The ground began to tremble violently.
Azazel appeared, his body wracked with uncontrollable spasms, his appearance demented. His horns suddenly stretched out, lighting up with a cruel red, until they condensed the light into a pulsing orb at their tips.
"Watch out!!" shouted Bakuzan.
The orb was hurled toward the Immortal Echoes.
The divine ground shattered in a deafening crash, opening into a titanic fissure. Bakuzan, Sakolomeh, and Leon leaped simultaneously, dodging the wave of destruction.
"He doesn't even wait for our signal!" yelled Leon. "He attacks without restraint!!"
Azazel let out an inhuman scream.
"AAAAAHHHHHH!!"
His mouth deformed, opening disproportionately, until it formed an even more colossal orb, charged with unstable energy.
Erasa put her mask back on and briefly turned her gaze toward Lucifer.
"Very well… If you truly want to redeem yourself, even in the slightest way in my eyes, then prove it.
Help us neutralize Azazel."
Lucifer slowly stood up… then smiled.
"That won't be an insurmountable problem."
His body altered immediately, becoming almost a moving shadow. Eyes opened everywhere on his silhouette, emerging in impossible angles, deploying and closing in a nightmarish way.
"Be careful!" shouted Leon. "Don't kill him above all, I beg you!!"
Lucifer tilted his head slightly, a sly smile on his lips.
"Unnecessary."
Azazel expelled the orb from his mouth.
The explosion was of even greater magnitude, ravaging this already fissured world. The devastating orb hurtled straight toward its adversaries.
Lucifer simply turned his gaze toward Azazel.
The orb disappeared.
Not destroyed.
Not absorbed.
It ceased to take place.
The Immortal Echoes remained frozen.
"What did he just do…?" murmured Satan.
Lucifer then propelled himself forward and attacked Azazel without hesitation.
Azazel, screaming in madness, charged in turn, unleashing a rain of cursed attacks, distorting space and causality.
But each of them faded before even reaching him.
For Lucifer was an original god, bearer of the nostalgia for the Nothingness before the Dream.
Everything that could take place… existed in the Dream.
But in the original Nothingness, nothing ever took place.
And that was precisely what Lucifer imposed on Azazel, staring at him with his countless eyes opened onto the impossible.
Lucifer materialized a sword as terrifying as his own form.
At its sight, Azazel let out a demented howl.
Then, without warning, Lucifer shuddered.
The Immortal Echoes felt the same thing.
An crushing pressure fell on their bodies — not physical, but ontological.
As if something was trying to redefine them.
And suddenly… nothing.
Lucifer came to a complete halt and leaped backward.
"What was that?"
Sakolomeh gritted his teeth.
"I think he… tried to reconfigure us."
Bakuzan frowned.
"Reconfigure? Explain."
Sakolomeh inhaled slowly before responding.
"Azazel carries within him the remnants of the Absolute Resonance.
As such, he can, in a certain way, embody the All indirectly."
He paused.
"Obviously, he is nothing compared to the Absolute Resonance itself…
But it's enough to impose a state, even if just for an instant."
Erasa felt a shiver run through her essence.
"If what you say is true… then it's terrifying."
Sakolomeh sighed.
"Yes… and no.
Azazel is extremely unstable. The majority of the effects he produces via the Absolute Resonance are just accidents, errors stemming from what remains of it."
He shook his head.
"He is incapable of maintaining these states.
But it's enough to disrupt, disorient… and open breaches."
He then raised his hand toward the sky.
"I'm going to use my law derived from the fragmentary My0x code."
A brutal light burst around his arm.
Sakolomeh controlled the remnants of M integrated into his law — an M just as fragmentary as the rest of the code.
In reality, he could fully exploit only one element: X.
The other components of My0x didn't even represent 0.00000…1% of their original potential.
"No matter," he murmured.
Red chains emerged from the light and violently wrapped around Azazel, restraining his movements.
"Attack!!" ordered Sakolomeh.
Bakuzan then materialized a silver sword, around which dense and solemn mana swirled.
He leaped toward Azazel.
But the creature opened its mouth wide and projected a new destructive orb.
Erasa simply extended her hand.
The orb faded.
Bakuzan turned his head, surprised.
Erasa nodded slowly.
"I've got your back.
Go for it."
Bakuzan nodded and brandished his weapon.
This sword contained the will of the Father God:
the pure Yes,
the one that recognizes everything of the Dream,
the one that, once upon a time, had made the Dream… real.
From that moment on, Bakuzan held absolute authority over everything that pertained to the Dream.
Over what was already part of it, over what didn't yet belong to it, over what would one day be born there.
Everything that was dreamed, conceptualized, narratable, or simply thinkable fell under his jurisdiction.
He could therefore deny effortlessly.
Impose the absolute No on a being, a creature, or an entire structure of the Dream, stripping them of all legitimacy — not by destroying them, but by invalidating them.
He could also impose paradoxical states:
neither yes nor no;
maybe;
why not.
Existences suspended, deprived of resolution.
This sword did not attack matter.
It rewrote or denied the very definitions.
The essence of a being, the nature of an object, the coherence of an idea, the logic of a concept — all of that could be altered or removed.
If Bakuzan struck a god, a demon, or a mythical artifact, the target was not simply wounded:
it could be redefined, stripped of its attributes, its role, its reason for being.
This authority knew neither causality nor natural laws.
It operated at the level of conceptualization itself, where the Dream gives form to all things.
The sword acted as the Primordial Voice of the Father God.
An absolute advocate of Kami-no-Koe.
Everything "said" by the sword became a conceptual reality.
The pure Yes established existence.
The absolute No withdrew it.
Declaring that a god no longer existed in a specific domain was enough to erase its attributes in that domain — not by destruction, but by withdrawal.
It could manipulate entire strata of the Dream:
nested dreams,
levels of reality,
complete zones — First Zone, Second Zone… up to the Dream of the Father God himself, to a certain extent.
If a being tried to extract itself from its dream, to transcend its condition, the sword could force it to remain inscribed in its own conceptualization.
For the Ineffables, any illegitimate elevation could be canceled.
Even the transcendence of so-called absolute beings —
not their true forms, but their powerful avatars such as Munhwan, Mü Thanatos, and others —
remained subordinate to the sword's authority.
For they too existed in the Dream,
and were thinkable.
No hierarchy placed them out of reach.
The sword could impose submission,
or alter the essence of entities believed to be untouchable.
Thanks to it, Bakuzan could manipulate the possibles,
and even the unrepresentable.
It could materialize or erase any imaginable scenario:
paradoxes,
contradictions,
beings supposedly "beyond conceptualization."
A being attempting to leave the Dream could be forcibly brought back.
Or see its existence rendered impossible in any conceptual line of reality.
And the sword had no need to touch its target.
For it did not act on bodies.
It operated directly on the Dream itself.