Chapter 1666: The natural evolution of the war

Nearly two long, grueling hours had passed—

"....." Sakaar’s space battles command instincts, his sense for reading the flow of war, sharpened with every passing second, like a blade honed in the fire of chaos itself.

And yet, despite the experience he was amassing in real time, the overall situation refused to change in any meaningful way.

By now, Sakaar

finally understood

why these cosmic wars could rage for centuries without ever declaring a victor.

It wasn’t because either side lacked power.

It was because the act of war itself—on this colossal, interstellar scale—was simply

too draining, too consuming, too endless.

At this very moment, three grand battlefronts encircled Verilion like burning rings of fury.

The first front, naturally, was the Fleet Battlefield—the heart of the storm—where hundreds of thousands of ships were locked in perpetual destruction.

Beams of light carved through the void; energy shells detonated into stars; wreckage spiraled through space like fragments of a dying sun.

Each ship, massive and proud, was a world unto itself—its surface glowing with protective runes and energy veins pulsing with life. They continuously activated layer upon layer of energy shields, resilience spells, evasion enchantments, and neutralization arrays—every conceivable form of defense known to advanced civilizations.

And still, despite all of that...

ships kept dying.

They bloomed into silent fireballs one after another, bursting apart like cosmic fireworks that painted the battlefield with fleeting beauty and eternal loss.

There was no such thing as total protection here—not at this level of destruction.

Meanwhile, Baron and Sayir executed their counter-maneuver to perfection.

The forty World Cataclysms, beings whose very presence warped reality, had struck deep from behind the enemy fleets.

They tore through the ranks like living storms, scattering formations, shattering discipline, and forcing entire armadas to retreat and regroup again and again.

That bold tactic allowed the Cataclysms to annihilate hundreds of enemy vessels, and in doing so, opened new opportunities for the allied fleets to rain down devastation of their own.

Yet, for all that divine power unleashed, the truth remained the same—control of space still belonged to the swift, organized, and numerous warships.

Their overwhelming firepower, coordination, and sheer mass dictated the rhythm of battle.

The question burning in Sakaar’s mind was simple:

How long could they keep this up?

Each passing minute consumed

oceans of liquid energy essence

and

mountains of energy Pearls.

Every volley, every recharged shield, was another fortune spent, another hour shaved from their endurance.

After those two merciless hours, the intensity of the barrage finally began to fade—slowing by nearly half from both sides, as though the universe itself had ordered a brief truce.

No ship dared to stop firing or lower its shields completely, but their patterns shifted—shots became deliberate, calculated, aimed to conserve rather than obliterate.

Sakaar immediately understood...

This was the real reason the wars of the heavens never ended.

It wasn’t that one side couldn’t crush the other—it was that neither could sustain the cost of victory.

That was why every wave of war burned fiercely for a single day at most before the attackers were forced to retreat and recover.

At this rate, within six hours—at most—the energy fueling the cannons and shields would run dry, turning these once-mighty fleets into drifting metal husks, empty fortresses lost in orbit.

And speaking of fortresses... that led to the second front—the war of the Nexus States and World Cataclysms themselves.

Sakaar shifted his soul perception downward toward the planetary surface. The fighting there had also slowed considerably, though the silence was heavy, charged with exhaustion rather than peace.

Thanks to Amon and his titanic squad of giants, and to Fyron’s endless artillery barrages, the warriors of the Crumbled Dreams Empire had managed not to win—but to endure.

Yes—endure

.

Because the difference in Nexus State numbers alone—three to one—made survival itself a miracle.

And even if they managed to wound their foes, killing a World Cataclysm or a Nexus State was another matter entirely.

These beings were not soldiers—they were walking calamities, each capable of surviving explosions that could erase cities.

In open battle, where they could defend one another, their deaths became almost unthinkable.

Even the Metal Lion, struck from both flanks, suffered terrible injuries—his leg torn away, his lower body mangled, and his innards scattered across the void. Yet before the light in his soul dimmed, his comrades stormed through the chaos to reach him.

They dragged his massive frame out of the battlefield, forcing his unconscious body to revert to its humanoid size, sealing his wounds with raw energy before placing him aboard one of the allied warships.

Of course, Fyron and the veteran strategist of the Crumbled Dreams Empire did not simply stand idle through all this chaos—

they had already unleashed everything in their arsenal to finish of the metallic lion.

But once three Nexus States descended to engage them directly, even their brilliance and will could do little but struggle against the tide.

Before such entities, every plan became meaningless, and every tactic was swallowed whole by sheer, overwhelming existence.

BAM

BAM

"...." Sakaar’s body trembled faintly as he observed the collision of those towering entities, the

battle between the Nexus States

.

Each exchange of force sent rings of distortion rolling across the void—waves faster than sight, heavier than sound, powerful enough to make even his soul-force vibrate with primal terror.

The space around them rippled unnaturally, forming folds upon folds, each one echoing the death-scream of reality itself.

It was a sight he had grown accustomed to witnessing only within planets of the Young Belt—

where the planetary spirits acted as divine regulators, imposing strict pathway limits, capping spatial force at the fourth stage.

When Helga, or any other World Cataclysm, struck with strength beyond that level, the fragile balance shattered; the very fabric of space would ripple, fracture, and begin to implode inward like glass under infinite pressure.

But here... in the vast emptiness between worlds, even in the scoop of the young belt, no such guardians watched.

No planetary spirit, no rules.

The Path of Space stretching freely all the way to the seventh stage here!

And yet—

BAM

BAM

BAM

BAM

The titanic clash between the World Cataclysms and the Nexus States turned the region around Verilion into something visible even to the

blind soul

.

Space itself could now be seen twisting, folding, shattering into countless mirrored fragments—then healing again in a heartbeat, reforming, only to break once more.

It was as if reality were breathing, a living organism of pain and regeneration, bleeding starlight and mending itself in the same pulse.

Each convulsion shook the heavens.

BABABA–DOOM!

Sakaar’s three hearts quivered violently at the sight.

Was it fear of the enemy?

No... not even close.

He could not explain the unease that crawled through his essence.

It wasn’t fear of death—it was something older, deeper, a primal rejection of witnessing existence itself being rewritten before his eyes.

If it were solely his choice, he would have ordered a retreat for every fleet, every soldier, every being still clinging to battle.

But he knew—he

knew

—that such a command would doom them all.

If Amon and Fyron withdrew now, their allies from the Crumbled Dreams Empire would be erased within minutes, their legions devoured by the advancing Nexus States.

And thus the war would end

today

, in an utter, irredeemable defeat.

Yet this confrontation —no matter how apocalyptic— was nearing its natural conclusion.

The World Cataclysms were not like the Nexus States.

They could not draw upon primordial chaos directly from the void to replenish their strength, nor could their bodies endure endless exposure to the nothingness of open space.

Their existence was finite, bound by the laws of the worlds they had once destroyed.

Their movements were slowing, and their energy-cores dimming under the weight of exhaustion.

Both sides—the Cataclysms of the Crumbled Dreams Empire and those of the Alliance Armies—were beginning to falter.

Their once-devastating blows had lost rhythm, their walls of energy flickered, their coordination fractured under the toll of endless combat.

They drifted backward, step by step, their focus shifting from domination to survival, from conquest to endurance—each one silently hoping the other side would collapse first.

Of course... there was one exception.

The Demon Cataclysms