Timeless Assassin - Chapter 912 Dilemma

Chapter 912 Dilemma

(Execution Livestream Continuation, The Pit)

Across the battlefield, the moment Leo’s presence fully registered, the illusion of control fractured in a way no formation, no doctrine, and no amount of preparation could immediately repair, as the Righteous Monarchs standing at the edge of the command lattice found themselves staring at a reality that simply did not align with any model they had prepared for.

Leo Skyshard?

Here?

On The Pit?

With an army?

For several heartbeats, no one spoke, disbelief rippling through the command strata as eyes traced the still-roaring Dimensional Tunnel and the expanding Cult fleet pouring out behind it, because the audacity of the act itself was staggering, an intrusion so brazen and so fundamentally impossible that it took time for even seasoned Monarchs to reconcile what they were seeing with what they knew to be true.

“How did he get here…?” one of them muttered grimly, his mind racing through possibilities even as none satisfied the question.

“Teleportation of this scale should be impossible unless one already made large scale mana arrays on both ends.

However, there were no arrays built here…. Then how?”

Another wondered, as he bit his lip.

“How did they even fly out of Ixtal unnoticed?

We had that planet on lockdown.

If anything flew out of Ixtal, we should have known immediately….

A third muttered, as the thought broke apart mid speech as reality refused to comply.

This was not infiltration.

This was an arrival.

And once that truth settled, disbelief gave way to urgency, voices rising sharply as Monarchs snapped out orders, hands slashing through holographic displays while they barked commands to stabilize lines, reassign reserves, and reorient formations that had been designed for containment, not sudden invasion.

“Seal the breach! Hold the outer ring steady-“

“Get casualty counts now!”

“Reinforce the manning arrays before the pressure shifts further inward!”

They shouted, as the structure held for now, but everyone present could feel it, the subtle redistribution within the Chakravyuh as millions of lives vanished from its periphery, the burden shifting inward by fractions that were insignificant in isolation, yet ominous in implication.

Yet still, on the ground, none of that mattered, for the common soldiers stationed along the outer rings were not thinking about formations or divine logistics, nor did they care about the elegance of the prison they had been ordered to maintain, because all they could see was death arriving without warning, an entire section of their comrades collapsing in silence as if reality itself had simply decided they were no longer necessary.

“Did you feel that…?” someone whispered, voice shaking as he stared at the bodies littering the stone.

“That wasn’t an attack, there was no blast, no light…. One moment they were standing fine, the next…. Dead.”

Fear spread faster than reason.

“He killed them just by standing there…”

“Is he already a Demi-God?”

“No-if that was his aura alone, then what the hell does that make him?”

The name passed through the Righteous ranks like a curse.

Leo Skyshard.

The Demon of Omega.

The Devil of the Cult.

It did not matter how disciplined they had been moments earlier, because discipline faltered in the face of something that rewrote the rules of survival, as soldiers stumbled backward, formations loosening as panic bled into instinct, their eyes drawn again and again towards the core of the Cult fleet where they knew he stood behind the cover

of Cult ships.

However, they were not the only ones experiencing this

phenomenon, as across the universe, the common citizens who had gathered to witness justice unfold found themselves frozen in place, mouths hanging open as certainty crumbled into something raw and desperate, because this was not the spectacle they had been promised.

“This… this shouldn’t be happening,” someone murmured in a

crowded plaza, the confidence in their voice gone. “The execution

was supposed to be swift and fast, not a war.”

“Surely… surely the Cult won’t actually save that disgusting criminal

Veyr today, right?…. Right?”

“Surely they’ve walked to their own graves right?

Afterall, our best forces are guarding the Execution Platform.

Surely the Cult Army will quickly be annihilated, right?”

The words came faster now, overlapping and uncertain, as people

leaned closer to their screens, searching for reassurance in the commentators’ voices and finding none, because even the carefully trained presenters had now started to falter, their practiced composure breaking under the weight of the impossible.

The narrative was changing in real time.

And no one could predict what was coming next.

Meanwhile, at the heart of it all, Kaelith remained trapped inside the

Chakravyuh’s prison, his gaze fixed on the outermost edge of the formation where the Cult army continued to pour through, his expression tightening into a genuine frown as calculation steadily displaced instinct.

