Immortal Paladin

521 The Execution Block

[POV: War]

War reveled in the clash, far more than he cared to admit, though the admission lingered unspoken even within his own thoughts. Each collision of steel rang like a hymn only he could hear, each shockwave a reminder that this was the kind of existence he had always gravitated toward. The sky had long since fractured into a burning mosaic of crimson and ash, continents below split like brittle glass beneath the force of their exchanges. Yet beneath that exhilaration, something unsettled him. It crept in through the rhythm of the battle, subtle but undeniable, like a missed heartbeat in an otherwise perfect cadence.

Da Wei’s body hurtled through the heavens again, sent flying across jagged mountain ranges that shattered upon impact, his form skipping across vast oceans as though the waters themselves had become nothing more than a series of rippling stones. Entire seas parted and collapsed in his wake, tidal waves rising like walls before crashing into distant shores that no longer existed by the time the water returned. And yet, despite the violence inflicted upon him, Da Wei never escalated. No grand invocations. No catastrophic spells that would have matched the scale of destruction already unleashed.

He fought with restraint.

Sword against sword, technique against technique, treasure against treasure. Every motion of his blade was precise, measured, and deliberate. War’s eyes narrowed as realization settled in.

Da Wei had been enduring it all, allowing himself to be thrown, crushed, burned, dissected by force and flame, all while gathering something unseen.

He was studying him.

War felt the edge of that truth press against his mind, and with it came the sharp awareness of his own disadvantage. This was not his domain. The rules bent differently here, responded differently, resisted him in ways that grated against his instincts. Time stretched in unfamiliar ways. Power did not flow as it should. If this dragged on, the conclusion was inevitable.

He would lose.

That realization did not deter him. It sharpened him.

Excitement curled at the edges of his thoughts, tightening his grip on the present moment until it felt almost suffocating.

“He’s dragging this out,” a voice murmured. “You have to escalate.”

Heavenly Flame’s presence flickered beside him, her ethereal form weaving through the chaos like a phantom untouched by the ruin surrounding them. Her gaze was fixed below, where fragments of continents still burned.

“He’s healing them,” she continued, her tone laced with restrained disdain. “Every mortal your strikes erase, he restores. Every life crushed beneath your flames, he pulls back from oblivion. We’ve reduced entire continents to debris, and still he mends its people like we are an afterthought. This cannot continue.”

War’s lips curved into a malicious smile.

His wings erupted outward, vast and blazing, each beat sending torrents of fire cascading across the fractured sky. Without hesitation, he surged forward, blade descending in a wide, merciless arc. Da Wei met it effortlessly, his sword sliding against War’s strike and redirecting it with a motion so fluid it seemed almost dismissive.

The redirected force did not vanish.

It fell.

A crescent of living flame carved through the atmosphere, striking the broken continent below. War’s voice followed it, resonant and commanding.

“With the privilege of creation granted to my sword, I order thee… transform—”

The world answered.

Flame twisted and roared, expanding into form as it descended. Scales of fire layered upon one another, wings stretching wide enough to eclipse the ruined horizon. A dragon emerged, vast and incandescent, its roar tearing through what remained of the land as it descended into the helpless remnants of civilization below. Cities vanished beneath its wrath, entire races consumed in an instant as its body coiled through the devastation.

There was no hesitation, no visible preparation. One moment Da Wei stood before War, the next he was gone, space itself failing to register the transition. He reappeared beneath the descending calamity, blade already in motion.

“Frost Smite.”

The words were quiet, but the effect was absolute.

His sword struck the ground, and the world inverted. Frost exploded outward in a blinding surge, swallowing flame, halting destruction mid-motion. The dragon froze, its massive form locked in crystalline stillness as ice spread across its burning body. Beneath it, the dead stirred. Countless mortals rose as if waking from a brief sleep, their forms restored in an instant before vanishing, displaced to safety far beyond the battlefield.

The frozen dragon cracked.

With a violent shatter, the ice burst apart, and the creature roared back to life, lunging once more toward Da Wei. Its jaws opened wide enough to swallow mountains, flames surging anew—

“—With my Divine Authority as the owner of the Hollowed World,” Da Wei declared, his voice cutting cleanly through the chaos, “represented by the Hollow Star and the Dark Veil, I order you to cease.”

The dragon stopped.

Its form unraveled as though it had never existed, flames scattering into harmless embers that dissolved into the air. Silence followed, brief and stark against the backdrop of ruin.

Da Wei turned his gaze upward.

Through the helm, his eyes burned with something unreadable.

“It felt… cool,” he said, almost conversationally, though the tension beneath his words betrayed something sharper. “Declaring things like that. I can see the appeal. Makes all of this feel like a game, doesn’t it? Like we’re just… playing around inside something that doesn’t matter.”

His head tilted slightly.

“Is that what this is to you? Because from where I’m standing, you’re carving through lives like they’re nothing. Are you really so devoid of sympathy that none of this even registers?”

