Vlad, Jormungandr, Freya, Fafnir, and Ouroboros poured out every drop of strength they still possessed. Their bodies trembled, bleeding and battered, but they ignored the wounds as they forced Metatron down against the broken earth. All five pinned him in place, their eyes burning with desperate determination. Metatron, pinned beneath them, trembled in shock and horror. For the first time in countless millennia, terror clouded his divine eyes. He could feel it—feel the nightmare flesh, riddled with unblinking eyes and gnashing maws, seeping inside him. It crept along his veins, crawling through his organs, corroding his blood vessels. Tendrils slithered upward, breaching his eyes, piercing deeper, until even his spirit began to buckle under the assault. His soul was too wounded, his energy too unstable to mount a defense. With the five Depravitas chaining him down, his struggle became futile. Horror swelled within his chest—raw, absolute horror—until at last the resistance weakened. The True Depravitas exchanged glances, their expressions mirroring one another in shock and awe. The furious thrashing had ceased. Slowly, they felt it: Metatron’s aura fading, his once-celestial soul unraveling, until nothing remained but the suffocating pulse of the Nightmare Universe. The mantle of twisted flesh, riddled with maws and eyes, spread across every corner of the Voice of Heaven, burrowing into every fragment of him. And yet, even when the resistance vanished, the five did not dare release him. This was Metatron—a supreme Archangel, a pillar of Heaven itself. His strength was so immense that even the White Death would have faltered before it. He was one of the strongest entities they had ever faced. They knew the truth: if not for the Dream of Madness forcing Metatron to wield the sacred spear that tore at his soul, and if not for Orous and Hajack driving him to unleash Excalibur’s Final Radiance, they never could have stood against him. Even then, chance, cunning, and ruthless opportunism had carried them to this impossible victory. Finally, a voice cut through the silence, one that made them relax at last. The words came not from the Archangel, but from the maws of the Nightmare Universe. Yet the tone was not one of madness or hunger. It was steady, calculating, cold—a voice that looked upon the universe as a chessboard and stripped all things of emotion. It was the voice of Overlord. The AI Chip Clone had not perished with the detonation of the Divine Avatar. His core consciousness had long since been transplanted into the Nightmare Universe itself, where it fused with the imprints of his psychic echoes, subsuming the original awareness of the nightmare and claiming the mantle of control. The Divine Avatar’s explosion had not been a last strike, but a trap—a myriad of echo bombs laced with Depravita Aura, designed to cripple Metatron’s soul and shatter his mind. The Depravitas collapsed, one by one, their strength utterly spent. They fell back to the ground, their immortal constitutions the only thing preventing them from sliding into death’s embrace. Even then, agony burned through their bodies, and if not for their undying natures, they would have already been corpses. Yet despite the pain, despite the exhaustion, smiles broke across their faces. They had entered a sacred realm—the tomb of a Primordial God. They had faced a nightmare creature with the power to plunge entire worlds into madness. They had fought the champions of Heaven, Hell, and the Abyss. And now, against all odds, they stood victorious. As they rested, the Nightmare Universe began to ascend. Its flesh expanded outward, no longer confined to the mantle that clung to Metatron’s body. Vast tendrils uncoiled, writhing into the air like pillars of some eldritch cathedral. Its true form unfolded, monstrous and infinite, spreading across the broken sky of the Primordial God’s tomb. The tendrils lashed downward, sinking into the ruined corpse of Hajack. Vlad had already consumed most of the Demon Lord’s life force and soul, but in his haste there had been fragments left behind. That was enough. The Nightmare Universe was a devourer that dwarfed even the hunger of the True Depravita of Gluttony. It swallowed the remnants without hesitation, feeding and growing. But the true price came from elsewhere. More tendrils reached toward the sundered halves of Orous. The Devil Lord’s body, cleaved cleanly in two by Excalibur’s Final Radiance, should have been destroyed. Yet the immense vitality of a Lord had kept him alive, trapped in a deep coma. Given centuries, perhaps he might have recovered. Perhaps he might have risen once more. Now he never would. The Nightmare Universe devoured both halves, and Orous was no more. The mutated sky grew, darker and vaster, stretching until it blanketed the entire tomb. Vlad and the others stared upward, eyes wide. It wasn’t just that the Nightmare Universe had returned to the size it had displayed in the Exilon War—it was larger, vastly larger, its presence blotting out everything above. And