—–

Song unleashed everything he had, frustration boiling over at the Spherical Demon’s stubborn struggle even in its final moments. He poured all his power at once through his Aura and the Skill he had gained from Anna’s sponsorship—the [Divine Dao Child of Fate Aura]—flooding the Spherical Demon’s Void Stomach with so much energy that it could no longer adapt or absorb it all. The overload would force an explosion from within.

BOOOMMM!!!

The plan succeeded spectacularly, though the resulting blast shattered space itself into countless fragments around them. The void surged outward, consuming the remaining demons and disintegrating them to near-subatomic levels.

Anna had warned him against such recklessness, but the boy hadn’t listened—perhaps driven mad by the Demonic Cursed Seals and the overwhelming storm of emotions he could no longer control.

“U-ugh…”

Song slowly opened his eyes and found himself floating in complete blackness. A massive crack in the darkness revealed a glimpse of blue sky and white clouds—home.

“W-Where am I?”

He looked around and realized he had “fallen” out of the sky—not into his world’s oceans, but out of the world entirely.

“A-Aaaah!”

His eyes widened in equal awe and horror as he beheld an endless cosmos: stars, black holes, planets, worlds, and twisting dimensional storms stretching across an infinite expanse.

“T-This is…?! Where… where am I?!”

He glanced back. The hole he had fallen through was slowly closing!

“No!”

He rushed toward it with all his strength, but simply moving through this strange space tore at his entire body—it felt impossibly dense!

“Uuggh…! Oof!”

“S-Song!”

Anna’s voice echoed in his mind. His armor hung in tatters but somehow remained intact, sustained mostly by his own lingering energy.

“Anna?! You’re still here with me?”

“I told you that you shouldn’t have done that, you idiot!”

“I-I’m sorry! I was reckless…!”

“Hurry, we have to get through that portal!”

“Yeah!”

Song and Anna pushed forward together. Their powers merged as a veil of cosmic light enveloped Song, making traversal through this alien space far easier.

“Anna, what is this place?!”

“Don’t look back!”

“Huh?”

“I told you not to look—”

But Song looked anyway.

TRUUUM!

“Ugh?!”

Something enormous had been hiding in plain sight.

Something so gigantic it twisted endlessly through the void and cosmos—something he had initially mistaken for mere background, just how space appeared to him.

Yet it felt artificial, unnervingly so: twisting mechanical parts, wires, and monstrous electronic components spun and swirled within the endless dark.

Countless artificial eyes glared directly at him…

Song didn’t need to ask what it was. He had already faced one of its eyes—the thing that had breached into his world.

[The {Universal Computer} is glaring at you directly.]

[Its endless wires move through space and the void, slowly trying to find you.]

“It’s the…!”

“The Void Ruler! Yeah!”

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Anna quickly manifested from Song’s armor, drawing a surge of power from her main body.

“Go, Song! Don’t look back!”

“E-Eh?! Anna!”

“You can’t possibly attempt to fight this thing! You’ll die!”

Anna gathered her cosmic power and formed a massive hand, hurling Song through the cosmos. He barely passed through the closing hole in time.

“Annaaaaaaa!”

As the rift sealed shut, Anna’s Ego faced the colossal void dweller alone. Its mechanical tentacles reached for her; its countless eyes burned with scrutiny.

Though she had confronted the Bleeding Scream within a Soul Scape, facing a Void Ruler in its physical form—so close, and within its own domain—was something else entirely.

She had to admit; this had never been part of her plans.

[The {Universal Computer} wonders about your own existence.]

[“Who are you?” “What are you?” “How could you stop my invasion?” “What do you plan?” “Why do you care about them?” “Why do you know so much?” “Who are you working for?”]

A torrent of questions crashed into Anna’s mind. Even though this was only her Ego, the pain bled slightly into her true body.

The horror, the pure dread—it was overwhelmingly terrifying!

“Shut up!” Anna roared in fury. “You think I’ll answer any of those questions?!”

[The {Universal Computer} is glancing at your soul.]

[“Then I will simply glare at your very mind and soul, worm.”]

RUMBLE!

“Agh?!”

Anna felt a sharp, crushing pain. She had intended to detonate this Ego and escape, but the Void Ruler’s presence had completely paralyzed it!

The giant mechanical eyes bored into her soul, hunting for answers to every question it had asked.

“Stop! Stop, you piece of junk! I’m going to fucking kill you!”

Yin cried out in rage. Her personality—far nastier than the original Anna’s—only made the Universal Computer laugh as she threatened it.

Her mind began to twist. Her perception of reality started to melt. Her senses suddenly manifested within her own soul as countless mechanical wires tried to infiltrate it, seeking to see everything.

