Devourer System : Infinite Paths

"God is the Greatest"

"God is the Greatest"

A deep and heavy voice repeated the sentence, clearly strained from repeating the words over and over for an unknown period. At this point, it had turned into a low growl and was slowing by the moment.

Yet, beneath the exhaustion, there was an eerie calm, a strange peace woven into the hoarse whispers.

The man responsible was chained to the floor, his body stripped bare in a deliberate attempt to rob him of dignity, with his knees and ankles shackled tightly to the cold stone, forcing him into a kneeling position. 

His arms were stretched wide, pulled taut by iron cuffs, while his torso was held upright by a collar fastened around his neck. 

The collar was attached to a heavy chain bolted to the ceiling, forcing his head up and his spine rigid. There was no room for movement, no escape from the relentless tension that kept him suspended in place, a prisoner of his own stillness.

The chamber itself was grand and appeared more like a throne room than a prison, as just behind the chained figure, there lay a grand throne made of pitch-dark material that drank the surrounding light, darkness bleeding out of it as if its surface was made of liquid shadow.

The high seat loomed with an unnatural gravity, commanding the room in silence, and the very presence of the throne felt oppressive, as though the very space grew thicker near it.

The chamber stretched long, with twenty-two bone-white thrones standing in perfect symmetry, eleven on both sides, their pale surfaces glimmering faintly in the low light. 

All of the thrones had a figure standing behind them, like a guardian or, more so, representing their owner. Carved from a plethora of colorful crystals, each one stood tall and proud, with life-like features, draped in flowing robes that appeared to ripple even though they were locked in stone.

The only different, outright broken statue was the one behind the dark throne. Its head was smashed, and its broken pieces were still lying around the throne.

"God is the Greatest," The man repeated, his words getting softer with each breath, only to get louder after a few breaths as if rejuvenated with newfound life.

The man was struggling, but his resolve was unbroken, showing how his words, whether a final stand or a quiet farewell in the face of the fate awaiting him, were his anchor to not break.

"Tick" "Tick" "Tick" "Tick" 

The steady rhythm of his voice was broken, interrupted by the sharp, cold, continuous click of footsteps belonging to a female who appeared out of thin air.

The female was tall, nearly 6.5ft, and she definitely did not belong to the human or even the elven race, even though her features made one believe otherwise.

She was draped in white robes, flowing like morning light yet doing little to hide her beautiful figure and calm. She had an innocent face, one that could charm and melt the hardest of men, not only because she was a beauty but also because she had a unique aura around her.

She halted before the man, lowering her face until only a few inches separated them. Her hand brushed his cheek, fingers cold against his skin, as she began to speak.

"My King, every inch of your body is crawling with bone-eroding and flesh-eating parasites while your body is constantly being healed by the rejuvenating chains that also keep you frozen in place and send intense pain through your entire nervous system,"

"My Master can not bear to see you, his dear old friend in this miserable condition, nor can I," She said, her voice trembling with sorrow. 

"So please, just please, let me put you out of your misery." Her tone was achingly sincere, as though every word hurt her as much as it was meant to comfort him, the plea hanging heavy in the air.

"Please tell me where you hid the galactic key, and I will personally bear the burden of ending your life and putting an end to the ongoing war," She said, placing both hands on his face as tears rolled down her face.

"God is the Greatest"

The lips did not move, yet the voice echoed loud and clear. The eyes stayed frozen, yet their mocking look was as clear as day.

The innocent face drenched in tears began to twist in anger, her eyes taking a pinkish hue as a swirling cloud of mist manifested behind her that swiftly coalesced into a disturbing creature with a massive jaw lined with sharp teeth and more than a dozen eyes and barbed tendrils.

"Shut Up, you insufferable bastard," She roared, her melodies and soothing voice taking a cold and hateful edge.

The intensity of her eyes grew stronger, and same happened to the eyes of the creature behind her before its jaw snapped open wide as the two stared into the eyes of the chained figure.

"YRRRAAAAAAA"

A mere moment later, the creature roared in agony, its giant eyes popping like balloons, while the eyes of the female bleed, forcing her to close them as she stumbled back.

The female swiftly opened her blood-filled eyes as she spun around to look at the swirling mass of crimson that dissipated as quickly as it appeared, leaving behind a man.

The man stood a few heads taller than her, his skin as dark as obsidian and eyes a deep shade of crimson, wearing loose pants, leaving his chiseled torso bare.

"Aivern, how are you here?" The female questioned her expression, one of confusion and vigilance.

