Immortal Paladin

541 Devourer of Worlds

[POV: Great Beast]

The First Layer, Deeds, had been the first to fall before the Great Beast.

No kingdom survived its passing. No law remained standing. The countless worlds buried within the layer had vanished beneath tides of screaming corpses that fused together into a mountainous abomination large enough to consume horizons. Entire continents had become organs. Rivers of blood moved like veins beneath rotten flesh. The dead were stacked upon the dead until existence itself bent beneath the accumulated weight of sin, regret, violence, and unfinished deeds. From those endless corpses, the Great Beast had been born.

And hidden somewhere deep within the blackened depths of that living catastrophe was the true Judge of Deeds, Duan Fen.

The old man no longer resembled the divine judge that once presided over the balance of mortal actions. His body had been crushed between layers of corpses so tightly packed together that every breath sounded like bones grinding against stone. Hands reached from every direction. Some clawed at him. Some merely twitched. Others slowly fused into his flesh as though the Beast intended to make him part of itself forever.

Duan Fen cried until blood leaked from his throat.

“I was wrong!” he screamed into the darkness. “I was wrong! Please… please forgive me…”

The corpses continued shifting.

“I didn’t know!” he sobbed. “That monster deceived me! The False Prophet filled my ears with sweet words and sweeter lies! He told me salvation was possible! He told me we could save them!”

No answer came.

The pressure around him increased. Ribs cracked beneath the weight. Rotten fingers slid into his mouth and muffled his screams.

“Please…” Duan Fen whimpered. “Please bring that little boy back… I’ll do anything… please…”

No one heard him.

Not the dead.

Not the heavens.

Not even the Great Beast itself.

The creature was not aware enough to hate him. It did not know mercy either. It simply devoured.

The First Layer disappeared beneath its passing, consumed so completely that even space itself had been shredded apart. Darkness stretched where reality once stood. Laws unraveled before touching the Beast, collapsing into inexistence as though the universe itself feared contamination. Worlds dissolved into fragments before being absorbed into the endless corpse-mass that formed the creature’s body.

Then the Great Beast entered the Second Layer, Intent.

Once, it had belonged to Famine.

Unlike the vibrant civilizations that had once flourished elsewhere in the Underworld, the Layer of Intent was barren and hollow. Famine had fed upon it since birth, leaving behind only scattered remnants of existence hidden within isolated miniature worlds. Those tiny civilizations had survived solely because Famine had failed to notice them.

Unfortunately for them, the Great Beast noticed everything.

Its shadow stretched across countless hidden worlds like the arrival of oblivion itself.

Within one isolated kingdom built atop floating islands of ash, people gathered along enormous temple walls and stared upward with trembling faces. The sky above them had become black flesh.

A king fell to his knees first.

“What… what is that thing…?”

The priests around him wept openly.

“It swallowed the stars…”

Another kingdom hidden within crystalline caverns watched their artificial sun disappear behind mountains of corpses larger than worlds.

“Mothers preserve us…”

“That’s not a beast…”

“That’s the end…”

Cities rang bells in panic. Armies mobilized despite knowing resistance was meaningless. Millions looked upward only to witness reality itself being torn apart as the Great Beast passed through their skies.

The Layer of Intent possessed the authority to perceive intent, reveal intent, and manifest intent in all its forms. Every hidden desire, every secret hatred, every suppressed cruelty, every honest dream existed plainly within the layer’s perception.

And after devouring it, the Great Beast began to think.

The thought emerged slowly, awkwardly, like a newborn learning speech.

“Who… am I?”

The Great Beast did not know the answer.

Yet awareness slowly formed amidst the endless hunger. The countless intentions devoured from the Second Layer stirred together within its mind like fragments trying to assemble into a complete soul.

Then another thought appeared.

“I shall destroy.”

And so it did.

The Third Layer, Karma, trembled upon its arrival.

At the center of that layer stood the Bone Palace, former domain of Conquest. Towers built from divine skeletons rose toward blackened skies while oceans of undead marched endlessly across ruined worlds beneath the palace’s authority. Conquest had transformed the entire layer into a grotesque playground where souls were trapped within rotting bodies for eternity.

The Great Beast devoured the palace first.

Bone towers shattered between its jaws.

Entire worlds disappeared beneath tides of corpses.

And as it consumed the layer, memories surfaced within its growing consciousness.

Conquest.

Schemes.

Manipulation.

Experiments.

The Great Beast slowly understood that its existence had not been accidental. Countless hands had shaped the road leading toward its birth, and Conquest’s hands had been among them.

Across the worlds of Karma, undead civilizations screamed beneath darkened heavens.

