Extra's Death: I Am the Son of Hades

Chapter 780: Victory

Neo ignored his anger.

He didn’t ask for soul fragments of his mother that Karax had taken away while running from Voraka Site.

Neo had them already.

He took them from the temporal strands while reversing the universe.

Neo already had nine more soul fragments of his mother, including the one meant for Voraka Site.

The others were still missing. Neo suspected they lay in another universe.

Neo had blamed Chaos properties before, thinking that the reason he couldn’t see Karax in Voraka Site was because of some sort of property of Chaos Elementals.

Now he understood the true reason. This bastard had had been moving through time. That’s why Neo could not catch him even though he found his mother’s soul fragment.

Karax spat out a string of words that sounded like desperate logic.

“You can’t stop this, Heavenbreaker. Even if you don’t remember, my presence shows we’ve fought. I will keep the eye—”

“That’s good. It means I can beat the shit out of you several times,” Neo said.

Karax was stunned.

He stared at Neo in utter stupefaction.

They reached the exact moment Karax had gained the Eye of All Fate.

The sky was a splintered mess where the Forgotten Suns fought.

Planets broke like shells, and the generals of the Forgotten Sun lay injured in bloody craters.

Only the Three Suns — the three Supreme Leaders — remained, tearing at each other with god-heat and raw authority.

Neo and Karax appeared in the middle of that devastation as if dropped from the sky.

Apollo, the First Sun, turned and squinted through the smoke.

“Who is that?” he muttered.

Neo gave a short nod in Apollo’s direction.

Apollo blinked, confused.

The Third Sun moved, but his temporal strand had already been plucked and stored in Neo’s Cosmos.

Apollo stiffened, certain an enemy had arrived.

Karax roared and launched at the Second Sun, the one holding both eyes.

Neo opened his mouth.

“Stop.”

The single command cut the battlefield into silence.

Neo’s body was nearly destroyed, reduced to Consciousness and mass of red lightning.

He had almost no energy left to form flesh.

Still, a mere command was enough.

His presence forced obedience.

No soldier moved.

Even generals froze mid-breath.

Neo walked through the ruined field with the red lightning like a cloak.

He stopped before the Second Sun and took Apollo’s eyes.

The Second Sun could only lower his head, and let Neo take the eyes.

Neo threw the Eye of All Watcher back to Apollo and kept the Eye of All Fate for himself.

“H-Huh? What?” Apollo muttered, confused.

He thought the stranger was an enemy, yet the stranger had helped him.

Neo used the last of his energy to transfer the complete temporal strands of everyone in the Forgotten Suns — except the Second Sun — into his Cosmos.

He gathered them like loose threads and tucked them away.

The Second Sun and the Universal Alliance could keep fighting their war in the universe.

Neo had no energy or interest in bringing them to his Cosmos.

Karax stumbled forward despite Neo’s pressure.

“Return that eye to me!” he snarled, voice raw.

Neo threw the Second Sun aside without effort.

Then something impossible happened.

The Eye of All Fate in Neo’s hand and the Eye of All Fate in Karax’s socket began to vibrate.

They pulled toward each other as if drawn by some hidden law.

Karax lunged for Neo, claws flashing, desperate to seize what was halfway torn between them.

Neo grabbed his neck and held him still.

The eye in Karax’s socket began to extract itself, sliding out like a pearl untethering from an oyster.

It moved toward Neo’s other hand.

“How dare you! How dare you do this to me? You destroyed my home and now you will take away my strength too?” Karax screamed, trying to break Neo’s grip.

“…what?”

Neo paused.

“So, this is why you didn’t save your colony despite being able to travel through time,” Neo muttered. “You did not want to risk creating too many paradoxes and end up changing your own past. You didn’t want to lose your strength. So… you let your colony and family die.”

The difference between Neo and Karax couldn’t be more.

On one hand, Karax was ready to sacrifice his family and friends for power.

On other hand, Neo was ready to sacrifice his power for his friends and family.

Both chased the ultimate goal of strength.

Yet, they could not be more different.

The hatred Neo had felt towards Karax thinned out and left something cold and quiet: pity and disgust.

Something like Karax wasn’t worth his anger.

Karax’s eye slid free and fused with the one in Neo’s hand.

Light threaded between them and then settled into a single, humming gem.

“So what now?” he spat, a mixture of indignation and despair. “I can still travel through time. You can’t kill me. And now, you are no longer strong enough to destroy the universe’s barrier and leave. So you can’t even throw me to that bitch outside to kill me.”

Karax tried to run away, but under the Authority of Beelzebub, he couldn’t move.

He was filled with despair.

Neo took away his Eye of All Fate.

Beelzebub countered his Authority of Time.

The preparations he made for billions of years were laid to waste.

Seeing such a lost cause was enough to make anyone go insane.

But Karax sneered, he refused to give the satisfaction of victory to Neo.

“He will soon return. And when he does, all you can do is wriggle like worm beneath his shoe. Know, this Heavenbreaker, the things you’ve done today, you will regret them for time immemorial to come—”

“Shut up.”

Neo tightened his grip on Karax’s neck until the insectoid warrior couldn’t force out a single sound.

Then he snapped it.

Karax’s Authority reacted instantly, dragging his body backward through a sliver of time and forcing him to survive.

Neo didn’t hesitate. He snapped his neck again.

And again.

And again.

And again, and again and again.

The victory was…. laughably easy.

True, Neo couldn’t use energy anymore.

His reserves were empty, his body barely holding together.

But he had still won.

Yet no relief came.

His Consciousness twitched and sparked.

The more he replayed the events in his mind, the angrier he became.

“Come out,” Neo said.

Karax screamed curses from where he lay broken, but Neo ignored him.

“Don’t waste my time. I know you’re watching, Void,” Neo said.

Silence.

Karax frowned through the haze of pain and confusion.

He wondered if Neo had gone insane. Maybe the strain of becoming a cripple had pushed him too far.

Then a loud, rolling laugh erupted through the universe.

The borders of the universe shivered under its force.

“How did you know?” Void’s voice echoed, amused and vast.