"Rinula, he is immune to your illusions, and a decade of torture would not weaken him enough to fall for them," The man said, seeing the condition of the female and the creature who stood ready to pounce at him.

"I asked you a question," Rinula said, her aura growing by the moment while the creature also grew in size, creating tens of barbed tendrils, each covered in eyes.

"I am here because my King sent me, giving me the honor to deliver the great news to my dear master," Aivern said as he kept walking, only stopping when only a few feet separated the two.

"What news?" Rinula questioned, her eyes taking on the intense hue once more while the barbed tendrils of the creature hovered inches away from the man.

"Nero Mortifer, a man who was chosen by a Primordial class system, making him the 0.0000001% of the galaxy, yet his system turned out to be dud, a dead system that was silent, gave him no benefits, made him no more than one of the common's,"

"The man grew, grew in power, reaching heights not even the best of past hundred generations could reach, his geniuses surpassing even the old Ruler or the Architects."

"However, now the man is chained in his own palace, his wife killed, his children suffering a fate worse than death, his clan erased from history, all because he is unwilling to give away his greatest creation."

"The Galactic Key," Aivern said, his eyes closed, unwilling to meet Rinula's gaze, which was seething with anger.

"I asked you a question," Rinula asked, the giant creature's jaws closing in on him, reading to devour him whole at the moment's notice.

"Do you know why he is unwilling to give up the Galactic Key?" Aivern asked, finally opening his eyes and staring directly into Rinula's pink eyes.

Rinula was taken aback by his action because Aivern should know well that she had the perfect hypnosis, and even he would fall for it unless he had made great preparation to defend against it.

Aivern actions were strange in her eyes, as his presence in the place was already odd enough, but to antagonize her with some basic information she was well aware of only to meet her powers head-on, all of it screamed he was up to something.

However, unluckily for her, the moment she took to consider his actions was the moment her fate was sealed.

"Because he knows what fate awaits the untold trillion of our galaxy," A voice different from Aivern's said while a white blade made purely of energy sliced through Rinula's face.

Nero was left stunned as the situation unfolded, and when he saw a creature materialize behind Rinula, his shock only grew.

The creature stood over two meters tall, his entire being made of energy, a blend of flowing darkness and light. His physique was humanoid yet also very alien.

He had four arms extended from his broad shoulders, each turning pure white just before his elbows. His head was crowned by a flickering white flame, which absorbed light rather than casting it, drawing the surrounding shadows inward.

The creature turned, its face devoid of features except for five shadowy eyes that met with Nero, who stared back, staying silent as his mind went through the possibilities of what the entity, who was half responsible for his downfall, was doing here.

The creature exuded a suffocating presence as the very air around him struggled to exist, drawn into the abyss of his being. Eyes like distant stars glimmered faintly within the void of his face, cold, distant, and terrifyingly ancient.

The entity walked closer, two of his hands morphing into thin blades and without a moment's waste, he made his move, his arms turning into a blur cutting through the dark metal without facing any resistance and in a single instance the chains holding Nero down were sliced open.

"Nero, My friend, Let's hope this works, or we are doomed," The entity said before his hands moved once more, plunging the blade into his chest.

'I don't know what happened, but I am happy that I can finally die,' Nero thought, repeating his mantra one last time in his mind as darkness slowly engulfed his senses.

Nero had gone through a lot, enough to break even him, but he stayed sane and did not break because it was his way of paying for a lifetime's worth of sins, sins so bad that he wished that he had died before doing them. The feeling did not change even when he secured a throne at the pinnacle of the entire galaxy.

So now, finally dying, knowing that he saved untold worlds from suffering a terrible fate, made him feel peace, but he was quickly taken out from the dark, peaceful embrace. 

A cold female voice, devoid of emotion, rang in his mind, pulling him out of the abyss of his death, forcing him to use his fleeting consciousness to question.

{Reincarnation System Activated}

{Searching for a stable timeline: Sucess}

{Atempting to send the soul to the chosen timeline}

{0.1, 0.5,-- - -, 0.9, failure, failure, failure}

'What the hell is going on? It's my system, The broken thing that did nothing for all my life?' Nero thought, question after question flooding his mind.

{Atempting to seal all the knowledge temporarily and send the soul to the chosen timeline}

{0.1, 0.5,-- - -, 0.9, failure, failure, failure}

Nero quickly realized what the system was trying to achieve but was left questioning whether he wanted it to succeed or fail. 

Before he could decide, darkness completely engulfed his senses, and the last thing he heard was another failure.