A massive explosion of destructive power erupted outward from the crater, the shockwave reaching all the way up to shake the gathered gods in the sky. It was a power of sheer destruction that was simply overwhelming in its intensity. They watched in shock and growing unease as Zenryu stepped out from the massive crater, which was now miles deep and miles wide from the impact.
Zenryu emerged from the destruction, his injuries already beginning to heal. It was a frightening sight to behold. Every layer of concepts, every level of existence, every aspect of his being had been erased by that single punch... but Zenryu came back anyway, overcoming all of that annihilation. His power was skyrocketing to new heights with each moment, growing stronger from the very destruction that should have ended him.
"Haha! To think, even with all of this power, we're still infinitely apart." Zenryu said with a twisted laugh as he emerged from the crater.
That attack had hurt like nothing he had ever experienced before. Having every aspect of your existence erased simultaneously—it hurt like absolute hell. But the power he gained from surviving it overcame the pain entirely. He would have died if not for his two wives making him functionally unkillable... no, actually, he wouldn't have died even without their protection.
Why? Simple. Instant Death would have killed Zeus the moment he posed a lethal threat and the list of failsafes went on and on. The fact that none of these abilities triggered meant one important thing—even with every aspect of his being completely erased, Zenryu would have healed and come back naturally without any intervention. Plus, he had improved Endless Nine by fusing it with negation abilities, so he would simply pop back into existence regardless of what happened to him.
There was also the fact that he possessed an infinite number of lives stacked on top of each other. Even if something managed to erase all of his lives and went beyond that somehow, he would still come back one more time. Although that final return wouldn't grant him complete immunity to what had killed him. So, in truth, he was never in any real danger from Zeus's attack.
Plus, Zenryu gelt like he could overcome his own end. So, even if all failed, and he truly meant his end… he could just overcome it. He had instant death, and with that came the source of the end.
"Destruction... no, The End? Darkness as well?" Zeus and the other gods were visibly shaken by what they sensed emanating from Zenryu. They could perceive his Source, and it was a fusion of countless other Sources merged into one. Destruction, The End, Darkness, The World, Creation—the list went on endlessly. There were simply too many to name or count.
"Well... let me get serious then," Zenryu said calmly. He took a deep breath, and in the very next instant, the gods moved as one. Of course, they were not going to allow him to do whatever he was planning to do. At speeds far too fast for anyone to comprehend, they appeared before Zenryu, whose eyes were currently closed in concentration.
They moved not to kill this time, but to seal him away. Zenryu's nature was too strange, too dangerous. They wanted to avoid making him any stronger through combat. But their pupils all shrank in shock when they realized they had sealed nothing more than an afterimage he had left behind.
They quickly spun around to look behind them, where Zenryu now stood with his hair changed to purple and white, standing straight up towards the sky like flames. Zenryu slowly raised his hand, almost like he wasn't in any hurry to complete such a simple task.
"This is the first time I've used this..." As the words left his mouth, all of the gods suddenly shook violently as countless blows and impacts landed upon their bodies simultaneously. The force caused them to drop to their knees, gasping in shock and pain.
This was no longer Ultra Ego or Ultra Instinct. It wasn't even Ultra Ego Instinct fused together... Zenryu had merged everything with this transformation. Be it Kaio-Ken, the Eight Gates, Nen, Sage Mode—every power-amplifying technique he possessed had been combined, creating the most complex fusion of abilities to increase his strength that had ever existed. This was the most powerful state of being gained from simple techniques alone.
It was, of course, incredibly overpowered. For even with Kaio-Ken multiplied to infinity, it still wouldn't be enough for him to fight these gods on even footing. This was because the gap between them wasn't just one infinity, or even an infinite number of infinities. It was beyond even that incomprehensible scale. Zenryu called this form Ultra Omega.
'...Such power, and it's still increasing with every passing moment.' Odin thought, genuine horror creeping into his ancient heart as he sensed Zenryu's energy. Zenryu slowly turned to look at them, smirking confidently... but he paused when the gods suddenly began to transform before his eyes.
They broke free from their humanoid limitations, quickly becoming powerful and mighty giants that towered over him, looking down upon him with even greater power than before. They had been in a significantly weakened state while maintaining their human forms, and now they had shed those restrictions.
'...How the fuck are they still just avatars?' Zenryu thought in disbelief. Once again, these gods were stronger than him, even after his transformation.
