Arthur casually stepped through the jagged and swirling vortex of the time portal.

The universe screamed in protest. The physical laws of reality tore at his coat.

However, his Dimensional Breaker Physique simply shrugged it off as mild turbulence.

He did not just enter a new location. He stepped entirely outside of the concept of time itself.

He found himself standing in a boundless and blinding expanse.

There was no sky, no ground, and absolutely no horizon. Instead, there was a raging and infinite river made entirely of shattered shifting glass.

Every single shard reflected a different moment in the history of the multiverse. From the size of a speck of dust to the size of a continent, they showed everything. Wars, births, supernovas, and silent deaths all played out in the razor-sharp currents.

"Fascinating," Arthur murmured and looked down at his own boots.

He was standing on a flowing pane of glass that showed a billion mortals going about their daily lives.

[Ding!]

[Host has entered the Temporal Stream.]

[WARNING: High risk of paradoxical erasure. External timeline enforcement is highly lethal.]

Arthur did not even blink.

"System. Anchor me to the present. Deduct whatever capital you need to keep my current existence locked."

[Ding!]

[Initiating Absolute Temporal Anchor.]

[Deducting 5,000,000 System Points. Host is now conceptually immune to past-tense alterations.]

A heavy and invisible weight settled over Arthur’s shoulders. It cemented his soul to his current pseudo-ascended state.

He let out a slow breath and his dark eyes scanned the chaotic storm of glass.

"Now," Arthur said as the pitch-black Ebonheart Sword hummed in his grip. "Where is that overgrown grandfather clock?"

"WHOOSH!"

A massive sweeping blade of condensed temporal energy slashed toward Arthur’s neck from the blind spot behind his left shoulder.

Arthur did not even turn around. He just raised the Ebonheart Sword and brought it up in a lazy backhanded parry.

"CLANG!"

The impact sent a shockwave of rippling energy through the glass river. It shattered a million fleeting memories into glittering dust.

Arthur glanced over his shoulder.

Chronos, the Heavenly Sovereign of Time, hovered a few feet away. The deity was gripping a terrifying and jagged weapon known as the Scythe of Ages.

The clockwork face of the deity was spinning erratically. His gears ground together with sheer unadulterated panic.

"You dare follow me into the deep stream?!" Chronos shrieked.

The sound echoed like a hundred overlapping voices from entirely different eras.

"You are a mortal! Your mind should be fracturing from the sheer weight of eternity!"

Arthur sneered. "Eternity just looks like a messy spreadsheet to me. And your accounting is incredibly sloppy."

Arthur pressed his weight forward.

The Primordial Flame wreathed around the Ebonheart Sword flared up violently. It instantly melted the edge of the Scythe of Ages.

Chronos gasped and violently kicked backward. He dived deeper into the river of glass.

Arthur did not rush at all. He casually strolled through the temporal currents.

His boots cracked the images of dead empires with every step.

As he walked, the system chimed in a continuous euphoric loop.

[Ding!]

[10,000x Temporal Mastery Feedback Loop Active.]

[Host is absorbing River of Time conceptual laws.]

[Host has gained: Grandmaster Insight into Temporal Flow.] 𝕗𝚛𝚎𝚎𝐰𝗲𝗯𝗻𝚘𝚟𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝕞

Arthur’s brain flooded with the absolute mathematical certainty of time.

He did not just see the past, present, and future. He understood the exact equations required to pause, fast-forward, and rewind reality.

It was an incredible feeling.

Up ahead, Chronos suddenly stopped.

His mechanical form hovered over a massive and murky pane of glass.

The Sovereign of Time pointed his Scythe downward. His gears whirred with desperate and triumphant malice.

"I have found it!" Chronos roared. His voice vibrated with absolute victory.

"Your origin point! The absolute beginning of your filthy anomalous existence!"

Arthur stopped and tilted his head. He looked down through the glass.

It was a bleak and miserable scene.

It showed the muddy rain-slicked slums of The Mortal Domain. Sitting in a filthy alleyway and shivering in a pile of garbage was a scrawny hollow-cheeked beggar child.

The boy was maybe ten years old. He was clutching a stolen crust of bread as he wept into the freezing mud.

