Damien closed his eyes, his soul burning. He braced himself for the end.

He waited for the cold embrace of the Void.

He waited for the explosion that would wipe him from existence to save the people below.

But the cold never came.

Instead, he felt warmth.

It started as a single speck of light rising from the shattered hull of the Ancient War Titan below. Then another. Then a thousand.

VWMMM.

Damien opened his eyes.

The ground was glowing.

From the mech where Alaric and Leona hid, streams of white light shot up into the sky.

From the Dwarven lines where King Durin stood, a river of golden motes ascended.

But it didn't stop there.

From the distant horizon, from the Elven Forests, from the Human Slums, from the Dragon Lands, millions of lights were rising.

They ignored distance. They ignored time. They rushed toward him like a reverse meteor shower.

[System Alert: External Will Resonance Detected.]

[Source: The Continent of Elias.]

[Analysis: The Hopes of the Era are converging on you.]

"What..." Damien whispered, his voice trembling.

The lights weren't mana, no he recognised this, they were small pieces of Will.

They were the desperate prayers of the beggars in the slums who saw him as a savior.

They were the roar of Ignis.

They were the stubborn pride of the Dwarves.

They were the silent pleas of the Elves.

They didn't want the Void. They didn't want the world to end.

They wanted Zero to win.

WHOOSH.

The lights slammed into Lyra's body.

The golden cracks on her skin didn't spread, they filled.

The agonizing pain vanished, replaced by a surge of power so immense, so limitless, that Damien felt like his soul had expanded to the size of the planet.

Right now he wasn't running on his own fuel anymore. He was plugged into the heartbeat of the world.

'You guys...' Damien felt a lump in his throat.

'You really are greedy. You want me to do all the work.'

He smirked beneath the unmasked face of Lyra. Tears streamed down her cheeks, glowing with starlight.

"Fine," Damien whispered. "I'll take it all."

…...

On the other end, the Second Prince screamed as he pushed the Void Nova forward. The sphere of erasure was massive, blotting out the horizon.

"DIE! WHY WON'T YOU DIE?!"

Damien looked at the Prince. He didn't feel fear anymore. He felt... heavy. He felt the weight of millions of lives resting on his shoulders.

He raised his hands.

"Domain Expansion..."

As he spoke, his domain began to rise, however this time it was much different from before.

Instead the usual gold and darkness, a blinding, white-gold light erupted from Lyra's back.

It formed wings that spanned the entire horizon. A body formed around him, not of shadow, but of pure, crystallized Willpower.

It was a Dragon. But it wasn't the same dragon as before. This time it could be called a White Dragon of the World.

"...Shadow Dragon Kingdom: Ascended Form."

The Void Nova hit the Dragon's chest.

SIZZLE.

However nothing happened, The "Nothingness" of the Void tried to erase the Dragon, but the collective Will of millions of people screamed:

"WE EXIST."

The Void was overwritten by the sheer density of Reality.

The Prince's eyes bulged. "Impossible... My Void! My God! Why isn't it working?!"

Damien floated inside the head of the White Dragon. His eyes were blinding stars.

"You want to rule the ashes?" Damien's voice boomed, echoing with the voices of Durin, Aelinor, Ignis, and every soul on the continent.

The Dragon opened its massive maw. The light of a thousand suns gathered in its throat.

"Then burn," Damien commanded.

"In the light of the living."

[Will Art: Dragon Breath of the World].

ROAR.

A beam of pure, white existence fired from the Dragon's mouth.

It was a divine eraser, erasung all things unnatural.

In a falsh it hit the Void Shrine.

There was no explosion. The Corrupted Buddha under this power vanished.

Its "laws" were rejected by the world. It turned into mist, then into nothing.

Not only that, but the beam continued. It hit the Second Prince.

"NO! I AM ETERNAL! I AM—"

The Prince shrieked as the light hit him.

His Void armor dissolved. His wings disintegrated. His immortality, fueled by the Void was negated because the Void itself was being scrubbed from the world.

For a split second, the Prince saw the face of the man he had bansihed to madness sixteen years ago. Theron Voss seemed to look back at him from the light, smiling.

"AAAAHHHHHH!"

The Prince was atomized.

His body, his soul, and his name were wiped from the sky.

The beam punched a hole through the clouds, clearing the atmosphere instantly, and continued into the upper stratosphere, parting the heavens.

*BOOM!*

The light faded.

The Void Shrine was gone. The Void Beasts on the ground collapsed, their connection to the hive mind severed.

The sky was clear. For the first time in three days, the real sun, the warm, yellow sun of Elias, shone down on the scarred desert.

High in the air, the White Dragon Avatar dispersed into millions of motes of light, drifting back down to the earth like snow.

A lone figure fell from the sky.

Lyra.

She was unconscious. Her coat was gone. Her mask was gone. She fell like a broken doll.

"LYRA!"

Leona who had been watching the battle in the sky propelled himself into the air, catching her moments before she hit the ground.

She landed heavily, cradling her in her arms.

"She's alive," Leona gasped, rushing over. "She's breathing. But barely."

King Durin and Queen Aelinor limped toward them. They looked up at the empty blue sky where the monster had been.

"He did it," Durin whispered, falling to his knees in exhaustion. "The crazy bastard actually did it."

….....

[The Abyss]

SNAP.

The connection severed.

In the dark, cold cave of the Garden of Silence, Damien Voss's body jerked violently.

"GAAH!"

He collapsed onto the stone floor, gasping for air. His nose was bleeding. His head felt like it had been split open with an axe.

"Master!" Isabelle was there instantly, pulling him into her lap.

"Master! Are you okay? You stopped breathing for a minute!"

Damien lay there, staring up at the fake, grey sky of the Abyss.

He felt empty. The power of the millions was gone. The connection to the surface was gone. He was back in hell.

But as he lay there, clutching the Veil of Stone in his trembling hand, a notification appeared on his internal screen.

[System Notification]

[Quest Complete: The Surface War.]

[Impact: SSS-Rank.]

[The Legend of "Zero" has been solidified.]

[Current Status: Trapped in Abyss.]

Damien closed his eyes. He let out a long, shaky breath.

"I'm okay, Isabelle," Damien whispered, a tired smile spreading across his face.

"I just... had to take out the trash."

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.