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617 Horror Versus Karma

Horror was dumbfounded.

Never before had he experienced this sort of direct threat. He had been born from the collective effort of the very first specimens of sentient life in the universe, and that placed him in a high position within the pantheon of aspects of existence. Those who could threaten him were few and far, and it was only rarely that he had the pleasure of meeting them.

The threat they posed on him, however, was not direct, but subtle.

Had any of them truly wanted to take his life, he would not have been warned, he would have been dead. Yet Daniel stood there. A simple human, he recalled. A common mortal who, at some point in time, had managed to obtain the power of his kind.

As he wondered about Daniel’s mind blowing evolution, Horror couldn’t help but think of the one and only entity capable of creating such a change. Another being whose appearance coincided with Horror’s own birth. The aspect of Destiny.

Suddenly, reality started to fall into place, and he finally realized who Daniel was.. And who this golden power belonged to. An aspect that, in the scope of their kind’s average life, could be considered to have been just born. The entity whose sheer existence had challenged the very nature of the omniscient Fate.. he was Karma.

This revelation, however, did not have that characteristic satisfactory feeling, as it spawned more questions than answers. Was Karma not a champion of Destiny? And how could Daniel have been one, if Destiny himself was not born yet? He asked himself, unable to figure out an answer.

One thing realizing who Daniel was did, on the other hand, was to significantly calm him down. The existential power of horror was not much different from the power of karma. They were both powers born from the actions of sentient creatures. Horror encompassing anything that would cause fear and pain, and Karma including the conscious decisions sentient beings made in their lives.

But while the scope of their powers’ nature was quite similar, there was a crucial difference between the two.

Horror was much older than Karma. His influence across the multiverse was fully established, while the power of karma was a new concept. Had Daniel become Karma the moment Horror was born, the latter thought, their strength could have matched, but that was not the case. Nobody had even heard of the existence of an aspect of Karma until a few years before.. And therefore, Daniel must have been weak.

This guess was supported by the strange attack Daniel had employed. An attack that had required him to use the majority of the karmic power in the surroundings, leaving it bare. Horror was convinced that, once this power was exhausted, Daniel would be little more than once more cultivator for him to kill.

At that point, the praise he would obtain from the pantheon of aspects of existence, he could not help but shiver in excitement at the very thought of it. After all, not many aspects of existence had the chance to kill a member of their own and prove their might, let alone kill public enemy number one.

Eager to prove himself, the aspect of horror responded to Daniel’s threat by once again reaching for his throat. His talon-like fingers merged into a single hand-sized drill, which he sent piercing forward with impossible speed and might, leaving cracks in space that connected with the ongoing destruction of the universe.

Daniel, however, was not bothering himself with the attack. Instead, his attention was dedicated to the hole he had just come out of, which now was the size of a large villa. In its immense power, the hole was growing out of control, and its edges were threatening to reach the still trapped armies.

Suddenly, two more of Horror’s deceased champions exploded, producing uncountable golden lights. These lights, as if wishing to fulfill any of Daniel’s desires, immediately dashed towards him in two distinctive rivers of power. The quicker of these golden rivers dashed past Daniel’s position, and immediately engulfed the large hole in space. Then, with a simplicity both Horror and Roley did not believe to be realistic, squeezed the hole shut.

By the time the hole in space had been sealed, Horror’s attack had come in contact with Daniel’s body, but so did the second golden river.. which instantly merged with the young man, turning him into a holy statue of pure gold. *CLANG!* Horror’s hand suddenly jerked backwards as the full extent of his attack’s might bounced back.

“What..” Horror muttered, appalled.

He knew that his body was significantly more powerful than Daniel’s. It had to, for the strength of the body of an aspect of existence was enhanced by the representation of their power within the universe. A power which, Horror recognized, was not much, but that was constantly growing thanks to the continuous production caused by the entrapped armies. Yet a vast amount of the power of Karma had appeared out of nowhere, and boosted Daniel’s body to a point where Horror, with all his strength, was unable to harm him.

Daniel continued to ignore Horror and his visible confusion, and instead turned towards the two large armies, now shrouded into a nebula of horrific existential power.

Once again, the corpses of the champions of Horror popped like fireworks. Each releasing an immense amount of karmic power that rapidly took the shape of a large cloud that instinctively drifted towards the entrapped armies. As it came in contact with the first elemental, a sudden desperate yell was heard.

The golden cloud continued to move, freeing more cultivators and elementals by the second.

It was at this point that the recently freed Der had managed to open his eyes. He had left the entrapment of Horror’s domain no longer than a minute ago. A minute he had spent with his head between his hands, eyes closed, and body trembling like a leaf in the wind. Not many could imagine what nightmares a cultivator as powerful as he was, had to witness to end up in that state.. But as he realized that he was not trapped anymore, he started to regain his bearings.

