The Battle of Gods (2)

Three light's echoed through the clouds above the God of Light's island. Masses of clouds were blown apart and split in half Shen battled against both brothers. The speed they were moving at seemed impossible for any normal human body to withstand. Yet they moved at these speeds and only continued to grow faster.

Teleporting behind Shen the God of Darkness coated his arms in his power before striking. Shen's mind quickly identified the threat but just as he went to dodge the power of the God of Light constrained his body for just a second.

The strike sent Shen flying out of the sky hitting the Island below that had been split earlier. The brothers stood side by side as they pointed their hands towards the island under them and gathered their power. Shining like stars sheer masses of light and dark energy combined into one before being unleashed.

The beam of power seemed to envelop the entire sky above the island. Before it even touched something it would be reduced to dust.

Recovering Shen looked up at the sky, as Godkiller transformed itself. The impact of that blast seemed to shake the ocean around them creating tsunamis for dozens of miles and causing whirlpools to generate across the surface of the ocean from the sudden violent currents.

The two gods stared down at the massive crater where the island used to be. Ocean water poured in trying to fill the sudden vacancy as a glint appeared at the center of the crater.

"Is he still alive even after that?" One major fault of the gods was that they weren't omniscient, in fact, they were inferior to even the Relic of Knowledge. Even Salem millennia ago could turn the gods against one another through mere words and trickery.

So without the gods when noticing Shen burrowed through the earth before bursting in the sky from miles away. The Godkiller was wrapped around his body like the armor as he appeared behind the gods before they could react.

"Agh!" Before the God of Darkness could react Shen kicked him in the back with enough force to create a shockwave that could rupture your ears. He was sent flying into the ocean below and like a rock in a pond, causing a massive watery explosion.

The next moment Godkiller transformed into a massive war hammer. The God of Light couldn't even react in time to teleport away as his entire body took the full brunt of Shen's next attack. Pain echoed through the God of Light's body which began to liquefy showing he had taken damage.

And just like his brother, he was sent flying towards the oceans of Remantn.

[What's with these two. Both of them are stronger than you even on their own. Even with my help, this shouldn't be so easy.] Shen's mind only needed a second to generate a plausible answer.

'These two have fought each other before, yet from how the God of Darkness reacted to feeling pain they've never actually hurt one another. That is to say, they simply throw their powers around they've never actually fought before.'

In terms of age and lifetime experience, Shen's was infinitesimal to their own. Yet compared to these gods who never paid attention to how beings on equal playing fields needed to fight to actually win, in terms of combat Shen was vastly superior.

"I've had enough of these games!" The God of Darkness burst from the water immediately attacking Shen.

His power seemed not just to affect Shen but the world around Shen as well. Immediately felt the gravity around him change. From normal it increased tenfold, twentyfold, a hundredfold, and even then it only continued to increase. Shen could feel his movements being constrained as they wrapped him in their power and sent him downwards.

At the same time, down below the God of Lights power spread through the ocean as it began to split along with the ocean floor beneath it. Stretching for miles the entire ocean looked as if it had been cut in half with both the brothers forcing Shen down deep into its pits.

As gravity increased around him Shen felt himself being pulled down faster and faster. Yet not single thought passed through his mind, instead, he moved his hands so very slightly and Life Fibers that had been previously hidden from view began to reflect light revealing themselves.

Hundreds of them were attached from Shen's body to the god's limbs and then unlike before when they had slack they immediately tightened and constricted themselves.

"When did he-" Before they could ask they were immediately pulled down into remnant along with Shen.

With Creation, he could create anything he had a grasp on. But due to Shen's limited knowledge when it came to even memorize even simple things such as the periodic table lots of things were beyond him. But that didn't make the power useless because there was one thing Shen grasped extremely well.

At the very bottom of the ravine, the deepest of purple lights seemed to escape along with a distinct sound. Both the gods forcefully broke from Shen's Life Fibers as they looked down. And in that instance, the entire ravine and the split ocean seemed to be engulfed in a single sound. Their vision was covered in the sight of arching lightning.

Violent and erratic lightning is an even darker color than that Karmic Lightning. It erased everything it touched, piercing through the earth, into the sky, through the clouds, and towards the atmosphere. It was even visible from space, as a portion of the world was engulfed. The sound echoed for hundreds of miles and the scene was visible for a hundred more even from space.

When the attack ended Shen flew from the ravine with Godkilelr having turned back into a normal sword. The ocean that had been split had now been evaporated revealing the ocean floor without a drop of water. The world around Shen looked as if it had been torn apart from millions of blades from the lightning and crumbled apart.

Who knows how long it would take for the ocean to once again fill in this much space, perhaps hours or maybe even days. But Shen couldn't care less about that, his eyes remained fixed on the two gods in front of him.

Despite them teleporting out of panic they still got hit by the sheer volume of the attack. Their bodies do not have multiple holes in them, showing where lightning had struck. Where these holes appeared their bodies dripped.

"I never thought something in this universe could ever reduce us to such a state." The God of Darknesses voice seemed to return to normal. Alongside him, the God of Light sighed.

"I wanted to avoid doing this, as to avoid potentially harming this world before we could judge it." With that, both the God of Light and the God of Darkness began to shine. They seemed to become balls of light and dark that enveloped everything they touched.

