CHAPTER 305: CHAPTER 4

The Empyrean Realm was cast in a soft, internal glow, and upon the radiant throne, Hades sat, his form utterly still, his eyes closed, his face achieving a state of profound, unsettling serenity.

Currently, he was engaged in the most critical defense of his life: he had projected his consciousness across the vast, collapsing architecture of the Hyperverse, plunging into the infinite expanse of the parallel timelines.

He was fighting the erasure of his own roots, struggling to stabilize and stitch together the conceptual remnants of the dying universes that were being devoured by the Outer Ones’ accelerating hunger.

Nyx, the Goddess of Night, floated silently near him.

She acted as his guard and failsafe, tasked to bring his consciousness back from the infinite parallel timelines back in the prime timeline if something goes wrong.

Her eternal gaze fixed upon his motionless form, ensuring that the slightest tremor of conceptual leakage or dimensional invasion would not shatter his precarious concentration.

Her worry was like a vast, palpable shroud of shadow in the light-filled realm.

Then, her eyes—those transcendent senses that perceived dimensions beyond the ordinary—widened in a flash of cold shock.

Just now, sbe had perceived the raw, hungry trajectory of a stray entity. A newborn Outer One had breached the conceptual fog of the distant void and was now heading directly, clumsily, for the Hyperverse.

A momentary wave of cold dread washed over her, recalling the primordial fears of a time when the Outer Ones were undisputed masters of chaos.

But...

That time was over.

She quickly regained her calm, her eyes becoming focused and determined.

’We are no longer the same,’she reminded herself. ’Hades has changed everything.’

Before, if even a fragment of an Outer One requires the combined might of an entire universe, now it’s different.

Even a true Outer One, especially one of such a low-tier nature, though devastating to a standard universe, would not be enough to completely suppress or instantly annihilate a being of her augmented power.

With swift resolve, Nyx used her unique, transcendent authority to issue a summons across the Hyperverse’s divine hierarchy.

She called upon the few other beings who, like her, had ascended past the rigid definition of Primordial God and into the realm of Transcendence:

"Gaia! Khronos! Erebus! Heed my call and attend to me!"

Though Tartarus was also among this rarefied group, he remained obediently sleeping within the absolute depths of the Underworld, acting as the ultimate, unmoving physical stabilizer of the entire Hyperverse, reserved only for crises that threatened the structural collapse of the cosmos itself.

And although this was one such instance, but there is no need to awaken him as she and those three were more than enough.

Her call was answered instantly.

Gaia, the primeval embodiment of the Earth, who had been observing the vital, rejuvenated growth of the Greek mortal lands, looked up from the surface of a lush, hyper-fertile field.

She shed her terrestrial focus and, with a shuddering shift in dimensional planes, materialized in the Empyrean.

Khronos, the Primordial God of Time, emerged from his self-imposed prison—a separate time and space dimension where he maintained the flow of all temporal reality within the Hyperverse.

He appeared as a shimmering vortex of chronological light, his vast eyes opening slowly as he assessed the situation.

Erebus, the ancient embodiment of Deep Darkness and Shadow, was the subtlest arrival.

He emerged not from a door or a tear, but from the shadow cast by the Empyrean throne itself.

He looked up, his form is like a consuming void in the chamber’s pure light.

The three Transcendent Primordials stood behind Nyx, their combined auras of primal power lending an almost unbearable pressure to the sacred space.

Gaia’s eyes immediately went to Hades, her grandson and lover, seeing his motionless, unnaturally serene state.

Her brow furrowed with immediate, deep concern. "Nyx, what is happening to the Anchor? His vital forces are intact, yet his mind feels like it is elsewhere. Is he harmed?"

Nyx held her gaze, offering a measured reassurance. "He is not harmed, Gaia. He is protecting us. He is currently dealing with the structural troubles happening in the parallel timelines that uphold the Hyperverse. He must not be disturbed."

She then turned, facing the three ancient, terrifying beings who represented the fundamental truths of reality—Earth, Time, and Darkness.

"For now," Nyx stated, her voice regaining its full, commanding clarity, "we have a far more important, and far more immediate, matter to deal with."

Khronos, his temporal vortex shifting slightly, tilted his immense, conceptual head. "Does this concern the Outer One who is about to reach out Hyperverse?"

Nyx nodded once, a gesture of absolute resolve. "It does. Its intent is singular and catastrophic, and it is aiming for the core. Hades is currently unable to divert his consciousness to deal with a physical threat of this magnitude. Therefore, the task of confronting and suppressing that Outer One falls to us, so be ready."

The three immediately turned serious.

*

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In the swirling, chaotic stillness of the void just beyond the freshly reinforced borders of the Egyptian Pantheon, a magnificent, desperate assembly had gathered.

