The overseer had one final trick in mind.
A taboo that only the Outworldly was allowed to touch.
Gustav sensed it instantly.
His eyes narrowed.
The Overseer stopped resisting and suddenly emitted a bright glow as holes appeared all over his divine form.
He spread his arms wide and began absorbing the deities around him.
Unlike Gustav's elegant, natural, perfect absorption…
…this was violent.
Deities scread as their essences were dragged toward him.
Their domains shattered into fragnts.
Their bodies twisted into rivers of divine flesh and light that spun around him like a vortex.
Their faces warped.
Their consciousnesses splintered.
One by one—then ten by ten—then dozens at once…
He consud them.
Against their will.
So begged.
So cursed.
So attempted to flee.
So clawed at the void for escape.
None succeeded.
They were ripped from existence and slamd brutally into the Overseer's growing mass.
He grew larger.
And larger.
And larger.
His body mutated.
His limbs elongated.
His aura darkened.
His form beca a massive grotesque silhouette stretching across sectors of space.
It was no longer divine.
It was no longer beautiful.
It was an abomination.
A writhing, chaotic mass of stolen divinity.
More than a hundred deities had been forcefully absorbed.
The universe trembled at the presence of this new monstrosity.
Nocturnis, who had barely escaped being consud, hovered at a safe distance with shock in his eyes.
"This… this is madness," he whispered.
Several surviving deities backed away in horror.
The Overseer was unrecognizable.
He was a towering fusion of limbs, faces, wings, scales, tendrils, flesh, and light—all shifting, all screaming, all alive.
His voice bood in layers:
"NOW… OUTWORLDLY…"
The many voices overlapped, distorted, furious.
"…FACE THE POWER OF HUNDREDS!"
The Overseer's new form was undeniably powerful... so powerful that even Nocturnis admitted, inwardly, that this thing might be able to rival the Outworldly.
For the first ti since the war began…
…Gustav tilted his head.
The Overseer was no longer recognizable.
What once resembled a dignified, ancient cosmic guardian had twisted into an abomination.
Colors that didn't exist in mortal spectrums bled out of his form, staining space like an infection.
His aura crackled like broken cosmic circuitry, flickering in and out of existence as though reality struggled to acknowledge him.
Gustav hovered before him, composed, and infinitely more terrifying in his calmness. His six Origin Lines glowed behind him like halos, each representing sothing beyond creation. Yet even with all that power, Gustav's expression tightened.
The Overseer moved first.
A limb whipped across a nebula, splitting into nine thinner limbs mid-flight and compressing the nebula into a marble-sized singularity.
That singularity shot toward Gustav.
Gustav shifted slightly and raised a forearm.
BOOOOM—
When the singularity touched him, Gustav's arm shimred with an unstable, swirling glow — the counterforce of raw existence. He crushed the singularity between his fingers, but the explosion behind it vaporized a star cluster and flattened a spiral galaxy into a thin sheet of paper-like reality, instantly tearing it apart.
Gustav's gaze flickered.
"Impressive," he voiced with a tone that vibrated whole constellations. "But reckless."
The Overseer's voice was layered with thousands of overlapping tones, so masculine, so feminine, so neither, so human, so not.
"I only need to kill you."
He launched forward and they clashed.
The mont their fists t, space shattered like glass, rippling through the cosmos. Whole planets turned into soap bubbles and popped. Others were rewritten into crude sketches of themselves before fading away.
A far civilization that had been spared by deities was erased in an instant as a shockwave tore through their system, flattening their existence entirely.
Gustav slipped aside as another arm stabbed toward him — this ti the arm extended into a spiral of blades that cut through dark matter and turned it into sand.
He countered with a thrust of his knee that contained enough force to break a universe in half.
The Overseer blocked with both arms, but the impact still bent the fabric of reality behind him, folding an entire starfield into a two-dinsional plane.
Even Gustav felt the recoil vibrate through his bones.
The Overseer's new abilities were undeniably lethal.
A tendril snapped forward, touching Gustav's shoulder.
The flesh around that spot instantly tried to transform into gas, tal, light, then nothing. Gustav flexed his aura and forced his form stable again, batting the tendril away before it consud more of him.
Another tendril lashed toward him from above, but Gustav vanished, appearing behind the Overseer in a burst of crackling paradox energy.
He slamd his palm into the Overseer's back.
CRAAAAAACK—
A spherical rupture expanded outward, dissolving an entire star nursery. Infant suns blinked out before they could reach their first breath of fusion.
The Overseer stumbled—
Then twisted his head backward with a grotesque crack.
"Inconsequential."
He expanded.
Massively.
His body swelled until he was the size of a solar system as his chest writhed like a storm of anti-creation energy. Gustav expanded to match and the two of them beca giants battling in a sea of dying stars.
The Overseer's new ability revealed itself:
He unleashed a roar—
And countless versions of Gustav from dead tilines peeled out of the void and attacked the real Gustav at once, each wielding the sa power he did but tainted with corruption.
Gustav spun as his eyes emitted a white glow.
"Imitations."
He flicked his finger.
BOOM— BOOM— BOOM— BOOM—
Each corrupted Gustav popped like bursting stars with their energies collapsing into holes that devoured the remnants of nearby galaxies.
Reality was folding...
The Overseer charged again with claws tearing open the void and spilling spilled paradox creatures that shouldn't exist — malford beasts that lived between seconds.
Gustav slamd his fist down.
A shockwave ripped across the universe.
The beasts disintegrated.
But the Overseer didn't stop.
Their battle tore through the cosmos, leaping from galaxy to galaxy instantaneously. Every departure annihilated the place they left.
Stars fell apart into glowing dust.
Entire planetary systems imploded.
Black holes cracked and bled silver fire.
Living civilizations were erased before they could even understand what was happening.
Gustav felt like if this continued, there would be absolutely nothing left.
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