The light itself seemed to become physical as the god's draconic forms arose from them. Their sizes immediately changed from their humanoid selves to sizes that dwarfed even the largest Grimm. And upon transforming they spoke a single word, one not directed at Shen but at the world around them.

"Stop." And just like that everything, everywhere began to slow, ever-moving debris from Shen's attack, the ocean water as it churned, the clouds as they moved. Everyone across Remnant including those in Kuchinashi halfway across the planet and even the sun itself. Every tick, everything began to slow until finally, it stopped.

The god's dragon selves slowly moved as time itself had stopped.

"We should have used these forms, to begin with, you know very well brother that we can't use our full power in those limiting human bodies." The God of Darkness stared at Shen with anger and rage. This human had injured them multiple times, which was unacceptable to him. The only reason that didn't use their draconic forms before was because of the power they unleashed on them.

They could easily destroy Remnant if they weren't careful, and even stopping time like this on such a large scale could cause unforeseen damage.

"Now then to get rid of this him." The God of Darkness raised his head before releasing a volume of flames from his mouth. Shen who was frozen in time was enveloped completely by flames. The Life Fiber skin on Shen was durable even with time stopped, yet their ability to self-recover was inactive.

And against flames that reduced everything they touched to ash Shen's body didn't last longer than ten seconds. Yet as the Life Fibers disappeared they saw movement. At this moment that was stopped, where only they should be able to move. They saw movement, and the God of Darkness immediately stopped his attack as he tared at Shen.

"Brother… What- What is that." The God of Darkness spoke to the God of Light, yet he received no answer. And he knew why, after all, both of them were transfixed at this moment. In a mixture of both intrigue and horror, they simply watched. At this moment Shen's consciousness was frozen his thoughts having no precedence.

And because of that his being was no longer being reigned in. The power that had been stored after being absorbed through Godkilelr and the power that was being taken in from the relics no longer was no longer stored. Instead, everything, all of Shen's power was being released at once and being devoured.

What they saw before them was simply beyond both human and their own imagination. It did not abide by the rules of time, nor the rules of physics. And why would it?

The control the gods had overtime slipped along with their focus, and slowly time began to move again. Shen was ever-growing, it only took seconds for him to reach the size of a mountain yet it continued. More power that was no longer constrained by Shen controlling it was being released by the second.

The shadow he cast only seemed to grow, developing the gods and their bodies and even overcasting the clouds. It was only as time finally returned to its normal flow that Shen's body also seemed to stop growing.

"It seems we both wanted to avoid our true selves from being released for similar reasons." Shen could only guess what happened, after all his Localized Clairvoyance suddenly cut itself off. It was as if the future suddenly stopped at a certain point.

He didn't know exactly what happened but for some period of time, he completely lost control of his power. Now nearly eighty percent of all the power he had saved up to this point was gone. That included the entirety of the energy he absorbed through the Godkiller. And the result was something that would be both remembered yet never recalled by anyone.

…

The sun had yet to fully set, yet at this moment no sunlight touched the planet's surface.

On a ship that was crossing the wide ocean, so far from where the gods and Shen were fighting that even the after-effects never reached the captain suddenly frowned.

"Why did it suddenly get so dark all of a sudden? Did we drift off course at some point?" He along with his crew peered out of their windows towards the sky yet all they saw were the stars. Before they knew it, all the machines and instruments on the ship shut down.

"What the hell?" A crewmember screamed as he looked at the monitor in front of him shut off. No matter what buttons he pushed or even if he tried to reset the entire system it would turn on.

"Our GPS and Radar are down as well."

"So is the engine!"

None of them knew what was going on, and didn't notice the workers out on the deck had stopped moving, all of them staring up at the sky. It was only when the captain looked out on the deck that everyone noticed.

"What are they staring at?" The crewman called for the workers on deck, yet no one responded. And so they slowly made their way out on the deck as well. None of the workers moved even when the crew touched them and called out for their names. The captain rubbed his head as he followed their gaze.

"What in the bloody hell are you all looking at?" It was when the captain looked at the sky aligned with his crew that their eyes seemed to contract.

Shapes that geometrically made no sense seemed to be scattered around the sky like stars. Actually, no it wasn't a sky at all, in fact, the night and the horizon were both hidden. The world above theme had been replaced with a deep yellow that rotated around an endless void, no light could penetrate it and it felt like nothing could escape it.

They saw destruction above them, from every anthill a child had ever crushed, to every horrific war that ever occurred. Yet at the same time, they saw the creation, the forming of Remnant as it was built into what it was today, piece by piece, atom by atom, over such a period of time it seemed impossible.

They saw all the life that had ever been born from humanity, every beautiful variation, and evolution. But they also saw death, scenes of entire cities falling apart, being overrun and slaughtered.

They saw the future, countless futures branching from countless choices, all the different possibilities weaving into one another like a jumbled rope. Yet they also saw knowledge, everything you could know, everything they can now, from now to the beginning of humanity.

Just by looking up, every person on this side of the planet could see it. Everything that was, could be and once was, all taken in by their eyes.

All of this came together to form an impossibility accompanied by pure entropy. And all of it swirled towards that void, that endless void.

And so as their minds tried to make sense of what they saw, they simply stopped. In every city, in every airship in the sky or boat on the water. Every emotion they felt where replaced with something indescribable, their thoughts and memories disappeared and finally, their sanity crumbled into nothing.

In those few minutes, on the day when the gods stopped time, almost half of Remnant's population died.