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Chapter 692: The Truth Part 3
"You’re an idiot."
Reign started laughing. It was the kind of laughter that surfaces when something was so absurd the body doesn’t know what else to do with it.
Re watched him. He didn’t say a word since the truth finished settling. He wasn’t sure what he expected to feel.
"You’re not even angry?" he asked, still catching his breath. "After finding out I’m the original?"
"Should I be?" Reign shrugged.
"Most people would be." Re responded.
Something shifted in Reign’s expression. He looked at Re the way someone looks at a reflection that moved slightly wrong.
"You’re full of flaws," Reign added. "Too many unnecessary ideas. That’s why you kept failing. I’m a better version of you in every way
Re opened his mouth. Closed it.
Because the other half of him wasn’t wrong. That was the reason he separated himself in the first place. His mind had already been tainted by countless experiences, so he knew he would never be able to learn Absolute Destruction.
"So what now?" Re asked. "You’re telling me there’s no version of this where I can win?"
"No version where you win," Reign corrected. "Or where I win. That distinction matters."
Re looked at his hands. He thought, briefly, of things he never told anyone.
Small things. The particular way light moved through atmosphere on the first world he ever truly chosen to cultivate.
The strange, structureless peace of a moment he spent alone once, eons ago, that he never been able to explain or replicate.
Things that would not survive what was coming.
Things that, maybe, were never meant to.
"So what’s your proposal?" Re asked quietly. If anyone could break this cycle, it would be the most twisted version of himself.
Reign’s smile returned. Slower this time. Like something surfacing from a very long way down.
"Let me devour you."
Re didn’t move at first.
"Don’t give me that look," Reign said.
"What look?"
"Like you’re still calculating." Reign tilted his head. "You already know how this ends."
Re’s jaw tightened slightly. "I still have Reset."
Reign laughed.
"Reset," he repeated, tasting the word. "You’re going to threaten me with Reset."
"It’s not a threat. It’s a fact."
"I am your last choice. Are you going to try again just to fail? Aren’t you tired?"
Re looked away.
Not because he disagreed. Because he didn’t.
"Once you’re part of me," Reign continued, "I’ll have your Meta Power. Combined with my Absolute Law of Destruction—"
He glanced past Re toward the horizon, where the cloud of darkness slowly churned.
"I’ll end it," Reign declared.
"And if you fail?"
"Then nothing matters anymore." Reign responded without any drama at all. "If I fail, the Void erases everything. You. Me."
"I could still—"
"You could," Reign cut him off.
"You could reset. Right now. Walk away from this conversation into another cycle. But you won’t."
Re’s eyes narrowed. "You don’t know that."
"I do. Because I am you. Or I was. And I know exactly what you feel right now. You’re exhausted."
Silence.
Reign opened his palm slowly, not commanding — just offering. Like the gesture itself was the most honest thing he knew how to do.
"You don’t have to carry this burden anymore."
Re stared at the open hand, tempted. Deep down, he already knew this was the best option.
Even if he devoured Reign, he still would not gain control over the Absolute of Destruction, making the entire reason for obtaining that law meaningless.
The Void was not something that could be defeated through strength alone. To destroy it, he needed an attack capable of erasing existence itself.
"I’ll finish it," Reign reassured him. "Everything you started. Everything you couldn’t."
Re stared at the hand of his other half for a long moment.
Then he looked up at his face—and for the briefest second, beyond the arrogance and those crimson, sadistic eyes, he saw something far more terrifying.
Absolute certainty. It was the kind of dominance he himself had never reached, even after countless battles against the Void.
This was what separated the two—what made Reign the perfect avatar of destruction.
"You really think you can do it?" Re asked one more time, his voice steady and serious.
"I know I can." Reign’s smile cracked open, so wide it almost looked like he was ready to bite Re’s head off the moment he said yes.
.
.
.
While this was happening, the Void was fighting against a restriction that slowed it down enough for Reign and Re to converse within their mental space.
That was new. That was wrong. It was a power Re had never used before.
It did not panic. It had no mechanism for panic. Only to adapt.
It pressed against the restriction.
The thread held.
It pressed harder.
The thread held again.
It gathered everything—every fragment of itself scattered across space, every extension, every version—and pulled it all inward into a single focused point.
CRACK.
The restriction shattered.
Space fluctuated violently, tearing open at the seams as waves of distortion launched outward in every direction .
The shockwaves crossed the distance in an instant, converging on the two suspended figures from every angle simultaneously.
There was nowhere to go. No time to react. No time to reset.
It was over.
And then —
Time stopped.
Not slowed. Not disrupted.
Stopped.
One single second stretched out and held, the shockwaves frozen mid-flight.
The universe itself seemed to hold still, as though something had pressed a hand flat against the surface of reality and said not yet.
Then that ’second’ ended.
BOOM.
The light erupting from the two figures had no color at first. It went beyond it—a radiance so overwhelming that normal light could not describe it.
The Void’s own attack hit the light and ceased to exist.
Space shattered—long fracture lines spreading outward like broken glass—and through those fractures, miniature black holes tore open one after another in a ring around the epicenter, each one pulling at the fabric of what remained.
It did not stop there. The indescribable light that had once blinded the Void itself began to shrink.