"Seal." Odin spoke a single word while holding his massive hand down towards Zenryu. The word transformed into an ancient rune that sealed away all of existence beneath it. Everything under this rune was sealed—be it the very concept of fate, down to the abstract idea of freedom itself. It was all locked away and made inaccessible.
But before Zenryu, the rune shattered like fragile glass, shocking the gods once more. Zenryu held his hand out toward the sky, and the gods all froze as rifts began appearing throughout space around them. From these rifts, copies of Zeus slowly crawled out, identical to the original in every way.
This was The Twentieth Movement of the Cosmos—Factor Mimic. It allowed him to create an exact copy of any target that would obey his commands absolutely.
How was this even possible? He had just created beings stronger than himself... but the explanation was simple. Zenryu possessed the Arceus Bloodline, the Magic of Origins, the Void Shiki Bloodline, and countless more reality-warping abilities. These many powers had been taken and fused together to make Factor Mimic infinitely stronger and absolute in its effects. Zenryu had created these copies of Zeus. They weren't perfect replicas, but they were close enough to rival the originals in raw power.
"Haha! Who is more overpowered than me?!" Zenryu laughed triumphantly while looking at the real Zeus, who was shaken by the sight of his clone... no, he was absolutely horrified. This clone was growing stronger by the second, for it possessed all of Zenryu's powers and abilities, including his capacity for infinite growth.
Zenryu appeared standing on his Zeus clone's shoulder, looking down at the assembled gods with amusement dancing in his eyes.
"Use Ultra Omega," Zenryu commanded. Instantly, the Zeus clone's hair shot straight up as the transformation activated. The gods' faces turned pale at this sight. Their expressions grew even more horrified when the Zeus clone created an infinite number of additional clones of itself, forming a vast dome of identical beings completely surrounding the trapped gods.
Zenryu felt that if he had truly fought them with everything he had, he would have been forced to go Super Saiyan or access some other transformation. He didn't want that, for one simple reason—he wanted to gain everything possible from his system first before even beginning to tap into his Saiyan transformations.
These super Saiyan transformations would disappear as Zenryu's bloodline evolves, so gaining them right now would be a waste.
"Cough... I think we had a misunderstanding here," Odin said shamelessly, trying to negotiate. But in response to that, Zenryu simply had the clones attack without mercy. The gods tried to fight back, but with the clones constantly evolving and adapting to counter every technique they used, the gods were quickly overwhelmed. One by one, they were killed.
Zenryu held out his palm, drawing the Sources of the fallen gods into it. The gods were desperately trying to heal and reform themselves, but the lightning from the countless Zeus clones suppressed their regeneration, allowing Zenryu to devour them completely. Zenryu didn't stop there either. He devoured the clones as well, ensuring that going forward, he would possess the combined power of everyone he had absorbed and beyond.
"Not bad..." Zenryu said with a satisfied smile, returning back to his base form. He rubbed his stomach thoughtfully, feeling the gods who were still fighting back inside him. But they were locked away in his stomach, trapped in an imaginary space from which they couldn't escape no matter how hard they struggled. Plus, within that space, Jarvis wasted no time using The Power of the Pencil to accelerate the process, having them be quickly and thoroughly devoured.
[Congratulations, you have leveled up. You have reached level 500,000]
The gap between himself and those gods had been greater than everything he had ever faced combined. So much so that he leveled up by such an astronomical amount from killing them. He had been at level 100 just a moment ago, and now he stood at 5hundred thousand. This was a clear sign of just how impossibly wide the gap between himself and those gods truly was.
Anyways, these were the abilities he went on to obtain with his newfound levels:
From Demon King Daimao: The Law of Identity, All Stories, Void Body, and the Akuto Sai Bloodline.
From 07th Expansion: The Featherine Bloodline and Creator Bloodline
From The Daily Life of the Immortal King: The Wang Ling Bloodline.
From Kajiri Kamui Kagura: The Hajun Bloodline, the Reinhard Heydrich Bloodline, the Mercurius Bloodline, the Marie Bloodline, and the Ren Fuji Bloodline.
From Yasei no Last Boss ga Arawareta: The Ruphas Mafahl Bloodline and the Alovenus Bloodline.
From Akashic Records of Bastard Magic Instructor: The Glenn Radars Bloodline.
From Fire Force: The Shinrabanshō-Man Bloodline.
From Fullmetal Alchemist: The Truth Bloodline.
From I Was Caught up in a Hero Summoning, but That World Is at Peace: The Shallow Vernal Bloodline.