A soldier missing half his face stared upward while maggots crawled from his exposed jaw.

“Again…” he muttered weakly. “We’re going to die again…”

A woman stitched together from dozens of corpses held her child tightly as earthquakes split apart the dead kingdom around them.

“Why won’t they let us rest…?” she cried.

Elsewhere, chained souls trapped inside skeletal giants wailed as the Great Beast consumed the laws binding them into undeath. Some thanked it as they vanished. Others cursed existence until the very end.

The Great Beast devoured all equally.

When the Third Layer finally disappeared, the creature began perceiving karma itself.

Threads.

Debts.

Cycles.

The entire universe appeared before its consciousness as an impossibly tangled web of imbalance and corruption. Countless karmic debts remained unpaid. Souls had been denied proper endings. Cycles had been interrupted. Laws had been twisted by powers that should never have existed.

The universe was wrong.

The circle was damaged.

It must be corrected.

The Great Beast continued forward with growing purpose.

Somewhere during its awakening, it had become a He.

He did not know when that happened.

He only marched onward.

The Fourth Layer awaited, Truth.

Unlike the previous layers, resistance finally emerged.

Tiny figures flew across the skies toward him, wrapped in blazing waves of spiritual light. Mountains shattered beneath the force of their techniques. Seas evaporated from the pressure of unleashed energy. Thousands of cultivators gathered together like swarms of furious insects before the advancing catastrophe.

To lesser beings, their power could annihilate worlds.

To the Great Beast, it merely tickled.

Golden beams exploded against his flesh and disappeared beneath layers of corpses. Sword intent capable of splitting dimensions shattered harmlessly upon contact. Great formations collapsed before fully activating as reality itself unraveled around him.

Still, the Great Beast noticed something important.

If another lifeform stood where he stood now, these attacks would kill them.

The realization lingered strangely within his growing consciousness.

Far below, panic spread throughout the cultivator sects.

“Retreat!”

“We cannot stop that thing!”

A white-haired elder coughed blood while staring at the endless corpse-horizon approaching their world.

“Evacuate the disciples immediately!”

Another cultivator screamed as space collapsed around the Great Beast’s body.

“The laws are disappearing!”

“He’s devouring Truth itself!”

Sect masters abandoned ancient rivalries and fled together through dimensional gates while millions of disciples cried beneath trembling heavens. Entire mountain ranges uprooted themselves as wandering immortal sects desperately attempted escape.

The Fourth Layer, Truth, possessed laws unlike the layers beneath it.

Lies struggled to survive there.

No matter how deeply someone buried their emotions, no matter how convincing their mask appeared, Truth dragged everything into the light. Fear could not hide behind courage. Hatred could not disguise itself as righteousness. Even self-deception eventually shattered beneath the layer’s influence.

And so, as the Great Beast marched across the Fourth Layer, he saw everything.

He saw the terror hidden beneath the cultivators’ battle cries.

He saw the despair concealed within the prayers of mortals.

He saw the selfishness behind heroism and the love hidden beneath cruelty.

All truths revealed themselves before him without resistance.

The little people fought anyway. At least, those brave enough to challenge him.

Golden rivers of spiritual energy surged across the heavens as countless cultivators launched themselves toward the Great Beast with desperate fury. Entire sects activated forbidden formations powerful enough to vaporize continents. Ancient treasures burned themselves apart to unleash one final attack against the advancing catastrophe.

Below them, mortals fled through collapsing cities while the skies darkened beneath oceans of corpses. They were left behind by there cultivator masters, reduced to nothing more than an afterthought.

“Run!”

“The world is ending!”

“Mama, where are we going?!”

“I don’t know!”

Kingdoms crumbled beneath earthquakes generated from the Beast’s movement alone. Oceans rose into the skies. Mountains collapsed into molten rivers. Millions abandoned homes, families, and entire histories in the desperate hope that somewhere beyond the horizon safety still existed.

The cultivators who remained, fared little better.

“Protect the younger disciples!”

“The spatial tunnel collapsed!”

“We can’t escape!”

An elder wearing torn crimson robes stared upward as reality peeled apart above his sect.

“That thing is eating the laws themselves… There’s no stopping it…”

Fear saturated the Fourth Layer so heavily that even the air seemed to scream.

The Great Beast saw all of it clearly.

The fear.

The anger.

The desperate desire to survive.

The instinct to fight back against inevitable destruction.

Truth revealed everything to him.

Yet despite understanding them better than ever before, the Great Beast still crushed them beneath his enormous paws.

Worlds exploded under his steps.

Continents folded inward like paper.

