Just like killing a divine child of the monarchs, it typically couldn’t exterminate them entirely.

It could take a thousand years. Maybe ten thousand. But as long as the one doing the killing wasn’t a monarch, it was just a reset. The same being would appear again eventually, born back into existence the moment the universe cycled around to it.

That was the basis of their operation.

Not permanent death.

Something else.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,

The shuttle came in low and touched down beside the forest, sliding directly into a docking station cut into the earth. Clean landing. No fanfare.

Outside, a group was already waiting to receive them.

Victoria stood at the front.

"You guys did good."

She nodded, her eyes moving across the group before settling on the void coffin behind Enzo.

"These demons are bound to the source of the universe, so killing them is quite hard. At most you’d offset their birth by several thousands of years."

She turned and began walking. They followed.

"However, in recent years we’ve come to realize they aren’t permanent residents of the universe."

The path led downward, into an underground bunker beneath the dark emperor’s castle. The air changed as they descended, cooler, heavier, the sound of the outside world cutting off entirely.

"Before time began, they latched onto the source. A type of infection. Something designed to corrode the universe from the inside."

Her voice was calm. Like she had rehearsed this a hundred times and stopped being unsettled by it a long time ago.

"Essentially, they aren’t really a part of this universe at all. They are only fooling the source into believing they are."

Enzo listened. And as he did, the question formed on its own.

If powerhouses like Victoria’s father knew this history, knew the full shape of what these demons actually were, why hadn’t they moved against them already? What was the barrier that kept something that powerful from simply ending it?

"I know what you’re thinking."

Victoria glanced back at him without breaking stride.

"But I’m afraid you’re not strong enough to know the full story yet."

A pause.

"What I will tell you is what we are doing here."

She pushed open a door.

The room beyond was filled with bright light. All of it. Every corner, every surface, saturated in white. It took a second for the eyes to adjust.

All around the space, people of different races moved quickly between instruments and stations, preparing equipment, running checks, calibrating things that had no obvious name. The atmosphere was focused. Controlled urgency. Like a team that had been waiting a long time for this specific moment and wasn’t going to waste it now that it had arrived.

"We are ready, your highness."

A scientist stepped forward, notepad in hand. The excitement in her eyes was immediate and unguarded. The kind that comes from years of waiting for a single experiment to become possible.

Victoria looked to Enzo.

"Do the honors."

She was smiling. She pointed to a section of the lab.

In his mind, a moment surfaced from just before the sealing. A notification that had appeared and stopped him cold.

[Subject has traces of dark void energy. Would you like to exterminate this soul and extract it?]

He had noted it. Filed it. Moved on.

Now he understood why it had appeared.

He placed the coffin on top of the altar, a raised platform wrapped in wires and instruments, and stepped back.

"The night has seven treasures," Victoria said, her voice shifting slightly, more deliberate now. "Shattered all over the universe. For some reason, these treasures seem to carry the ability to end beings like them permanently. Beings tied to the source."

She looked at enzo as she said it.

The implication sat in the air without needing to be spelled out.

After Victorias brother Raz died at Enzo’s hands, the divine being of the sun had not reincarnated. Tens of thousands of years had passed. Not a single trace of him had surfaced anywhere in the universe.

He was dead. Completely. Permanently.

Victoria had spent years trying to locate more of these treasures. She had found one. But it held no attack power, and without understanding how to weaponize it, she had no clear path forward.

Then Enzo had appeared.

Right moment. Right ability. Right place.

"Hahaha."

The laughter came from inside the void coffin. Rough. Hysterical. Like someone performing for a room they couldn’t see.

"You dumb bastards. Killing me does you no good. I’ll just come back in a few thousand years, and by then you’d have started a war against us. Is it even worth it for this one measly planet?"

A pause. The laughter settled into something more conversational.

"You know what, if you let me out right now, I’ll let this slide. I only want the one that killed my pet. I’ll corrupt and mutate him into a horse."

Another pause. His voice shifted, quieter, worse.

"Or I wouldn’t mind riding the Red of War and Life. She has a banging body after all."

Nobody in the room reacted visibly.

Victoria’s men finished their final preparations and signaled to her. She looked at them, then looked at Enzo.

She nodded once.

Enzo nodded back.

[Host has selected an option]

[Exterminating subject....]

A wave of darkness spread through the void coffin and into Battlebeast’s body. It moved through flesh and bone like water through dry earth. No resistance at the surface. Just consumption.

"Ahhh!!!"

The scream filled the room.

But there was still a smile on his face. Even through the pain, he held onto it, looking out through the coffin at the people surrounding him. Memorizing them.

He would come back. He always came back. And when he did, he would find every single person in this room and take his time with them.

Then, after a few seconds, something changed.

The smile faded.

Typically by this point he would feel it. The source of the universe reaching back. The familiar pull of something vast and impersonal calling him home, the first signal that the reset had begun.

There was nothing.

No pull. No signal. No call.

Just silence where the source should have been.

The dread hit him before the understanding did. His body moved before his mind caught up, straining against the restraints, throwing everything he had into breaking free.

The restraints didn’t move.

He kept trying.

Eventually he stopped.

His body had become a dark void of nothing. Empty. No light. No energy. No trace of anything that had once been inside it.

[You have slain a divine being (High God)]

[You have received a spark of divinity]

[You have unlocked the use of the Void by consuming void energy. Void hunter package unlocked.]

[2/7 treasures obtained]

[Shadow Step has evolved into Void Step]

[Night Vision has evolved into Void Vision]

[Shadow Manipulation has evolved....]

Ding!!!

[Host has received Void Scripture]

[Host has received title: Protector]

The notifications kept coming, stacking one after the other in Enzo’s ears as the room went quiet around him.

Everyone watched Battlebeast disintegrate.

No one spoke.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Somewhere in the universe, a pair of eyes opened.

Deep in the void. Absolute darkness in every direction. The eyes opened the way eyes open after a nightmare, sudden, gasping, searching the dark for whatever had just pulled them awake.

A long silence.

"I’ve lost a part of myself."

The voice was low. Genuinely shaken.

"That’s not possible. Not unless those old monsters finally made a move...."​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​