CHAPTER 444: CHAPTER 444 - THE ULTIMATE PARADOX

"... The last piece I need, to complete the greatest design. Now, show me, O Dafient. What will you do?"

The Demon Legion roared in approval, their frenzy shaking the land. Chains clattered, banners of flesh snapped in the wind, a choir of millions screaming for blood.

The Shadow Legion remained still. Silent. Each shade awaiting only Taufik’s command.

Taufik exhaled slowly, his gaze sweeping the sky where demons perched like carrion kings. His hand brushed the hilt of darkness at his side, but he did not draw it. Not yet.

Instead, he raised his head, eyes gleaming with void-light so absolute that even angels would not dare meet them.

"Lucifer..." his voice was calm, almost conversational, but each word pressed upon the armies like the weight of a collapsing world. "...do you really think your 72 can measure me?"

He closed his eyes briefly. "System... I think this is the time. I’ll say it again... If I forget, make me remember. If no path exists, carve one. No matter how long it takes... I’ll wait"

[Master, what will you do?]

"...I’ll go all in," Taufik whispered. The thought had haunted him since the time he fused Night and Darkness into the Living Void. That alone had made him a terror. But what if he fused everything? All six Concepts: Night, Darkness, Blood, Life, Death, and Eternity. What would remain of him then? "I don’t know what will happen to me. If I lose control... I leave it to you, System. Because you and I are one"

The System hesitated, as though even its cold machinery feared what it was about to be asked.

[Understood. If you lose yourself, I will carry your will until the end, Master]

Taufik inhaled once, then let silence fall. The battlefield, the 72 Demons, even Lucifer’s laughter, all seemed to lean forward, waiting.

Then...

The shadow beneath him collapsed inward.

No, not collapsed. Erased. The ground simply ceased to be, as though his presence had declared existence itself unnecessary.

Darkness poured outward, not as an element, not as a weapon, but as truth. The truth of Nothing.

The six Concepts stirred.

Night, a shroud that smothered stars, draping infinity in silence.

Darkness, not absence of light, but the hunger that devoured it.

Blood, the hymn of mortality, rivers thrumming with life and sacrifice.

Life, endless growth, cruel, radiant, unrelenting.

Death, stillness, judgment, the final silence that awaits all.

Eternity, the endless chain, past and future locked into one.

They did not resist. They did not clash.

They merged.

The Living Void took form.

A figure of silhouette, but within him, galaxies bloomed and perished in a single blink. Veins glowed red, constellations pulsing through him like rivers of blood. His flesh fractured into obsidian plates carved with scripture no being had ever written.

The Shadow Legion bowed lower, not in obedience, but in reverence.

The Demon Legion fell silent, their frenzy strangled into awe and terror.

Even Lucifer paused. Just for a breath. For him, that was enough.

"That... is it," Lucifer murmured, and every Deadly Sin felt it ripple through their essence. "The Ultimate Paradox. A state even ’Father’ once tried to wield, and vanished instead. With this... with this power, I could- no, I can... suppress Him. This is the power I seek"

The Ultimate Paradox: a single, unending instant where contradiction is law.

Night and Darkness, the canvas of absolute nothingness.

Life and Death, locked in eternal, static struggle, existence and non-existence, neither yielding.

Blood, the proof of paradox, substance that both is, and is not.

Eternity, the moment unending.

A singular now. The contradiction perfected.

And Taufik stood at its center. The ground beneath him was no longer ground. It fractured, then dissolved, turning into rivers of ash and veins of red light. From the cracks, not fire, but Nothing bled out, swallowing existence wherever it touched.

Taufik’s body convulsed once, then stilled. The fractures across his skin deepened, glowing with molten crimson that pulsed like veins carrying galaxies instead of blood. His heart burned at the center of his chest, no longer flesh, but a singularity, an endless star collapsing and birthing itself at the same time.

From his back, shadows unfurled, not wings, not flame, but both, and neither. They bent like wings of night but burned with veins of eternity, strands of paradox woven into their shape.

His hair unraveled into streams of midnight, every strand dripping darkness that devoured the light around it. His face was half-flesh, half-void, his features shifting as though reality itself could not decide if he was human, god, or something that should not exist.

And his eyes, rings of eternity, rotated endlessly. Within them flickered life and death, blooming and withering in an infinite loop. To look into them was to see yourself born, live, and die, a thousand times in the space of a breath.

The Six Concepts had fused.

Night wrapped him in infinity.

Darkness crowned him as hunger incarnate.

Blood surged through him, rivers of crimson creation.

Life breathed in every step, each motion a genesis.

Death cloaked his silence, the certainty of ending.

