The Purge of the Grey Absolute
Amid the war consuming the Otherworld, Grey moved like a silent reaper through his own domain, exterminating every single powerhouse above the rank of supreme warrior.
No matter how vast the Grey Realm within the Absolute Realm might be, the number of supreme experts possessing over one trillion in divine power does not exceed ten thousand. These beings lead the primary forces that divide and rule the Grey Realm. Only by eliminating them all can I achieve perfect control.
Even those who fell short of one trillion were swelling into uncountable numbers of upper-level warriors, forming a formidable military presence. Yet no matter how much strength they pooled together, they were no match for Grey, who wielded the absolute dimensional authority backed by a divine power of one thousand trillion—an amount that defied comprehension.
Any barrier or ward crumbled helplessly before his dimensional authority, and his mobility was nothing short of miraculous. There was simply no way to stop him as he crossed the Absolute Realm—which felt impossibly vast even to gods—in the blink of an eye to crush his foes. What was more, to Grey, who could launch simultaneous attacks across territories larger than a regional universe, greater numbers only made it easier to harvest vitality.
The result was inevitable: they were picked off one by one before they could even assemble their armies.
The quick-witted ones sensed the purge and fled to other domains, but only those without established forces could manage such an escape.
The leaders of the major ruling races, who had poured eons and immense effort into building their colossal powers, had no choice but to stand and fight—only to be slaughtered.
And now, the final supreme warrior-level expert hung suspended in the air, his neck gripped in Grey’s hand.
“W-wait—! Just a moment—! O Grey—! I have never shown you the slightest disrespect! I will swear my loyalty even now—kuaaaaaaaaagh—!”
The arrogance with which he had once made demands had completely vanished, replaced by desperate begging. The thick blood mist drifting around them was all that remained of the near-supreme powerhouses who had tried to stand with him. The instant black dots had flickered into existence around Grey before vanishing, those warriors had been ripped apart and annihilated in a single heartbeat.
It was almost impossible to comprehend how such a being could be ranked at the very bottom, the weakest among the 10 Mainstays. And the consequences of the violence he had unleashed on a whim were enough to drive anyone mad.
“I have no need for subordinates or loyalty,” Grey said coldly. “With the absolute authority of dimensions at my command, time and space impose no restrictions. I manage everything alone. You are the last. You pathetic, worthless weaklings. Go on—speak again. As the Grey Absolute, who besides Jinri has the right to demand my permission or control?”
He gave a light flick of his hand. The aftershock was brutal, rattling the man’s skull and brain like a storm inside his skull. Crack. Crunch. Snap.
His mouth opened against his will as screams poured out. The agony of something exploding throughout his entire body, accompanied by deafening booms, was pain he had never experienced even in the fiercest battles of his life. From the inside out, bones and organs were indiscriminately pulverized into dust without distinction.
Over the gruesome sight, Grey’s emotionless sneer spread like a shadow.
“Heh heh heh… And you lot, who grew fat on Gold’s support, dare speak of loyalty to me? Besides, as you yourselves insisted, I have no interest in the opinions of someone who couldn’t secure the full support of their own faction. All that matters now is the simple hierarchy of power. So stop your worthless babbling and die. Become vitality.”
Crunch. Crack. Snap.
Having erased the last supreme warrior and every force that had followed him, Grey reclaimed the vitality with a refreshed expression. He had killed without restraint, but not a single speck of vitality could be wasted. Jinri measured progress by the quantity of vitality within a domain. Since every supreme warrior he had slain had been converted into vitality and absorbed, the numbers remained perfectly consistent.
He had been meticulous—leaving untouched the planets inhabited by sentient beings and only eliminating the supreme warriors above one trillion along with their irreplaceable core forces.
“Kuhuhuhuhu… So this marks the complete annihilation of every supreme warrior with over one trillion divine power in the Grey Realm? The ones who fled can simply be killed again when they return. It makes no difference. They originated from the Grey Realm, so the vitality they provide remains unchanged. And the one hundred billion surplus I registered upon entering the Grey Realm is more than sufficient.”
