Half a second till either Icy or Lostradus survived.

The fifty seconds of time compressed into this short span gave Icy as much time as possible to control the several snakes of condensed mana stored within his palace. Meanwhile, he then released a tank of Origin Force as well, the spirit automatically took control of its energy and began to rapidly infuse it across his body.

Icy already theorised how this all possibly worked, even if it utilised a completely insane theory.

Firstly, he waited until prompted by the Nexus after swallowing a concentration of Raccelline’s blood.

[Allow movement of divinity?]

He barely whispered his agreement before overwhelming mana and heat erupted from his stomach. The divine incarnation rapidly broke down at the same time, no longer focused on protecting Icy but rather forced to fight against the two invading powers no lesser than itself.

Of course, the minute flames were miniscule compared to the mass of Divinus runes. However, with that blood alongside it, Icy’s body even slowly cutting away portions of it without any aid, the Origin Force could now sweep through.

It pushed its way onto all three powers, forcibly attaching to the invisible flames, golden divinity, and scarlet blood which melted through his stomach already.

But the spirit continued as ordered, and once each of the three parts received a flood of Origin Force, it continued to coat Icy’s body in a thick layer to act as a foundation. All the while, the completion of this initial step allowed the outrageous quantity of mana to pour into his body, a literal tidal wave splashed all three powers away from one another, constricting the weakened divinity and speck of flames, meanwhile, he separated and adjoined such powerful blood to both sides.

Firstly, he needed the awakened bloodline to take effect, through its power suppressing the two incredulous forces. Unlike the flames with its slight limitation, his purified, albeit unstable, Origin Force stuck to anything.

Literally speaking, it could even stick to multiple things at once, acting as a binder between them, but Icy rarely used this feature. The last time he did so, it beat Lostradus as his Divinus-wrecking flames failed to remove that sticky breath.

In this battle though, it never even got an appearance as the phoenix flames would’ve melted the vanilla extract faster than he spewed it.

Binding the concentration of blood to either power went way better than Icy expected, they stood no chance and hardly fought back against it. However, their aggression to one another remained, if allowed to contact, an unrestrained burst of energy would decimate his ice cream innards, even more so than the partially refined bloodline currently did. The gaping hole through his stomach and rapidly melting form agreed with that analysis. But the possibility still remained.

Mana now took direct action on the flames, its smaller size forced to spread thinly over the huge draconic body and infused into the backdrop of Origin Force which now covered every cell of ice cream or crystal within him.

Without even asking, he released a second tank of Origin Force for the spirit to use, it immediately scooped all the transparent fluid up and layered this on top of the flames. All the while, Icy had to somehow use a bathtub of mana to pull away a rapidly retracting incarnation who forced its way back into his body in search of the enemy flames. Scarlet blood still slowly infused into its whole form, granting the golden divinity a blood-red tinge in the moment.

“Just… Wait. It needs to finish first,” Icy spoke aloud to the divinity who ignored the dragon’s voice. But more importantly, he watched as a fresh layer of Origin Force coated the flames which broke down his whole body.

Not just the flames though. He had to worry about his frozen body quickly thawing as the incarnation’s protection disappeared, thankfully, the runes within his body blocked any heat which came through in this half second of accelerated time.

But that bloodline… His body stood no hope of holding it back in these amounts. Without divinity fighting back against it, the fully activated power of ‘Exeter’ smashed his supposedly impressive bloodline to shreds. Icy’s body heated up substantially from this, like always, but that was not the reason his body collapsed.

It destabilised his very bloodline, mutating it uncontrollably as it sought to dominate, and without stability offered by Draconic endurance, the cells collapsed to ice cream mush.

But he had it ignore these spots of literal broken matter in favour of the flames.

“Done.”

A single word came to his mind from the spirit, and he now released the divinity which he held back with a veritable wall of mana. If its speed hadn’t also been drastically slowed by this acceleration, he couldn’t possibly restrain it too… and even as his head ached from such an extreme effect combined with endless mental strength, he finished what he began.

The divinity was not allowed to break down the flames in his body, but rather squashed down and spread thinly. It allowed this course of action only as it approached its most hated enemy…

And that’s when his spirit took its final action, combining itself with his body to act as the final seal which compressed all these layers together.

On top of his cells one saw seven layers of substance: Origin Force, scarlet blood, invisible flames, followed by a repetition of the first two, a layer of thick gold Divinus runes… And a caramel gold spirit on top which pushed downwards.

Breathing out heavily, one lung half melted and collapsed, Icy wearily asked, “Any bets Nexus? Do I live? Or die?”

Boundless mana pushed upwards on the layered powers, and surging Origin Force pushed down. The two combined to squeeze together a pair of opposites which simply had no right to exist. But then again, Raccelline’s bloodline shouldn’t even exist. What’s the harm of one more thing popping up?

As the layers squeezed, they did not thin out but rather overlaid. At first, both the divinity and flames combined with the blood completely. It wasn’t a layer of them, but rather both existences now occupied the very same space.

Rather than two objects, they completely became a single existence with Origin Force used to sustain this unstable state, ironically, a power which only accelerated their decomposition whilst being the cause of it.

Now, only a thick layer of Origin Force separated the two from each other, licks of flame still touched the divinity though, and occasional runes seeped downwards onto the fire. Each collision resulted in a burst of energy which Icy redirected into his own body. Hundreds of little, pellet-sized holes littered his insides, most of which thankfully healed. Neither two sides cared though, as they pushed harder, solely desiring the two antithetical existences to merge.

They resisted, anyone would, but their weaknesses abound allowed Icy to overcome this. More importantly, the very existence of Raccelline’s bloodline suppressed them further when enhanced with Origin Force.

