Chapter 186: The Laughing Emperor (2)
[Trickster’s Mirror (Originless)]
HUMMMM!!!!
The moment Loki activated the power, even in her sealed state, the world around them literally cracked open.
In a heartbeat, massive cracks split through the sky and spread across the stone courtyard, splintering like shards of broken glass.
From the massive rifts spilled a rich, emerald-green glow, seeping into every corner as an ancient, coiling power pressed down, making the very world creak and strain under its weight.
Without missing a beat, Loki waved one massive hand.
Outside, the ten thousand Unbound Gods and Constellations vanished in an instant, their shapes unraveling into shimmering streams of light.
But... she didn’t just destroy them.
No, Loki, she was the Goddess of Tricks— she wasn’t a variant or bound to any specific path of deception.
She reigned supreme across the entire multiverse when it came to the art of trickery.
With her innate power unleashed, she could sway or deceive anything, bending reality itself to bring it over to her side.
In the blink of an eye, the Legion Slaughter Array twisted and reshaped, its very essence rewriting itself under her command.
And before Akasha or anyone even knew it... the constructs reappeared—this time arrayed behind and around Tyron, their auras now turned outward in his defense.
The heavy weight that had forced him to his knees lifted, and he drew in a deep breath as pressure eased.
Then Loki’s green eyes widened even further.
Akasha’s form became fully perceivable, pulled into the waking world by the restriction of the Laughing Sword.
As mentioned before, his innate powers... which included every function of the Dreamer’s Scythe... remained locked.
While Loki had glimpsed his image through the Grand Loom of Fate, seeing it face to face was something else entirely.
In that moment, she could sense the Divine traits pouring from Akasha in unending waves.
She shuddered hard, a pure, instinctive fear rippling through her colossal frame.
"That’s... an Unus..." she muttered under her breath, the words barely more than a stunned breath.
In all honesty, identifying an Unus was never something that could be done easily.
It wasn’t that they were so rare they were hard to keep track of—quite the opposite, actually.
Within Pantheos, Lesser Unus were scattered far and wide, just like any other race.
But unlike most races, the Unus were one of the few considered outright forbidden.
There were many reasons for this, but one of the biggest was how incredibly difficult it was to recognize one.
They didn’t have a single shape or form, and sometimes they didn’t take on a form at all.
That was what made them so terrifying.
By the time someone realized they were facing an Unus, the traits of that race would have already seeped into their very being.
Loki, however, was quite different—and not just her, but all of Asgard Valhalla knew exactly how to recognize an Unus.
This was because the leader of their Pantheon held perhaps the oldest records of the Unus race and had issued a strict order to flee on sight.
If you encountered an Unus without the one weapon capable of killing them... then you run.
But like mentioned before.... by the time you realized what you were facing, the traits of the Unus would already be taking hold.
----
HUMMMMMM!!!!!
In this moment, Akasha’s imperfect Beauty flooded outward without restraint.
Tyron’s emotional stability cracked first.
The waves hit him like successive tidal waves—raw obsession, choking dread, and a will that felt as if it were being peeled apart layer by layer.
As he stood with the rewritten array force surrounding him, his body swayed as if the ground itself had turned unstable.
Sweat streamed down his face as if a storm cloud hung over him.
His free hand flexed restlessly at his side, while the Laughing Sword remained firmly in his grasp.
At first, his mouth opened and closed in silence, but soon disjointed, overlapping words tumbled out.
"No...no, this isn’t YOURS!" He roared madly.
"I built this! It’s mine... You can’t— Lord Dream! Stop looking at me like that... I won’t... I won’t kneel!!!"
His voice broke halfway through the sentence.
He swayed sideways, staying upright only thanks to the array’s support...
His eyes were wide and distant as conflicting urges ripped through him: the fierce instinct to strike, the sudden urge to let the sword fall and plead, the dread of seeing everything he’d built crumble beneath that single, piercing stare.
