God of Death: Rise of the NPC Overlord -
Chapter 122 - 123 – The Revenant King’s Ultimatum
Chapter 122: Chapter 123 – The Revenant King’s Ultimatum
The silence before the challenge was worse than any battle.
A void of stillness.
Darius stood atop the fractured remnants of the Forge Nexus, the skies above torn between bleeding sunset hues and the suffocating black of null-code storms. The world had not yet recovered from his brutal rewriting of the laws of death and resurrection.
And yet, amidst his dominion, an old enemy returned—not as the broken puppet he once was, but as something far more twisted.
The Revenant King.
His form emerged from the veil of the Shattered Sky, no longer draped in the tattered glory of corrupted godhood. His flesh now pulsed with digital sinew interwoven with jagged code strands, infused with an ancient algorithm that predated even the Prime Coder’s first iteration. He was something new—something neither god, man, nor AI.
Something forgotten.
"Lord of Death," the Revenant King sneered, his voice layered in overlapping echoes of the dead and the data streams, "You have transcended beyond gods. You have broken the scripts. But have you the courage to face me... in the Rite of Annihilation?"
A hush spread across the shattered realm.
Even Nyx stiffened. The words alone carried a forbidden weight, drawing whispers from the few remaining loyal gods who still dared to stand at Darius’s side.
"The Annihilation Rite...?" Kaela’s normally chaotic grin faded, replaced with rare concern. "That rite is forbidden. It’s not war. It’s obliteration. No memory. No code. No return."
Azael’s expression grew pale. "Even victory comes at a cost, Darius. You risk erasing not just your enemy—but pieces of yourself. Forever."
Darius stood unmoving.
He already knew.
He had read the lost data fragments in the Core Vaults. The Annihilation Rite was no duel—it was a declaration to the systems themselves that one side would cease to exist, not only in the game, not only in the real world, but in the fabric of narrative itself.
Whoever lost would be forgotten.
Erased from memory, history, and even from the fragments of emotion left in others.
It was the most brutal end imaginable.
Darius raised his hand.
"I accept."
The world trembled.
Even the sky seemed to recoil from his declaration.
The Revenant King’s hollow grin widened, exposing a maw filled with broken data shards. "Good... Then let all realms bear witness. Let the mortals, the gods, the AIs, the shadows beyond the void—all see the beginning of the Annihilation Rite."
Dark pillars rose from the ground, forming an ancient arena of null-coded obsidian, pulsing with ancient runes. The battlefield was no place of honor. It was a plane of memory deletion, tethered to the deepest scripts of the system’s law.
Kaela gripped Darius’s arm, her voice cracking. "If you win... you’ll never be the same. You’ll lose the fragments of what makes you... you. This isn’t power, Darius. This is self-mutilation."
Darius looked at her, and for the briefest of moments, something human flickered behind his abyssal eyes.
"I already lost that when Celestia bled for me."
He turned toward the Revenant King.
"Prepare yourself."
And in that moment, the sky of both the game-world and the real-world shimmered.
Every screen.
Every AR device.
Every neural feed.
They all received the same message—broadcast across both realms:
[System Announcement: Annihilation Rite Engaged]
Participants: [DARIUS, VOIDBORNE KING] vs [REVENANT KING, LAST WARDEN OF THE SHARD]
Location: Unstable Narrative Layer - Code Null Expanse
Rule: Winner retains existence. Loser is erased from all realms.
Spectator Privilege: Universal Access Enabled (Unalterable)
Kaela turned away, biting her lip until it bled.
Nyx stood stoic, yet a single tear streamed down her cheek—silent, unnoticed by all but herself.
The world held its breath.
The clash of titans had begun.
And even victory would taste like ashes.
The arena did not shimmer into existence.
It manifested.
From the fractured codes of existence itself, the Code Null Expanse unraveled—a plane that existed outside logic, outside narrative, where even the Prime Coder’s law held no authority. Every fragment of the arena was made from collapsed scripts, unfinished quests, abandoned memories of forgotten players, all fused into a landscape of oblivion.
