Parallel Memory

Chapter 693: When one Refuses to Fall

The thunder of Aaron’s dying cry had barely faded when the world lurched violently back into motion.

Holy mana still surged across the battlefield like a second dawn—brilliant, searing, too pure for the blood-soaked warfront it illuminated. The plains were shattered into uneven ridges and clefts, the ruins of ancient structures half-swallowed by the earth. Soldiers—human, elf, and beastkin alike—stumbled under the radiance, clutching their weapons as holy light washed through them. Wounds closed, breaths steadied, but fear intensified; the mana felt like a farewell as much as a blessing.

But none of that light reached the other side of reality.

Inside the fractured pocket dimension Aamon had created—an unstable realm stitched from darkness and collapsing time—the storm only grew darker.

Zero exhaled shakily, the sound too thin against the thunder of ripping space.

Even from across the dimensional tear, he felt Aaron’s death. It wasn’t physical pain, nor emotional grief—it was something deeper, something carved into instinct. The holy mana made it impossible to ignore. It magnified the sensation until the echo ricocheted through his bones, his blood, his memories, his soul.

Aaron... was gone.

Just like that.

And Aamon could not mourn, not truly. He could not celebrate, either. There was no victory in the loss of someone who should’ve lived longer, fought more, teased the world with his arrogance just a little more. Someone whose existence forced even devils to look up and acknowledge him.

But this battlefield did not allow time. Grief was a luxury for people far away from the epicenter of gods and calamities.

Aamon forced his eyes away from the flickering afterimage of holy light and locked onto the ones infront of him.

The devil lord’s aura—always oppressive, always monstrous—now rippled with turbulence. The edges of his demonic presence wavered like flames in a storm. His breaths came harsher. His half-healed wounds darkened instead of regenerating cleanly. His tail lashed behind him in uneven arcs, betraying agitation.

Zero saw it.

Everyone else might’ve missed it—but not him.

Aamon’s movements were no longer perfectly fluid.

His breathing was uneven.

The regeneration of his cracked obsidian-like scales had slowed.

His claws, once extensions of pure, seamless killing intent, now trembled for half a heartbeat before strikes.

It wasn’t the holy mana weakening him.

Aamon was simply stretched thin. Too thin.

Holding a dimension from collapsing while fighting the Emperor of Destruction—a being who shredded reality by existing—was already suicidal. But Aamon had also felt Aaron’s death. Not as enemies feel victory, but as brothers feel loss.

Even devils weren’t immune to that kind of pain.

Zero swallowed, throat tight.

He didn’t know if Aamon deserved sympathy. Probably not. But understanding... that was unavoidable.

”This is it,” he whispered to himself. ”This is the moment.”

The moment where overwhelming power wasn’t the deciding factor. The moment where strategy mattered. The moment where all his parallel choices, all the roads he didn’t walk but saw anyway, converged.

This was what Parallel Memory had taught him.

Not to be the strongest—

—but to understand the battlefield better than anyone else alive.

He tightened his grip on his daggers. The hilts felt heavier than before, weighed down by every possibility he had glimpsed through countless failures.

Slowly, he closed his eyes.

Parallel Memory.

Show me everything.

His consciousness didn’t expand outward. It folded inward, spiraling into depths shaped by layered echoes—ghosts of timelines where he hesitated too long, where he misread Aamon’s rhythm, where he failed to synchronize with the Emperor’s destructive arcs, where his dragonoid form shattered under pressure.

He saw himself die fifty different ways in a heartbeat.

Then he pierced through those failures into the one path that held possibility.

Time slowed.

The collapsing dimension became a shallow hum, the Emperor’s movements a series of concentric patterns, Aamon’s killing intent a dissonant melody he could now predict—not perfectly, but enough to slip between the notes instead of being consumed by them.

When Zero opened his eyes again—

He moved.

His dragonoid form surged back to life momentarily, fueled not by rage or fear but by instinct sharpened to an impossible edge. Golden cracks of light pulsed beneath his skin. Scales surfaced along his arms, layering like molten armor. His irises glowed with a feral brilliance that blurred the line between human and beast.

He wasn’t fully transformed—he couldn’t be. His body was far too exhausted and the holy afterglow was already fading. But this half-state... it was enough.

