Chapter 721: Sorry, I’m Not Your Brother

"It’s time."

Lian looked away from the Ruined Heart window.

In front of him, the remains of the plateau stretched far into the distance, huge cliffs had collapsed into newly formed gaps, and thick layers of ice covered parts of the ruins.

Roderick’s body had been destroyed, but White Oblivion’s presence could still be felt.

He knew he did not have much time.

Even so, before activating Black Silence’s power, his gaze stopped on the scattered remains of the corpses.

’It would be a waste to leave all of these here.’

He raised his right hand and took the Devouring Egg out of his inventory.

The egg remained motionless for several seconds, then as it approached the remains of the Withered, a faint vibration appeared on its surface.

Lian placed it on an undamaged section of the ground.

"You can eat whatever remains of the corpses around here, but don’t touch the treasures, those are mine."

The egg moved slightly and headed toward the nearest remains it could reach.

He no longer paid attention to it.

Instead, he opened the Ruined Heart window again.

[ Calamity Selected: Black Silence ]

[ Calamity Power Borrowing Available ]

[ Duration: 30 Seconds ]

[ Activate? ]

His finger moved toward the confirmation option.

Thirty seconds.

If this time ran out and he still had not managed to find White Oblivion’s true form, all his efforts to achieve his Second Evolution would be wasted.

He took a calm breath and then activated the option.

At first, nothing happened in the physical world.

Lian’s human body was still standing on the rock, a weak flow of mana moved through the energy pathways in his body, and the cold wind gently moved his hair.

But his consciousness was no longer there.

A huge darkness opened before him.

He felt something awakening deep within his existence; not an ordinary skill, nor a power that could be compared to the mana of a human body.

Something with a much older nature.

For a moment, he felt as if his entire existence was opening apart.

Then the first purple eye opened in the darkness.

Then the second, the third, and within a very short time, thousands of eyes appeared in parts of the darkness where he could not even determine a clear direction.

Some stared forward, while others could see behind him.

Others looked at things that did not exist in the physical world, and all those eyes belonged to him.

This...

Lian tried to turn his head for a moment, but realized he no longer had a head in the human sense.

He was looking at his surroundings from thousands of angles at the same time, huge mouths opened and closed in different parts of his existence, and tentacles emerged from the darkness, some of which had no clear ends.

His huge black structure was covered with lines of purple light.

Eyes appeared among the twisting dark limbs, and sometimes, a mouth opened in a place where nothing had existed a moment earlier.

Black Silence.

One of the Five Calamities.

But what caught his attention even more than his new appearance was the strange feeling flowing through him.

Power.

Not simply the feeling of being powerful, but a deep and instinctive certainty that told him all other beings existed at a lower level than himself.

For a moment, countless worlds seemed like small things in his mind.

He felt that if he wished, he could drive the emotions of millions of beings into madness; make kings raise their swords against their own people and armies destroy one another before even seeing the enemy.

And this was only part of the power now flowing through his existence.

’What a feeling...’

At that moment, an old memory returned to his mind.

Father’s dark manifestation.

The same presence he had previously seen in Black Silence’s memories.

At that time, he had felt something similar; the greatness of a being before whom all levels of power seemed meaningless.

So this is the same feeling....the feeling of absolute superiority.

But Lian quickly realized the truth, this confidence was part of Black Silence’s nature.

He had not truly become a being with endless power; for a short time, he was only experiencing the world from the point of view of a Calamity whose pride was deeply rooted in its nature.

Even so, he could not deny that the experience was amazing.

A voice rose from thousands of mouths.

"Interesting."

Even he was surprised for a moment when he heard his own voice.

The sound did not come from a single point.

The entire non-physical realm echoed with it, and at that exact moment, his thousands of eyes detected another presence.

At an unknown distance, the first white ring appeared.

Then more rings emerged from the darkness; thirteen huge, broken rings, with countless names written inside each one.

The names were slowly erased, and before they disappeared completely, new names took their places.

At the center of the rings, a huge creature formed.

A long, semi-transparent body, with six pale wings made of human figures, faceless hands, and unknown limbs.

Its face had no clear eyes or mouth.

There was only a vertical opening where its face should have been; an opening in which countless faces appeared and disappeared again before becoming complete.

Lian looked at the creature in front of him with thousands of eyes.

But something strange happened.

Every time he tried to remember its entire form, part of the image slipped away from his mind.

He could see the six wings, but a moment later, he could not remember the shape of one of them.

He looked at the white rings, but their order kept disappearing from his memory.

’So even its true form affects perception.’

He frowned, the creature’s true form seemed to be something that no created being had the right to see and continue remembering.

White Oblivion.

The Calamity that erased the names, memories, and identities of living beings.

The white creature remained motionless for several seconds, all the rings behind it slowly rotated, and then a voice rose from the faceless opening.

"Brother...?" The Calamity seemed surprised, why was his brother here? A brother he had not seen for centuries.

Thousands of purple eyes focused on him at the same time.

"No, I’m the human who came to kill you."

A heavy silence followed.

White Oblivion pulled back for a moment.

"You..."

His white rings became unstable.

"You devoured him?"

"Yeah." Lian answered calmly.

The creature looked at the huge dark structure in front of him for a moment, and then his voice changed.

"One of the Five Calamities... devoured by a human?...That’s impossible!"

Lian slowly moved one of his huge tentacles.

"And now it’s the second one’s turn."

[ Time Remaining: 00:26 ]

White Oblivion was no longer as calm as before.

His six huge wings opened in the darkness, and the white rings began moving faster.

"Father did not create us for such a fate!"

Lian looked at him for a moment.

Father again.

But before he could answer, one of his thousands of eyes noticed something strange inside the white creature’s structure.

Traces of countless identities.

Some had almost completely disappeared, but others still contained scattered memories.

Lian focused his attention on them.

[ Thousand Eyes of Sin ]

At that moment, an image of an unknown world appeared before his consciousness.

A green sky, a huge city beside a black ocean, and people attacking one another in the streets with completely white eyes.

The image changed.

A commander wearing golden armor opened the gates of a falling city from the inside. Behind him, soldiers who no longer showed any sign of reason were massacring their own guards.

Then came the third image.

Monstrous creatures were entering another world through huge cracks, while that world’s armies had already been destroyed from within.

All these images passed before Lian’s thousands of eyes in a single moment.

These are...

His gaze returned to White Oblivion.

"So the Withered weren’t prisoners from the beginning."

The white creature remained silent for a moment and then answered proudly.

"They were my armies."

One of the white rings rotated, and more images appeared within it.

"To destroy a world, I only needed a few carriers, a ruler who would open the gates, a soldier who would betray his comrades, or an insignificant creature that would spread my disease among others."

Lian now understood the truth.

White Oblivion first corrupted a group of inhabitants from each world, they spread the corruption among others, and gradually lost their memories and identities.

When nothing remained of their free will, they turned into Withered who only followed the Calamity’s orders.

They killed the people of their own worlds, destroyed defenses from within, and opened the way for monsters to enter.

And all of this had happened before they were imprisoned.

Some of those creatures had served White Oblivion willingly, while others had been deceived or lost control of themselves after becoming corrupted.

But all the prisoners of the prison had taken part in his crimes in some way; whether a little or a lot, willingly or under the control of the disease.

In simpler terms, the Withered were his direct subordinates who carried out his orders.

Lian looked at the scattered memories for a moment.

well

"So first you erased their identities, then used them to destroy their own worlds."

"They belonged to me."

"And when they were no longer useful to you, you turned them into fuel for your ritual."

White Oblivion did not answer.

"What a generous master." Lian gave a short laugh