Across the courtyard, the survivors suffered the same emotional overload.
"Make it stop!" an elderly dragon roared, both hands clamped over his skull as blood leaked from the corners of his eyes.
"I can’t think! I can’t!!"
A fox-kin woman dropped to all fours, screaming.
"It’s inside my head... get it out! Please get it out!"
Several more collapsed where they stood, bodies twitching, mouths open in silent or half-formed screams as their minds buckled under the relentless surge of obsession and dread.
Inside the Laughing Sword, Loki felt the pull of submission clawing at her thoughts with far greater force than before.
The urge was almost magnetic—an instinctive, bone-deep need to abandon Tyron completely, to step forward and offer Akasha whatever he required, to please every unspoken demand that radiated from him.
Her massive hands gripped the edge of the green-and-white couch hard enough to tear the fabric. Green eyes burned with furious refusal even as her body leaned forward against her will.
It wasn’t Tyron’s influence that kept her standing, but the deep-seated hatred all Asgardians held for the Unus, and, of course, her own schemes.
’I will not... allow Asgard to fall.’
The thought was a snarl inside her own mind.
’I will not kneel. I will not—’
Yet the desire to submit kept rising... the promising relief if she gave in and served the Unus standing in the waking world.
She clenched her jaw until it ached, long black hair falling across her face as she fought the need with every fragment of will she still controlled.
However, before she could even get her emotions fully in check, the Waking Fears took hold.
HUMMMMM!!!!
In an instant, the chaos intensified across the surrounding 900 million kilometers.
All around Tyron, in his vision, the courtyard around him twisted into a nightmare.
The stone steps under his feet splintered and charred, while banners of his new empire crumbled to ash in the gusting wind.
He saw Lord Dream standing calmly over the ruins... everything Tyron had built reduced to smoking rubble.
The factions he had bound through years of careful work lay scattered and broken, their leaders dead or kneeling in chains.
Every step of his path, every seed he had planted, every title he had claimed was erased as if it had never mattered.
The image struck so deep that his mind began to slip.
"No, no, no, no!" Tyron’s voice tore out of him in a ragged scream. He clenched both hands against his skull, fingers digging hard enough to draw blood.
"That’s mine! I built it! You don’t get to take it! You don’t get to stand there like it means nothing!"
He staggered in a tight circle within the protective ring of the rewritten array, still upright only because the constructs held the space around him.
Tears of pure rage and terror streamed down his face.
His eyes were wide, unfocused, darting between the real courtyard and the collapsing vision that refused to leave.
"I was going to make them remember me! I was going to reach Pantheos! You can’t just— stop looking at me like that!"
And back inside the Laughing Sword, Loki’s worst nightmares crashed down at once.
She saw Asgard burning—golden spires collapsing under blackened skies, the halls she had once walked reduced to molten ruin.
She saw her Universe collapsing under the weight of the very doom she had spent eras trying to halt.
Timelines splintered in every direction, worlds breaking apart like delicate shells.
Galaxies dimmed one by one, their stars vanishing in quick, silent bursts, as though something immense and unstoppable was consuming them entirely.
"No... I was stopping it!"
Loki’s voice cracked inside the sword as her massive hands clutched at the air as the visions poured through her without mercy.
The weight of those futures pressed down so hard that her colossal form lost balance.
She toppled sideways off the green-and-white couch, long black hair cascading around her in a dark wave.
All the while, outside, Tyron’s reaction only intensified.
He dropped to one knee despite the array’s support, still clutching his head, blood running between his fingers as he screamed at the figure who was still laughing hysterically before him.
"Lord Dream... I’ll kill you... I’ll carve my name over yours! You don’t get to end me like this!"
However, slowly, Akasha’s Eternal Incompletion took effect.
His wild, forced laughter abruptly stopped, cut short as if sliced away.
In its place, a deep, cold frown spread across his face.
"What shitty luck do I have?" He muttered as he quickly scanned Tyron.