Aamon noticed immediately.

”You again.”

The devil’s voice cracked—not with fear, but bitterness deep enough to grind mountains. ”Do you truly think yourself worthy of interfering with me?”

Zero didn’t answer.

He didn’t need to. Words were weight—sound slowed the mind, slowed the hands, slowed the outcome. Silence sharpened everything else.

He vanished.

Not teleported. Not blinked. He simply moved so fast that space didn’t bother acknowledging his departure.

Aamon reacted instinctively, wings flaring open with a snap that generated a shockwave.

But the Emperor of Destruction was already on him.

The colossus, whose presence made all creation recoil, stepped into Aamon’s guard with a motion that seemed almost casual—but every step fractured the ground into expanding spirals.

Aamon blocked the first blow with crossed forearms, but the force still sent him skidding backward.

And in that exact moment—

Zero appeared beneath Aamon’s guard, a flicker of motion riding the Emperor’s shockwave like a shadow carried by a greater storm.

Both daggers met Aamon’s armored abdomen.

Draconic energy surged.

The explosion of force wasn’t loud—it was too dense to scream. It hit like condensed lightning, like the breath of something ancient waking inside Zero’s bones.

Aamon staggered, actually staggered, boots grinding against the fragmenting floor of his own dimension.

For the first time, Aamon didn’t look furious.

He looked hurt.

Not physically—emotionally.

”Humans...” his voice rasped, as if scraped raw from the inside. ”Taking advantage of my brother’s death?”

Zero froze, just for a heartbeat.

Because the tone wasn’t the hateful hiss he expected. It wasn’t the mockery devils used when they called humans insects.

It was grief—

weaponized into accusation.

But Zero couldn’t yield to that. Not here. Not on a battlefield literally collapsing around them. Not when the survival of every frontline—Kaileon’s unit, Nock’s priests, Seraphine’s mercenaries—depended on finishing this fight before more reinforcements from the arena crash arrived.

Zero’s jaw clenched.

There was no room for morality. No room for honor, or ritual, or even fairness. Not when the world itself was gasping under the weight of god-level combat.

He moved again.

Aamon snarled and lunged, claws trailing destruction, wings tearing through air as if ripping a curtain. Zero deflected a slash that would’ve bisected him, flipping backward as shockwaves erased the ground where he’d stood.

The Emperor intercepted Aamon from the side, smashing him through a floating slab of displaced terrain. Zero followed instantly, diving into the wreckage, blades crackling with residual draconic aura.

Aamon emerged with fury blazing across his features, fangs bared, tail whipping. He caught Zero’s wrist mid-strike, their clash detonating sparks. The force traveled up Zero’s arm like fire—but Zero had already twisted, shifting momentum and driving the other blade toward Aamon’s throat.

Aamon jerked back, barely avoiding decapitation.

”You... insects...” Aamon hissed. ”Even united, you cannot comprehend what you face.”

”Maybe not,” Zero whispered, already moving again, ”but we don’t need to comprehend it.”

He spun, slashing across Aamon’s ribs as the Emperor’s arms closed around the devil from behind, pinning him for a split second.

”We just need to kill you.”

Aamon roared, breaking free of the Emperor with a shockwave fueled by pure agony. The entire dimension shuddered, cracks racing across the sky like shattered glass.

Zero didn’t retreat.

He advanced.

Because in this moment—

he understood something Aamon didn’t.

The devil lord was unraveling.

The Emperor was tireless.

Zero was reckless enough to gamble his life on a single opportunity.

And this battle wasn’t just physical.

It was emotional.

Aamon had lost his brother.

Zero had lived entire timelines where he lost everyone.

In this single overlap, Zero found clarity.

He darted in again, blades cutting through demonic aura that felt heavier than gravity. Aamon blocked once, twice—but his reactions were just a fraction slower.

A fraction was all Zero needed.

The next strike pierced Aamon’s side. The one after that plunged toward his heart.

The Emperor’s fist descended from above.

Aamon’s scream tore through the collapsing realm—an enraged, grief-stricken howl that felt like the death cry of a star.

And Zero—

—kept moving.

Because hesitation meant death.

Because grief, even a devil’s grief, could not stop the world from ending.

Because the battle wasn’t over.

Not yet.

Not until Aamon fell.