SWNOVELXO chapter 421 - Battle of Concept
From behind him, within the yawning spiral of darkness, a hand emerged.
Pale. Elegant. Inevitable.
It reached for Taufik, not as a weapon, nor a threat, but as a lover's touch. An embrace both tender and eternal.
And with it… came a whisper.
"You're finally remembering me"
Taufik smiled faintly, the edge of war still burning in his eyes.
"Ahaha~ I'm sorry to keep you waiting.
But Death… lend me your power once again"
The voice returned, velvet and wickedly fond.
"What's mine is yours, darling... Take as much as you like~"
And with that, Taufik vanished from view, his form devoured by swirling fog, thick and black as forgotten tombs.
The Outer Gods paused.
Then, a hand emerged from within the mist.
Not dark. Not decayed.
But white.
Pale as moonlight on bone.
It moved.
And the fog obeyed.
It did not dissipate. It converged, coiling into the hand like a loyal serpent.
It became a scythe.
Forged not of metal, but of Concept.
A blade woven from silence, memory, and inevitability.
And then… Taufik stepped forth.
No longer cloaked in mortal skin.
He had become what he had always denied.
Not rage.
Not destruction.
Not wrath.
But the conclusion.
And with his presence came the end.
Not shouted. Not screamed.
But simply… accepted.
Because when he appeared... Death was granted. And death… was absolute.
When the fog cleared, they saw him.
No longer mortal.
No longer even god.
He stood at the edge of existence itself, Taufik, the Deathbringer.
His body was wrapped in robes darker than void, yet edged in silver threads that shimmered like the final breath of dying stars. Each thread was a soul, lost, remembered, forgiven.
His skin was no longer flesh, but something between marble and memory, pale like moonlight against obsidian sky.
Around his eyes, faint ink-like markings flowed, living script, ancient runes that constantly rewrote themselves, words in a language only Death could read.
His scythe, long and curved, shimmered with impossible material, its edge not forged by smiths, but honed on endings.
The shaft was carved from the bones of forgotten worlds, etched with dying prayers.
Behind him stretched a cloak of shadows that moved like wings, not flapping, but folding space, rippling between dimensions.
But what made the gods still. What made the Outer Ones hesitate was not his form... But his presence.
There was no aura. No pressure. No divine signature.
He was simply… there.
And in his presence, all things remembered their expiration date.
---
The silence ended in a scream.
The Outer Gods descended, a storm of limbs, eyes, sigils, maws, and truths too broken for sanity.
They did not attack like soldiers.
They attacked like madness, from all angles, in all directions, through all layers of reality.
The first god reached him, a writhing mass of teeth and dripping ink.
Taufik moved once.
The scythe sang.
There was no arc, no trail, no spectacle.
Just...
Absence.
The god was gone. Not slain. Not erased.
Unwritten.
From the memory of the world.
The others hesitated.
Then came fury.
A hundred Outer Gods lunged.
Reality cracked. Gravity folded. Sound turned into color. Time wept blood.
And in the center of that blooming chaos... He walked.
Every step left behind footprints of ash.
Not of things burned.
But of things concluded.
A god of mirrors shattered into infinite reflections and screamed.
Taufik's hand flicked... And every reflection fell silent.
Another, a cathedral-shaped monstrosity wrapped in bells and hymns, tried to rewrite Taufik with forbidden scripture... But his eyes flashed.
And the hymns forgot how to be sung.
They tried devouring him with philosophies.
He answered with stillness.
They pierced through dimensions, dragging the screams of dying stars.
He answered with one word:
"End"
And it did.
The battlefield twisted. Some gods fled sideways into concepts of safety. Others merged into singularities of war.
But Taufik didn't chase.
He only swung his scythe... And reality obeyed.
His blade cut across space, not through matter, but through permanence.
Entire pantheons of unspoken horrors dissolved like mist.
Every swing was a sentence.
Every step was a eulogy.
And still, they kept coming.
Dozens.
Hundreds.
A swarm that should have outlasted stars.
But the more they came... The quieter the battlefield became.
No cries.
No screams.
Just silence, growing louder with each god erased.
At least, only one remained.
And it was not a god in the conventional sense.
It was everything that refused to end.
It towered across dimensions, a being not shaped but resisted, its form a roiling contradiction of light and void, gravity and rejection. Its presence made the stars recoil. Planets cracked in their orbits just to move away.
Its voice echoed across time itself.
"You cannot kill me"
It did not speak. It declared.