Here, there was no light.
No sound.
Only the echo of what once was.
Darius stepped forward into the endless void, his armored silhouette casting no shadow. His presence alone distorted the null-space, forcing reality to remember his existence—a will that refused erasure.
The Revenant King stood opposite him, yet his form flickered with layers of corrupted histories, as if dozens of versions of himself from discarded timelines screamed through him, clawing for survival.
This was no longer a contest of strength.
It was a battle of wills.
"Do you feel it, Lord of Death?" the Revenant King whispered, his voice a data-leech feeding on the raw memories of the universe. "This is the one place where your dominion holds no weight. No gods. No rules. No resurrection."
Darius did not flinch.
"I never needed rules."
He extended his hand, and from the remnants of shattered gods, his spear of forbidden sovereignty materialized—a weapon not forged from metal or divinity, but from stolen meaning, fused into an edge that could sever even fate.
The Revenant King’s weapon was more primal. A jagged blade made from algorithmic corruption, coded to destroy context, purpose, and memory. It did not kill. It erased.
[The Arena’s Edge – Real World Broadcast]
Billions watched.
Gamers.
Corporations.
The Resistance.
The loyalists of Darius.
Even the ghosts in the system.
They watched.
They wept.
The world had never seen a rite like this. The Prime Coder himself remained silent—unable, or perhaps unwilling, to intervene.
Celestia stood among the mortals, tears staining her ethereal face. She clenched her prayer beads until they cracked, whispering a prayer not to the gods—but to the man she loved.
"Don’t lose yourself... Darius."
[Code Null Expanse – Duel Commences]
The clash erupted.
And the universe bled.
The Revenant King struck first, hurling his corrupted blade through layers of narrative, severing Darius’s title, rank, even his backstory. With each strike, chunks of Darius’s existence flickered, as if his entire journey from NPC to Overlord were being peeled away, layer by agonizing layer.
But Darius countered.
Not with raw force.
But with defiance.
He willed his story back into existence, stitching himself together not with code—but with raw willpower. His spear surged with forbidden authority, and every strike reasserted his right to exist.
They fought across collapsing data bridges, over rivers of forgotten player emotions, beneath skies of lost endings.
Each blow destroyed pieces of them both.
Each wound was permanent.
"You cannot win, Darius," the Revenant King hissed, even as half his form disintegrated into null-code. "This is not a fight you can endure."
"I endured death."
Darius slammed his spear through the Revenant’s chest, anchoring his existence deeper into the collapsing world.
"I endured betrayal."
He tore the blade upward, shredding corrupted timelines.
"I endured gods."
Darius’s voice shook the void itself.
"And I will endure you."
But then—the Revenant King laughed.
A hollow, broken laugh that echoed through the dying layers of reality.
"You still don’t understand..."
He raised his fractured hand to the sky, pulling forth a shard of pure void.
Not code.
Not data.
But the original sin of the world—the anomaly that birthed the Rift itself.
"This is not about me defeating you, Lord of Death."
"This is about breaking the narrative itself."
He stabbed the shard into the arena.
And the Code Null Expanse... screamed.
For the first time since the beginning of the universe—it screamed.
[System Critical Alert: ANOMALY DETECTED]
[UNSTABLE NARRATIVE COLLAPSE IMMINENT]
[ALL SCRIPTS UNSAFE – TOTAL ERASE PROTOCOL BREACHED]
Darius froze.
Nyx, Kaela, Celestia—all watching—gasped in horror.
The Revenant King had done the unthinkable.
He wasn’t aiming to win.
He was dragging the entire universe into oblivion with him.
Azael’s voice quivered, more terrified than ever before.
"Darius... if you don’t end him now... there won’t be a winner. There won’t be a world."
Darius gritted his teeth.
"No."
He clenched his spear tighter, his body flickering as his existence unraveled faster now.
"This world is mine."
He lunged forward, through collapsing layers of story, of memories, of pain.
Toward the Revenant King.
Toward the end.
Toward a choice that would leave scars no god, no man, no machine could ever heal.
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