The cultivators who dared approach him vanished instantly upon contact with the storms of shredded space surrounding his body. Some dissolved into blood. Others disappeared so completely that even their karma ceased to exist.

The Great Beast watched the little people scatter in every direction.

Where were they going?

He did not know.

There was nowhere left to run.

Eventually, the Fourth Layer disappeared into his endless body just like the ones before it.

And then he learned Truth.

The universe had become stagnant.

The natural cycle had long since rotted away beneath the existence of beings too powerful to belong within creation. Supreme Beings stood above reality itself, endlessly distorting the balance of existence merely by continuing to live. Their power suppressed growth. Their immortality corrupted karma. Their authority bent universal laws into grotesque shapes that benefited only themselves.

And among them existed the greatest offender of all.

Supreme Death.

The Great Beast saw fragments of ancient memories hidden within Truth itself. He saw the pale figure standing silently at the edge of dead universes. He saw the countless eras where Supreme Death observed suffering without intervening. He saw the despair hidden behind the entity’s emotionless gaze.

Supreme Death knew the universe was broken.

He knew.

And yet he did nothing.

The Great Beast could not understand such inaction.

He himself had been born from catastrophe, hatred, death, and endless accumulated malice. He was destruction incarnate. Momentum given flesh. A disaster shaped into the form of a living creature.

He existed for a purpose.

To bring an end to everything.

That purpose should have been simple.

Yet something within him was changing.

Thoughts no longer came solely from instinct. Desire slowly bloomed from the depths of his tainted, filthy soul. The more layers he devoured, the more complete his consciousness became.

And consciousness created want.

“I will destroy this universe,” the Great Beast declared.

His voice shook countless dimensions.

Then another thought followed immediately after.

“And make it mine.”

The Fifth Layer awaited him, Bonds.

The moment he entered the layer, the Great Beast felt everything. Pain flooded his consciousness first. Then loneliness. Then love. Then grief.

The Fifth Layer connected existence through invisible bonds shared between all living things. Every relationship, every heartbreak, every act of kindness, every betrayal, every lingering attachment woven throughout the universe became visible to him.

The sensation nearly drowned him.

He felt mothers mourning children long dead.

He felt lovers separated by war.

He felt friends betraying one another for survival.

He felt entire civilizations praying desperately for salvation that would never arrive.

At first, the Great Beast simply absorbed those emotions as nourishment. But slowly, his thoughts changed. The universe was beautiful. Not because of the stars, laws, or the endless heavens. It was beautiful because life struggled so desperately to continue existing despite endless suffering.

Initially, he wished to own the universe after destroying it because sentient life had ruined something magnificent.

Now, after absorbing Bonds, he realized sentient life itself could also be magnificent.

Their pain made them beautiful. Their fragility made them precious. Their endless struggle against despair stirred something unfamiliar within the Great Beast’s growing heart. His original desire twisted into something else.

“I will save this universe.”

The declaration surprised even himself, yet he continued marching forward regardless.

The Sixth Layer soon appeared before him, Order.

Compared to the chaos consuming the lower layers, the Sixth Layer possessed rigid stability. Laws operated perfectly there. Space remained firm. Time flowed precisely. Entire civilizations existed in orderly harmony beneath absolute systems maintained for countless eras.

The cultivators still appeared occasionally.

Some attacked him.

Others fled immediately upon seeing him.

The Great Beast paid them little attention. Whether they resisted or escaped no longer mattered. Eventually, all things would perish before him anyway. Then something enormous moved within the darkness ahead.

A roar thundered across the Sixth Layer so violently that entire dimensions shook from its force alone.

Space cracked open.

An immense serpentine body emerged from the void between realities. Black scales larger than worlds reflected dying starlight while endless crimson eyes opened across its colossal form. Its body stretched across entire horizons like a living abyss given shape.

The creature roared again.

This time, words accompanied the sound.

“THOU SHALL NOT PASS.”

The language felt ancient and foreign, yet the Great Beast understood fragments of it instinctively.

The enormous serpent coiled itself before the Great Beast and unleashed another roar powerful enough to rupture dimensional barriers.

“I SHALL DEVOUR THY FLESH, ABOMINATION.”

The Great Beast searched through the countless memories swimming within his mind. Soon, he found the answer. Void Beast. Nidhogg. It was a creature from ancient ages long erased from history. Once, it had belonged to the Supreme Void himself. A pet. A companion. A monster raised beneath the authority of one of the oldest Supreme Beings to ever exist.

The Great Beast stared at the colossal serpent before him.

And for the first time since his awakening, something resembling excitement stirred within his endless hunger.