow to stern, each at a different radius. The ark’s pointed bow cleaved through the void, stirring up waves of starlight that cascaded along its hull like celestial surf.

This was the Wheel of the Blazing Sun—the most powerful Saint Steel Vessel of the Radiance Church, the greatest weapon left behind by the majestic Third Epoch Empire of Light, and the Apocalypse Ark that served as the steed of the Great God.

Once, it had been sealed within Holy Mount, held as one of the Radiance Church’s greatest trump cards. Now, it had emerged once more—or more precisely, it had become the blazing sun itself.

Within the palace-like bridge of the massive ark, an elderly man clad in humble white robes gazed upon the chaotic, polluted scene before him. His eyes turned to the flesh-laden world below—a planet of blood and corruption, far vaster than even the ark beneath his feet.

In a weary tone, he murmured.

“The fragile balance has finally tilted…

The long-sedimented filth has spilled over…

Doomsday is here…

Let this final Radiance shine forth through me…

Whether it shines upon a hopeless future… or a new world…

That will be decided now.”

This was Phaethon, the Holy Pontiff of the Radiance Church.

For a thousand years, he had been the jailer of despair and corruption, watching over the seal from above. Whenever corruption stirred, it was he who ascended to strengthen the lock—drawing near to the one power no mortal was ever meant to face.

Though a jailer, Phaethon had always known the truth: the prison would not last forever. One day, he would have to face the terrible power sealed within it. That day had finally come. And so, in calm resolve, he had picked up his weapons, ready to meet that fate.

“Phaethon!! How dare you return! Pay the price!!”

From the flesh planet below, Unina, now merged with the blood-earth, screamed in fury. Her rage twisted her face into something almost monstrous, and in resonance with her wrath, the Mother of Chalice’s flesh incarnation began to surge violently.

One after another, countless thick tentacles burst from the corrupted earth. With each rupture of the swelling blisters on the ground, more monsters were born. The thick plague mist gathered rapidly in that region.

The tentacles split open with rows of gnashing mouths, coiled with blood-serpents, all lunging toward the ark glowing in the heavens. Alongside them came legions of plague manifestations and deformed beasts.

The Mother of Chalice's onslaught broke through sky and earth. Even the colossal ark—hundreds of kilometers long—seemed pitiful in the face of such a tsunami. It was like a lone canoe in a typhoon, one that might vanish in the next moment beneath the tide of blood and flesh.

Yet before this overwhelming assault, Phaethon remained composed.

With a single wave of his hand, the golden ark began to hum. Across its massive surface, phantasmal spell arrays and divine cannons manifested at every point. All of them aimed at the approaching wave of corruption and fired beams of blinding golden light.

These beams—each one powerful enough to slice continents and cleave planets—now numbered in the hundreds. Together, they wove a lattice of radiant destruction, forming a brilliant net of light that caught and halted the tide of blood.

Tentacles were severed, blood and plague vaporized, and entire specialized monsters were annihilated in the radiant weave.

Though powerful, the light-web could only do so much. The tide of filth continued to grow, wave after wave. More gaping maws began to bite through the radiant beams, and the endless blood seas refracted and weakened the light. Some of the beams were twisted by plague magic, turning into thick yellow meat-worms crawling with blight.

The light alone was not enough.

Phaethon raised his hand once more, infusing his power throughout the ark. More ancient and arcane runes blazed across its surface—and then, six radiant lights rose from its flanks.

These were not beam weapons. They were entities—six luminous beings who circled the ark once before shooting toward the oncoming tide. As they flew, their forms began to change.

One became a blazing flame, from which emerged a massive figure clad in ornate golden armor, with wings of fire and a halo of golden flame above his head.

Another formed into a solemn, iron-faced figure, with no visible features beneath a jeweled crown. Scroll-fragments composed his wings, and a halo of commandments etched in stone floated above him.

A third unfurled pure white wings, wearing robes that shone with sacred light. Golden hair flowed around a blurred face, above which hovered a halo shaped like an ouroboros, a white snake biting its own tail.

