Caging the big bang(chapter 142)

previously in chapter 141

Henry didn't spare a glance at the wonders surrounding him. His eyes, sharp and focused, were set on his path, unyielding. With a simple, almost casual swing of the Infinity Warblade, reality itself seemed to shudder. A colossal shockwave tore through the city, obliterating everything in its path. Stars trembled, and planets in distant realms collapsed into themselves, reduced to nothing more than cosmic dust. The ground beneath Henry cracked and splintered, entire floating islands disintegrated, and the once-perfect city began to collapse in on itself.

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Chapter 142

The gods in the arena gasped in horror, realizing the scale of the destruction. Without a word, Henry swung the Warblade again, this time directing it towards the two towering Celestial Guardians that stood near the entrance to the Hall of Eternity. These beings were enormous, titans that had stood watch for eons, guarding the divine council with unmatched power. They raised their colossal weapons, preparing to strike down the intruder. But it was too late.

The Warblade cut through time and space itself, leaving a dark, jagged rift where it passed. The Celestial Guardians barely had time to react as their forms were torn apart, disintegrating into nothingness. The blade's shockwave continued, cutting through the very fabric of reality, leaving a massive gaping hole behind Zeus' throne, opening up to the void of space beyond. The gods stared in disbelief.

Henry advanced, undeterred by the chaos he had wrought. Zeus, still seated upon his throne, watched in stunned silence as Henry approached. Panic rippled through the divine assembly. It was Thor's voice, quiet but full of dread, that broke the silence. "What is this…?" Before anyone could react further, Henry began his slaughter. He swung the Warblade with cold precision, cutting down any god that dared to stand in his way. The gods of lesser realms—those whose powers were built on domains of nature, love, or wisdom—rushed at him with divine spells and weapons. The god of storms hurled lightning bolts of unimaginable power; the goddess of war lunged with a spear forged from the heart of a dying star. Their attacks either disintegrated on contact with Henry's power-negating aura or were redirected harmlessly away by the Eternal Nanite Sphere, vanishing through time itself.

One by one, gods fell, their immortal forms reduced to nothing. Henry showed no emotion, no hesitation. He cut through them all as if they were nothing more than obstacles. The god of the sun, a radiant figure who blazed like a star, unleashed a solar storm. Henry's Warblade cut through it effortlessly, severing the god in half with a single strike. Blood, glowing with divine essence, sprayed across the hall.

The air was filled with screams, gods fleeing in every direction, desperate to escape. Some tried to teleport away, but Henry's mastery over time prevented their escape. He stopped their movements mid-teleport, dragging them back into the slaughter. Others cowered, pleading for their lives. One god—a minor deity of wealth—knelt before him, offering riches beyond imagination, his voice trembling in fear.

"Please! I can give you anything! Gold, power—" Henry's response was the same as it had been for every other god. Silence. He swung his blade, and the god's head rolled across the blood-soaked floor.

Zeus, the King of Gods, finally stood, lightning crackling around him as he prepared to unleash his full fury. "You dare?!"

But before he could even raise his hand, Henry was upon him. With one devastating swing, the Warblade cleaved through Zeus' chest, tearing through his divine form as though it were nothing more than paper. Zeus' lifeless body crumpled to the floor, his golden blood pooling beneath him. The gods who had not yet fled watched in stunned horror as their king fell. In the chaos, Uatu the Watcher, dressed in his golden armor, moved to intervene. But the moment his eyes met Henry's, he paused. The sheer power emanating from Henry was beyond even the Watcher's comprehension. Uatu hesitated, then stepped back, knowing that even he could not stop what was happening.

The slaughter continued. Gods from every realm—those of the Earth, of stars, of time and space itself—fell under Henry's blade. Their divine powers, their cries, their desperation… none of it mattered. Every attack launched at him was negated, redirected, or rendered useless. The Eternal Nanite Sphere adapted to every challenge, phasing him through time when needed, stopping it entirely when convenient. Not a single god could touch him.

Henry's cold, unrelenting strikes filled the divine hall with the blood of gods, divine essence spilling across the golden floors. The cries of the fallen echoed through the halls, but there was no mercy. There was only death. One by one, they were all cut down until the once-proud Omnipotence City lay in ruins. Its divine inhabitants were no more, their lives extinguished in the relentless storm of Henry's power.

As the last god fell, the city itself began to collapse, its foundations crumbling under the weight of the destruction. Henry stood amidst the carnage, his blade dripping with divine blood, the Eternal Nanite Sphere shimmering with temporal energy. He looked out over the ruins, his expression unreadable. He had left none alive. "Well, this is just boring," he sighed as he extracted the essence of flesh from every god, minor or major, as well as their souls. Lastly, he drained their unspilled blood and gathered the spilled blood before storing them and leaving.

-scene change-

In the depths of space, Henry arrived, pulling out the Infinity Warblade without hesitation. He pointed the blade toward an inhabited planet and, with a single word, "Extinguish," released a tiny stream of cosmic energy. The planet was destroyed in a purple explosion. But he didn't stop. No, he extracted the life essence of the planet—yes, he drained the entire essence of it. And he didn't stop. He did the same to the next planet, and the next, and the next. Planets, all full of life, yet their light, their life, extinguished, extracted.

It wasn't just 100 planets—no, it was more than that. It was more than a hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand, no—it was millions and millions of planets. And when he was done with that, he moved on to his next target. "Time to cage the flame that birthed the universe," he thought as he turned time backward, further and further, until nothing existed—nothing that he could see.

In the final moments before the Big Bang, the universe was a void—a place beyond time, form, or existence. There was no light, no matter, and no spatial dimension as we understand it. The scene was one of pure potential, an infinite nothingness, but one that hummed with latent energy so incomprehensible that it was as if the laws of reality were on the verge of being written. It was an eternal stillness, pregnant with possibility but utterly devoid of the forms and structures we now associate with the universe. Yet, somehow, Henry existed. He could feel himself being destroyed, slowly and painfully, but he endured, even while sensing the nagging presence of a great horror behind him—hundreds of them.

The fabric of space-time had not yet been born, and so neither space nor time existed. Yet, within this void, an unfathomable pressure began to build—a density beyond measure, containing all the mass, energy, and forces that would soon give rise to the cosmos. The infinitesimal point, a singularity of infinite density, held within it the raw forces that would later become the building blocks of the universe: matter, energy, gravity, time, and space itself, all crammed into this "point."

Suddenly, the tension of this boundless energy was on the brink of rupture. The fundamental forces were stirring, trembling in the prelude to an explosion that would tear apart this formless void. The moment of creation was at hand. What began as a ripple in the fabric of non-existence was about to explode outward in an event so immense it would birth everything. The singularity could no longer contain the staggering energies within. And just like that, the Big Bang erupted with unimaginable force—a blast so large, so magnificent. Yet before it could continue, Henry activated his accursed skill: Essence Extraction. He extracted the essence of the Big Bang in its purest, most potent form. Yes, it did destroy him in an instant, but he came back to life and continued the extraction.

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A/N .....ok, maybe i do have some scaling issue.