"...Have you ever borne witness to a cosmic war before?"
"...No."
Robin narrowed his eyes slightly, his tone cautious. He couldnât quite grasp the intent behind the questionâor why, exactly, they were strolling together toward the edge of the floating cloud. It felt oddly... ceremonial.
The crimson clouds stretched across the horizon like bleeding silk.
The sunâobscured behind curtains of smoke and cloudâcast long shadows across the sky.
Below, radiant meteors blazed upward like defiant arrows piercing the heavens.
The view was breathtaking, poetic evenâlike a myth captured in motion.
But Robin couldnât help but wonder:
Were men of their power and rank truly meant to stand still and marvel at the skies?
Was this just Hedrickâs version of stalling?
Hedrick ignored the unspoken question laced in Robinâs voice. Instead, he kept his pace steady, his hands behind his back, and spoke as if recounting a memory carved deep in his soul:
"Wars... they erupt somewhere every day, often without warning. But when millennial empiresâthe ancient juggernauts of a sectorâclash against one another, thatâs no mere war. Thatâs what we call a
cosmic war
, even if itâs only a minor one."
He tilted his head toward Robin. "A war like that pulls in
everyone
.
Every power, every clan, every mercenary guild and kingdom gets sucked into the chaos, like blood drawn to a gaping wound."
"It doesnât matter whether they want to fight or notâ
The sheer scale, the consequences, the shockwavesâthey force the hand of the entire sector."
"Economies collapse. Worlds fall into famine.
And life itself?
It becomes cheaper than dirt."
Robin frowned slightly, unsure whether this was some sort of lectureâor warning.
"And the worst part?" Hedrickâs tone dropped lower. "These âminiatureâ wars are often just sparks. Sparks that ignite something
far
greater."
"Because every millennial emperor has connectionsâalliances, debts, loyaltiesâoutside his own sector.
So when war begins, they send word.
Reinforcements arrive. Blood is spilled.
That blood demands vengeance. More arrive, and more still... until the war stretches beyond borders, and becomes a
true
cosmic war."
"..."
Robin narrowed his gaze, finally grasping Hedrickâs intent.
This wasnât just a story.
This was a glimpse of
his future
.
"I didnât choose this view as the meeting place by accident, Robin." Hedrick continued, his voice solemn. "I brought you here not just for the beauty, but to show you something Iâve seen many timesâsomething
you
, too, will see."
"As long as you possess a planet seed... this will be your destiny."
By now, the two had reached the edge of the great cloud.
Hedrick extended his hand forward, gesturing to the world below.
"Go on.
Take it in.
Fill your sight with what a true cosmic war looks like."
And then came the sound.
Clatter...
CLANG!
CLANG!
"...?"
Robin leaned forward instinctively, his brows twitchingâ
Then, suddenly, his entire body jerked back on reflex.
"What--!"
"Easy," Hedrickâs hand pressed gently against Robinâs back, keeping him steady.
"Weâre still inside the Soul Domain. These are just recordingsâresidual echoes stored in memory."
"Recordings...?"
Robin blinked rapidly, then slowly leaned forward again.
His eyes opened wide.
Wider than they had in decades.
His heart slammed against his ribs, a chaotic drumbeat of awe, confusion, and something elseâsomething he hadnât felt in a long time: dread.
"What... is this place?" he whispered, breath catching.
Robin had seen war.
Noâhe had
breathed
war.
He had started wars, ended them, burned cities to the ground and razed armies by the millions.
But never had he seen anything remotely close to
this
.
Below the cloud, stretching to the ends of sight, was not a battlefield.
It was a world-ending cataclysm.
A war beyond comprehension.
They hovered at a terrifying altitudeâso high that lesser men might have fainted just from the viewâ
And yet, across the horizon not a single inch of land below was untouched by blood.
Not a single pocket of sky above the battlefield was free from movement.
From edge to edge, the entire landscape was
alive
with combat.
Mountaintops were crumbling into ash.
Rivers hissed into steam.
Oceans had turned black and red, tainted with blood and smoke.
This wasnât a war to claim territory.
This was mutual annihilation.
How many were down there?
Millions? Tens of millions? Hundreds of millions?
No.
More.
Far, far more.
There were dozensâmaybe hundredsâof different races, each wearing distinct armor, wielding strange weapons, shouting war cries in tongues both ancient and alien.
They were all locked in deadly combat with a singular forceâ
A legion clad entirely in shimmering silver, their formation flawless, their resolve unshakable.
