Cosmic Ruler - Chapter 474

Chapter 474: War XLVII
THUMP.

Aiden’s world blurred. His breath caught in his throat. For a single, terrifying moment, his heartbeat faltered.

Then—pain.

A raw, searing agony exploded from his chest, spreading like wildfire through his veins. His vision darkened at the edges as an unbearable weight crushed his soul.

“Aiden!” Myne’s voice was distant, drowned out by the abyssal hum inside his skull.

Nihil’s grin widened. “Do you feel it? The weight of nonexistence? The unraveling of your very being?”

Aiden staggered, but he refused to fall. He clenched his fists, grinding his teeth against the pain.

No. Not like this.

“You underestimate me.”

His Golden Sword Martial Spirit erupted from his back, shining with divine radiance, battling against the abyssal corruption invading his body.

SHRIIIIIING!

Golden flames ignited around him, pushing back against Nihil’s touch.

But the abyss was not so easily denied.

Nihil chuckled. “You struggle for nothing.” His abyssal claw dug deeper.

Crack.

Aiden’s soul shuddered.

“Tch!” Nexus surged forward, golden circuits pulsing with power. He slammed his hands together—

“Inverse Providence: Reality Rewrite!”

A golden shockwave rippled through space, forcibly severing Nihil’s grip on Aiden. The abyssal claw dissolved, and Aiden was launched backward, tumbling through the air.

Nexus caught him, bracing against the force.

“You good?”

Aiden coughed. His chest ached, but his heart was still beating. The abyss hadn’t consumed him—yet.

“I’ve been better,” Aiden muttered, forcing himself upright. He stared at Nihil, who was still completely unharmed.

This wasn’t working.

Their attacks weren’t landing.

Their defenses were barely holding.

And Nihil was just playing with them.

Aiden’s mind raced. He had faced powerful enemies before, but this—this was something different.

They needed a plan.

Because right now?

They were losing.

Nihil tilted his head, his blackened eyes swirling with the abyss. “You’re still standing? Interesting. But you must realize… you cannot win.”

He took a slow step forward. The air itself shuddered, the space around him collapsing into jagged distortions. The very fabric of reality resisted his existence.

Aiden wiped the blood from his mouth, his breathing heavy. The golden flames of his Golden Sword Martial Spirit flickered, struggling against the oppressive void radiating from Nihil.

Nexus clenched his fists, golden circuits humming with unstable power. “Aiden… if we don’t figure something out soon, we’re done.”

He wasn’t wrong.

Aiden’s mind raced. His attacks couldn’t break through. His defenses barely held. And Nihil hadn’t even gotten serious.

There had to be a way.

Then—it hit him.

Nihil was absolute. But absolute things had rules.

Aiden’s eyes flickered with realization. “He’s too perfect.”

Nexus shot him a glance. “What?”

Aiden took a deep breath. “He’s absolute destruction. But destruction has a limit. It still follows an order, a path. And if it follows a path…”

“Then it can be broken.”

Nexus’s eyes widened. He understood. They didn’t need to overpower Nihil. They needed to make him contradict himself.

Aiden grinned, despite the pain. “I have a plan.”

Nihil smirked, as if amused. “Then show me.”

The battlefield trembled as Aiden surged forward, his golden aura clashing violently against Nihil’s abyssal presence. Sparks of divine energy and pure darkness crackled in the air, each collision distorting space itself.

Nexus understood his role immediately. If Aiden’s theory was right, they had to make Nihil contradict his own nature—force his absolute destruction to collapse upon itself.

“I’ll back you up!” Nexus shouted, golden circuits glowing as he wove complex symbols into the air. His energy pulsed, forming chains of luminous glyphs that locked onto Nihil’s presence, analyzing the structure of his power.

Nihil raised a hand. “Futile.”

With a mere thought, the chains shattered. The very concept of restriction dissolved before the embodiment of destruction. But Aiden was already in motion.

“Perfect. That confirms it.”

Aiden’s blade flashed, golden arcs slicing through the void, not aiming to destroy Nihil—but to redirect his energy.

Nihil countered effortlessly, his movements impossibly fluid. Each strike of Aiden’s sword was swallowed into the abyss, devoured without a trace. But Aiden wasn’t trying to land a hit.

He was forcing Nihil to erase energy in precise ways.

Every clash sent ripples through the battlefield, creating subtle but crucial distortions in the abyssal force. Nexus caught on, his calculations shifting.

“He’s adjusting his own destruction to counter you!”

“Exactly,” Aiden grinned. “But what happens if we make destruction… destroy itself?”

Aiden activated his Destiny Thread of Million Miracles, weaving fate into the battlefield. His sword strikes changed—not random, not chaotic, but deliberately timed and placed. Every attack forced Nihil to erase energy in specific patterns.

At first, Nihil didn’t react. Then—his expression twitched.

Aiden saw it. The first crack in perfection.

“Got you.”

Nihil’s form flickered. His own destruction, forced into an unsolvable paradox, began erasing itself.

For the first time, the Abyssal Lord took a step back.

Nihil’s form shimmered, his abyssal energy fluctuating wildly. For the first time, true instability rippled through his existence. Aiden’s strategy was working—by forcing Nihil’s destruction to erase itself, he had disrupted the very foundation of the Abyssal Lord’s being.

“You dare?” Nihil’s voice, once an unshakable force, now carried the faintest edge of uncertainty. His presence wavered, and the darkness around him flickered like a flame in the wind.

“It’s already over.” Aiden’s eyes burned with golden light as he raised his sword high. The Destiny Thread of Million Miracles glowed at his fingertips, weaving the unraveling energy of Nihil’s destruction into an inescapable fate.

Nexus saw it too. The paradox was spiraling out of control, feeding back into itself like an ouroboros devouring its own tail. Nihil, the embodiment of annihilation, was being undone by his very essence.

But the Abyssal Lord was not finished yet.

“I am the end. I do not yield.” Nihil’s form condensed, his power surging in one last desperate act. If destruction was being turned against him, then he would collapse everything in his wake.

“Aiden, he’s—” Nexus barely had time to warn him before Nihil’s body exploded outward, a tidal wave of abyssal force expanding in all directions. A final act of defiance, a last attempt to drag Aiden and everything else into the abyss with him.

Aiden didn’t flinch.