Beyond the Apocalypse-Chapter 1056: No one escapes death

"I, Lucifer, will end your existence."

His voice carried neither rage nor doubt—only absolute certainty.

The Archangel shifted into a battle stance, his presence condensing as power surged violently around his scythe. Divine energy spiraled along its blade, distorting space and carving invisible wounds through the air itself. With a thunderous explosion of force, he plunged downward, diving straight into the massive crater below.

Lucifer no longer cared about traps or hidden strategies. His soul was singularly focused on one thing—killing.

Below, Vlad did not retreat.

He did not brace.

He smiled.

Fear was absent from his expression, replaced instead by pure exhilaration. This was the moment he had been waiting for. His wings snapped open with a powerful flap, plasma and light erupting behind him as he surged upward to meet the descending Archangel head-on.

Sword in hand, eyes blazing, Vlad rose into the sky.

Sword and scythe collided.

The moment their blades met, the realm itself seemed to recoil. Massive streams of gray and crimson energy erupted outward, tearing through space like opposing tides of annihilation.

The power carried by the Quietus Sword bled into the surroundings, staining reality in ashen hues. Everything it touched—stone, light, even air—froze in a state of eternal stasis. The air itself crystallized, particles locked in place as though time had been nailed to the void.

The crimson energy, however, was something else entirely.

Where it passed, existence vanished.

It did not burn. It did not freeze. It erased. Entire sections of space were stripped away, leaving behind a star-flecked emptiness, as if a layer of reality had been peeled off and discarded.

The battlefield became a patchwork of frozen stillness and hollow void, two absolute forces clashing in defiance of all natural law.

Again and again, sword and scythe crashed into one another, each impact unleashing cataclysmic shockwaves that rippled across the Sixth Level of Heaven. At first, the two forces seemed evenly matched—but slowly, inexorably, the crimson power began to gain ground.

Vlad clenched his teeth.

He was not surprised.

The Quietus Sword’s power was immense beyond comprehension, but it had been forged for an Archangel—one bearing the proper Gift and bloodline, capable of unlocking its full authority. Vlad did not possess that legacy. He wielded the blade through brute force, soul mastery, and sheer defiance, not divine compatibility.

And yet—

A smile spread across the face of the True Depravita of Wrath.

Without hesitation, Vlad poured everything into the black sword.

The surge of energy was obscene. Yellow, green, purple, and golden psychic power merged with the gray light of Quietus. The pressure alone would have shattered a Lord-tier artifact instantly—but the sword endured.

It was Paragon-tier.

Reality screamed as Vlad pushed forward.

Above them, divine weapons continued to rain from the sky, falling like judgment incarnate. A gray sun and a crimson sun clashed again and again, their collisions shaking Heaven itself. Entire layers trembled. Laws destabilized. Even the heavenly firmament warped under the strain.

---

Far away, the Sovereigns of the Six Suns Alliance watched the battle unfold. Their expressions were a mixture of awe and dread, eyes reflecting the impossible spectacle before them. This was not merely a clash of titans—it was a confrontation between cosmic authorities, powers that carried fragments of the universe’s essence itself.

"This..." one Sovereign whispered, voice unsteady, "this is beyond war."

"White Death," Brightkin said grimly, turning toward the Emperor of the Graecia Empire. "If you were to fight Lucifer... how do you think you would fare?"

The question silenced them all.

Alexandro—the White Death—narrowed his eyes, focusing on the crimson glow of the scythe slicing through frozen reality. His expression hardened, calculations racing behind his gaze.

"Ten percent chance of victory," he said calmly. "Twenty percent chance of defeat. Thirty percent chance of a draw."

"And the rest?" another Sovereign asked quietly.

The White Death inhaled slowly, frost-like energy coiling around his pupils.

"Fifty percent chance," he said, "that we both die."

The atmosphere among the Sovereigns turned heavy. Vlad possessed terrifying survival capabilities, but he had expended an immense amount of energy simply reaching the Sixth Level. His regeneration had already taken damage, and worse—the crimson energy carried by Lucifer’s scythe clearly neutralized healing at a fundamental level.

Their eyes returned to the projection. None of them dared blink.

