Chapter 191: The Child of Consumption Attacks? (2)
The Child of Consumption’s fingers had just closed around the next pastry when the void changed.
He froze mid-motion, the small, glazed piece still pinched between thumb and forefinger.
His eyes, previously calm, narrowed a fraction.
Something vast and wrong pressed against the edges of his awareness—divinity so dense it felt like the space around him had suddenly grown teeth.
It wasn’t just him, either... Beside him, Vesatine’s breath hitched. Her jet-black eyes widened, pupils contracting sharply.
She took one involuntary step back, the soft sole of her boot scraping against the deck. In all her years serving him, she had never felt anything like this.
Not from pure divinity... the sheer volume pouring forth was beyond anything she’d ever imagined could exist in a single entity.
"...High Apostle?" she asked, her voice softer than she meant, almost swallowed by the stillness.
The boy didn’t reply right away.
His gaze stayed fixed on the pastry in his hand, as though its weight and warmth were the only things keeping him tethered while something immense and unseen surged through the void before them.
"This isn’t possible," he said finally.
His tone still carried that same air of maturity, but now there was a chill beneath it, something sharper and more deliberate.
A trace of calculation lingered there, mingled with disbelief, and just the faintest suggestion of unease beginning to take shape.
"This is divinity..." he said, as if confirming something he had always known.
"No single being should be able to produce a surge of this magnitude."
He was all too familiar with the fact that the highest powers in not just this Star System, but across the entire Galaxy, never extended beyond the Cosmic Union Rank.
No matter how far one searched, no matter how mighty the Pantheon appeared, there wasn’t a single being who had stepped beyond that threshold.
Which meant that unless someone possessed something extraordinary—an artifact, a physique, or anything unique capable of boosting divinity output to absurd levels—such power was impossible.
And if that were the case, the World of Kalpa and the Star System itself became all the more fascinating, yet equally daunting.
Because if all beings at the peak of the Galaxy shared similar ranks, then the deciding factor in battles came down to total power output and the measure of one’s divinity.
Before Vesatine could reply, purple light swallowed the view beyond the window.
It didn’t spread slowly at all.
One moment, the golden barrier of Kalpa shimmered before us with the waiting army standing ready, and the next, everything beyond the ship was swallowed up in a deep, flowing purple, as if the whole world outside had been dipped in pure color.
The light pressed against the transparent alloy of the deck like it was alive...
And... they came.
They spilled forth from the purple radiance in an endless stream, their delicate, translucent wings catching the light as they drifted through the void with a dreamlike slowness.
At first glance, they seemed like the most beautiful sight imaginable, but if one’s gaze lingered for even a second too long—literally—something shifted.
They became utterly, impossibly wrong, twisting into the stuff of the worst nightmares.
And they were... butterflies.
The first ones touched the outer ranks of the one hundred thousand warriors.
There was no cry, no struggle—just the quiet unraveling as flesh, armor, and divinity dissolved into a cascade of fine, shimmering dust that drifted away and disappeared.
The butterflies drifted forward without hesitation, their delicate wings brushing past more bodies, skimming over weapons, and touching countless lives.
In their wake, entire formations crumbled, ranks breaking apart and melting away into nothing as the gentle, unyielding tide of wings swept through them.
Inside the starship, Vesatine’s hands tightened into fists at her sides as she stared out the window at the incoming swarm, her throat constricting.
"High Apostle—"
But before the Child of Consumption could so much as move, the butterflies struck the hull.
The metal dissolved on contact.
Walls, floors, the glowing control orb, even the plush furniture—everything their wings brushed against unraveled into shimmering motes of purple light, drifting away like dust on an unseen current.
The boy finally let go of the pastry, but it never reached the floor.
Both it and the hand that had been holding it were already disintegrating, pieces breaking away into nothing. His final thought wasn’t one of fear or panic. Instead, it was a simple, sharp wave of irritation.
’This world... I must have it...’
Vesatine parted her lips to whisper his name one last time, but the sound never came.