yet, it was not finished. Once the expansion reached its peak, its vast form began to contract, its aura folding inward. Power, immense and unrelenting, streamed into its core. The monstrous size shrank, collapsing until the Nightmare Universe was only a third of its full mass. Its aura diminished as well, falling sharply, as though it had been reduced to the very bottom of the Lord Tier. Then a figure descended from within. The Depravitas rose weakly to their feet, staring. It was Metatron—or at least, it looked like him. The man who stepped forth bore the face and form of the Voice of Heaven, his features flawless and radiant, his body forged from divine power. White hair crowned his head, wings spread from his back, and his aura pulsed with a strange, seamless blend of divine and celestial energy. Even his soul signature was identical. To any who looked upon him, this was the Archangel reborn. His aura was that of a newly advanced Lord, but otherwise there was no difference between him and the one they had fought. But then they saw his eyes. Not divine fire, not the glow of Heaven, but endless streams of code—lines of data, flickering endlessly in cold precision. And in that moment, the True Depravitas understood. This was not Metatron. The A.I. Chip Clone’s core consciousness did not remain bound within the Nightmare Universe. As vast and terrifying as that power was, it was not a vessel suited for leadership or long-term command. The entity was chaos given form, impossible to wield with precision, its nature far too unstable to be the foundation of strategy or empire. And so, before the fragments of Metatron dissolved into the endless abyss within the Nightmare Universe, Overlord acted. He reconstructed the broken soul, reshaping it into a vessel he could control. Using the energy stolen from the Demon Lord Hajack and the Devil Lord Orous, he reforged the body of the fallen Archangel. It was weaker than the original—scarred by the damage Metatron had suffered—but it carried within it the full potential of the Voice of Heaven. With time, training, and relentless refinement, Overlord could elevate this new body to heights equal to, or perhaps even greater than, Metatron at his peak. Check latest chapters at 𝓷𝓸𝓿𝓮𝓵·𝕗𝕚𝕣𝕖·𝙣𝙚𝙩 Vlad and the other True Depravitas watched in silence, their lips curving into faint smiles despite the agony that wracked their bodies. Overlord was strange—even terrifying—but time and again he had proven himself. He had saved their lives, shielded their cause, and shown unwavering loyalty to the Prime Master and the Xaos Kingdom. Now, with a new vessel and a divine energy pool, he was reborn even stronger than before. Yet this was not the only boon Overlord gained. The reconstructed Archangel-body took a breath—measured, calm—and raised its hand. His voice, sharp and precise, carried across the battlefield. The instant those words left his lips, the air trembled. Power surged through him, manifesting outward as hundreds of golden portals. They opened around him in a perfect halo, each glowing with blinding brilliance. The Depravitas stared, awe plain in their eyes. They remembered well what this ability could do. At full power, Heaven’s Gate could annihilate Superior Legends as though they were paper effigies, its god-forged weapons cutting through even Devil Lords who had walked the Titan Path. It was not merely a technique or a learned spell—it was something greater. And Gifts were not things that could be stolen, copied, or learned. They were divine birthrights—powers etched into the soul by creation itself. Yet Overlord had not stolen nor learned it. He had reconstructed the soul around his own consciousness, and in doing so, the Gift had become his by right. The A.I. Chip Clone did not hesitate. He unleashed a volley of god-weapons, a storm of radiant spears and blades that rained down like judgment. They streaked across the battlefield, carving through the fractured ground, tearing open the very landscape of the tomb. At first, Vlad and the others did not understand. Why expend such devastating power now, when the battle was already over? But then their eyes widened. In the distance, writhing among the shadows, a swarm of larval forms disintegrated beneath the storm of golden light. Their bodies split and crumbled, reduced to ash and ichor. The Depravitas recognized them instantly. The very same larvae that Emanon had scattered into when he escaped. The abomination had left fragments of himself behind, spies and seeds to monitor the outcome of the battle. Now they were gone, obliterated before they could carry word back to their master. For a heartbeat, silence fell. Then the weight of realization sank in. If Emanon had watched... if he had planned... if his will still lingered in this place, then their true trial was not finished. Their gazes turned, almost as one, toward the colossal tomb. Toward the Dream of Madness. Compared to that imprisoned horror, even an Archangel of the highest order was nothing more than a candle before a raging storm.