“FUCKING BITCH, STOP!”

Anna attacked directly, but the Void Ruler slammed her down with overwhelming force! Being so close granted it almost no penalty.

“STAY STILL, WORM.”

Electromagnetic, mechanical tentacles wrapped around her entire Soul Avatar, electrifying it and drawing screams of agony.

“Uuuaaagggh! Aaaaggghh!”

Completely helpless, Anna became an open book for the Void Ruler to inspect at will.

“I SHALL NOW LEARN THE SECRETS BEHIND YOUR STRANGE EXISTENCE!”

As its artificial eyes began scanning through all of Anna’s information, they glowed red, delving deeper and deeper.

As it read, the surroundings slowly transformed. Even Anna couldn’t fully comprehend what she was witnessing.

Countless letters appeared, pages of a book were constantly shifting and flickering. The Void Ruler found itself floating above these pages, words rotating around it.

“WHAT IS THIS?! IT MAKES NO SENSE! WHAT…?!”

“W-What the fuck is going on?”

Not even Anna understood, but something deep within her, within her very existence, began to manifest rapidly. These words, these pages, her knowledge, it all emerged as an endless book.

Yes—the novel itself that Anna had read in her previous life, before transmigrating as one of its characters.

“I AM… PART OF A BOOK?! WHAT…?! NO… THIS—THIS IS…!”

The Universal Computer could not comprehend it—that everything within its own existence was nothing but written text. The revelation challenged its perception of reality and its understanding of the cosmos itself.

“It’s the novel I read… What the—”

As Anna wondered what was happening, the Void Ruler’s entire soul avatar began to shake violently. Mechanical parts cracked and shattered, wires exploded, electricity arced from broken circuits.

“I CANNOT… PROCESS…!”

Void Rulers fed on the largest of stories, entire worlds. They were the apex predators of the cosmos, their hunger so vast that only consuming worlds’ worth of Stories could even begin to satisfy them.

So when it began to devour Anna’s Story, it encountered a paradox: it was consuming a Story that encompassed the entire world it inhabited, far too much, even for a being of its caliber.

“G-GRAAAAGGH! AAAAGGGHHHH!”

Amid the pages of the book, a gigantic blue-and-golden eye manifested, glaring directly at the Void Ruler. Anna felt a profound connection to it.

It was… as if the eye were her own.

[The Unknown-Level Trait: [Reader] has manifested its true power.]

As the eye stared down, the pages and letters enveloped the Void Ruler’s mechanical body, beginning to…

Devour it!

“AAAAAGGGH! AAARRRGGGHH!”

The Void Ruler screamed in terror and retreated frantically from Anna’s soul before suffering irreversible damage, though its very essence had already been bitten.

“YOU’RE A MONSTER! YOU INCOMPREHENSIBLE PARADOX!!!”

As the Universal Computer vanished from her soul, Anna’s Ego regained awareness. Yin watched the colossal monstrosity writhe in pain, large sections of its body exploding and collapsing.

“UUUAAAGGH! IT HURTS…! IT HURTS! DAMAGED… TOO MUCH DAMAGE FROM MERELY…! UUGGGHH!”

Its groans echoed across the cosmos, shaking the empty void with its agony. Yet that pain only fueled deeper hatred toward Anna than ever before.

“I’LL ELIMINATE YOU! FOR DARING TO INFLICT SO MUCH PAIN ON ME, YOU MUST BE ELIMINATED!”

The monstrous entity surged back toward Anna, its gigantic body poised to crush her, and through her Ego, to shatter her soul!

Though Anna could somehow retaliate if her soul was invaded, nothing shielded her from being physically crushed or having her soul obliterated.

“Hah, I don’t even know what the hell happened but go fuck yourself.”

Anna’s Ego—Yin—smiled viciously at the Universal Computer.

As the tentacles descended to crush her, she released every last drop of energy and detonated.

BOOOMMM!!!

The explosion seemed massive, yet against the Void Ruler it was barely a scratch. It glared with pure fury at the flames scorching it, flames that quickly faded.

“THAT WORLD… I WILL DEVOUR IT! AND THAT GIRL… I WILL ELIMINATE HER!”

The mechanical tentacles rushed toward the dimensional cracks it had laboriously torn in Bestia’s boundaries, attempting once more to force an invasion…

What the entity failed to notice was the darkness within the void—the abyss itself—slowly creeping closer. Swirling dark tentacles spun silently; crimson eyes glared at the mechanical being.

Seamlessly blending with the void and shadows, it moved undetected even by other Void Rulers. As it advanced, dimensional waves rippled outward without a sound.

Like a hunter stalking its prey.

—–

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep