As the final waves of emerald light faded, the silence of space returned but it was a silence steeped in tension. Darkseid stood still, his body beginning to tighten. It wasn't fear that caused it. It was anticipation, one born from ancient instinct which was primordial itself, an awareness woven into the very fabric of his being after living for billions of years. He recognized the shift. The boy god was no longer the same. The power he now exuded… it bent reality around him like a black hole bends light.
What stood before him now… was no longer the same Lunaris who he had almost annihilated moments prior.
He had studied the boy closely as he stood in the void before him. Lunaris had already been lethal. But now, his very existence seemed to tug at the seams of reality,
like a melody played in reverse it felt wrong and impossibly heavy. The very concept of limitation trembled in his presence.
But then again ur was not so impossible considering entities who exist on a higher standing compared to the boy.
Darkseid's breath was steady, but the metaphysical pressure he was feeling from the boy was anything but.
And yet Lunaris was not looking at him.
His eyes were turned to the right, into the void covering trillions of millions instantly as all laid bare before his gaze.
The emerald flame of his aura flickered briefly as he felt the gazes. Far-reaching into space, some felt ancient and others felt unknowable, stretching from the far ends of space, across galaxies and through planes itself.
Gods, Or something like gods.
Presences that stirred with a whisper of curiosity, danger and warning.
One of them more focused than the rest and tried to look into him.
Into his soul. Into his origin and Into his very concept of being.
Toneri had felt this presence once before…
After his battle with the Chaos Lord.
He had ignored it then. It passed like mist.
But now…
'Later,' he thought.
He turned his head and finally regarded Darkseid again.
"How peculiar," he murmured inwardly.
There was something he could almost sense some distortion, subtle but lingering. Darkseid's nature seemed to be folding around itself, as if something was hiding, shrouded just out of reach. Toneri's eyes began to glow again, and the aura around him pulsed in rhythm. His Otsutsuki chakra surged, and space itself twisted as the pressure of his existence pushed against every law and rule it touched.
Darkseid's body reacted first.
Before his mind could fully register the decision, his body moved instinctual and immediate. A beam of golden light, enormous in scale, sliced downward through the void. It cut not just through space but through understanding, and despite Darkseid's movement, a sharp line of pain erupted across his left shoulder. Blood burst outward as he staggered.
He didn't know when the strike had began and when been delivered.
He had moved before it happened… or so he thought.
But Toneri stood there, hand still extended toward the end of the golden blade.
"Kinrin Tensei Baku(golden wheel reincarnation explosion)," he murmured softly.
The blade, larger than comprehension, extended into the distance and was infinitely more powerful than the version he had used against Naruto. Far behind them, Uranus began to tremble. There was no explosion, no shattering impact. Just a deep, unnatural thud like the groan of a world being peeled apart.
Uranus split cleanly in two.
For a moment, the halves hovered in place, unaware that they had been severed. Then, slowly, they began to drift, the gap between them growing as the planet processed what had been done to it.
The cut was impossibly smooth, unnaturally precise. It was surgical and Unreal.
Darkseid's blood had stopped flowing. The wound was sealed by his will alone. But as he turned back toward Lunaris and he saw nothing.
Toneri was gone.
There wasn't any sound or a trace of him.
He hadn't blinked, hadn't looked away.
But the boy was simply no longer there.
Immediately, Darkseid's omega effect surged firing hundreds of omega beam burst in less than a second, and his fist lashed out to the left in a brutal punch, laced with his energy. The blow should have connected as it appeared directly in front of Toneri's position.
But it missed and all the omega beams seemed to miss… or went through him?.
The space between them had changed and seemed to widen and become out of phase. The omega beams all went through Lunaris as If he were a ghost. As if reality had bent in on itself.
'Did I just miss and when did I slow down?' Darkseid wondered, confused.
A sharp pain in his ribs cut through his thoughts. Toneri had struck, and the impact hurled the dark god through the void. The blow was so fast it hadn't even been seen. Blood rushed up his throat, but he forced it down with pure control.
Toneri vanished again, his body phasing into a ghostly blur before disappearing altogether.
Darkseid hovered in silence, then expanded his awareness. Cosmic perception flowed from him, engulfing the solar system. He probed every atom, every shadow.
And then, he saw him.
Toneri stood on one half of the dissected Uranus, his arm extended and palm raised toward the void.
In an instant, hundreds of thousands of enormous emerald fists erupted from space, hurling toward Darkseid like titanic weapons of vengeance. They moved with precision, speed, and weight as each one carrying the force of annihilation.
Darkseid flared his power and began to open a portal.
But suddenly, the entire backdrop changed.
Uranus was behind him again.
The fists were gone.
"What?" he muttered.
A beam of darkness, laced with emerald energy, tore through the void and struck him from behind. The energy was massive, crushing, and relentless. Space burned as the wave consumed all in its path. It passed planets, vaporized moons, and continued on endlessly before finally dispersing into the stars.
As the wave of the Emerald wheel cleared up, Darkseid was nowhere to be seen.
Toneri hovered in place above Uranus, eyes narrowing. He scanned the surrounding space, sensing carefully.
'That wasn't enough to kill him… so where did he go?' he thought.
He vanished, reappeared far away hundreds of thousands of miles away from Uranus, looking again. Then, just as quickly, he returned to where he had stood on the dissected planet. It as though he had never moved at all.
A portal opened exactly where he had just left.
Darkseid stepped out.
Burns scorched across his body. His armor was completely gone from both arms, and his left side already damaged by the previous attacks on earth was blackened and exposed. The wounds were visible now. The battle was taking its toll.
His eyes glowed faintly as energy crackled across his skin. The area around him rippled, space bending from the sheer pressure of his power. He stood still, but the distortion around him was growing.
'Time…'
Something unexplained and terrible was beginning to stir.
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