Grey expanded his dimensional senses to their utmost limit, scanning the entire Grey Realm. Nothing but silence. He had traversed the whole territory, slain every supreme warrior above one trillion, and ground into vitality anyone who tried to obstruct him. Nothing could possibly move.
Those who had failed to surpass even a single trillion and existed only as upper warriors could never dare challenge the Grey Absolute, whose power exceeded one thousand trillion. At last, the realm had stabilized.
“This should quiet the ones influenced by Gold for a while. Still, it would be rather disappointing to call this hell. Then it’s time for the next step. Come forth—! Creator Great Gods of the Substitute Gods—Daui—!”
A low, resonant vibration shook the void. Uwoooooooooong—! Uwoooooongwoong—!
Beings larger than planets tore through space and materialized. They were Creator Great Gods of the Substitute Gods, each possessing over one trillion in divine power. More than five hundred of them had answered the call—an overwhelming force. Every powerhouse known to stand nearly equal to the supreme warriors of the Absolute Realm had appeared simultaneously within the Grey Realm.
With no Creator God King present, Daui—the representative—stepped forward, bowed his head with utmost respect, and spoke.
Grey had already proven his capabilities in the most direct manner possible. The supreme warriors of the Absolute Realm were known to stand above the Creator Great Gods of the Substitute Gods. Yet more than ten thousand of those supreme experts and their powerful factions had been annihilated or forced to flee in less than a week against an enraged Grey.
With the other 10 Mainstays currently bound by the ranking war, no one could stop him—let alone dare to interfere. Once again, the Absolute Realm was forced to remember that any single member of the 10 Mainstays possessed the power to destroy their entire world.
Therefore, Daui conveyed his intentions with the respectful resonance unique to the Substitute Gods.
But Grey’s reply was ice-cold.
“Words? This is an order. ‘All available’? I commanded the total mobilization of every Creator Great God. What use is a mere fraction of the Substitute Gods to the 10 Mainstays? Do you dare play word games before me, Grey? Shall I slaughter every Creator Great God of the Substitute Gods just like the rest?”
“…….”
Daui could only sigh deeply.
Huu… If he truly meant to eliminate us, he would not have summoned us in such a formal manner.
Grey had suddenly issued a total mobilization order despite not being the Origin of the Substitute Gods. They had initially considered ignoring it. Now, that was impossible. He had personally demonstrated what happened to those who showed him disrespect—eradicating every supreme warrior in his domain.
Moreover, having no clan of his own, he required no consensus. He crossed the boundless territories of the Absolute Realm in moments, deploying wide-area authority to hunt down and slaughter every supreme warrior and their entire supporting forces. He had even slain and exiled the highest-ranking clans of the other 10 Mainstays as if they were insects.
If the other 10 Mainstays had been present, such a continuous string of insane, tyrannical actions could never have occurred. Yet the supreme warriors of the once-mighty Grey Realm have been wiped out or driven into exile.
The entire process had taken merely one week. Mathematically speaking, given three months he could annihilate the entire Absolute Realm.
The only ones capable of stopping him—the other 10 Mainstays—were immobilized by the ranking war. From past experience, that conflict was never resolved in mere days. It had once dragged on for over a year.
Until this ranking war concludes, Grey is the undisputed, sole ruler of the Absolute Realm.
By slaughtering every powerful being and faction that had shown him the slightest discourtesy, Grey had proven himself a mad tyrant. No one had expected the virtue and dignity of someone like Yuil Yongsinje, but this was excessive beyond measure.
The lives and deaths of every living being and spiritual entity in the Absolute Realm now rest in the hands of a mad despot. There is no one left to stop him.
Every being in the Absolute Realm had finally grasped the reality of the situation. They held their breath, trembling in terror.
When the 10 Mainstays led their clans into the ranking war, overall control naturally weakened. In the past, supreme warriors had used that period to settle grievances and disputes over interests through massive wars and duels, which was why everyone preferred the conflict to last as long as possible.