Eternity bound it all, making him the moment that never ended.

The Ultimate Paradox stood complete.

The Shadow Legion prostrated themselves fully now, pressing their foreheads into the ashen earth. The Demon Legion, for all their madness, fell silent, their voices strangled by awe and dread.

And Lucifer, Lucifer laughed, but the sound cracked, a tremor in velvet tones. He lifted a hand to his lips, hiding the briefest smile that was not amusement, but unease.

"Beautiful," he whispered, though no one could tell if he meant it as praise... or as a prayer.

Taufik, no, it was no longer Taufik. What stood there was a being stripped of all reason, a husk of mortal identity, a nightmare that should never have taken form. His body writhed with cracks of searing crimson, each fissure spilling raw power like molten veins, as if reality itself was failing to contain him.

He took a single step forward. The ground didn’t tremble, it fractured, splitting apart as if the world were trying to recoil from his existence. Flames of void and ash erupted in his wake, swallowing the land.

Slowly, he lifted his head. His eyes glowed with an abyssal hunger, a light that devoured instead of shone.

Then he roared.

The sound was not merely heard, it was felt. The air screamed, the land shrieked, and even the heavens groaned under the weight of that voice. Reality cracked like fragile glass, the very laws of existence straining to endure his presence.

The roar had not ended.

It was still echoing, folding in on itself, cascading across the battlefield like an infinite scream that devoured sound.

The Demon Legion, once frenzied, collapsed into trembling silence.

And then, the clash began.

Malphas, the Crimson Tyrant, was the first to strike. His war-banner flared, a continent-sized blade cleaving downward, enough to split realms. His army roared with him, yet the blade never reached.

The moment it entered the Paradox’s shadow, it dissolved, turning into rivers of rust that bled into the void. Malphas himself staggered back, one of his arms unraveling like ash peeling from fire.

"Impossible-"

The word never finished. A fissure of crimson light split through him, silent, absolute, and the Demon Lord of War ceased to exist. No corpse. No scream. Just absence.

The battlefield froze.

Then Raum shrieked with mad laughter and lunged, juggling crowns that exploded into storms of fire, chaos incarnate. But the flames warped midair, folding inward. The crowns shattered before reaching their target. Raum’s laughter broke into a wet gurgle as his jaw, his skull, his entire being collapsed into nothingness, swallowed by a silence deeper than Death.

Orobas unleashed every scripture, every secret, scrolls unraveling into chains of prophecy meant to bind even gods. But the moment they touched Taufik’s wings of paradox, every word burned blank.

History itself erased him. His countless eyes flickered in terror before blinking out one by one, until no gaze remained.

Three Demon Lords. Gone.

In less than three breaths.

The Twelve Dukes faltered. Valefor, the Iron Butcher, charged with his titan-bone cleaver, roaring curses. But before he could swing, a tide of shadow swept him, stripping flesh, marrow, and even curse into silence.

Murmur’s legion of the dead rose, countless shades marching, but the moment they beheld the Paradox, they fell. Not defeated, obliterated. Their silence, their devotion to him, meant nothing before a silence absolute.

Murmur’s helm cracked as if crushed by invisible hands, his hollow voice snuffed out forever.

Vassago raised his threads of fate, desperate to bind, to redirect. But his threads snapped. Not cut, denied. The Paradox had no fate to bind. His scream was the sound of inevitability breaking, and then he was gone.

One by one, the Dukes followed. Marchosias, Foras, Balam, Glasya-Labolas, all their power unleashed, all swallowed. Each death was not death, it was deletion.

The Fifty-Six Lesser Demons swarmed, a storm of terror meant to drown kingdoms. But they never reached him. Their wings burned away, their teeth dissolved, their banners crumbled. Each step they took was erased by the shadow tide, until they were nothing but whispers that never existed.

It was not a war.

It was erasure.

The Ultimate Paradox was not fighting. It was truth rewriting itself around him.

Every strike, every curse, every legion, all meaningless.

The armies that once drowned nations were annihilated in silence.

The battlefield became a scar, not of blood, but of Nothing. A wasteland where even memory refused to linger.

The Shadow Legion did not cheer. They bowed lower, pressed into the ash, as if afraid their devotion itself would be erased.

And above it all, Lucifer laughed.

Not joyfully. Not mockingly. His laughter cracked like glass.

"Magnificent," he whispered, his smile split with unease, his perfect face trembling for the first time. "Yes... Yes... This is what I sought. The power to deny everything. Even me. Even Him. But-"

He leaned forward, his eyes burning like collapsed stars.

"... How long are you just going to watch while hiding there, my brother?"

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