A few Degritones redirected a few stray chunks of cooling lava from hitting the enemy forces. "This is going to be annoying to clean up properly. Proper realm eaters are taxing."

"At least we actively know the flow to negate the headaches the system enforces, rather than just have it as something our sub-process obtained from Music figured out."

A purple fog rolled up on the Degritones and their cloaks began rapidly flailing around to keep it off them. "Great. I imagine this would hurt my eyes if they were actual eyes, holy cow this needs a seizure warning. Continuous, omnidirectional attacks are annoying."

"But hey, we got that part right, at least. Steam isn't the best way to test that." Rust dust began piling up below their feet and the ground itself turned to rust.

One Degritone did a long blink and said, "Oh, wow, that's a pretty cool idea. I imagine the system makes it cost a ton, though. Converting matter to iron oxide looks construct intensive. Did we ever do anything like that?"

"Dunno. Been way too long. Could have checked if Skype hadn't deleted the message logs, would have been nice to have a full refresher on all the stuff in the RP."

"How dangerous you think this is, and how's it looking, friendly-fire-wise?"

The other Degritone disappeared for a couple seconds before reappearing. "Seems it's controlled, it's very much not moving toward the army. Could be that it only affects the surface of stuff, in which case, it's harmless to us. Heck, given our regeneration, it's probably harmless even if it can seep into our body. Breathing it in would be super deadly for anyone with low stats, though."

"Would also make equipment really annoying to use. What's it do to enchantments and mana stuff?"

One Degritone flashed to get an enchanted item and the other produced a mana sword. They stuck them outside the ovoid of protection offered by the cloak, which seamlessly deflected the fog around the protrusions. They both rapidly turned to solid rust and the enchantments on the weapon failed as their smooth innards were broken up by the uneven surface of the rust.

"Seeing the cloak in action IRL is way more insane than what we thought it'd look like. Yeah, there's still some kinks to work out, like being unable to detect and block mind attacks, but still. It's fun seeing it properly defend from an omnidirectional attack while still letting our weapons out."

"So, what do we-" the mana weapon was smashed into little chunks of rust as something impacted it, sending Degritone's unprepared arm to the side a bit, "-do about this guy? He's taking up a little more of the battlefield than we'd like a single dude to take."

"That's usually prime's decision. It's not anything near an erasable offense, but I think he should be pulled off by a couple of us to... where's a good spot? Mars? They shouldn't need to breathe if they're participating in this. 1v1 vs an AoE image wouldn't give the AoE image enough credit."

"Nnnnnope, I'm leaving," a voice in the fog said as it retracted significantly and solidified. Platforms of solidified purple fog appeared in the air and the source of the fog jumped from one to another, creating and dissolving more and more to continue their ascent and escape.

"Are we getting law of ninjased? Whatever it's called?"

"Are we what?"

"In movies and stuff, single ninjas are, typically, a frightening opponent. But add in even just a few ninjas all at once, they become super easy to deal with." Another shell shot from their tank. "I see no reason that can't be applied to an army with an image. If we were fighting one tank vs all of them, would we actually fare better?"

"No," a Degritone said, appearing in the middle of the tank. One of the opperators shot at him, but it was blocked by his cloak. "Mostly thanks to Axel's blunder during our fight, I've gained more system-bypassing power than most people could hope to achieve. 1v1, 500v1, or 1v500 would make no difference. Exactly one person on earth has the understanding to get past my defenses, and even if they do, my regenerations through the system are insanity and I can revive myself.

"I could still permadie if someone shut off my system access and used the realm eater on me, but I don't know anyone who can do that. This war is literally just to show people that there's no point fighting. We'll probably be here a week, maybe 2 or 3, before everyone gives up. Maybe a month, people are stubborn. I'm not here to cause wanton death, and those who have attacked your army with lethal force have been dealt with, with the casualties revived."

"Are you here just to gloat?"

"I guess? It's more to demoralize you so you leave more quickly. I'm not very good at human interaction, or I guess sapient interaction now that there's non-humans we could talk to, but blah. It's my job to just slowly go from person to person and try to talk them down, or otherwise show them why they should just leave. We will make sure your higher ups are unable to punish you for desertion."

"It's been 3 days and we've already had 5% of our forces retreat. This is insane, there's, what, a few hundred of them against the millions of us? How have we not managed to take a single one down yet?"

"Well, sir-"

A Degritone appeared beside them.

"All the people that were easy to turn away are gone. Only got a little under 22% to leave," a Degritone said to Degritone prime.

"Cool. Let's go, then," he responded. The sky flashed purple for a fraction of a second and all the Degritones removed their cloaks and went on the offensive, ripping apart tanks and yanking their operators into the sky, holding them there, letting them watch as the Degritones decimated the army. With their cloaks removed, people could actually land attacks on them for the first time in a 6 days.

Infantrymen had their guns crushed before obtaining the same fate. The planes were a little more annoying to deal with due to their speed, with the Degritones being unsure if instant stops would smash their pilots or not, but they were removed from the equation rapidly, if more carefully. By the end of the hour, the only ones left on the ground were those who were unique, rather than stock armies. Millions of soldiers darkened the skies over the few hundred thousand remaining combatants.

A large majority of those held in the sky, especially those among the first caught, who got to witness the entire thing from a bird's eye view, surrendered. Most of those remaining surrendered after being allowed to unload the entirety of their power onto Degritone's cloakless form and seeing him come out unscathed. A handful refused to surrender until they were killed and revived.

With the proximity of the Degritones to hostages, very few people on the ground were confident in not causing friendly fire. Those that were confident enough were told to wait their turn after their shots were ineffective, or blocked if off-target. Some took flight to try to get better angles, but they were forced to join the army, bound in place by movement Stavch.

