The simple truth was that Drex Valen's Chaos Dimension could no longer keep pace with its creator's growth.
At first, the Eyed Fiend had assumed being dragged into the Chaos Dimension was a death sentence.
Now?
It wasn't worried at all.
Drex had never intended to rely on the Chaos Dimension to imprison it anyway.
His real goal was to keep Cyttorak and Chthon from finding them.
Fighting one multiversal entity was manageable.
Fighting three at once was another matter entirely.
Even Drex had to admit that.
At the hidden convergence point of endless space-time, buried beneath layer upon layer of void beyond mortal perception, only beings on the level of the Cosmic Abstracts could truly comprehend what was unfolding.
A force carrying traces of eternal, indestructible power erupted outward.
Entire regions of space-time spanning hundreds of thousands of light-years were obliterated.
Nearby galaxies and star systems were shredded apart, their energy signatures mixed together into a blazing sea of chaos.
This was the Chaos Dimension.
Space here was so stable it might as well have been forged from Adamantium.
The celestial bodies scattered throughout it possessed effectively infinite mass and impossible density.
They were miracles of creation.
Then, centered on Drex, a grotesquely distorted force field expanded outward.
It swept across the entire dimension in moments.
Everywhere it passed, reality trembled.
Gravity became unstable.
Light twisted into impossible shapes.
Anything touched by the transparent wave fragmented instantly into jagged debris before scattering in every direction.
The surrounding space resembled a sheet of paper that had been crumpled into a ball.
Everything drawn upon it was torn apart, folded over itself, and rearranged beyond recognition.
The structures remained intact in a technical sense, but no longer obeyed the rules of three-dimensional space.
Instead, they were reconstructed into a chaotic higher-dimensional configuration.
Life required an astonishing number of conditions to exist.
Destroying it offered an equally astonishing number of possibilities.
Extreme heat.
Absolute cold.
Crushing gravity.
Radiation.
Vibrational collapse.
Kinetic devastation.
And countless other forms of annihilation.
The sudden shift in Drex's fighting style caught the Eyed Fiend completely off guard.
More importantly, Drex noticed something interesting.
This method worked.
It was genuinely effective against the creature.
Of course, the advantage didn't last.
The Eyed Fiend adapted quickly.
At their level, victory was never decided in moments.
Killing an equal opponent was an even longer process.
That was precisely why Drex had dragged the battle into the timeless Chaos Dimension.
A raging energy storm spread behind the Eyed Fiend like wildfire.
The attack Drex had just used...
The creature had learned it.
Drex ignored the incoming assault.
Space warped and twisted around him, but it failed to affect him in any meaningful way.
Instead, he closed the distance instantly and punched straight through the Eyed Fiend.
The creature exploded.
Moments later, it regenerated.
Then it exploded again.
This time, Drex emerged from inside its body.
The instant he appeared, he felt a violent tremor.
The Eyed Fiend was attempting the same maneuver.
Like the Sentry, it possessed extraordinary learning capabilities.
Unlike the Sentry, however, it had no hesitation about copying an opponent's techniques.
Unfortunately for it...
It had walked directly into a trap.
"Got you."
A faint smile appeared on Drex's face.
What he had used moments earlier was a phenomenon rooted in quantum observation.
A state of existence where something both existed everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
The Eyed Fiend had copied the technique without understanding its deeper implications.
By forcing itself into Drex's body in the same manner, it had unknowingly handed him an opening.
When the creature finally tore itself free, it emerged heavily wounded.
Far more seriously injured than before.
Because what Drex had done wasn't merely damage.
He had stolen part of its existence itself.
The Eyed Fiend studied him for a moment.
Then it spoke.
"Most of the time, we fight in our true forms. Yet occasionally, you return to a human body. We are fundamentally similar beings. Why continue using the form of a carbon-based organism?"
Its countless eyes focused on him.
"Is it because you were once one of them? Why cling to a vessel incapable of containing what you've become?"
Whether it was genuine curiosity or an attempt to distract him, Drex couldn't tell.
Or perhaps didn't care.
"The difference is that I still have a personality."
His answer came easily.
"So I still need a human form."
"If I abandoned that completely, I'd exist only as a concept drifting through the universe."
Two contradictory forces constantly pulled at him.
Part of him belonged to the realm of higher-dimensional existence.
That side possessed an instinct for endless evolution.
For expansion.
For absorbing everything.
It pushed him toward absolute rationality and ever-increasing depth of perception.
But another part remained stubbornly human.
The remnants of who he had once been refused to disappear.
Whenever his sense of self threatened to dissolve, those remnants fought back.
They preserved his habits.
His emotions.
His way of thinking.
And they struggled constantly to anchor those things in place.
Drex wanted power.
But he had no desire to become like Lucy.
A being elevated so completely beyond humanity that nothing of the original self remained.
"My goal was never complicated."
Drex looked directly at the Eyed Fiend.
"If you discover you're trapped inside a box, the first thing you'll want to do is escape it."
"But before you can leave the box, you need to understand it."
"You experiment."
"You test boundaries."
"You learn."
"The transition from lower-dimensional life to higher-dimensional existence has always been the question I wanted to answer."
His voice remained calm and utterly certain.
"From that perspective, you're actually inferior to humanity."
The Eyed Fiend seemed puzzled.
"Why?"
"Because you lack possibility."
Drex's gaze sharpened.
"From the Big Bang to the end of existence, you'll always remain exactly what you are."
"You are eternal."
"Massive."
"Powerful."
"But stagnant."
"The same is true for the other two."
He didn't need to name them.
Both knew he meant Cyttorak and Chthon.
"You don't grow."
"You don't change."
"You barely possess emotions."
"And you'll never produce a variable outside my calculations."
The Eyed Fiend remained silent.
Drex's expression hardened.
"That's why the outcome of this battle was decided from the very beginning."
"You were doomed to fail."