With a final, god forsaken push; Time slowed dramatically under his acceleration; Trapped in a ball of golden flames determined to kill him; with a single second to determine who lived or died.

The two slammed together. No longer two powers opposing one another, but a single object occupying the same space once more. Sort of, as Icy’s heart stopped for a moment to see whether the combined powers exploded into a cataclysmic supernova or merged into an ‘impossible’ creation.

…

No explosion happened.

Icy did not die. And yet, he was hardly alive as far as the world concerned itself.

Flames sprouted from his body, an uncontrolled fire beyond his control which burned as though the dragon set himself alight. However, these flames did not release any incredible waves of power, not a hint of light came off them, as their very existence led one to confusion and unknowable depth which left nightmares in those unaware.

These flames were black. Not black like shadows or darkness, not black like the deepest abysses or darkest of minds… Just a blackness of pure emptiness. Nothing existed.

Neither flesh, nor mind, wind nor earth, every last atom disposed off to create nothingness, the very fabric of space and time wiped from existence to ensure that the flames revealed purely empty nothings. Merely a small blockage of Origin Force separated this incomprehensible fire from Icy, however, nothing blocked its spread outwards as it rapidly burst out into a great ball of blackness.

The golden wall disappeared, the flames no longer existed. Space no longer existed, and neither did the light or life of the phoenix. All of it disappeared.

But they did not die. Because death is something.

One second had not passed yet, but as the final seconds of acceleration came to an end, the battle’s conclusion was soon to be writ… Or rather not.

Icy, from within the expansion of empty, black flames, looked outwards to see how the curling, fluttering, and completely random fiery tips visibly slowed in his vision. Their movemented quelled further and further until nothing moved any more, the 50th second of his acceleration occurred, but this frozen state remained. It confused him, he could not sense the power of these flames, when his eyes flashed white or even gained a glint of gold, he saw nothing regarding their inner workings, and for a moment his fear deepened.

However, before that could happen, he received a message from the Nexus.

[Are you happy now?]

He operated completely normally, as did the Nexus, but the world around him froze to a still point without even the slightest movements. To some degree, he was unsure of what exactly upset them… But he sort of already knew the answer. Didn’t stop Icy from ignoring it and asking, “Did time break or something? What are these flames as well?”

[No, we did that. Accelerated your existence a billion-fold, something like that, to stop you dying in about 0.2 seconds. And those flames are literally breaking everything]

He flinched at the written intonation, immediately guessing they weren’t flames in the slightest. Then reacting to the fact he was actually accelerated by such a ridiculous amount but still alive and intact. He didn’t even get to ask before the Nexus answered.

[If we want you to live through our acceleration, we can make you live. It’s not that hard]

“Then you can also just stop the flames and stop me dying… Feel free to laugh at me when my line ends too,” Icy rolled his eyes, as much as he wanted to play a hapless and ignorant fool in this moment, the seriousness made that impossible.

[We can’t help even if we wanted to. You broke everything, do you think the destruction of space or time matters to us? These flames broke the natural laws themselves… Oh, apparently more than we realised since that wasn’t classified]

So this was probably the outcome they mentioned prior, the one the Nexus dearly wanted to avoid. Hardly taking joy in the actual anger presented by this omniscient power, Icy now began to realise just how poorly the situation grew. These flames, whatever their existence, presented a power so incredible that they literally broke the universal laws which binded the Nexus. Laws which usually restricted what information it could share, and the powers it might exert.

He just asked one more thing first, “What… did I create?”

When he combined two opposing concepts, it was nothing like dumping water over a bonfire, where either the water boiled off or the fire died out. Instead, Divinus and the flames which existed to destroy those runes acted more like two natural laws.

The Nexus liked to equate them to matter and antimatter interacting, but this simplified the matter too much.

Rather, he saw the two powers as similar but different ideals. A suitable example may be the second and third thermodynamic laws, the former expressed how heat transferred to ‘colder’ regions while the latter stated an absolute minimum temperature of the universe. And now, those two concepts had been fused into one solitary existence which somehow existed at the lowest temperature whilst emitting heat to its surroundings.

Oh, that didn’t make sense?

That’s the idea. None of it made sense. He broke it.

[These should be void flames by all descriptions. Also, you are technically safe from any prying eyes, void cannot be seen through]

The two words sounded awfully normal on their own, and someone without any knowledge wouldn’t blink twice at the description. Though, if any dragon heard this they’d be up in arms about the nonsense of this statement, Icy too expressed this, “But void isn’t an element, how can there be flames of it? That makes no– I see why you’re angry now… Why did you seem prepared for something like this?”

He quickly came to realise what the actions here meant today.

Universal laws aren’t some esoteric unwritable bouts of nonsense, they were carved from purely mathematical concepts from which anything and everything can be predicted or expected. The Nexus used these laws to simulate evolution pathways after all.

[Void is not an element, correct. And yet they have been turned into flames like a common magical existence, something which goes against their very description. Would you like a sticker?]

“For what exactly?” Icy frowned slightly, perturbed by the harsh and generally sarcastic tone the Nexus took at this time. It made him appreciate its far calmer and humorous form prior to this mess.

[What else for? Creating an Exeter class object which has no right to exist in this universe. You’re quite a few years ahead of schedule]

Not only had they expected this but… Things turned so much worse with that single admission. While he very much wanted to ask all the questions built up over months now, that looming scythe somehow returned once more, this time not only pressed against his neck but already cutting through scales.

Holding off the burning curiosity, he gulped to help suppress those emotions before saying, “How much time do I have?”

[About half an hour. In this accelerated state we have granted]