It took 10 hours of convincing, but the entirety of the rank-and-file, as well as a few of the unique people below who found the display enough to chicken out, surrendered and were taken back to civilization.

"Alright, hands up, who is willing to die to stop me?" Degritone prime projected to everyone through thousands of portals. A few people took the opportunity to try to get some ranged attacks off on him, but he blocked them as many, many hands went up. He stamped a mark onto the souls of everyone who raised their hands. "Alright, time to fight for real. Let's see if you can make this last more than a week."

With that, he closed all the portals and the Degritones descended into the amassed army. Those who were willing to die were given a few chances to get some ineffectual hits in, without them having their cloaks on, before being swallowed up by a black hole and revived after a few seconds, to let them see what happens after death. The ones who weren't willing to die were allowed to completely empty their resources before being reduced to 0 Health.

Around half way through the carnage, massive flowers erupted across the whole battlefield, consuming a majority of the remaining anti-Degritone army and a few of the Degritones in their floral maws, instantly killing every single one caught by them, even the Degritones. Degritone prime took this in and sent the remaining Degritones off on revival duty as he tried to find the originator of these plants.

He donned his cloak just in time for one of the plants to try to chomp him in half. "Those were more effective than I thought they'd be. How'd so many people get marked for hunting while being so weak?"

Degritone turned to look at the voice, originating from a small latino girl. He looked her up and down and squinted his eyes. Her legs are a little long to be a loli. Head's too small, too. Maybe could still fall in the loli ranges, but... he spent a couple fractions of a second to figure out her height, not having any good frame of reference requiring measuring the number of atoms she was tall, which he wasn't able to do at a glance. Nope, an inch and a half too tall. I'm good. The plant released him and went to bite a nearby, fleeing earthling.

Degritone flashed in its way and sent a self-devouring realm eater disk through its mouth and stem. "So, you're one of the system's hunters?" He asked the woman.

"Interesting. You're not even level 150, yet you can kill one of my plants in a single attack. Too bad you won't live long enough to tell me how that works," she said, teleporting under Degritone. She held her hand out toward him and another flower erupted from her palm, engulfing him and surrounding him in digestive fluids.

His cloak kept it off himself as he ripped his way downward, through the flower, while summoning his Condensed sword. He stabbed forward right as the outside world became visible. His sword was stopped by the palm of the woman, who looked confused.

"You litera-" he cut her off by flashing so his hand was covering her mouth and fired a self-devouring disk of realm eater through her skull. Her body went limp and her body was slowly devoured by the realm eater.

At least it doesn't spread off objects it's eating. That'd be annoying to clean up, Degritone thought. "Well, back to-" a flower grabbed him and threw him into the ground while hundreds of small flowers grew around him, wrapping themselves around the ovoid of protection created by his cloak.

He flashed out of their grasp and hundreds of feet out of range of the tallest flower. "How'd you do that?" A female voice asked from behind him. He turned and saw the same woman from before. He looked back at where he'd left the body that was getting eaten, and it was still there, mostly gone.

"Confused? Singular-existence being like yourself have no chance of defeating a multiple-existence being like myself." She flicked her wrist and Degritone's cloak moved to intercept something only visible to Stavch sight. After a second, the woman frowned.

Degritone did a long blink and said, "Wait, you're a timeline hopper? Well, that complicates things. Any chance you could tell me how to form my... I forget what we called it, actually. Time core? Auto-translate exists, I could literally say nonsense and you'd understand what I mean. Any chance you could tell me how to form my time core? The system's method for creating Stavch flows doesn't work for it, for some reason."

"How did you survive that attack just now?"

"Oh, my cloak makes me literally invincible to anyone below multiverse hopper. They can perform time-ignoring feats and actually hit me. Once I become a multiverse hopper, it'll protect me until around half way through that level of power."

"Invincible? Ha! I've heard that one before. How much of what resource to keep up? How fast does it cause you to corrupt?"

"None, and not at all. I'm immune to Stavch corruption, no I won't tell you how. Considering how complex it is, it might just straight up kill a normal person to use it for any amount of time. Depending on how many timelines you can exist in at once, you might be able to keep it active for anywhere between 10 minutes and an hour. Stavch corruption is way more aggressive than raijingeki's limiter. Anyway, time core?"

She flashed in close, well inside the range that his cloak had been blocking attacks before, and tried to stab one of her fingers into his eyes, plant growth already occurring from it. The cloak instantly moved to block it. She grabbed it and teleported it away, but it instantly reappeared. She held onto it and sent a glowing green knee into his crotch, but it flashed out of her grasp and blocked the knee.

"Look, I can literally just stand here for three trillion years and you'd never so much as touch me," the other Degritones returned with all those killed, saw that the intruder wasn't dealt with yet, and ferried them off to safety before coming back to surround her. "Timeline hopper," Degritone prime said to the others.

Various "OooOoOOOs" and "Nices" erupted from the peanut gallery. "She told you how to become one yet?"

She tried ripping in half with movement Stavch, but the cloak flashed Degritone out of the way of the movement origins and smashed the flows out of existence. "No, she's still trying to figure out a way around the cloak."

They all chuckled before saying, "Good luck."

A flower grew out her shoulder and grabbed one of the Degritones by the cloak and flung them into Degritone prime, to no effect. "Ooo, I know, call in Destruction. That should prove that you can't do anything."

The space around the Degritones wobbled and almost seemed to be melting. Spacetime itself was ripped in half through a Degritone, then filled in with newly created space. That Degritone's lower half was split apart, but his upper half was kept in place by the truly invincible cloakium.