The fourth burst apart into machinery—revealing a mechanical angel with steel wings of metallic feathers. A gear-shaped halo hovered above a head filled with sensors.

The fifth light dimmed to reveal a skeletal figure wrapped in linen, bearing dry, thorned wings. A halo of spiked thorns rested atop his shadowed hood.

The sixth was darkest of all—an angel blacker than the night sky, clad in starlit armor, bearing wings of shadow, and crowned with a moonlit halo.

These were the Six Cardinals of the Radiance Church, now transformed into Six Archangels—far more powerful than the sacred garrison angels.

Together with the ark, they launched themselves into battle against the endless corruption of the Mother of Chalice.

Flaming swords vaporized blood, golden flames devouring blood-serpents in the sky.

Commandment seals bound demonic maws, chaining shut mouths along the giant tentacles.

Sacred light purified plague, rendering lethal pathogens harmless.

Laws and runes immobilized monsters, freezing them in place.

Divine weapons were forged and equipped mid-battle, and ritual domains were established at breakneck speed.

The moonlit shadow angel flashed across the battlefield, shattering armies of tentacles and beasts.

With the Six Archangels in full force, and the ark’s support from behind, the tide of filth was finally halted. For a time, there was even a glimmer of reversal.

But… the Mother of Chalice was a Great God.

The six archangels’ counterattack could only push back so far. As more divine power flooded in from the Mother, the corrupted tide surged once more.

Worse, the power the archangels poured into the Mother was absorbed—transformed into new monsters tailor-made to counter them.

When thorned beasts spoke, commandments were broken.

When serpent-headed monsters lashed their tails, healing light was reversed into corruption.

When beasts inscribed with scripture passed judgment, guilt was devoured and innocence proclaimed.

When a red dragon-like beast soared skyward, it devoured eternal flame.

Muck-like abominations slipped into shadows to ambush the night angel in his own element.

The archangels’ momentary edge was lost.

As the Mother of Chalice’s power increased, the tide of corruption surged once again—irreversibly advancing toward the ark, determined to engulf and consume it completely.

Watching this grim reversal, Phaethon furrowed his brow.

With a soft sigh, he raised his head and gazed into the stars—toward another battlefield overrun by filth.

“O my noble blood… lend me your strength… to construct the glory of Radiance…”

He spoke not to a mortal, but to heaven itself. His voice echoed through space, and across realms.

It reached Dorothy, still battling corruption on her front.

“Construct… the glory of Radiance, is it?”

Dorothy’s eyes narrowed with interest. A moment later, she answered decisively.

“As you wish.”

At her words, Dorothy gathered a vast portion of her divine power. Then, channeling the Throne of Fate, she wielded the overwhelming might of Revelation to touch upon the power of Law.

“Now, all the symbols of Radiance converge within you… Go forth, cousin…”

With her command, Dorothy transformed the entire Radiance Church—and even the Third Epoch Empire’s entire legal framework—into pure divine power. She poured it all into Phaethon—the perfect vessel.

Just as she had once bestowed the power of law upon the Ice Dragon Emperor, now—far more skilled and with a far worthier bearer—she repeated the process.

With a single decree from the Fate Sovereign, an immense power drawn from history surged into Phaethon’s body. A soft glow lit up around him, ethereal symbols began to appear, and he could feel his power rapidly increasing—but it still wasn’t enough.

“Father… look upon this filthy world. Let me be the light that purges the wicked…”

As he spoke, the glow around Phaethon flared suddenly. What had been a gentle radiance burst into a dazzling brilliance, flooding the entire colossal ark in an instant. The entire vessel seemed to transform into a blazing comet streaking through space.

Above countless realms, in the dusky firmament, the radiant cross still stood tall, shrouded in amber light. And the withered figure bound to that cross began to glow faintly in resonance.

From the body of Heros, remnants of divinity flowed downward into the material realm—and into Phaethon.

Enveloped in radiance, Phaethon’s form began to change dramatically.