---

Sword and scythe began to collide faster and faster, until the impacts blurred into a continuous storm of destruction. It did not take long for wounds to appear.

Gray energy seeped into the Archangel’s injuries, freezing regeneration at its source. Flesh stiffened, divine circuits locked in place, unable to repair themselves. But the wounds inflicted upon Vlad were no less terrifying. They refused to close. Even when he attempted to regenerate, the tissues resisted, as though an authority greater than the principles governing his immortal body had issued a command of denial.

Lucifer’s law superseded his own.

Vlad laughed as he abandoned regeneration entirely.

Every ounce of energy, every fragment of soul and will, was redirected into offense.

The next collision detonated.

"BOOOOOOOM!

The explosion of energy hurled both combatants apart. Vlad recovered instantly, space bending beneath his will as he anchored himself midair. His eyes blazed as he drove the Quietus Sword downward, burying it into the fabric of space itself.

Dozens of dark sword-blades manifested in an instant, forming a lethal storm around the Archangel of Death. They flashed forward simultaneously, each strike calibrated to pierce soul, body, and authority alike.

Lucifer did not retreat.

His scythe moved.

It moved with such precision and inevitability that logic itself seemed offended. Each blade was shattered mid-flight, erased or deflected in seamless arcs. Then Lucifer vanished—

And reappeared in front of Vlad.

The scythe slashed.

Vlad barely evaded, leaping back—but a heartbeat later, a massive wound tore open across his chest. Blood sprayed outward, staining frozen air.

"How?" Vlad’s eyes widened. "I dodged it!"

"No one escapes death," Lucifer’s voice echoed—from behind him.

The scythe descended again.

The Quantum Eye was activated, making the weapon phase harmlessly through Vlad’s body.

And yet—

Another heartbeat later, a wound split open across his back, exactly where the scythe should have landed.

Vlad’s pupils contracted.

"His Gift," he realized.

Dodging, phasing, teleportation—none of it mattered. Lucifer’s Gift rewrote reality, ensuring that his attack had already landed. Evasion was irrelevant.

The realization crossed Vlad’s mind in less than a second.

He turned instantly, blocking the next strike with the Quietus Sword.

This time, there were no spontaneous wounds.

"This will be hard," Vlad muttered.

He pressed forward, forcing close-range combat, denying Lucifer the freedom to exploit absolute inevitability. His sword strikes accelerated, faster and heavier, each one layered with spatial collapse and frozen authority.

Then—

An opening.

Vlad lunged.

The scythe intercepted.

But the sword was not the real attack.

All seven eyes embedded across Vlad’s face ignited at once, firing concentrated beams of annihilating light directly into Lucifer’s chest.

The Archangel of Death was blasted into the distance, the flesh around his chest charred by that blast.

Of course, that wound was far from enough to stop the Archangel of Death.

Lucifer’s eyes burned with glacial cold and unwavering determination as he twisted through the air, regaining perfect control over his body in an instant.

Space warped beneath his will as he vanished and reappeared, flashing back toward the True Depravita of Wrath with lethal intent.

The sigils etched across Lucifer’s pale armor ignited, and the skeletal constructs surrounding him began to expand. Bones cracked and reassembled with thunderous force, growing larger, thicker, and more complex.

In seconds, the scattered remains fused together, transforming into gargantuan draconic skeletons, each one radiating condensed death essence. Their hollow eye sockets blazed with crimson light as they lunged forward, carried by overwhelming momentum and crushing authority.

Vlad answered with raw power.

The True Depravita of Wrath erupted with energy, his aura flaring violently as he struck the skeletal dragons with everything he had. Each blow landed with enough force to shatter moons, yet cutting through those constructs felt far more difficult than cleaving celestial bodies. The bones were reinforced by layered death laws, bound together by Lucifer’s Gift itself.

Even so, Vlad did not slow down for even a fraction of a second.

His blade tore through the draconic skeletons one after another, reducing them to massive fragments that froze in midair under the influence of Quietus. Broken ribs, shattered skulls, and jagged claws remained suspended in endless stasis, locked in place by gray authority that denied both decay and regeneration.

At last, only one remained.

It was nearly twice the size of the others—a colossal skeletal dragon whose presence eclipsed the battlefield.