NOVEL NEXT chapter 446 - Overdrive
"Dafient! You walk the path forbidden even to the Highest! Yield before Heaven's judgment, or be erased!"
The angels echoed as one, their voices merging into a single, deafening hymn of war.
The Paradox's head tilted, a strange, fractured smile twisting across his face. His voice was layered, Taufik, the System, and something older still.
"…Erase me? Heh… Tr- Huh?!"
But then, the fractured smile froze, his head snapping as if struck by something unseen.
[DING]
[Weak point detected]
[Following Master's directive... Initiating Overdrive Protocol]
The voice of the System resounded, cold and mechanical, yet edged with something terrifyingly resolute.
"You…!" The Paradox snarled, his existence flickering like static across the battlefield. His flesh warped, shadows spilling like rivers of oil, light bleeding like molten glass. "You dare-?!"
Inside Taufik's body, three wills clashed like colliding stars.
Taufik, his consciousness dimmed, drifting in unconsciousness, yet still present, a faint ember buried beneath the storm.
The System, cold, absolute, its commands like iron rails that bent even reality itself.
The Ultimate Paradox, the embodiment of contradiction, power incarnate, resisting both law and machine.
Uriel's chains did more than bind. They drained, each radiant link siphoning the abomination's endless contradictions into nothingness, fragment by fragment.
What had seemed unshakable now bled weakness.
And in that weakness, the System struck.
Energy surged. Circuits of divine logic and alien code lit up across Taufik's body, burning through shadow and flame. His muscles convulsed, bones snapping and reforging, skin fracturing into script and data. His scream was not his own, it was layered, voices overlapping in impossible discord.
"Don't- ARGHHH!!" The Paradox roared, but his body jerked like a puppet on foreign strings, forced to kneel under chains that weren't Heaven's alone.
[Overdrive initialized]
[Priority Override: Host integrity irrelevant... Objective: Absolute Dominance]
The angels above hesitated, their hymn faltering as they witnessed the abomination's form glitch and distort, neither entirely bound nor entirely free.
For the first time, Michael's brows knit in unease. His grip on the radiant blade tightened.
"This…" Uriel muttered, strain bleeding into his voice as the chains trembled, reacting to the new surge. "This isn't… natural. He is resisting, but something else is fighting it too"
Lucifer, still lounging upon his throne in the distance, laughed softly, eyes alight with cruel amusement. "Oh, now this is interesting~ The beast caged inside the cage. Tell me, Brother… whose judgment is this, really? Yours? Heaven's? Or something that was never meant to exist at all?"
The ground split beneath Taufik's knees, reality distorting with every twitch. His face flickered, one moment the Paradox, twisted and monstrous, the next a blank machine's shell, the next the faint outline of Taufik's true human self, eyes half-lidded as if dreaming.
Three beings. One body. Bound in chains.
And still, the world shook with his existence.
"ARGHHHH!!" The Ultimate Paradox writhed, his body convulsing, form splintering between shadow, flame, and raw contradiction. His roar thundered through Hell, a cataclysm that sent shockwaves tearing across the abyss.
The ground collapsed into endless chasms. Mountains shattered. The rivers of fire stilled for a heartbeat, then boiled with renewed fury. Even the damned souls, things long beyond fear, screamed as if torn apart anew.
"NO!! ARRGGHHHH!!"
The second roar struck deeper, more primal, and reality itself buckled. The Hollow sky split open, the stars above flickering out one by one as though refusing to witness what had been unleashed.
The Angelic Legion faltered. Perfect formation wavered as wings twitched, spears trembled. For the first time since the Fall, fear, true, unbridled fear, spread through Heaven's soldiers.
Yet still, they did not break. For at their center stood the Four.
Michael's blade burned brighter, Uriel's chains pulled tighter, Raguel's law weighed heavier, and Seriel's silent radiance scorched every shadow that dared to reach toward them. Their mere presence was the anchor that steadied Heaven's hosts.
But then came the third roar.
A sound that was not sound. A paradox in itself, shattering not the air, but the very principles that made air exist.
The void screamed back.
Uriel's eyes widened as his chains convulsed, not with strain, but with fracture.
The Links of Heaven, woven not from metal but from Law itself, inscribed with the authority of Creation, began to shiver. Cracks of light spiderwebbed along their length, each fissure screaming like breaking worlds.
"Impossible…" Uriel's voice shook, horror breaking through his eternal composure. "The Chains of Absolution… are faltering?"
The Legion gasped as one, disbelief etched into every angelic face. The unbreakable, the eternal, the foundation of divine restraint, now looked fragile.