The intrusion itself did not alarm him.

In isolation, a mortal fleet meant nothing to a being like him, because erasing such forces had never required effort, intention, or even focus from a God of his standing.

Yet the Chakravyuh made nothing ordinary.

Sealed within its interior alongside Helmuth, Mauriss, and Soron,

Kaelith found his power turned inward by design rather than choice, his aura bound by a construct that did not allow outward projection, because the prison existed for a single purpose- to ensure that no God trapped inside could influence reality beyond its boundaries, and not even he was beyond that rule.

Hence, although he wished for nothing more than to annihilate the

ships emerging beyond the barrier, the formation did not permit him to take such an action, for any attempt to force his aura outward was sure to strain the prison’s walls, and strained walls risked cracks….. cracks that Soron could exploit to then escape, in what was the cruel elegance of the Chakravyuh.

Because the God-Killer formation was not merely a cage.

It was a system.

And the system did not sustain itself from within.

It was upheld by the Eight beings anchoring it at its core, and the billions supporting them beyond it in what was a load sharing mechanism tapping into the strength of one’s soul.

However, while the restrictions placed on those at the outer rings was negligible, once engaged, the eight beings powering the formation at its core were also as good as trapped without having any scope of movement, for a shift of even a fraction would destabilize the lattice, and destabilization, however brief, was all Soron would need to

escape. Which meant that once again, the only figures capable of responding to the Cult’s advance were also the ones who could least afford to act.

‘Well played brother…. Well played. So this was your plan all along….

Kaelith thought, as he gazed towards Helmuth and Soron still fighting like wild dogs near the execution stage.

‘You must trust your army enough to think they can plow through the best soldiers the Righteous Faction has to offer and reach this formation’s core.

However, the real question is…. Can they?’

Kaelith wondered, as he thought about how the Chakravyuh did not

simply lose soldiers when mortals died along its outer rings.

But rather lost stabilizers.

For the way the formation worked was that every soul powering it

acted like a small stabilizer, and when stabilizers vanished, the burden did not disappear, but rather redistributed inward.

Meaning that each death kept adding to the strain required to keep the prison sealed from those already holding the structure together.

For now, the loss remained manageable.

Twenty-five million deaths spread across a construct of this scale

redistributed thinly enough that the Eight at the core could endure the added load without visible consequence.

But Kaelith did not think in terms of the present.

He thought in terms of trajectory.

Because if the Cult continued advancing inward, if the death toll

climbed into the billions and outer rings began failing in contiguous

sections rather than scattered gaps, then the weight would shift

rapidly toward the center.

Toward the Eight.

And at that point, the Chakravyuh would demand a choice.

Either they would risk movement to intercept the Cult, gambling on

cracks and Soron’s escape.

Or they would remain immobile and allow the Cult army to press

inward until it threatened the prison itself. Neither outcome was acceptable.

And Kaelith could see that inevitability written into the lattice as

clearly as law. ‘How did you even manage to bring an army through the fourth

dimension? When you are nothing more than a Monarch?” Kaelith wondered, his gaze slipping past the Cult destroyers that had landed to block mortal sightlines, before briefly settling on Leo’s collapsed

form. Irritation tightened in his chest as the implication took hold. Because he knew, with certainty, that even Raymond, as a Demi-God,

could not have accomplished what Leo had achieved as a Monarch.

Yet it was not Leo’s presence that unsettled him to his core.

It was the expression on Mauriss’s face.

The Deceiver watched the unfolding chaos with open delight, his

smile widening rather than tightening, as though the Cult’s arrival had not disrupted his expectations, but fulfilled them. ‘What are you planning now… you snake?’ Kaelith wondered, as the unease that spread within him as he watched Mauriss was indescribable.

Goosebumps traced down his spine, not from fear, but from recognition, from the quiet certainty that whatever bond still existed between him and Mauriss was beginning to fray.

As he felt increasingly certain that the Deceiver was beginning to lose his sanity and was slowly but surely leaning towards making decisions

catered towards stirring maximum chaos rather than predictable

victory.

‘Dont…. Whatever you’re planning, just don’t.

Just be normal for once…’

Kaelith prayed, yet even as he prayed for the best, he inevitably began

preparing for the worst.