His gaze flickered, briefly, toward the flickering form beside War.

“I mean, I get it,” he added, voice thinning with a trace of dry mockery. “You’ve got a Shén for a sword. That already says a lot. But what about you, Heavenly Flame? Aren’t your kind supposed to be stewards? Creators? Something a little less… catastrophic?”

Heavenly Flame manifested fully this time, her form sharpening as she stepped forward, her expression twisting into a brief, unmistakable sneer.

“You speak as if you understand anything,” she said, her voice low and cutting. “You don’t.”

Da Wei’s response came immediately.

“Then enlighten me.”

That struck something deeper.

Her expression shifted, irritation giving way to something harsher, something older. When she spoke again, her voice carried weight of remorse and self-loathing.

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“We, Shén… are destroyers.”

The words settled heavily between them.

“We destroyed when we abandoned the Age of Divinity and left it to rot in our absence. We destroyed when we summoned the first Supreme Being and fractured existence to make way for it. We destroyed when we neglected the Origin and twisted it for our own ends. We destroyed when we ended the Primordial Age and buried everything that came before.”

Her gaze locked onto him, unyielding.

“You know nothing about me. Nothing about us.”

War’s grin widened at her words, something almost approving flickering across his expression. His attention shifted back to Da Wei, eyes gleaming beneath the inferno that framed him.

“Sympathy?” he echoed, his voice carrying a quiet amusement that clashed against the devastation surrounding them. “You’re asking the wrong existence.”

His wings flared again, flames surging higher.

“I am War.”

The words were simple, but they were the truth.

“And sympathy,” he added, his smile sharpening into something colder, “is not made for me.”

“Really?” Da Wei asked, his voice carrying an almost curious calm that clashed with the devastation surrounding them. “Why do I feel you being so sad, then? After all, war is not just about the madness, the fight, and the slaughter. It’s about the stakes. Men with conviction go to war, both the foolish and the brave. Not one of them has the certainty that they will return to their loved ones, and even if they do, they won’t be the same.”

The words did not strike like a blade.

They slipped in quietly, threading through something buried far deeper than flesh or power. War felt it then, a sharp, unwelcome prick lodged somewhere within him, subtle yet undeniable. His expression did not change, but his grip tightened ever so slightly around his sword. The sensation was foreign, invasive in a way that irritated him more than any wound could.

He recognized it.

Da Wei’s Supremacy Trait. 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦

“I think I know you more than you know yourself,” Da Wei continued, his gaze steady, almost analytical. “After all, you carry the memories of the Supreme Death. An Earthling like me. If there’s anyone in this reality who could even begin to sympathize with him, it would be me. But even then…” His voice dipped slightly, not in hesitation but in thought. “I can only imagine what kind of war he endured to shape you into this.”

War’s thoughts snapped inward, sharp and immediate.

Who told him?

The question flared with irritation, his mind moving through possibilities before settling on one name with cold certainty.

Conquest.

There was no one else reckless enough, or amused enough, to let something like that slip. The idea alone scraped against War’s patience, but he buried it just as quickly. This was not the moment for that.

“Enough talk,” War said, his voice flattening as the air around him grew heavier.

Power shifted.

“Law of Slaughter.”

The declaration did not echo loudly, yet reality itself seemed to recoil at its presence. Though this world suppressed him, restricted him, dulled the overwhelming authority he once wielded, the law still answered. It was fractured and diminished, but still present within him.

It was enough.

War vanished.

Space bent, and in the next instant he stood before Da Wei, his blade already descending with lethal precision, carrying the weight of countless battlefields behind it.

“Divine Protection,” Da Wei said simply.

The clash came and went in less than a breath. War’s sword struck true, only to rebound. A sharp metallic sound rang out as the blade slid off Da Wei’s armor, leaving behind nothing more than faint scratches, shallow and insignificant.

Da Wei did not move.

His eyes, barely visible behind his helm, had lost what little warmth they once carried. What remained was something colder, emptier, as though whatever restraint he had been maintaining had finally been set aside.

“It’s time I stop sandbagging,” he said, almost casually. “I’m going to give you the beating of your life right—”

He vanished.

Even War’s perception failed to track it.

“Now,” Da Wei finished.

A hand clamped around War’s throat with crushing force before he could react. The next instant, his body was driven downward, smashing into the continent beneath them. The impact carved out an enormous crater, shockwaves tearing through the land in all directions as mountains collapsed and the earth split apart.

Dust and debris surged upward like a storm.

Da Wei stood at the center of it, his grip unrelenting, his voice devoid of any emotion.

“I have conducted twenty-two thousand three hundred simulations,” he said, each word measured, precise. “I have completed my analysis of you. Every variable accounted for. Every deviation corrected. There is no outcome left unexamined in which I fail to kill you in the most efficient and brutal way possible of your entire darn life.”

War laughed.

The sound was rough, edged with something unyielding despite the position he was in.