And somehow...
they were holding the line
.
"RRRAAAAARRRRR--!!"
Robinâs breath caught in his throat.
Across the battlefield, enormous beastsâtowering monsters easily fifty meters tallâwere locked in savage combat.
They werenât just pets or summons.
They were apex predators, tearing through battalions like blades through silk.
Robin watched, wide-eyed, as one of them swallowed a soldier whole.
He saw another slam a mountain beast into the earth with enough force to split the crust.
The sky
shook
. The land
screamed
under their might.
Robin instantly recognized itâthose were no ordinary beasts.
There was one particular creature repeating itself in multiple areas across the battlefield.
A massive serpent, its color undulating between shimmering silver and a faint, ghostly blue.
Its body was a grotesque hybridâone half a muscular, coiled mass of sheer power, the other a bony skeleton lined with jagged, obsidian-like spikes.
Even its enormous head was nothing more than a skull, hollow-eyed and cracked, exuding an aura of death and primal fury.
Robin counted nine of them within his line of sight.
Scattered across different fronts, each one battling entire armies alone, and not faltering in the slightest.
That could mean only one thingâthese werenât just summoned beasts.
They were warriors, individuals who had inherited a powerful and condensed bloodline of that monstrous serpent.
Just like Pythor.
Sensing Robinâs rising curiosity, Hedrick subtly raised his hand and pointed toward one of the sectors held by the silver-armored forces.
There, amidst a tide of silver banners and gleaming halberds, stood one of those nightmarish serpents.
"That," Hedrick said, his voice low and even, "is the army of the Falling Meteors Empire.
And those serpents... bear the blood of the Beast King Naggarath, a creature born from the Law of Shattering.
It once reached the very summit of the Nexus State Realm before being hunted down and slain.
It cost me dearly to obtain even a fraction of his bloodline... but for them, it was worth it."
"All of them... are at Pythorâs level of beast blood density?" Robin whispered, eyes wide with a mix of awe and disbelief.
It was clear they wielded a minor destruction law, and the intensity of their blood was overwhelming.
No, not just Pythorâs level... many of them surpassed him.
A significant number of the troops below were clad in complete enchanted armor,
while the serpents themselves bore layered sigils and arcane bindings, with reinforced support gear fused into their bodies.
Those nine serpentsâeach a calamity on its ownâwere now engaged in a clash against twenty-two other towering monstrosities.
Beings that were likely also transformed warriors who had achieved the absolute peak of the second path.
Robin felt a cold shiver run down his spine.
-Devastation- didnât even begin to describe what his eyes were beholding.
The red hue bleeding through the clouds wasnât the light of sunset.
It was blood.
Vaporized blood that had risen into the sky in such vast quantities,
it created a red fog that drowned the horizon.
That mist of blood challenged the combined vapors of all oceans and riversâ
a horrifying testament to the scale of slaughter that had unfolded below.
And the light he had once mistaken for a glowing sun beneath the clouds?
It wasnât a sun.
It was a mountain of burning corpses.
A designated crew, dressed in matching uniforms, moved methodically through the field,
gathering the dead and throwing them onto the flames.
Not a single faction tried to stop them.
Every army simply allowed them to do their workâ
cleansing the battlefield of rot and disease...
and making room for more dead.
"This..."
The meteors Robin had admired earlier for their haunting beauty?
They were artillery blasts.
Shells fired from massive warships and huge cannons hidden beyond the clouds, deliberately aimed skyward.
Robin craned his neck higherâso far he felt a pop in his spineâ
and what he saw made his blood freeze.
"Aa... Aaah..."
Above the atmosphere, a second war raged.
A silent, ferocious clash among fleets of warshipsâ
a celestial battle between world Cataclysms and Nexus State Realm experts,
unfolding in the vacuum of space.
The sheer scale of it was madness.
Thousands of ships filled the skies like a swarm of colossal, metallic leviathans,
their forms shifting between shadows and flashes as they exchanged fire endlessly.
The explosions flickering across the void resembled eternal fireworks,
a chaotic ballet of power and precision with no signs of stopping.
Those upward strikes from the surface werenât random.
They were strategic support fire,
each side attempting to bolster its aerial forcesâ
because the collapse of Hedrickâs generals and fleets above would mean one thing:
Verillion would be annihilated.
All it would take is a single, direct strike
from one hostile Nexus State.