{Chapter: 252 Indestructible Horror vs. Relentless Exorcist}
But in truth?
Even he was struggling to suppress unease.
He had faced countless powerful creatures—liches, vampires, void abominations, undead demigods—but never something like Dex.
Most enemies, no matter how tough, could be worn down. Once, twice, maybe three times… a high-level opponent could feign immortality. But after twenty Disintegrations? With no loss of strength?
"This isn't magic," Larte thought. "This is… something far worse."
He had long since abandoned the idea of exhausting Dex through conventional means.
His soul-blazing attacks had shattered Dex's body repeatedly, yet the demon returned without delay, without a scratch, and without fatigue.
"Enough," Larte finally murmured, eyes narrowing. "Let's try banishment…"
It was a tactical compromise. Not ideal. But better than wasting divine-tier magic on a creature that simply refused to die.
Without warning, a halo of sacred energy burst open in the room.
Dex, still contemplating whether to eat his own brain for recycling, froze mid-thought.
Then vanished—his body ripped from reality, forcibly ejected into the void by a primal spell of spatial rejection. It was clean. Silent. Clinical.
And for a few precious seconds, silence returned to the battlefield.
But Larte didn't relax.
In fact, his brow furrowed even deeper.
He could feel it—the exile wasn't complete.
Due to the gods' world barrier, a plane-encompassing shield designed to lock out Abyssal incursions, his banishment spell had been severely limited. Instead of casting Dex into the deeper void—or a hostile crystal wall far from this realm—he'd only managed to hurl him into a nearby spatial pocket.
Still technically part of the greater material plane.
Still close enough… for a monster like Dex to find his way back.
And all too soon…
"WUMMMMMMM"
A deep tremor echoed through the chamber. Space bent.
Then…
"CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!"
Space shattered like glass.
From midair, several pitch-black rifts appeared—gaping holes in the fabric of space.
A vortex of wind erupted from within, strong enough to yank even armored warriors off their feet.
Chairs, scrolls, corpses, and stone debris were all sucked into the dimensional tears, vanishing into the unknown.
Larte glanced at the other unsteady warriors in the distance, a hint of helplessness flashing in his eyes.
He stretched out his hand and cast a defensive barrier around them, protecting them.
Otherwise, many low-level warriors would likely have met the same fate as ants facing a vacuum cleaner. This clearly demonstrated that if one's strength is too low, even watching others fight can result in being instantly killed by the aftershocks.
Furthermore, if Larte hadn't cast some protective spells on them beforehand, many of the low-level warriors would have been affected when facing Dex's true form, becoming some kind of medium for him.
"Hold your ground!" Larte barked.
Even his own men—battle-hardened professionals—struggled to remain standing. A few of the lower-ranked ones screamed as they clung to pillars or each other, their boots sliding across the blood-slicked floor.
If not for Larte's intervention, half the chamber would have been consumed by the spatial maelstrom.
Then…
He returned.
From within the largest rift, two massive claws tore apart the edges of space like curtains.
Through the blood-stained veil stepped Dex, whole and pristine.
Even his horns were polished, his wings stretching wide with renewed fire.
His grin was back.
"Ahh… that was refreshing," Dex said casually, cracking his neck. "Nice place you threw me into, but a bit too quiet. Now… where were we?"
He stepped forward. Each footfall made the ground pulse. Magic wavered in the air around him. The shadows clung to his form like servants.
And worst of all?
He was fully healed.
No holes. No burns. No melted flesh.
Even the brain he'd lost earlier was gone—whether reabsorbed, rebuilt, or replaced, it didn't matter.
He was untouched, like the battle had never happened.
Larte remained still, but the look in his eyes sharpened.
'This… is not just a regeneration,' he thought.
'He is not drawing from his own body. He is feeding on the world itself.'
Dex's passive skill—[Undying Evil Body]—wasn't just a trait.
It was a curse, a blasphemous engine that converted malice, fear, death, pain, and sin into pure recovery.
As long as hatred existed…
As long as mortals screamed, as long as cities burned, as long as agony bled into the wind…
Dex would rise again.
"You didn't banish me," Dex chuckled. "You just gave me a breather."
He exhaled slowly.
The air around him ignited.
The battle wasn't over.
It was only just beginning of End.
---
In the past Dex View.
Dex crouched beside a scorched crater, what remained of his jaw hanging limply by a sinew of burned muscle. His body was once again a patchwork of half-melted exoskeleton and pulsing demonic sinew. He plucked out the chunk of brain that had been dangling from his shattered skull and gave it a playful toss between his hands like a fresh fruit, steam rising from the folds.