Now, they could only pray for the ranking war to end quickly so that this insane Grey’s unchecked dominance would cease.
We never realized the danger of a prolonged ranking war being decided by the narrowest margin at the very end. If he deliberately self-destructed in order to break away at the fastest possible speed, his malice is truly terrifying.
If the sole tyrant of the Absolute Realm decided to attack the Substitute Gods on any pretext, they had no means to resist. The Origin of the Substitute Gods, a direct blood relative of Jinri, was forbidden from direct intervention. That left only one among them who could possibly receive divine protection and fight—Seongmyeol, who had fully settled into his divine spirit form.
But the Dimensional Magic God who should have become that divine spirit had instead chosen external manipulation. He was now little more than a puppet.
In the end, if Grey decided to exterminate the Substitute Gods, there would be no escape.
Which was why Daui had declared an emergency and gathered every clan as ordered. In that position, he bowed deeply once more and asked.
At this declaration of surrender, Grey once again drew his black robe over his face. The beautiful youth’s features vanished, but the lips visible beneath the hood curved into a perfect semicircle. An extremely pleased tone followed.
“By the authority of I, Grey, I hereby open the Grey Realm of the Absolute Realm to the Substitute Gods.”
The reaction was explosive. Before Daui could even respond, the other Creator Great Gods who had been watching nervously from behind shouted in unison.
Though the Substitute Gods had fought their way up to become a major ruling race by the 498th Master Universe, they possessed only numbers. Their greatest problem was the Master Universe’s insufficient and thin vitality. Even their leader Daui had only reached five trillion, while the rest barely managed one trillion each.
Of course, even that was enough to deter casual provocation thanks to their racial traits. But the root cause of their weakness was solely the lack of vitality.
The Master Universe is simply too weak to fully embrace the Substitute Gods.
In the end, they had no choice but to once again don their planetary bio-armor—used to restrain their existing divine power and reason—create new stars, and cultivate sentient beings. Accumulating vitality for rank advancement or training was an unthinkable luxury in such barren conditions.
Despite an abundance of qualified and capable individuals, each Master Universe could only support one or two Creator Great Gods with roughly one to two trillion divine power.
No matter how efficiently they remodeled or created stars with ten times the creative power of ordinary gods, the Master Universes were simply too vast. This was the extent of their progress. The 499th Master Universe, which had yet to establish itself as a ruling power, was in such dire straits that a sealed preliminary Creator God of the Substitute Gods had to take charge.
Resolving the fundamental problem of insufficient vitality would require an unfathomably long time.
But if they could obtain even a portion of the Grey Realm—which possessed density and quantity at least two circles higher than the Master Universes—every problem would vanish.
Creating stars and training in an Absolute Realm domain where vitality overflows would make advancement ridiculously easy.
For the current Creator Great Gods, surpassing ten trillion in divine power would become merely a matter of time, and not even that much time. They would only need to visit the Master Universe for work.
Yet the Absolute Realm belonged to the 10 Mainstays. Each of them possessed personal clans numbering in the hundreds of millions, all exceeding one trillion in power, supported by various ruling factions that maintained tens of thousands of supreme warriors above one trillion each.
Those established ruling powers had built impenetrable walls, completely blocking any influx or attempts by the Substitute Gods. As latecomers who were still relatively weak, the Substitute Gods had been forced to endure massive ability loss and burden due to their lack of vitality, leaving them no choice but to expand into the Master Universes.
Their refusal to engage in normal conversation with other races, instead conveying only one-sided, secretive intentions, was also an expression of resentment toward every species that had thoroughly rejected them.
There had been pride in being chosen by Jinri as the next divine race, but without this accumulated grudge, they would never have ceased dialogue.
As the Substitute Gods possessing over ten times the creative power of ordinary gods, they rarely needed assistance from others.
That convenience had become their racial characteristic.
Yet now the Grey Absolute had publicly declared that he would open his own domain to the Substitute Gods.
There could be no greater news for their kind.