Dimensional Keeper: All My Skills Are at Level 100 Chapter 1326 Final Battle - 13

"You must find a way to counter this strike," the clone urged, his tone thinning as he spoke. "Failure means the end for everyone."

A faint smile touched the clone's lips, a flash of relief crossing his features as his physical form began to break apart into shards of shadow and light.

"I have reached my limit."

With those words, he vanished entirely.

The frozen world surged forward once more.

The momentary stillness shattered.

The conflict erupted again.

Max remained motionless for a heartbeat, the torrent of potential futures forced into his consciousness still ringing painfully in his mind. As time resumed its unrelenting march, his focus snapped back to Mark. The world-ending technique was already unfolding, its weight crushing the very fabric of reality. Max sensed its approach not as a mere physical object, but as an inescapable fate.

"I have to put a stop to this," Max whispered, his grip tightening on his hilt until his knuckles turned pale.

The realization was clear. No standard technique would suffice. No concept governed by the laws of this world could withstand a force designed to delete existence. To oppose a strike of this scale, he needed something that defied erasure—something that transcended cause, effect, and time itself. He needed an attack forged from the core of a Cosmic Path.

However, therein lay the obstacle.

Max possessed no Cosmic Path.

He wasn't even close to achieving one.

"Damn it… think," Max commanded himself, his pulse thumping loudly in his ears. "What is the requirement for a Cosmic Path?"

A direction.

That served as the bedrock for everything existing beyond concepts. Within the Divine Realm, concepts were merely instruments. A Cosmic Path represented the underlying will, the trajectory that permitted laws to progress infinitely without collapsing into paradox. Yet, Max had never forged one himself. He had only analyzed them, grasping their mechanics through the lessons of his master.

The strike loomed closer.

Reality began to shudder.

"Toward what direction should I guide my Severing Sword?" Max wondered desperately. "Space? No. Space is relative. If I only cut through space, then time, causality, and existence itself will remain out of reach."

His thoughts raced through countless variables at incredible speed.

"Time?" he dismissed the idea at once. "Time is even more limiting. A blade tethered to time will fail the moment it encounters something that exists outside of it."

The elements were even less suitable. Fire, lightning, frost, or shadow—every element was merely a manifestation of reality, not its foundation. Any path built upon them would be burdened by their inherent flaws.

"I cannot evolve the Severing Sword through any elemental affinity," Max understood grimly. "That would only confine it. It would lead to specialization rather than transcendence."

The power bearing down on him was no longer far off. It weighed upon his senses like an approaching apocalypse, a final judgment etched into the universe.

"What is the true essence of the Severing Sword?" Max demanded of himself, fighting back the rising panic. "It doesn't just cut physical matter. It doesn't just cut energy. It doesn't even just cut laws."

His pupils dilated slightly.

"It cuts relationships."

The Severing Sword did not function by destroying things; it functioned by disconnecting them. It separated cause from effect, existence from meaning, and law from authority.

"That's it," Max whispered.

A Cosmic Path could not be constructed on what things were composed of. It had to be built on the principles that allowed things to exist in relation to one another.

"I shouldn't lead my blade through space, time, or elements," Max determined as clarity finally cut through the mental fog. "I must lead it through the concept of separation itself."

His hand grew steady on the hilt.

"A path that severs without bias. A path that ignores whatever stands in its way. A path that refuses to acknowledge laws, causality, or existence as barriers."

The attack was massive, only moments away from completion.

Max lifted his sword with slow deliberation, his breathing growing calm rather than frantic.

"I will not follow an elemental route," he said quietly. "I will walk the path of absolute severance."

In that heartbeat, something deep within Max transformed.

It wasn't a change in power.

It was his emotions.

Max had no way of knowing if he would regret this decision later, nor did he have the time to weigh the long-term costs. The attack was descending, reality was being deleted, and any delay meant total annihilation. If a path was to be walked, it had to be stepped upon now.

Throughout his journey, Max had felt emotions in their most raw states. He had known joy that was blinding and sorrow that pulled him into a bottomless pit. He had felt rage like a tempest consuming the horizon and despair that left him hollow. Love had provided him strength, and hatred had honed his resolve.

He had never truly embraced these feelings, particularly after receiving an artificial soul that intensified every sensation a thousand times over. Yet, the truth was undeniable. These emotions had defined him more than any Cultivation technique, any legacy, or any law he had mastered.

Anger never felt like simple annoyance; it was a consuming storm that obliterated logic. Happiness was never subtle; it erupted without restraint. Sadness didn't just linger; it weighed on him until he could barely draw breath.

For the longest time, Max viewed this as a defect—a burden he had to carry. Now, facing total destruction, he realized something he had previously overlooked.