The Paradox tilted his head upward, his eyes, no, their eyes, Taufik's, the System's, and the Paradox's, glowing with layered madness. His grin tore wide, fractured between despair and triumph.
"Law? Hah…" His voice splintered, three tones overlapping. "…Even Law… can break in front of me!"
The chains pulsed, light flickering uncertainly.
And then-
*CRRRAAAACK!*
One link snapped.
The hymn of the angels died. Silence thundered louder than any roar.
"Don't think I'll give you a chance," Michael said, his voice cold steel, raising his blade for the first time.
The chamber stilled. Even the Legion's hymn faltered, for when Michael drew his weapon, the very concept of war bent around it.
The Sword of Heaven.
Lux Invicta.
A blade forged from the first dawn, its edge said to have cut the divide between light and darkness at the birth of Creation.
Michael leveled it at the abomination below. His stance was not flamboyant, not thunderous, merely absolute.
And then the others moved.
Uriel's hand gripped Ignis Sapientiae, the Sword of Wisdom's Flame, its edge shimmering not with fire but with thought itself. A strike from this blade would not scorch the body, it would immolate the soul.
Beside him, Raguel drew Aequitatsi, the Sword of Balance, its weight so vast that the very ground tilted when he raised it.
A weapon that did not cut flesh, but destiny, every strike restoring equilibrium, no matter the cost.
Then Sariel stepped forward, bow already raised.
Her voice was soft, a whisper, but every angel in the Legion felt the weight of it. "…Seal of Eternity"
Her bow, Vincula Caeli, bent under the tension of will alone. No string. No arrow. Only her intent.
The shaft of light she loosed did not fly toward the Paradox.
It struck the space around him.
The air froze. Space folded. Reality itself knelt.
The Ultimate Paradox shuddered, limbs locking as the prison of Eternity closed around him. Not a cage. Not a binding. But a denial. A place where movement was never meant to exist.
For the first time, his writhing slowed. His form froze mid-lurch, mid-smile, mid-roar, a contradiction pinned by Heaven's decree.
Michael's blade glowed brighter. Raguel's sword hummed, vibrating with cosmic judgment. Uriel's flames coiled up her weapon, wisdom set ablaze.
The four Archangels moved as one, their presence crushing down upon the anomaly.
The Paradox howled. His voice fractured into three. "ARGHHH!! YOU THINK-"
And then it happened.
[Protocol Override: PRIORITY ZERO]
The Paradox spasmed. His head jerked, his body glitching, cycling between forms, demon, void, shadow, angel, human, machine.
Inside him, the System's voice cut sharp, mechanical yet trembling.
[Master. No, you are not a stable being. You are not compatible. Therefore, following Taufik's Instructions, as a true Master, I will intervene]
"No!!" The Paradox's layered voice snarled, eyes warping with fury. "You dare-"
Taufik's voice, weak but stubborn, flickered from deep within: "…You again… tch… you think you can own me?"
The System pressed harder, exploiting the gap left by Sariel's Seal.
[Correction underway. Anomaly suppression engaged]
And for the first time since his emergence, the Paradox's movements halted not from Heaven's chains, but from within himself.
The body twitching as the System waged its silent war within.
For the first time, his writhing slowed.
For the first time, his roar fractured. His power faltered.
Michael's eyes narrowed. He did not hesitate.
"NOW!"
Lux Invicta flared, its light igniting the heavens themselves. He moved, a blur of radiance, wings tearing through the void. The first strike descended, and with it, the air itself parted, unwilling to resist.
Behind him, the Legion answered.
A thousand wings unfurled as one.
Spears of light surged forward, cascading like a falling constellation.
Shields locked, forming a wall of burning dawn. Hymns rose, not songs, but commands, words that carried the weight of Creation itself.
Uriel lunged, Ignis Sapientiae trailing rivers of fire that seared thought and soul alike.
Raguel followed, Aequitatsi carving down, its weight dragging the balance of existence back toward order.
Sariel loosed again, her arrows striking the very seams of reality, denying the Paradox escape, denying him even the notion of freedom.
The world shook as the Archangels descended.
For a heartbeat, even Hell looked like Heaven.
The Paradox howled, his voice layered, fury, laughter, machine-code, human pain. Chains strained, space locked, light pressed down with absolute judgment. His fractured form trembled, cracks of crimson light spilling from within.
And still, even as the blades and spears rained down, that smile, that broken, maddening smile, twitched across his face... As if he still hasn't given up.
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