[You have transcended your fleshly form. You have evolved and have become the God of Anime. The System and the Host have fully fused. You have gained every anime ability, skill, technique, power, item, and bloodline without limit.]
Zenryu, who had been in the middle of picking more abilities from the vast selection before him, suddenly paused. Without warning, he received everything from every anime that had ever existed. His physical form began to flicker and fade, for he was ascending beyond mortality, losing his corporeal shape as he transformed into something far greater—the God of Anime itself.
***
Fun fact: the avatars of the gods were at most capable of destroying islands. Are you shocked by how weak that sounds? How could they be so limited when they were countless times stronger in their true forms? To understand this, we have to examine what the building blocks of this world actually were.
Down below everything else was the multiverse. This was where the universe holding Earth could be found, along with an infinite number of other universes stretching out in every direction. These countless realities were but the roots of the great tree of Yggdrasil.
Going up the tree was the tower. Climbing it was, of course, an incredibly difficult task to accomplish, as the infinite floors were vast beyond comprehension and overflowing with countless dangers at every turn. The plane of the gods existed among the vast number of branches that filled the tree of Yggdrasil. But the main branches were the nine primary ones, which corresponded to the nine realms.
For example, Zenryu was currently in Midgard. The ground in Midgard and the other eight realms wasn't simple dirt and stone—it was, in fact, Gaia's physical body. For this reason, the continent was truly infinite in scale. One couldn't simply walk off the edge of the island and into the ocean, for the ocean was, in truth, another primordial being entirely—Hydros.
To reach the other continents that filled Midgard, one would need to accomplish the impossible and successfully cross the vast and dangerous sea.
Midgard, along with the other realms, was broken into two distinct parts. The lower plane and the higher plane. Gaia formed the lower plane, and above stretched Uranus, the sky itself.
Uranus had been defeated by his own son with the help of Gaia long ago, and he was sealed away in the heart of Gaia's being. But after Zeus came into power and defeated Gaia's son, this enraged Gaia, who tried to strike down Zeus in revenge. She was defeated and imprisoned for her rebellion.
In fact, all of the primordial beings had been imprisoned, for the gods had overpowered them one by one. Even Nyx, the strongest of all the primordials, was defeated when her own children betrayed her.
Zeus and the others possessed enough power to destroy Gaia's body entirely... but she was immortal in the truest sense. Her very being was the source of Yggdrasil's existence. Without her, everything would fall into the primordial Chaos that had birthed them all.
So, all of this was to paint a picture of what could happen if the true form of a god made a move in this realm... and that was exactly what happened as Zenryu looked towards the heavens. A massive palm, so enormous that it covered the entire sky from horizon to horizon, descended from above.
Zenryu, who had just finished reforming his body, looked up at the descending sky. His face was completely blank as he observed this apocalyptic sight. He had just reformed using the Chaotic Law of Identity. The current him was simply too powerful to put into words... yet he still found himself feeling like an ant before this palm that threatened to crush all of existence beneath it.
By the way, all of his abilities had evolved during his transformation. The power of contradiction had fused with every single ability he now possessed. Meaning, if someone was immune to one of his abilities, it would form a contradiction between them and his power, which would empower his ability and allow it to affect them anyway. In other words, every ability he had was now absolute in its effects.
"What should I use? Avesta?" Zenryu said softly, looking up at the palm which was simply too overpowered for most beings to even comprehend. He had far too many abilities to choose from now, and one of the most overpowered among them was Avesta.
[Avesta] — Azi Dahaka's power, which allowed him to add his enemies' original power with his own and create the mirror opposite that neutralized everything, following the principles of dualism. No matter what situation or kind of enemy he faced, no matter how many gods one could gather against him, it was impossible to win against someone wielding Avesta. The more enemies that fought against him, the stronger he would become. By imitating his enemy's power and absorbing the antithesis into himself, he could use it without limit.
Overpowered, right? But Zenryu didn't just have Avesta—he had Chaotic Avesta, an evolved version. And he intended to make the ability even more broken than it already was.
'...Jarvis, take every power, ability, and technique I have. Copy them and fuse them all together with Avesta... do this to every ability I possess.' Zenryu thought while casually pointing towards the heavens. The massive palm that was still descending from a few miles up in the sky suddenly stopped in place. Zenryu had halted it like it was nothing at all.
Slowly, cracks began spreading across the surface of the massive palm. The divine construct tried to transform into a massive mountain and seal Zenryu away instead. But it shattered into golden light before it could complete the transformation, and Zenryu absorbed every particle of that divine energy into himself.