Story by: Rhenhwa.
Virtual God's Online
Chapter 13: The final boss appears
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, organizations, and settings depicted are entirely fictional and created for storytelling purposes.
***
A dull impact hit.
THUD–!
A ripple spread across the star's grass-covered surface—followed by streaks of white and black light arcing like fractures across a glowing emerald sky.
Then—
BOOM—!
A shockwave exploded from the point of contact, sending concentric circles rippling across the surface of distant stars.
To explain it, it was as if gravity itself were drumming in sync with the chaos.
From above, the heavens cried. The ground fractured.
White and black collided, inverted, then collided again—BOOM—!
From the point of origin, black inverted to white, and likewise, white inverted to black.
Both were locked in a clash.
Arm to arm.
The slender right arm of the female deity was locked with the male's right arm.
However, despite the clash, their arms never reached each other.
Due to their force, the space around them was warping at unprecedented levels, forming a spatial isolation around them.
"As expected! That wasn't your best!"
Hearing her voice again, he frowned.
'She isn't speaking through a filter. It's not the usual sysematic voice I've heard from that deity.'
Is she a player?
"Where is your mind at?"
The question snapped through him. Alcor blinked. Too slow. She caught him thinking. He recoiled, kicking back from the lock.
"Ehhh,"
Recoiling, he closed in on her, then spun with sharp torque, grabbing her arm and hurling her upward into the air.
—VYUN!
The clouds ruptured from the force alone, parting.
[Celestial Smasher]
He didn't hesitate.
His body moved before his mind fully caught up. Instinct knew what logic hadn't yet processed:
She was a problem.
Black and white gathered, coalescing, wrapping around him from strands of condensed law.
The virtual space lit up in blinding helix arcs as the beam tore toward her midair position.
"Good!"
The beam climbed diagonally, shooting upward toward her; however, she balanced herself mid-air.
Stretching out her right hand, the beam clashed against it; however, something weird happened.
The beam was,... stopped.
Not like it just stopped. It was entirely canceled with that simple motion.
"What…? No, I guess I shouldn't be surprised by anything anymore…"
If there was anything he learned during the past few days of his birth, it was that nothing was absolute.
Especially today.
And yet—
This still managed to catch him off guard, that is.
White and blue, swirled with ghost-pale violet, started to converge into a single bright point high above.
From exactly where he'd thrown her.
"Wait—!"
Then, like judgement, the brilliant light rained down.
A needle-thin beam of concentrated existence came down, slicing what was left of the shattered field in two straight to the distant horizon of the star.
He was quick. After first spotting the initial blast, Alcor dodged the beam.
Then the real destruction began.
Flames.
They rose in a slow, crawling fury from the fissure, stretching across the star's surface, following the cut's path.
"Okay, first—WHAT!"
"Second, THE FUCK!"
Despite saying that, his voice was drowned out by the destruction and the loud rumble of the now collapsing star.
The rumbling groan of tectonic systems giving way. The scream of the atmosphere unraveling under pressure.
He launched himself skyward, just in time to see the planet start to fold in on itself.
Seeing the beautiful destruction of this star now reminded him of the first star.
"Was that how it looked when I…?"
Thinking back, maybe he might have really looked like that. Alcor thought with a blink.
Now, he stood in the expanse of the digital simulation, slowly turning his head to her.
She sat in the air as if it were a chair, legs crossed.
Her boots tapping a rhythm into the emptiness, softly bobbing in time to music only she could hear.
Only when his gaze finally locked onto her did she look up.
"Ah. Finally ready for me?"
Alcor didn't answer immediately.
"…What about the rest?"
Ageha's expression pinched with mild disappointment.
"Are you really worried about the rest? Now
Saying that, something seemed to change. Something in the sense that he was in more danger than before.
Raising her lowered head once more, a frantic expression was on it.
"Collapse. Coagulate."
She lifted her right hand, bringing her index and middle fingers together, just beside her face.
What happened next was something that not even Alcor, in his current state, would have been able to do.
Six of the eight remaining stars began to move.
They didn't just shift orbit, they were gravitated, dragged toward her. Inexorable.
"That is—"
As it did, slowly, it began to crack, break—the stars, that is. Collapsing in the truest sense.
Each one began to shatter into fractured geometries, pieces collapsing inward… until they hovered behind her in a strange ring formation.
For the first time, it spun. Like that, it spun again. Then it began to spin wildly.
"Rebirth, expansion."
She then pointed a finger at him.
TSUN–! TSUN–! TSUN–!
TSUN–! TSUN–! TSUN–!
Beams.
To call them beams of light was not accurately current. But they worked like beams of light, stretching out to him.
He knew each beam of light was dangerous, so he began evading.
With his figure a smear of black motion, he flew across the simulation's artificial gravity.
He dipped low, then spun around the base of the massive golden tree.
Yet, despite that.
"You can't get away!"
Ageha, however, was hot on his trail. Right behind him with each maneuver.
She didn't even need to stress about it. Much more seriously was she beginning to take things.
Much earlier,
Before the commotion caused by Neutrality,
The deities on the live feed had erupted into a flurry of discussion, especially about the fight with that Tribunal deity.
●『Channel4: Live feed』
[Hold on a min. Isn't that deity strong? I knew Tribunal deities were weird in this way, but really..?]
[Seems like you haven't heard much about them; well, that's why they are unpopular. A certain Shinto deity would beg to differ..]
