"You think it will be so easy?" Zeus’s voice rolled like thunder, and the sky answered him.
Clouds twisted into violent spirals, the heavens rumbling as lightning gathered, each bolt thicker than the tallest trees.
Neo tried to move, but his body would not obey.
The first strike landed.
A blinding arc of lightning tore across the peak, striking him with a force that made the ground split apart.
His flesh was being obliterated in an instant, bone after bone crushed and dissolved.
Yet, at the sa rate, his body rebuilt itself, as if ti itself was weaving him back together.
Zeus narrowed his eyes.
His face shifted into sothing between curiosity and irritation.
Neo’s lips curved into a faint smile, though half of his face had already lted away.
He could move even without a body.
Yet he did.
Every ti the lightning reduced him to nothing, his form returned.
He was not only resisting Zeus but showing him he could stand against him.
"Vain pride," Zeus muttered.
He raised his arm, and the lightning answered his will.
Sparks spread across the sky. The threads of lightning wove together until a colossal figure ford.
A man of lightning, upper body only, beard flowing like a storm cloud, and in its hand a massive trident of pure current.
The giant hurled the trident.
It scread through the sky, tearing sound apart before it struck.
The explosion swallowed the mountain.
A blast wave ripped smaller peaks away, collapsing stone into dust. The world seed to end in that single strike.
The dust slowly cleared.
Neo was still walking forward.
Each step ca with the crunch of bones snapping and flesh twisting unnaturally, warped under the pull of gravity and the force of Zeus’s World Law.
His body tried to fall apart, but he forced it back together.
One step.
Two steps.
He did not stop.
Zeus was about to move when sothing shifted in the air.
Danger.
He turned his head sharply, just in ti to dodge a blade that sliced through the space where his neck had been.
A figure floated before him, clad in black armor that revealed nothing. A faceless, and silent knight summoned by Moraine. Its weapon was aid for Zeus’s throat.
Zeus clenched his fist.
The backhand ca with the sound of the world breaking.
The knight’s chest caved in, armor shattered, and the body was thrown down from the sky into the mountain below.
Zeus did not follow.
His gaze observed as golden threads appeared, weaving from Moraine’s body.
They extended into the broken knight, seeping into the shattered armor, pulling it back together.
The crushed plates bent into shape again.
Slowly, piece by piece, the knight stood once more.
Zeus’s brows furrowed.
"What is that?" His voice was quieter now, but edged with danger. "You are using Fate to heal him? How is that possible—"
He stopped.
His expression changed in an instant, as if sothing he had sensed reached too deep.
"Who are you!?" His voice thundered again, but it was not just anger. It was alarm. "How do you have sothing like that?!"
His figure blurred.
One mont he was high above the peak, the next he was in front of Moraine, hand stretched like a claw towards her neck.
But then he froze at a voice.
"That’s it? It wasn’t hard."
Zeus turned his head sharply.
At the tallest peak stood Neo.
In the brief mont Moraine had distracted him, Neo had reached the summit.
"So what if you reached the peak?" Zeus said. "Even if I am not invincible, what can you do? You are nothing compared to —"
Before he could finish, the air split.
An overwhelming surge of energy erupted from Neo, bursting outward in a wave that swallowed the mountain, the clouds, the sky itself.
Zeus frowned.
He felt the weight of the energy but did not understand what Neo was trying to achieve.
Then he sensed it.
Ti.
Neo was activating a technique to twist it.
"Turning ti back? Pointless. You don’t have enough energy to affect —"
His thoughts ended when the world shifted.
Darkness cut his senses, and the next mont, his awareness snapped back. He was no longer inside his World.
He was flying through the void of space.
Toward a spaceship.
’Ti was turned back,’ he realized as his body smashed against the tal hull.
Unlike before, Neo was waiting for him.
His fist was pulled back, his stance steady, as if he had planned this mont all along.
"Clench your teeth, uncle!"
The punch landed.
Zeus’s head snapped back as Neo’s fist connected with his face. The blow carried him away, launching him at impossible speed.
Zeus barely had ti to think, but thoughts still raced.
’Ti turned back?’
’He had enough energy to do that... to ?’
The difference between a Grade 3 Stage 6 and peak Stage 6 was more than the difference between a mortal and a Stage 6.
The gap was not just wide, it was unthinkable.
And yet Neo had done it.
’How?’
’Did he make a contract with Ekravion?’
That would explain it. The demon’s power would allow Neo to borrow energy from the future. If that was true...
’I just need to push him, and make him burn it all. If he draws too much strength from his future self, he will collapse.’
While these thoughts flashed, only a fraction of a second passed in reality.
Zeus adjusted instantly.
He moved forward, body blurring as he prepared to strike Neo again.
Neo’s voice rang calmly.
"Space, lock the area around him."
Zeus felt it.
Elentals of Space answered the call.
Invisible chains wrapped around him, pressing from every direction, trying to freeze him in place.
He let out a short breath.
"This is useless. The power of the Elentals depends on your existence. With your level, they cannot stop ."
The bindings groaned.
Zeus took a step forward.
The space bent around his foot, and the void scread under the pressure.
The bindings struggled, but he moved with ease, walking calmly toward Neo, as if to demonstrate just how much higher his power was.
But before his next step, Neo’s energy flared again.
It was violent. A burst so high it seed to warped the whole universe around him.
Zeus’s eyes narrowed.
’He is trying to turn back ti again,’ he thought.
This ti, Zeus decided not to resist. He let Neo do it. Neo would end up wasting his own strength, and weaken himself until there was nothing left.
But suddenly, Zeus froze.
His body refused to move.
’What?’
The thought was sharp.
He was shocked.
He tried to step forward, to raise his arm, to even blink.
Nothing.
He couldn’t do anything.
’He stopped ti for ?’
The realization shook him. Turning ti back was one thing. But stopping it—especially for soone like him and for so long—demanded an even greater price.
Yet Neo stood before him calmly.
He walked across the void.
Step by step, unhurried, mocking the sa calmness Zeus had used just monts before.
"What now, uncle?"
Neo stopped only a few paces away.
"Is this all you had? Did you co to fight a Heavenbreaker with only this level of preparation?"
Zeus could not answer. Ti itself had caged him.
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