Instead, she dissolved like everything else—skin, bone, and strands of black hair unraveling into soft, luminous particles that drifted away, borne off indifferently by the butterflies.
The swarm continued for a few heartbeats longer, sweeping the last fragments of the starship and the final remnants of the army into nothing.
Then the butterflies themselves faded.
As the final wing faded away, the void beyond Kalpa lay vast, empty, and pristine.
There was no trace of debris, no lingering glimmer of light, no hint that a hundred thousand warriors or a colossal starship had ever been there at all.
-----
Far beyond the Orin Star System, in a Star System completely ruled by Dark Humans and Shadow Demons, the void itself felt much darker than it should.
Between drifting dead worlds hung the stronghold of the Pantheon of Endless Hunger.
It towered over every world in sight—an enormous, darkened edifice of bone, metal, and stone, as if sculpted from the very essence of shadow, sprawling across the void like an unhealed scar that refused to fade.
The place was so vast that entire continents could have been swallowed by a single towering spire, its surface so dark that it swallowed the light of distant stars as if they had never existed.
Inside the stronghold, the air hung heavy, saturated with the metallic tang of blood and the acrid sting of something far stranger... the extraction of divinity itself.
Dark Humans and Shadow Demons moved through the vast halls in constant motion.
Some tore into captured beasts and cultivators, devouring both flesh and strength in a single savage bite.
Others gathered in circles of assimilation, pulling threads of divinity into their bodies until every whisper faded away.
Starships came and went without rest, sliding into docks along the outer rim to unload new captives or launch with freshly ascended warriors aboard.
Deep within one of the secluded chambers, a boy sat quietly by himself. More precisely, he was the Child of Consumption.
His Shadow Demon form was gone, replaced by a Dark Human appearance—short black hair, eyes as dark as midnight, and a sharp black tattoo etched in the center of his forehead.
He kept his eyes closed, breathing slowly and steadily, each breath stretching into long, silent moments.
Then they opened.
His face shifted into a curious mix of emotions—part frown, part smile, with irritation and a shadow of amusement twisting together.
He leaned in a bit, resting his elbows on his knees, and muttered something quietly under his breath.
"Again... someone keeps killing my vessels."
He said as his fingers curled against the fabric of his pants.
"And... this only drags out my plans even further... though I have to admit, that was a rather interesting discovery."
He could still recall the overwhelming surge of divinity that had poured from the void when he’d been using his Vessel.
Back then, even though Akasha had gone too far years ago when he destroyed the Child of Consumption’s first vessel, the child had been utterly unaware.
That was because, at the time, he hadn’t truly been controlling the Ancestor—he’d simply been letting the old being live out his final days until the moment drew near to initiate his plan to consume the world.
But now, knowing that someone on that world possessed something capable of extending one’s divinity...
There was no way he could let such an opportunity slip through his fingers.
In the next moment, he rose to his feet.
The dark robe hanging on a nearby stand was pulled over his shoulders with practiced ease.
One quick adjustment of the collar, a smooth press along the front, and he left the room without so much as a backward glance.
As he made his way down the corridors, the air grew stiller and the silence deeper, though the watchful eyes on him only increased.
Eventually, he came to the last set of doors... imposing structures of black stone etched with intricate carvings and fringed with shifting, living shadows.
Two guards moved in to block his path, their Cosmic Union auras surging slightly, their posture unyielding.
Though they eased their weapons down just a fraction, they remained planted, making no move to let him pass.
One of them spoke, voice flat.
"State your purpose and identity."
Hearing this, the Child of Consumption felt no offense, understanding that this was simply the way of the Pantheon—no matter one’s rank, if you weren’t the Supreme God, there were doors you could never pass through.
Especially those that lay beyond your granted authority. He halted in his steps, his black eyes rising to meet the guard’s gaze without a flicker of hesitation.
"The Child of Consumption. High Apostle of Endless Hunger." He let the titles settle for a moment before continuing. "I carry important news regarding the ongoing meeting in the Orin Star System. I need to speak with the Supreme God."