[Goddess Wakahirume?]
[Exactly that one. And to be fair, if it weren't for the Tribunal being disorganized, they would be more than "Nameless".]
[Law of Singularity discovered. An authority that hides things, even its existence…]
[But you're not talking about how Celestial Smasher worked, despite that. He should be nearly impossible to reach, shouldn't he?]
[I don't know, but I feel that Celestial Smasher should incorporate some authority of destruction. It would make sense with how he keeps rewriting the landscape.]
They'd formed their own theories, and most fans even hailed him.
More than damaging his reputation, this even increased it.
Higher-class deities who had no interest in lower-class games, at this point, found themselves watching.
More than Blackstar, they'd seen lower-class deities hold their own against an Ultimate-Class opponent, despite Poseidon still holding back.
But that in itself was a feat of its own.
●『Channel2: Live feed』
[BlondC99: BWAHAHAHAHA! Narberal wasn't the only one to eat dirt! Poseidon got dusted too..!!]
[TheMostCalmOceanDeity: You fool, I resigned. They didn't beat me.]
[BlondC99: Yap all you want, ocean boi—it still counts as a fat L, LOL!]
She was known to be a naturally chaotic deity, even more than Ageha. At least Ageha was more of a battle junkie.
This one, who was like and unlike her, just loved chaos. And that was where she thrived.
Other deities already knew this, so they steered clear of her.
However, something happened that no deity ever thought they'd see happen.
●『Channel2: Live feed』
[VerdanRep1: Huh? High Goddess Ageha?]
[BlondC99: Wait, HUH? WHAT THE—]
[TheMostCalmOceanDeity: No wonder I had that bad feeling. Smart of me to leave when I did.]
[BlondC99: No kidding! That's freaking Ageha!]
[KagirinakiKirigiri: Aiyaya.]
What's more, she appeared directly in front of Blackstar. Well, not exactly in front, but behind him.
Nobody knew what deities like her think.
Perhaps only fellow transcendents can understand what she thinks, and most of them knew at a glance.
●『VIPChannel: Live feed』
[Illion: Oh? So that's Ageha's counterpart? Interesting. ]
[CelestialCommander: That one finally has a counter? Is this good news or bad news? Ageha embodies both the creation and destruction aspects, doesn't she?]
[Illion: Quite so. But because of that, we know he's a tribunal.]
[LucyMST: Creation and destruction, light and dark, beginning and end, alpha and omega—all these are just two parts of one overarching system. He might be a primal archetype of some other side, but synonymous with Ageha. Or at least, that's my speculations.]
[Ōmikami: Oh, how rare for you to join us here. What, you have your eye on the tribunal now?
[LucyMST: Don't flatter yourself. One Ageha is a divine migraine. Two is a damn apocalypse..]
[Illion: Regardless, as expected of a former Primal Light, your foresight is something.]
[LucyMST: Pipe it Illion, I don't need compliments from you, I'm simply here to observe what that reckless Neutrality of a fool is up to.]
[MIKOTO: HO! SEEMS LIKE YOU HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY, HUH? LUCY]
[LucyMST: Please keep it down, sir uppercase. Your tyranny suffocates even Akasha itself, that it translates your words in uppercases.]
[GungnirExplosion: Oh shit! I just saw Ageha in my dreams! OH BIGGER SHIT! What the dumbass doing!?]
[ShadowQueen: Please pipe it down.]
Contrary to the flames these well-respected transcendental deities were cooking up in their especially private chat,
Alcor was being physically and mentally abused by Ageha in the simulated space.
He currently hid inside one of the colossal leaves of the golden tree.
And by "leaf," it meant the kind that could blanket a star.
He crouched near the curled edge, where starlight bent and reformed against its surface, breathing slowly.
No wounds on him. But it hurt.
"I've thrown five specialized [Celestial Smashers]… over the span of a few simulated minutes."
"Each one's either been cancelled… or swatted down."
And yet—He didn't sound panicked. Only… tired. Alert. Balanced somewhere between that, honestly.
He didn't understand why she had access to the same class of authority as him.
Both of them ruled over cosmological entropy, different angles of the same celestial law.
Yet, she towered over him immensely.
Observation didn't work. His readings came back blank, distorted. His head physically ached just trying to analyze her.
Unironically.
And somewhere in all that pain, something inside him was starting to crystallize.
His personality. His self.
So far, he had been mostly instinct and code, slowly developing.
But now, having felt that perfect shell break by her, it slowly made way for crystallization.
For now, other than his basic authority to control aspects and principles of stars and entropy, he was lost.
Truly, this was a defeat for him.
"...."
"What am I thinking…"
He muttered through a wry, self-deprecating smile. If he just gave up and ran, something deep down would break.
And when it did… it may never come back.
Hence,
"Sorry to keep you waiting."
He floated gently out from the massive fold of golden leaves, levitating into the open air again.
This act alone was an act of madness in front of every deity.
Personally, he had witnessed her strength when a single punch had nearly deleted him from the borders of the space more than once.
Yet, he approached her again.
"Hehehe. So you've given up?"
Ageha said that, propping her chin slightly upwards, her eyes glowing blue as she spoke.
"Give up? What's that?"
In response, his eyes glowed.
The space trembled, the golden tree towering systems tall swayed under the pressure of both.
『....』
Akasha itself was at a loss for what to do.