Chapter 189: A Massive... Joke - One After Another
In the void of a Star Cluster far from Kalpa, inside a Star System with nine worlds, a yellow and green world sat as if it always did.
A lone white sun bathed the world in a constant, gentle light.
Two vast continents of deep green sprawled beneath skies adorned with swirling yellow clouds, while oceans of pale gold shimmered as they caught the glint of faraway stars.
The world moved with the calm, steady pulse of a place untouched by fear, its harmony unbroken and timeless.
But then, without warning, the fabric of the void itself began to shift.
HUMMMMMMM!!!!!!!
Two massive purple hands began to form in the emptiness surrounding the world.
However, they did not appear all at once.
First came the faint outline of enormous fingers, each one longer than mountain ranges, woven from pure dream essence and divinity that pulsed with soft purple radiance.
The palms followed, vast and flat, closing in from opposite sides of the planet with slow, deliberate certainty.
The moment they appeared, they began to move with a slow, deliberate grace.
As they drifted closer together, the space between them seemed to darken, the surrounding void pressing in as though it were being squeezed into nothingness.
CCRRRRRACCCCKKKKK!!!!!!!
HUUMMMMMM!!!!!
The silence grew heavy, thick with mounting pressure, as the yellow-and-green landscape quivered.
The space around the world itself ripped apart in long, shrieking ribbons, scattering into the void.
Overhead, the white sun’s glow twisted and distorted, bending unnaturally beneath the weight of the force drawing ever closer.
Cracks of pure purple divinity raced across the world’s surface, splitting the two continents and boiling oceans before the hands had even fully closed.
----
On that world’s surface, Tyron Alabaster stared up at the sky in stunned disbelief.
A cascade of purple and white light swallowed everything around him. It was as if the very heavens had disappeared beneath the blinding radiance.
The air grew thick and oppressive, as though the weight of an entire world—and more—had suddenly pressed down on his shoulders.
His knees gave way at once, and he collapsed from the skies onto one knee, still clutching the Laughing Sword, its green-and-black blade rasping against the fractured ground.
"Master... what the hell is going on?!" he shouted, voice raw against the rising roar of the collapsing sky.
Loki’s shimmering illusion lingered close, her lips curling into a wry smile that did nothing to hide the unmistakable disgust in her eyes.
"We’ve gone and pissed off an Unus," she remarked, her tone casual but edged with irritation.
"That’s what’s going on."
In that moment, the massive purple hands kept closing in, and the light became so blinding that the edges of the world seemed to melt away. Loki’s green eyes never left Tyron, her gaze steady and unshaken.
Her voice stayed calm, almost soothing, even as everything came to an end.
"But... don’t worry. Things will be better when you wake up."
Then finally.... the hands met.
KRRRRRAABOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!
The yellow-and-green world did not simply break... it was utterly crushed.
The two continents crumpled like soaked paper before bursting apart in a spray of immense black-and-purple fragments.
In the same breath, the oceans vanished in a single, deafening instant, while mountains were crushed into fine dust between invisible, closing hands.
Then, without warning, darkness swept in and consumed it all.
It was nothing like the night’s sky... no, it was an all-consuming, absolute blackness that poured from the seams of the purple hands and flooded the entire world.
The lone white sun blinked once, twice, then vanished, like a candle snuffed out in a sudden gale. Light seemed to fade away entirely in the space between those dream-born fingers.
When the roar finally faded, all that lingered was scattered debris drifting in the void.
Chunks of the shattered world drifted aimlessly in the vast emptiness, scattered like debris from some ancient, forgotten cataclysm.
Wisps of frozen blood and fine dust from pulverized stone wandered lazily through the gaps, lingering in the darkness like the fading sigh of a world long gone.
There was nothing more—only silence and the remnants of what once had been.
For a long while the void remained broken.
The shockwave from the destroyed world had not faded cleanly.
Even the closest stars flickered and dimmed, their light bleeding into the surrounding darkness as if wounded.
As nearby worlds trembled in their paths, debris from the destroyed yellow-and-green planet drifted in slow, endless clouds, throwing the entire star system into instability.
HUMMMMM!!!!!!!
But the chaos didn’t last long. Moments later, a green light appeared.
It burst without warning, engulfing the battered star system in one sudden, violent flare.
The color was not soft. It was deep, toxic, and absolute—an emerald radiance that burned through the lingering darkness and painted every drifting fragment of the dead world in an unnatural brilliance.
Within that green radiance, the same yellow-and-green world began to form again.
And... It did not rebuild piece by piece.
It simply appeared—larger than before, now with a single supercontinent, its oceans deeper, its single white sun hanging heavier beside it.
The atmosphere condensed around the new mass in a rush of pressure and power.
Then the world stabilized in the void with a low, resonant thrum that vibrated through the surrounding space, as if reality itself had been forced to accept its return.
For one stretched moment it hung there, complete and whole, larger and more solid than the original had ever been.
Then it vanished.
One instant the world occupied the void.
The next, the space it had filled was empty again, as if the world had never existed at all.
Only the residual green glow remained for a few fading heartbeats before that, too, drained away into the black.
The whole thing was truly... one catastrophic joke.
----
"Why does it seem like... bullshit suddenly keeps knocking?" Akasha muttered to himself as he had no clue that the world he had just destroyed had simply come back to life.
And there was a good reason for that...
The moment he saw with his own two eyes that the world was destroyed, a certain being appeared before the group with an urgent message for him to look outside the world of Kalpa.
Luna and Yume both shifted closer, their expressions more serious than usual.
"You’re not wrong... This keeps getting stranger," Luna said, pink-and-purple hair drifting in the soft wind of Dreamer’s Peak.
Her heart-shaped eyes narrowed slightly.
"First that Loki... and now this."
Yume stood a step behind her, blue-streaked purple hair resting still against her shoulders.
Her voice came out cooler, quieter than before.
"Right... she must be ridiculously strong... and old as hell. Even you couldn’t get a clear read on her power level," she murmured, casting a glance toward Luna.
"And now... there’s a whole damn army here."
The being who had arrived with such urgent news stood just a short distance away on the plateau.
It was the Wanderer—more accurately, the consciousness of Kalpa itself.
In that moment, there was no cloak to conceal it.
Instead, a pure white silhouette stood alone, featureless and motionless, as if the world itself had decided on the simplest form it could imagine filling the space.
Its gaze seemed to wander across the mountaintop, passing over the three of them before stretching outward toward the farthest reaches of the sky.
"What... could have drawn so many beings to this world?" the white form murmured, voice soft and ancient.
"I expected some would eventually come... But there is still a little over seven decades until the barrier is meant to open."
However, to those words... Akasha did not answer aloud.
He simply focused on the All-Seeing Orb still resting in his awareness.
In that moment, purple light flickered behind his eyes as he looked beyond Kalpa’s atmosphere.
The image came into focus. In the vast emptiness just beyond the world, a hundred thousand Cosmic Union auras were gathered in a loose formation.
Looming behind them was an enormous Star Ship, its dark hull blending into the black expanse of space, so immense it could cast a shadow over entire continents if it ventured any closer.
Akasha made a quiet mental count and let the number settle.
"Really... One hundred fucking thousand." He muttered with a shake of his head.
Yume’s gaze flicked toward him.
"Master... What are you going to do?" she asked.
Luna’s lips curved into a small, teasing smile despite the tension still lingering in her eyes.
"Looks like it’s time to play hero again," she said lightly.