Those emotions weren't flaws.

They were his only constant.

If he tried to anchor his Severing Sword to space, it would be limited by distance. If he chose time, it would be bound by sequence. If he chose elements, it would be restricted by form.

But emotions were unique. They existed within all sentient life. They persisted beyond laws, beyond dimensions, and beyond logic itself. They weren't dictated by causality; they were the creators of causality.

A blade forged from pure emotion wouldn't care what it faced.

It would cut through gods and mortals with equal ease.

Max inhaled deeply.

For the first time in ages, he stopped resisting his feelings. Instead, he welcomed them entirely. Every memory rushed back at once: the thrill of gaining power, the agony of loss, the white-hot fury of betrayal, the cold isolation of being alone, the dread of failing, and the iron will to protect.

Every feeling he had known since his awakening flooded his heart and his artificial soul, before streaming outward into his weapon.

The sword began to vibrate.

Its hue shifted. It was no longer silver, black, or gold. It became a deep, dark gray—neither light nor shadow, neither vital nor dead. The space surrounding the blade warped in silence; it didn't tear or crack, but simply became irrelevant, as if the sword no longer recognized space as a reality.

"My chosen direction for the Cosmic Path of the Severing Sword," Max said softly, his voice unwavering as the apocalypse surged toward him, "is the Emotion Severing Sword."

Then, he released everything.

In that split second, Max cut away every emotion inside himself.

The stress of stopping Mark's strike vanished. The brief spark of joy from his epiphany died out. The grief over his clone's end faded into nothing. There was no rage, no terror, no hope, and no misery. Only absolute clarity remained.

His blade became a void.

And because it was empty, it possessed the power to sever everything.

Max stepped forward and executed a swing.

There was no blinding light, no thunderous boom, and no roar.

The arc of the blade passed through Mark's world-erasing strike as if it were mere smoke. It didn't clash or struggle. It simply severed the link between cause and effect, cutting the reason for the attack's existence before it could reach its target. The erasure process unraveled in silence, collapsing into the void as if it had never been cast.

The slash moved onward.

It struck Mark.

And Mark's body was once again divided in two.

It wasn't ripped apart or smashed; it was cleanly severed.

"What?" Mark bellowed, his voice piercing the shattered sky as shock finally replaced his insanity. He stared down at his split form, at the precise and heartless cut that had divided not just his physical body, but the very core of his being. "How is this possible?" he screamed, a mixture of fury and panic taking hold of him.

This time, his regenerative powers did not immediately kick in.

The two halves of his frame shook as divine radiance flickered feebly between them. Skin and energy began to crawl toward one another at a grueling pace—so slowly that Mark felt every passing second as an eternity of suffering. Minutes ticked by without any real progress, followed by more. He realized with a surge of dread that it would take hours to recover, and even that hope felt uncertain.

Max's blade hadn't just inflicted a wound.

It had severed the very law of causality.

The hidden thread connecting Mark to the crown—the link that allowed infinite divine power to flow into him—had been sliced through.

Cause no longer resulted in effect.

The crown no longer accepted Mark as its host. His immortality, once absolute, was now just a fading echo trying to maintain its grip.

"No," Mark croaked, his self-assurance crumbling. "This cannot be..."

Before he could pull his fractured will together, a new figure appeared.

Lucien walked forward with total composure, taking a position between the two halves of Mark's body. The surrounding chaos didn't seem to affect him. His gaming goggles sat on his face, displaying scrolling lines of cryptic data, while a simple controller was held loosely in his hand as if this were a casual game.

He looked at Mark with a blank expression.

Then, he spoke.

"Permanent erase."

The command was quiet, almost indifferent.

Reality answered the call instantly.

Mark's divided form began to dissolve. He didn't burn or shatter; he simply dispersed into countless bits of existence that unraveled into the void. Divine radiance crumbled like dust. Infernal power scattered and vanished. The remaining threads of causality still attached to him snapped one by one, leaving him with no anchor, no point of return, and no future where he could exist again.

"Impossible!" Mark shrieked as his essence unraveled, his voice now filled with pure horror. "How can this happen? I am immortal! I cannot be slain! I am the god of this world! I am not meant to die!"

His screams rang out for a moment, then went silent.

The final remnants of his presence vanished, erased beyond any hope of return. No soul, no essence, and no echo remained. There was no blast or final defiant cry—only a sudden absence.

Silence took over.

Where a deity had once stood, only the tainted crown was left, hovering lifelessly in the air before Lucien. Its dark crimson light pulsed weakly, as if it had lost its purpose now that its master was gone.

The immortal crownbearer was destroyed.

Permanently.