Chapter 182: Void Serpent

Victor sat unmoving upon the smooth stone peak, his breathing perfectly synchronized with the pulsing time runes floating in the twilight air. Despite his serene posture, the sheer scale of energy circulating within him was astronomical.

Deep within his consciousness, his soul sea churned like a boundless ocean of liquid light. With every passing second, he refined the purest cosmic laws into concentrated chaos essence, sending a steady stream of the supreme fuel across the soul bond directly into Astrion’s isolated spatial dimension.

Inside that detached space, Astrion sat surrounded by thousands of golden computation arrays. The moment a drop of chaos essence materialized, Astrion drawn it into his core, absorbing the dense energy to break through his own operational boundaries.

At first, the process was manageable, but as Victor refined his technique, the flow of chaos essence transformed from a steady trickle into a roaring river.

Purple droplets gathered in Astrion’s domain at a speed that defied comprehension, piling up into floating spheres of concentrated power. Astrion worked relentlessly, his consciousness burning at maximum capacity as he prepared for an unprecedented series of consecutive realm breakthroughs.

While the young prodigy cultivated in silence, a grave scene unfolded in the grand throne hall of the eight cosmic guardians. The massive floating seats, once radiating absolute power, were now dimming.

The eight supreme entities sat upon their thrones, their faces drawn and unnaturally pale. Maintaining a time acceleration field of thousands of times required a staggering amount of divine origin energy, and the constant strain was draining their vitality at an alarming rate.

"Do you really believe he could become a cosmic god within 100 years? Is it really possible?" one guardian muttered, his voice trembling slightly as crimson light flickered weakly around his silhouette.

"We can just hope he can. We don’t have any other choice now, do we?" Erdogan said in a solemn tone. His divine radiance, usually as bright as a condensed galaxy, had dulled to a soft flicker.

Suddenly, an icy, mechanical voice echoed directly within the consciousness of all eight guardians. The voice possessed no gender or emotion, carrying an absolute directive that pierced straight through their souls.

[Warning! Warning! An extremely terrifying chaos entity is rapidly approaching the universe. All the 8 guardians are ordered to go outside and take emergency protocol.]

Instantly, the faces of all eight guardians turned ghastly pale. A suffocating chill descended upon the grand hall as they swallowed their saliva in collective horror. They knew all too well the terrifying reality of chaos entities.

The eight guardians, even when combining their ultimate strength alongside the full authority of the universe, could barely contend with a standard cosmic god level entity. Their only true option against such threats was to run or hide the origin universe from their perception.

"Why would a chaos entity appear here now? Does the heaven really want to destroy this universe along with us?" one of the guardians cried out in sheer frustration, his aura fluctuating wildly.

"Everyone, move out. We need to fend off this one. We can’t waste any time," Erdogan ordered, his tone hardening despite the creeping despair in his heart.

In the next instant, the eight supreme beings vanished from their grand thrones, reappearing directly outside the universal barrier.

They materialized in the extreme sea of chaos, a desolate realm of infinite void where waves of gray, destructive energy rolled incessantly.

The environment was so violent that even supreme cosmic realm beings like them could not survive for more than ten breaths without deploying their full universal energy shields. Positioned on the outer edge of their universe’s glowing shell, the eight guardians turned their gazes toward the distant gloom.

Cutting through the dark, violent waves of the chaos sea was a monstrous creature of unfathomable proportions. Its body was nearly half the size of their entire universe, stretching across the void like an endless mountain range of obsidian scales and burning pale yellow eyes. It moved effortlessly through the destructive chaos waves, parting the void like a ship gliding through still water.

The eyes of the eight guardians widened to their absolute limit.

"Impossible. Why would a Void Serpent be here? That thing is above the cosmic god realm. We are finished. We are totally fucked up," one guardian said, his voice cracking with sheer terror.

Gulp.

Shit! Shit!

Damn it!