"I am the last breath held back. The scream never screamed. I am denial made manifest. I am the final refusal. I am the wound that won't close. For who I am... is none other than the Last Denial"
Reality twisted just to accommodate it.
Skies blackened.
Earth's mana screamed.
And Taufik… stood alone.
High above the shattered veil, beneath a dying sky, the Deathbringer raised his gaze.
His expression was unreadable. Calm. Measured.
His fingers tightened around his scythe.
"…Then you are exactly who I was meant for"
The Last Denial struck first.
Not with claws, not with weapons.
But with rejection.
The laws of existence around Taufik folded.
Suddenly, his scythe didn't exist.
His body never lived.
His thoughts never formed.
Every strike of Denial was a statement against his truth.
"You were never born"
"You never became a god"
"You have no right to kill us"
And yet, Taufik stood.
The black spiral behind him pulsed.
Death itself anchored him.
His voice echoed, not from his mouth, but from every truth that refused to be overwritten.
"Even denial… ends"
He lifted his hand.
The scythe reappeared, forged again from concept, truth, and legacy.
The Last Denial tried again, shifting its attack to memory.
All at once, Taufik saw visions.
Aksara dead.
Earth burned.
The System is corrupted.
All outcomes where he failed.
Where he gave up.
"Look," the Last Denial whispered with ten thousand voices. "You cannot protect them. You never could"
But Taufik's grip never wavered.
He closed his eyes.
Exhaled.
Then cut the visions away, one by one.
"False futures are nothing," he said, "to those who keep walking forward"
The Last Denial screamed.
Its body split into multitudes, entire galaxies screaming through its limbs. It created echoes of itself, each one a version of Taufik that had failed:
Taufik the Tyrant.
Taufik the Broken.
Taufik who never stood up.
They surrounded him.
Mocked him.
"You are us"
Taufik stared at them.
Then…
He smiled, softly.
"No. I'm the one who kept going"
He spun his scythe.
And with one wide arc, not of death, but clarity, the false selves collapsed into ash.
Breathing heavily now, The Last Denial stood in its true form.
A black sun bleeding contradictions.
Its voice cracked.
"You cannot kill me. If I die, you become absolute. If you are absolute… You are alone"
Taufik's gaze softened.
He stepped forward, closer to the god that refused.
Closer to the contradiction.
"You're right," he whispered. "But… this isn't about power. It never was"
"It's about knowing when to stop"
He raised the scythe.
And then…
He didn't swing with rage.
He didn't scream.
He simply brought the blade down like the closing of a book.
A gentle motion.
A final breath.
The Last Denial shuddered.
It didn't scream.
It didn't explode.
It simply…
Stopped.
All of it.
The contradictions.
The screams.
The resistance.
It ceased.
Because even Denial, in the end, must surrender.
Taufik stood alone.
Above a sky finally still.
The scythe in his hand gleamed once more, no longer drenched in wrath, but in peace.
Behind him, the black spiral slowly began to close.
Death whispered again, sweetly:
"It's done, darling. You finished the unwinnable"
And for the first time…
Taufik exhaled.
--------
The battle had ended.
But it was not fought with sword or spear.
Not with flame nor lightning.
It was fought with Concept.
With Authority.
A clash not of muscles or magic, but of meaning itself.
And though it took place far beyond the veil of Earth, in a space where no man could walk... all witnessed it.
Every god.
Every spirit.
Every mortal.
Not directly.
But they felt it.
Like a forgotten instinct stirring in the spine.
Like the world exhaling after holding its breath for too long.
They saw the skies ripple, felt the mana currents tremble, and heard the echo of a voice, one that tore through the heavens not with rage, but with finality.
Something… had protected them.
A force.
A will.
A someone.
They didn't know what it looked like.
Man or woman.
Human or god.
Light or shadow.
They only knew one name:
"D'Archy"
And across the world, that name sparked like wildfire.
There was only one family with that name.
One bloodline is known to carry it.
And just like that… speculation began.
Rumors. Questions. Myths reborn in real time.
Was it a god?
A hidden protector?
A remnant of an older age?
Or something new?
Humanity didn't have answers.
But the Gods did.
The Known Ones, seated in the Sanctum Aeterna, knew exactly who he was.
They had witnessed it, not a battle, but a declaration.
And they did not speak of it.
Not because they forgot.
But because their pride... would not let them admit the truth.
That was what they had seen…
It was something they had all spent millennia chasing.
Studying. Scheming. Sacrificing.
A state of being far above divinity.
... Something close to Eternity.
....
...
..
.