His emaciated body swelled with vitality, going from gaunt to robust in an instant. Dry skin turned smooth, deep wrinkles vanished, and his hunched posture straightened to a proud, towering frame. His height shot up over two meters. Sparse hair thickened into flowing golden locks. The dull haze in his eyes was replaced by a dazzling light.

In mere moments, Phaethon transformed from a frail old man into a radiant, powerful young warrior. The loose robes that once draped his elder frame now strained and tore apart, revealing massive, well-defined muscles, etched with golden divine markings. His shoulder-length hair flowed freely, his features chiseled like marble, with a strong, resolute jawline. He now bore a striking resemblance to Hyperion—at least seventy percent alike.

At this moment, Phaethon was absorbing the titanic main divinity of the Radiant Savior.

The Savior’s divinity had long been sacrificed to maintain the prison sealing corruption—a prison manifested through three aspects: Holy Mother, Holy Son, and Holy Father. These three aspects collected mortal faith to reinforce the Radiance seal.

Of these, the Son and Father corresponded to the Stone Prince and Great Soul. Though neither had fully fallen, both harbored latent corruption risks. The Great Soul had a parasitic corruption within that could seize its body at any moment. The Stone Prince, heralded as unyielding and eternal, had resisted the Egg of Chaos for countless cycles without reincarnation, making him dangerously susceptible to corruption.

Thus, Radiance invested little divine power into the Son and Father—only enough to stabilize the Stone Prince and Great Soul.

But the Holy Mother bore the full burden of sealing the fully corrupted Mother of Chalice, and thus received the greatest share of Radiance’s divine investment—and the most faith.

Now, with the Holy Mother’s prison shattered, all that immense Radiance divinity was released.

Phaethon was now absorbing that freed divinity, aided by the immense Revelation Law power Dorothy had infused into him through the Throne of Fate. At this moment, Phaethon stood closer than ever to becoming the true Lantern Great God.

Revealing his true form, Phaethon cast a cold gaze toward the ocean of filth before him. He extended his hand, and a flash of radiance coalesced into a scepter forged from white stone and gold—resplendent and regal.

This was the Staff of Radiant Decree. Though originally the Pope’s ceremonial implement, it had since passed through the hands of Kramar, Vania, and Dorothy, solving numerous crises. Now, it had returned to its rightful master.

Just as it had responded to Dorothy’s divine lineage, now, too, the staff reacted to Phaethon, reshaping itself in his grip. Surrounded by a glow, the rod elongated, transforming into a long spear forged of the same divine materials.

Simultaneously, Phaethon’s clothing transformed. The simple robes turned into an ornate imperial armor.

His powerful chest was clad in engraved muscle-plated armor, a gemstone-studded skirt hung from his waist, and a heavy helmet veiled his face—save for the two radiant eyes glowing beneath the visor. A vast cloak flowed behind him, fluttering gently in the vacuum of space.

Clad in ancient imperial battle gear, Phaethon raised his holy spear and silently pointed it forward—toward the surging tide of corruption, where the six archangels were now struggling. The filth had nearly reached the ark.

“Sun Wheel… purge the unclean.”

With his whisper, the entire star system underwent sudden change.

At the center of the system, the massive sun flared with intense solar activity. Gigantic sunspots boiled to the surface, coalescing into a massive hyperactive flare zone.

Then—from that sunspot burst forth a colossal beam of solar fire, wider than most planets, even wider than gas giants. It crossed space in a blink and descended onto the battlefield.

Having been warned, the six archangels withdrew just in time.

The solar beam struck—and instantly engulfed the oncoming filth, composed of tentacles, plagues, blood torrents, and monster hordes.

Under the purest purifying force, in searing divine flame, the tide of filth was annihilated.

Blood torrents vaporized. Devouring maws disintegrated. Corrupting flesh curses and soul-infecting plagues were scorched to dust. Even fire-resistant monsters bred by the Mother of Chalice were utterly undone by the extraordinary temperatures.

This power—the purifying force of divine sunlight—was overwhelming. It ignored all resistances, shattered divine mechanics and rules alike, and purified everything in its path.

Even the flesh planet, now larger than a gas giant, was fully engulfed.

Its surface vaporized rapidly under the light, and from deep within, an earth-shaking scream of agony echoed across the cosmos.

The divine sunlight was purging the very source of corruption.

And yet—even while completely engulfed in solar fire—the flesh planet did not perish.

Blood and flesh boiled away, but more erupted from within to take its place. It continued growing in the sunlight, replacing every scorched layer with new meat.

Even as the planet evaporated, it began to grow again.

With more of the Mother of Chalice’s divinity entering the realm, the planet refused to die. It continued expanding—soon, it might even surpass the size of the solar beam itself.

Seeing this, Phaethon halted the beam.

As the light dissipated, a massive, charred, pitch-black sphere appeared again in space. But even this black crust cracked. From within, red flesh burst forth, surging and screaming as it renewed itself.

Seeing this grotesque rebirth, Phaethon raised his spear again.

With a single motion, the sun itself began to transform.

Its golden light dimmed to crimson orange. Its volume expanded rapidly.

The once young and stable star was now becoming a red giant—a star with terrifying heat and unstable mass. It swelled, engulfing its innermost planets and pushing outward with terrifying speed.

The sun’s original mass was already a million times that of a terrestrial planet. Now, as a red giant, its size grew exponentially.

And as it expanded—engulfing the inner planets, encroaching upon the orbit where the flesh planet resided—it presented itself as an entity too vast for language to describe.

Any word used to describe “vastness” would feel inadequate at this moment. Looking inward from the orbit of the flesh planet, one would see an immense crimson wall of scorching heat—a red giant wall—stretching from the top of the universe to its bottom, from the farthest left to the farthest right. The now raging red giant had already occupied multiple inner orbits, and its volume was beginning to surpass the limits of a star.

It was an indescribable sense of suffocating pressure. As it loomed closer, it felt as though everything would be swallowed. Even the massive flesh planet—already far larger than Jupiter—now seemed smaller than a speck of dust by comparison.

To the current red giant, devouring such a tiny celestial body would be easier than crushing an ant. Yet, just as the flesh planet was about to be swallowed whole, a sudden anomaly occurred.

A surge of crimson ripples spread from the flesh planet—not just at high speed, but transcending the very concept of speed. In an instant, it covered the entire cosmos. And with that, the entire universe began to change.

Like a malfunctioning television, the image of the red giant consuming the flesh planet suddenly froze and glitched, distorting into static and bizarre hues. These chaotic colors rapidly filled the cosmos—but then, just as suddenly, both the static and the corruption vanished. The image resumed smoothly again… yet what was shown now was completely different from before.

The red giant that had once swollen to devour all was now shrinking rapidly—its immense body reducing to the size of a typical gas giant. Its ominous red hue faded, returning to a golden brilliance.

But that wasn’t all.

The flesh planet, once dwarfed, had suddenly expanded—exploding in size to match the scale the sun had just lost. It now sat at the center of the star system, where the sun used to be.

In this new configuration, the gigantic flesh planet occupied the center, while the sun and moon—now each only as large as gas giants—orbited around it. The moon emitted a natural silvery glow, and numerous other celestial bodies also began to orbit the flesh planet in diverse patterns.

Upon the surface of the flesh planet, one could still observe the rising and setting of the sun, moon, and stars—illuminating the land—but the cosmic mechanics behind it all had become entirely different.

Seeing this drastic transformation, Dorothy furrowed her brows deeply. Possessing tremendous divine power, she immediately sensed what had occurred.

“This is… the universe itself has changed… The Mother of Chalice has rewritten the cosmic model!”

Indeed, what they were witnessing was the result of the Mother of Chalice rewriting the universe. With more divinity flowing into the material realm and the seal now broken, She had gained the strength to alter the cosmology itself.

Moments ago, She had reversed the heliocentric model of the cosmos, transforming it into a geocentric one. Her manifestation—the Flesh Earth—became the center of the star system, drastically increasing its influence. In turn, the once all-powerful sun—once central in the heliocentric system—was weakened and demoted to a satellite revolving around the Flesh Earth.

Such is the power of a Main God's divinity—capable of rewriting the universe at will. Whichever side has dominant divine power can shape the cosmos to its favor. Now, with the divine liberation from the seal, the Mother of Chalice had achieved that level of influence.

“Hahahaha!! Do you see it now, Phaethon?! This is Mother’s power—even the sun must submit!”

From within the flesh planet, Unina, now merged with it, laughed wildly and arrogantly. Her laughter echoed as the flesh planet began convulsing violently. Countless tentacles burst forth again, surging with pestilent blood and filth, launching into the sky in a cosmic-scale assault.

Due to the vast expansion of the flesh planet, the filth-tide was now of unimaginable magnitude. When even a single tentacle, larger than an entire planet, fanged and disease-ridden, lunged toward the ark, the ark itself felt as insignificant as an ant, just as the flesh planet had earlier before the red giant.

“Sun Wheel… heed my command!”

Facing this moment of despair, Phaethon, aboard the ark, once more raised his spear. Immediately, the sun, now orbiting the Flesh Earth, changed its trajectory and rushed toward the ark.

Though greatly reduced in size, the Sun Wheel still radiated immense power. As it neared the ark, its searing radiance began to vaporize and purify the incoming waves of corruption.

Filth was incinerated en masse, yet new waves surged from the Flesh Earth, continuing their onslaught, threatening to engulf both the ark and the Sun Wheel.

At that moment, the ark underwent a sudden transformation. From its front hull, several thick golden chains shot forth—embedding themselves into the Sun Wheel. Once the chains pulled taut, the sun began to drag the ark, and the ark itself began to expand.

In an instant, ark and sun became one, turning into a stream of blazing light that tore through the battlefield—evading the swarming tide of corruption.

The Solar Chariot—this was the true form of the Radiance Ark. It could tether the sun and use it as a celestial steed, pulling the chariot across star systems to wage divine wars.

This had once been the chariot of Hyperion, who had ridden it into battle to annihilate countless enemies.

Now, Phaethon was driving his grandfather’s war chariot, leading Radiance into battle against the most formidable enemy they had ever faced.

Guiding the Solar Chariot, Phaethon raced across the surface of the Flesh Earth, scorching its land with divine fire. The earth blackened to ash—yet within seconds, it regenerated entirely. Waves of filth erupted from below, launching relentless assaults against the light.

Though the Solar Chariot far outpaced the filth tide, the expanding Flesh Earth gave rise to ever more tentacles. The entire planetary surface now seethed with assault, continuing to grow beyond the scale of a star.

The chariot kept purifying, burning away the filth it encountered, but the corruption's growth now threatened to consume even the chariot.

“Even with our combined power, it’s still not enough to destroy this thing… We can’t keep wasting time in a war of attrition—we must go all in, drive deep into the Blood Chalice’s core, and recover the last fragment of my divinity. That’s the only way we can turn this battle around.”

From her position in a distant part of space, Dorothy sent a serious transmission. Most of her strength was already used up augmenting Phaethon’s divine laws—she could only rely on him now to retrieve her divinity from the Mother of Chalice. Only then could the tide be turned.

“Pierce… a main god? I will try my best…”

Listening to her voice, Phaethon, still riding the radiance of the Solar Chariot, whispered quietly and focused all his will—projecting his intent across the cosmos, summoning every bit of power he could.

In that instant, outside this embattled star system, in countless other geocentric star systems, their own suns suddenly responded—shaking and glowing violently.

And then, these countless miniature suns, having also been diminished by the cosmological shift, broke free from their orbits, transforming into streaks of light, crossing light-years in moments, converging toward the Flesh Earth.

Thus, to fulfill Dorothy’s request, Phaethon began drawing upon all light within the material realm's cosmos, channeling everything into one final, decisive strike.

Meanwhile, deep within the swollen, grotesque heart of the Flesh Earth, an immense power was also stirring—one capable of once again rewriting the universe’s structure, just as it had moments ago.