“You can’t beat me—”

“I’ve already beaten you,” Da Wei cut in, his tone unchanged. “The moment I dragged you into this world, the result was decided. That alone fulfills nearly all the conditions required for your defeat. Your laws, your authority, your so-called advantages… they are meaningless here.”

His grip tightened slightly.

“Within the Hollowed World,” he continued, “I am invincible.”

War’s form flickered.

Space folded again as he forced himself free, reappearing behind Da Wei with his blade already in motion, cutting through where his opponent should have been.

The strike landed on nothing.

The figure before him dissolved like mist, unraveling into a phantasmal illusion that scattered into fragments of light. War’s eyes narrowed as the realization set in, irritation flickering beneath the surface.

War had already analyzed Da Wei’s illusion spells.

Or so he thought.

The fact that he had been deceived again told him everything he needed to know. Da Wei had not simply been holding back power. He had been refining, adjusting, perfecting every aspect of his abilities while enduring War’s assault.

The ground beneath War vanished.

There was no warning, no gradual collapse. One moment he stood upon fractured land, the next there was nothing beneath him. The continent simply ceased to exist, revealing an endless expanse of darkness below. It was the Dark Veil stretching infinitely, swallowing light and depth alike.

War’s body hung in the void for the briefest moment.

Then he looked up.

Another continent loomed above him.

It hovered in place, vast and overwhelming, its sheer scale eclipsing everything around it. Within the Hollowed World, each continent carried the weight and mass of a complete reality, dense with existence, heavy with the fabric of its own laws, like an entire world.

And Da Wei had lifted one, repositioned it, and suspended it directly above them.

War’s mind processed the impossibility even as his instincts sharpened. Ascended Soul or not, this level of control, this level of raw authority over the Hollowed World, bordered on something else entirely.

What was he planning?

“Divine Favor,” Da Wei’s voice echoed, though his presence remained unseen.

The continent above began to glow, light spreading across its surface like veins of divinity awakening. The air thickened, saturated with an oppressive force that pressed down on everything beneath it.

War scanned his surroundings, senses flaring outward, searching.

Nothing.

No trace of Da Wei.

Then the continent moved.

It began to fall.

Slowly at first, then faster, its descent accelerating as gravity took hold. The sheer mass of it distorted space itself, the air screaming as it was crushed beneath the weight of an entire world collapsing downward.

War reacted instantly.

Space bent around him as he attempted to leap, to escape the inevitable impact—

“Divine Mandate of the Executor.”

The words locked into place.

Something cold and absolute wrapped around his throat. War’s movement halted mid-transition, his body forcibly anchored as inky black chains materialized, tightening with suffocating precision. They were not merely physical restraints. They carried authority, binding not just his form but his ability to act.

The falling world loomed closer.

War’s attention narrowed as the inky black chains tightened around his throat, their presence not merely physical but conceptual, latching onto the space between intent and action. He completed his analysis quickly, faster than most would have believed possible under such pressure. The binding was not a simple restraint; it was a coercive law that forced designated combatants into direct confrontation, suppressing escape and severing avoidance from the equation of battle itself.

He clicked his tongue internally.

There was no time to dismantle it properly.

The Dark Veil beneath him responded first.

From its endless depths, it spat upward an eruption of armaments and constructs, spears forged of voidlight, swords etched with fractured runes, chains that moved like living serpents, and innumerable other implements of enforced destruction. They rose in dense waves, converging on him from every angle, as though the abyss itself had decided to participate in Da Wei’s design.

War moved through them with controlled precision.

His body shifted between trajectories that did not yet exist, slipping through gaps between incoming strikes as if he had already memorized their future positions. Where evasion alone was insufficient, he met force with force. Heavenly Flame had already shifted in his grasp, no longer a manifestation of presence but condensed into blade form, its edge resonating with a restrained, volatile brilliance.

Each impact against incoming weapons sent tremors through the air, scattering fragments of dark metal and dissipating void-etched energy into harmless ash.

Even as he moved, War’s focus never left the descending continent above.

The world continued to fall.

Heaven itself felt compressed under its weight.

War’s voice dropped low, meant only for the blade in his hand.

“Lend me your strength.”

The response was immediate.

Heavenly Flame surged, not as fire but as essence, a concentrated quintessence that flowed into War’s being like a river of molten authority. His presence shifted at once, the pressure around him warping as dormant principles within him reawakened, aligning themselves to his will.

A faint grin crossed his face.

“Law of Power.”

Reality bent around his swing.

The blade arced upward, carrying with it an overwhelming reinforcement of force, not amplified strength alone but the fundamental assertion of dominance over impact itself. The descending continent met that strike halfway through its fall.

It split cleanly.

The division was absolute, a perfect severance that cut through land, divine reinforcement, and embedded authority alike. The two halves of the continent drifted apart, their structural integrity undone in a single moment of imposed law.

For a brief instant, War thought the path ahead had been cleared.

Then he saw it.

A second continent.