He was even planning to consume it himself.
"According to the theory that you are what you eat… if I recover and eat this, maybe I'll gain a little more intelligence," he murmured idly, half to himself.
Despite the grotesque condition of his body, he wasn't distressed. Not even irritated.
In fact… he almost looked amused.
Because he wasn't at a loss. Not at all.
Being forcibly banished from the battlefield had given him insight. During that brief exile—where most would have panicked or unraveled in spatial storms—Dex had observed the distortion in the timeline itself.
From within the cracks of space, he had seen the glow of ancient runic magic. And when paired with the strange way he'd been struck over and over in the exact same spot—no matter how he dodged—it finally made sense.
"BZZZZZT…!"
A vibration thundered through the air like the tolling of a cursed bell.
The space around Dex rippled and blistered, and a wave of scalding heat exploded outward from his core like a detonation, bending the very air around him into waves of distortion.
From within those ripples, dozens of golden runes began to shimmer and glow, like ghostly tattoos hidden within the folds of space-time itself. These runes flickered into view, etched into reality far beneath the surface.
Professionals nearby gasped audibly.
Though few could comprehend the language of time, they could instinctively feel the power humming through each symbol—a resonance that exceeded elemental law and bent the natural order of the world.
"A ritual spell that manipulates time…" Dex whispered, eyes gleaming. "Now that's a masterpiece."
Even those who didn't fully grasp his words felt a cold sweat run down their backs. Spells of this scale… involving temporal manipulation… were the stuff of lost ages and god-wrought miracles.
Then—
For the first time in the entire battle, Larte spoke.
His tone was cold, yet thoughtful. "When I banished you earlier… you noticed it, didn't you? The spatial irregularities outside the barrier."
Dex chuckled and nodded.
"Of course I did. But that wasn't the only clue. During your attacks, I noticed something… no matter how I dodged or changed positions, I was always hit in the exact same spot. Every. Single. Time.
"At first I thought it was my imagination. But then I sensed those runes… And then everything became clear."
Dex raised his hand, flexing his fingers as if reliving the feeling of impact.
"You didn't strike me multiple times. You struck me once or twice at most… and then simply replayed the moment, over and over, by looping that fixed point in time.
"The damage, the angle, the burning—it all repeated. Because the outcome had already happened. My actions, my reactions… were irrelevant."
He glanced down and tapped his foot against the floor. "Even my movement betrayed me. Each time I attacked, I noticed… you shifted slightly. One millimeter here. Two there. Just enough to reset your position and create the illusion that my blows missed."
Dex lifted his gaze.
"You stopped time… moved out of the way of the attack… then let time resume."
A beat of silence followed.
Then Larte answered with faint amusement in his voice, "So many flaws… and yet it makes no difference. Whether you understand or not, whether you resist or not… it won't change the outcome."
As if to prove his point—
"THOOM!!!"
Dex's chest imploded, as if struck by an invisible hammer.
Dozens of exorcism runes bloomed like searing brands across his torso. Flesh peeled away like scorched bark, revealing the glowing entrails beneath.
His left arm fell off at the elbow, the bones dissolving in mid-air.
And still, he smiled.
Because he understood now.
Larte wasn't controlling time, not truly. He was simply shaping a tiny fragment—a localized bubble, a simulated temporal loop.
'You haven't mastered time,' Dex thought. 'You've just built a sandbox.'
A clever illusion, yes. Powerful, yes. But also flawed.
This "timeline" didn't touch the grand stream that spanned the Mi Ling world, the cosmic river that carved through the universe, or the multiversal tide that the Outer Gods themselves feared.
Furthermore, due to the imperfections of this small timeline, it inevitably had various flaws and defects. For example, its influence on higher-level beings was extremely limited; it couldn't achieve higher-level time manipulation, nor could it affect the individual time of living beings to achieve effects like resurrection, rejuvenation, or locking health and mana.
If Larte truly possessed time's dominion… he wouldn't be wasting time trading blows.
He would've frozen Dex completely, or better yet, reset his existence before the [Evil Immortal Body] ever awakened.
Or he could have just frozen his time. After all, a being that has completely ceased activity is no different from being dead.
But he hadn't.
'Because he can't do that,' Dex realized. 'He's bluffing. Brilliantly, but still bluffing.'
The temporal cage had limits.
It couldn't lock blood.
It couldn't reverse resurrection.
It couldn't stop my thoughts.
And it sure as hell couldn't contain a monster like me forever.
And in that realization…
Dex grinned wider than ever.
"Time… is on my side."is