"? I’m the strongest there is."
Normally, Naless Death would’ve dismissed a statent like that as idiotic bravado.
He’d heard plenty of fools make such claims over the centuries.
But Cole was different.
There was no bluster in his tone. Just calm confidence.
It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t boastful. It simply was.
And more than that, his instincts scread at him.
They scread one word whenever he looked at Cole: Danger.
"Now," Cole said, his voice was easy and light, "let’s talk about what you were doing."
Naless Death remained silent.
"I’ll be honest," Cole went on, "you can devour the connection and try to understand the Path of Achievent. Even with your True Darkness, though, it’s not going to be easy. It’ll feel like trying to read a book written in a language that doesn’t exist."
Naless Death frowned.
Cole didn’t sound like he was warning him out of fear.
He sounded more like soone laying out the rules before a ga.
"But even then," Cole continued, "I just can’t let you devour it. After all, what’s the point of having a level if the boss enemy doesn’t put up a good fight?"
"...?"
A chill ran down Naless Death’s spine.
Before he could speak, Cole snapped his fingers.
The world shifted.
They were no longer standing on the balcony.
The street, the houses, and the city disappeared.
An endless dark void appeared around them. Only silence existed next to them.
Naless Death’s eyes darted around, searching for boundaries. There were none.
"What are you doing?" he asked.
"Simple," Cole said. "Block one attack from , and I’ll let you devour the connection between you and the Universal Codex System. I’ll even throw in a freebie."
His voice was calm.
"But if you fail..." Cole shrugged, "then no deal. Don’t worry. I won’t kill you if you lose. Promise."
Naless Death’s expression worsened.
His instincts had been right.
Cole was soone who stood far above most beings he had ever encountered.
And was an eccentric person.
That was the worst combination one could have in their opponents.
"I’ll use the sa strength Barbatos used when he attacked you," Cole added. "You’ll need to block the sa way you blocked him."
A mont later, Naless Death felt the limiters placed on him vanish.
His strength returned.
Like a dam had broken, energy surged through his body in waves.
The strength was endless.
And yet his expression remained grim.
He had blocked Barbatos’s attack, yes.
But it hadn’t been intentional.
His instincts had taken over back then.
He still couldn’t reproduce the technique at will.
Cole didn’t wait.
He stepped forward, and a sword appeared in his hand.
Its form wasn’t flashy or overly ornate.
It looked like a normal longsword, but Naless Death could feel the weight of a universe behind it.
’That doesn’t look like a Stage-5’s attack to .’
Before Naless Death could protest, Cole raised the sword above his head.
Instantly, space began to warp around the blade.
Its length seed to stretch, like it was cutting through dinsions themselves.
The void trembled.
Naless Death’s instincts told him.
That sheer aura of that sword could destroy a galaxy.
And then Cole swung down.
Naless Death didn’t hesitate.
The mont the blade moved, he activated his Ninefold Ti Dilation.
Everything slowed.
Thought and instinct moved faster. Ti itself bent around his perception.
Even then, the attack felt like it was coming too fast.
’I’m going to die.’
That single thought slamd into him.
And if Cole was the strongest as claid himself to be, then no resurrection or revival thod would bring Naless Death back.
He would simply cease to exist.
For the first ti in ages, Naless Death truly felt Death.
Ever since he gained his immortality, he had forgotten what true Death felt like.
But now, staring into that infinite slash, he rembered.
This was different.
This was Death.
This was Despair.
’I have to block it.’
His mind worked rapidly.
The last ti he had survived an attack like this was during his clash with Barbatos.
And back then, a single concept had erged from the chaos.
[Resonance]
Naless Death had always wondered sothing.
Ever since he learned about the Gods, a question had nagged at the back of his mind.
If the Supre fused all the Elental Gods into themselves, why train in multiple elents?
If a Water Elent God brought their Concept to the Supre’s Universal Law, why bother with Lightning Elent’s Concept or Fire or Death?
It felt useless.
But the Gods still trained across elents. Why?
He hadn’t understood it back then.
But when he saw Barbatos’s technique—when he felt the terrifying harmony of it—he had started to grasp the truth.
’The answer is Resonance.’
The Gods didn’t just use multiple elents.
They made them resonate with each other.
Concepts weren’t bound to a single elent.
They could be transferred, shared, and fused.
A Concept of Lightning could be used with Death.
A Concept of Water could be made to move through Wind.
They weren’t isolated powers.
When aligned, they created sothing more.
Sothing stronger.
That was the power of the Stage 5 Gods.
By resonating their Concepts with others, the increase in strength went beyond simple increase in output of the attack’s strength.
They attack’s potential reached an entirely different plane of existence.
And if they combined them all into one strike...
Naless Death’s instincts scread.
His mind was already racing faster than the world around him.
He didn’t hesitate anymore.
He poured his Concepts into one another.
He used Darkness as the base and aligned the thousands of Concepts he had within him.
They began to resonate.
His entire body shook under the strain. An otherworldly aura radiated from him.
He raised his blade.
The sword in Cole’s hand was already descending, still infinite, still carrying enough power to erase galaxies.
Naless Death didn’t think.
He trusted the feeling. He let his instincts take over once again.
He swung.
Two blades t in the void.
There was silence at first.
No explosion. No sound. No shockwave.
Then a ripple expanded out, slow at first, then accelerating.
The void trembled.
Aura exploded from Naless Death’s blade. The dark resonance around him scread as it surged upward, colliding fully with Cole’s infinite slash.
And then—impossibly—it cut through.
Cole’s sword shattered.
Not literally. The energy behind it dispersed, folding back into the void. The swing had been stopped. Not entirely, but enough.
Naless Death stood there, breathing hard, his sword lowered at his side.
His body trembled from the sheer energy he’d just unleashed.
He wasn’t injured. But he was greatly exhausted.
Across from him, Cole looked at the dissipating energy and then smiled.
"Huh," he said. "You actually did it."
Naless Death didn’t reply. He was still catching his breath, still processing the fact that he had blocked it. That he was alive.
"Looks like I owe you a freebie," Cole added.
He waved his hand casually, and the void around them began to fade.
The street returned. The buildings. The wind. The faint jingle of an ice cream truck in the distance.
Everything was normal again.
Naless Death still didn’t say anything.
"You learned Resonance faster than I expected," Cole said. "Not bad at all."
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