“Dan.. what are you doing here?” Der asked as he looked around, and noticed the figure of Daniel, who had now stopped glowing. Near the interdimensional he saw the uncountable corpses that were once the feared horde of Horror’s domain, while on the other side, were the Immortal Armada and the elemental army, who, just like him, were slowly being awoken by a cloud of pure gold.

As his eyes met Roley’s, he found the same confusion he had been feeling. His inquisitive look was only answered by a shrug of the latter’s shoulders, right before turning to look back at the clash between the two deities.

At the sight of the two armies being freed, Horror was infuriated. He still could not understand where Daniel was taking these waves of power from, but his actions were tipping the scale from its favorable position. He had to do something.

With murder on his mind, he allowed his body to grow to the biggest of sizes...

His horns alone, thought to be as big as mountains before, could now dwarf stars. His enormous glossy eyes had split into billions of normal sized ones, and moved over his sickly skin to cover his body completely, while his lamprey-like mouth had become so large, and filled with so many teeth, that it was not absurd to believe it capable of crunching planets like candies.

His growth alone had struck millions of cultivators and elementals, sending them flying across space for all eternity. As their silhouettes were about to disappear into the infinite darkness, however, several more monstrous corpses exploded, forming a second cloud that picked them off the horizon like lint from a black shirt, halting their motion.

Horror’s immense size, however, did not seem able to hinder his movements.. And in the blink of an eye, Daniel found himself in between two enormous walls. The two hands joined together, coming down to clap him into a fine paste.. yet, Daniel did not move.

*SPAH*

The sound that produced by the two clapping hands was beyond deafening.

It created a shockwave that cracked space under its passage, and pierced the eardrums of everyone present. Roley, Der, the freed cultivators and elementals.. Not even their unconscious counterparts were spared from the piercing sounds that almost erased their consciousness, and left them bleeding from the seven orifices.

Yet, that was not the end, as the multitude of light brown orbs of horrific power started to converge towards Horror’s now joined hands, seeping into the nooks and crannies of his hands which, in comparison, were as wide as valleys.

This power pushed its way in between the two joined palms, where Daniel’s body lay still, pressed in between two walls of oily and rubbery skin. It then attached itself onto his body, forming layers and layers of powers that, not unlike that he had used to entrap Der, Roley and their followers, had locked him into a matryoshka of curses. An entrapment formed by the entirety of horrific power the two armies had produced.

Aware of the shortcomings of his karmic counterpart, Horror had decided to trap Daniel into his own nightmares, hoping that, once separated from the sudden and unexpected bursts of karmic power he had employed, he would have nothing to use to free himself.

“DANIEL!” Roley shouted as he channeled the elements in his body, creating several orbs of pure mana and sending them towards the colossal monster. These attacks, however, fell onto Horror’s skin like droplets of water, blasting through the outermost layer of grease, but dealing no damage whatsoever.

Seeing this, Der shot towards the monster’s ears, and with enough effort to bring him to the precipice of death, he ordered, “LET HIM-BLERGH.. GO!” copious amounts of blood left his mouth, taking the shapes of beads that, due to the monstrous creature’s gravitational pull, rained onto his skin like a faint drizzle.

His words seemed to disturb the aspect of Horror, but only enough for him to shake his head in annoyance.

As the many eyes that covered Horror’s palms saw layer upon layer form, he finally relaxed. Daniel was in another plane of existence now. One that, like Death’s underworld, and Spirit’s spiritual plane, was fully separate from the multiverse. A plane of existence where Karma could not be created, and from which he could not gather his powers.

As the thought that he had won began to form in his mind, however, a faint golden light started to shine through the many layers of brown colored power, growing in intensity until, as if unable to resist its magnitude, the latter started to bubble, and melt away.

When the first of these bubbles burst, a powerful ray of light shone onto Horror’s skin, scorching it thoroughly. The leviathan’s monstrous cry resounded across the universe as he pulled his hands back, and his body slowly started to shrink.

When he was half the size he had been, the orb of horrific power had become twice the size, malformed by the numerous bright bubbles that were ready to burst. By the time he was as big as a two story building, many of the bubbles burst at the same time with loud pops, releasing dozens of rays that made it look like a disco ball.

Shocked, Horror decided to flee.

He had used all the fresh new power the trapped cultivators and elementals had produced for him, and now that all of it was gone, he was left with the universes’ faint contribution to his power.. Which was far from enough. And to make matters worse, by now, most of his victims had been freed, preventing them from creating more.

Unwilling to die, the aspect of Horror shot in the direction of the interdimensional portal. If he could leave, and jump into a universe he owned, he would have at his disposal enough power to kill Daniel.. But if he stayed, he would die.

With impossible speed he dashed through space, but before he could go far, three blades of golden light shot out of the disco ball, and with incomparable speed, struck the aspect’s body.

Feeling lighter, Horror looked down, and immediately realized that both his legs had been cut diagonally, and that his arms had been severed.