It was a coalition of the Hyperverse’s sharpest minds and most powerful warriors of Egypt, anchored by those who understood magic and esoteric defense.

Hecate, the leader of this defense, stood at the forefront, and arrayed beside her were Athena, Frigg, Hel, and Freya—the converged Goddesses of Wisdoms and Magics.

Behind them stood the entirety of the Egyptian Pantheon.

Ra, his solar disc crown blazing with renewed but cautious power.

Thoth, frantically projecting stabilizing glyphs.

Anubis, his eyes focused towards the void.

And almost all of other Egyptian gods and goddesses, their auras forming a protective crescent around the boundary of Egyptian realm.

They have all gathered here because base on their calculations, the chaotic energy trail shows that the newborn Outer One’s trajectory would intersect this point of the Egyptian boundary.

And they planned to confront it, preventing it from entering the Hyperverse.

However, despite their numbers and the incredible influx of power provided by the Hyperverse’s Anchor, a thick, cold current of terror still ran through the Egyptian ranks.

The memory was still too fresh for them. Eons ago, a mere splinter, a fragment of a greater Outer One’s consciousness, had nearly brought their glorious civilization to absolute ruin.

Now, they were confronting a true, physical manifestation of primordial chaos, however young and weak it might be.

Especially Ra, who felt the anxiety acutely.

He was powerful, immensely so, even many times stronger than he had ever been in his prime.

But that was his ceiling, for now.

He had yet to achieve Transcendence, a state now attained by others like Nyx and the ancient Primordials.

The thousand of years of being deprived of energy, the brutal siphoning by the Christian Pantheon, had taken a devastating toll on his divine origin.

His conceptual root was badly damaged, requiring every joule of the Hyperverse’s stabilizing energy just for fundamental recovery, leaving no surplus to fuel the arduous leap to a higher state of being.

He was like a colossal engine running perfectly, but with a deeply cracked chassis.

He was strong enough to win against a dozen of the previous him, but he knew with chilling certainty that his current strength was not enough to face something born of Primordial chaos.

Just then, the stable nothingness outside the Egyptian boundary began to distort, not by being pushed or torn, but by being inverted.

Space seemed to fold over itself, creating a nauseating visual of non-existence being brought into being.

Ra and the assembled gods instantly tensed.

They knew this was it. The Outer One had arrived.

"Be ready!" Hecate shouted, her voice tight with urgent command, as she began to channel unimaginable magical energy.

Then, the inversion completed its process, and the Outer One manifested fully.

It was a nightmare given form, a creature born from the absence of order.

It was a churning, gelatinous vortex of impossible anatomy.

Its limbs, moving with a jerky, chaotic rhythm, were numberless, shifting between the appearance of flailing tentacles and razor-sharp crystalline spines.

Its body was riddled with countless, wet, lidless eyes that stared directly into the observers’ souls, each eye reflecting a different, terrifying end to reality.

Its presence exuded the stench of cosmic garbage and infinite, hungry entropy.

"T-That... Is an outer one!?" Ra’s voice trembled.

Just then, a wave of high-pitched, agonizing screams erupted from the rear ranks of the assembly.

"AAAAHHHH!"

"NOOO!"

"STOOP!"

Several weaker Egyptian deities and minor gods, clutched their heads, their minds unable to process the true physical manifestation of Primordial Chaos.

The direct, unfiltered visual and conceptual assault of the creature’s reality-breaking form was too much.

They began to smash their heads with their own hands, weapons, and armors, driven by a desperate, instinctual need to stop the input—to smash their own sight and hearing to escape the unbearable, sanity-shattering vision, even if it resulted in their deaths.

Divine ichor, glistening gold, flowed down their faces, yet the compulsive, desperate self-harm continued.

Ra, galvanized by the immediate loss of sanity among his gods, snapped out of his own deep, primal shock.

His solar aura flared, acting as a momentary anchor against the psychic intrusion.

"Those who are not affected, immediately stop them! Hurry! Do you want them to die!?" Ra roared, his voice trembling with the effort of fighting the mind-rending influence.

Hecate ignored the internal chaos as she had already averted her gaze, relying solely on her intricate magic to track the Outer One’s energy signature.

Her face was set in a mask of absolute concentration, her lips moving rapidly through a sequence of forbidden incantations.

"Begin!" Hecate shrieked the command, and in response, the entire space surrounding the divine assembly erupted in a blinding display of coordinated magic.

Countless, shimmering runes, a fusion of Greek, Norse, and Egyptian glyphs, appeared in the void.

Massive, interwoven magic circles, stretching hundreds of miles, snapped into existence around the Outer One, forming an inescapable, crystalline cage designed not to harm it, but to bind its concept and isolate it from the Hyperverse’s reality.

Now, the first battle of this war had begun.