It was the original body.

The native vessel that Arthur Sterling had hijacked when he first transmigrated into this universe.

"Look at you!" Chronos mocked and raised the Scythe of Ages high above his head.

"A pathetic starving rat! If I erase this seed, the mighty Emperor of the Ebon Citadel will simply cease to exist. You will fade into the void as a paradox of your own making!"

Arthur just stood there and looked at the crying child.

He did not feel a single shred of nostalgia. He did not feel a twinge of pity either.

His actual childhood had been spent in the cutthroat boarding schools of Earth.

He was miles away from this magical dirt-ball.

That kid down there was not him. That kid was just the fleshy space-suit he had rented to start his corporate empire.

"You are attacking the previous tenant," Arthur sighed with genuine disappointment. "I expected better market research from a Sovereign."

Chronos completely ignored him. He brought the massive scythe down with world-ending force.

He aimed directly at the glass pane separating them from the child’s timeline.

"Die!"

"SHAAAAANK!"

Arthur did not use a spell. He did not even swing his sword.

He simply utilized his newly acquired Grandmaster mastery of Time and fused it effortlessly with Space and Karma.

His figure blurred and he instantly appeared directly beneath the descending Scythe.

Arthur raised his bare left hand and caught the razor-sharp edge of the cosmic weapon just an inch from the glass.

"CRACK!"

The kinetic force of the God-tier strike shattered against Arthur’s palm. It utterly failed to pierce his Dimensional Breaker Physique.

The glowing eyes of Chronos widened in absolute mind-breaking horror.

"How?!" the deity choked. "That is the Scythe of Ages! It cuts through causality itself!"

"It cuts through crap," Arthur corrected smoothly. His fingers tightened around the blade. "And you are trespassing on my property."

Arthur squeezed his fist.

The indestructible divine metal of the Scythe of Ages groaned and buckled. Then, it violently exploded into a million pieces of useless shrapnel.

"NO!" Chronos screamed and stumbled backward. His mechanical joints sparked and smoked.

Arthur did not let him retreat.

He grabbed the front of the Sovereign’s starlight robes and hoisted the massive clockwork entity entirely off the ground.

Arthur’s eyes burned with the blinding and chaotic fury of the Primordial Flame.

"You want to erase a past?" Arthur growled. His voice was a low demonic rumble that shook the entire temporal stream.

"Let me show you how a real liquidation works."

Arthur did not aim his sword at Chronos.

Instead, he plunged the Ebonheart Sword directly into the river of glass beneath

their feet.

"Burn."

"BOOM!"

The multi-colored reality-defying Wrath-Fire erupted from the blade. It caught onto the temporal stream like gasoline.

The fire did not just burn the glass. It burned the very concept of time itself.

The flames raced upstream and downstream simultaneously. They devoured millions of years of history in a single catastrophic blaze.

Arthur was not just killing Chronos in the present. He was burning the deity’s timeline.

He was erasing the moment Chronos was born, the moment he ascended, and every single second he had ever existed.

"AARRRRGGGHHHH!"

Chronos unleashed a scream that defied all logic.

His physical form began to violently glitch. His golden gears rusted and dissolved into ash.

His starlight robes faded into nothingness.

The God was being unwritten from the fabric of reality.

"You... you are breaking the universe..." Chronos wept. His form turned entirely translucent.

"I am just fixing the bugs," Arthur said coldly.

He let go of the robes.

Chronos fell backward but he did not hit the glass. He simply dissolved into a cloud of glowing temporal dust that was instantly swallowed by the roaring Primordial Flame.

The Heavenly Sovereign of Time was dead. Erased across all timelines.

[Ding!]

[Target Chronos successfully liquidated.]

[Host has achieved absolute mastery over the Law of Time.]

Arthur pulled his sword from the burning river and rolled his shoulders. The immense localized heat washed over him.

The glass around him was melting. The temporal stream was violently rejecting

his presence now that the anchor of the Sovereign was gone.

"Time to head back to the office," Arthur muttered.

He raised his hand and his fingers sliced through the air. He tore a fresh rift

directly back to the present.