A wave of panic swept through the guardians as they stared at the colossal horror advancing toward them. The Void Serpent was an ancient, mythical entity mentioned only in the oldest scriptures preserved within the sacred Aether realm. It was a true void walker, a calamity capable of consuming origin universes to fuel its immortal life cycle.

"We have zero chance of fighting and surviving. Why don’t we try to hide the universe and see if this thing goes away?" one guardian suggested desperately, his energy shield flickering under the pressure of the chaos sea.

"Do you think our puny universal concealment technique would be able to fool a void walker? That’s a pipe dream, nothing else," the leader replied, his voice heavy with grim realization.

"Hahaha! Then we die before even the cosmic storm can do anything!" another guardian laughed bitterly, driven to the edge of sanity by the sheer hopelessness of their situation.

The Void Serpent was moving at a speed that defied its massive size. Even if they pushed the universe to its maximum movement speed, the monster would reach their universal barrier in at most one month.

"Let’s enter the universe and focus on the time field properly. The messiah is an anomaly, maybe he would be able to do some miracle or else we can enter the Aether realm and ask for help," Erdogan suggested, turning his head toward the glowing barrier behind them.

"Do you think those old bastards would help us? The rogue universe inhabitants? They think we are some country bumpkins," one guardian smiled bitterly, shaking his head.

"You two go inside the Aether realm and ask for help, while the rest of us focus on maintaining the time field," Erdogan ordered, taking control of the chaotic situation.

"Okay," replied two of the guardians in unison. Without another word, their forms dissolved into streaks of light, shooting back through the barrier to perform their respective tasks.

Inside the isolated time field, the serene atmosphere on the stone peak was suddenly disrupted.

Victor opened his eyes, a slight frown appearing on his face. The golden time runes floating around the mountain peak were flickering, their movement noticeably slowing down. The dense temporal pressure that had enveloped the area began to thin, causing the flow of time to decelerate.

"Hmmm? The time field is not moving time as fast as before, what is going on?" he muttered to himself.

Diana and Noelle also opened their eyes, sensing the sudden shift in the ambient energy. Recognizing that something critical had occurred outside, Victor did not hesitate. He reached into his spatial ring, took out a glowing, crystal communication token, and crushed a small array on its surface to contact the guardians directly.

"Sir Erdogan, what is happening to the time field? The acceleration factor just dropped significantly," Victor asked directly through the communication link, his voice calm yet demanding.

A heavy silence lingered over the connection for a brief moment before Erdogan’s weary, breathless voice resonated through the crystal.

"Messiah... we have encountered a major crisis outside the universal barrier. A Void Serpent, an ancient chaos entity far beyond our power, has locked onto our origin universe. It is approaching us right now, and it will reach our location in less than a month."

Victor’s glowing purple eyes narrowed slightly as he absorbed the information. "A Void Serpent?"

"Yes," Erdogan continued, his tone laced with exhaustion. "Its presence is forcing us to divert a massive portion of our power to strengthen the universal shield and prepare for the inevitable impact. Because of this energy drain, we can no longer maintain the time field at its full thousandfold acceleration. Two of our guardians have already left for the Aether realm to seek emergency reinforcements from the ancient powerhouses residing there, but we cannot guarantee they will agree to help us."

Diana’s face turned pale as she overheard the transmission, while Noelle instinctively tightened her fists, her gaze shifting to Victor. The pressure of the impending catastrophe hung heavily over the mountain peak, but Victor remained completely composed.

"How much time do we have left inside this field under the reduced acceleration?" Victor inquired coldly.

"At this reduced rate, you will only have equivalent to roughly fifteen years of internal time before the creature arrives at the barrier," Erdogan replied with a deep sigh. "We are doing everything we can to stall it, but you must prepare yourself, Messiah. If the Aether realm turns us away, you are our absolute last hope."

"Fifteen years is shorter than planned, but it will have to suffice," Victor said calmly, his voice containing an unshakable confidence that momentarily silenced the panicked guardian on the other end. "Keep the shield stable for as long as possible. Leave the rest to me."