The Extra's Rise - Chapter 1094

1094: The Overlord’s Mercy 1094: The Overlord’s Mercy I lay in the silt, staring up at a circle of distant, violent sky framed by walls of rushing water.

Tenebria hadn’t left.

She had parted the Great Ocean like a curtain, creating a dry cylinder of air that reached all the way down to the seabed where I lay broken.

The sheer water pressure of the depths should have collapsed in on us, crushing everything instantly.

But her Will-amplified by the Authority of Pride-simply refused to let the water touch her.

She descended slowly, floating down the shaft of air until her boots touched the muddy floor of the crater.

She didn’t look like a monster.

She looked like a conqueror inspecting a collapsed bridge.

She walked over to me.

Her coat was shredded.

The wound on her neck-the one Valeria had died to inflict-was still weeping black blood, refusing to heal fully against the lingering resonance of my Sovereign intent.

I tried to move.

My body screamed.

My spine was knitting itself back together, the Blood of the Overlord acting as a chaotic, aggressive adhesive, but the pain was blinding.

I managed to prop myself up on one shattered elbow, coughing up brine and blood.

Tenebria stopped two feet away.

She looked down at me, her eyes shifting to a contemplative Blue (Sloth).

“You’re alive,” she stated.

It wasn’t a question.

“A fall from the exosphere, followed by a punch that cracked the continental shelf.

And you’re still conscious.” She crouched down, resting her forearms on her knees.

She looked almost…

disappointed.

Not that I survived, but that the fight had ended so abruptly.

“You relied on the metal,” she said softly, reaching out to touch the empty space where my sword hand lay.

“You poured all your definition, all your self, into that stick.

When it broke, your concept broke with it.” She tapped my chest, right over my heart.

“You tried to carry an ocean in a paper cup, Arthur.

It was bound to burst.” I wheezed, spitting out a clot of blood.

“I…

almost took your head.” Tenebria laughed.

It was a genuine, bright sound that echoed strangely in the damp crater.

She touched the wound on her neck, bringing away a finger slick with black blood.

“You did,” she admitted.

She showed me the blood.

“This is the first time I’ve bled since the Dragon War.

Tiamat didn’t cut me.

Bahamut didn’t cut me.

You did.” She stared at the blood, her expression shifting.

The arrogance faded, replaced by a strange, Darwinian respect.

“You understand it, don’t you?” she asked, her voice dropping to a whisper.

“The hunger.

The need to be more than what you were born as.” She leaned in closer.

“I saw your memories in the Library, Arthur.

You weren’t a god.

You were a mortal.

A weak, fragile thing that died in a dungeon in your first life.

You clawed your way back.

You stole powers.

You broke rules.

You are just like me.” She extended her hand.

“Yield.” The word hung in the air, heavier than the ocean above us.

“I don’t need another corpse,” Tenebria said.

“The universe is full of corpses.

I need peers.

I need Lords who can actually hold a conversation without their brains melting.” Her eyes burned with intense sincerity.

“Join me.

Become the Eighth Lord.

I will give you a Sector.

I will give you the Gift of Sloth to fix your broken body.

We can rewrite this reality together.

No more struggling.

No more pain.

Just…

dominance.” It was a genuine offer.

In her mind, this was the highest honor she could bestow.

She was acknowledging me as a survivor of the same caliber as herself.

I looked at her hand.

It was pale, strong, and covered in the blood of gods.

Then I looked at my own hand.

Empty.

Broken.

Covered in alien mud.

“You think we’re the same,” I rasped, forcing my lungs to expand.

“Aren’t we?” Tenebria asked.

“We both started with nothing.

We both conquered.” “No,” I said.

I pushed myself up to a sitting position, my bones grinding audibly.

“You started with nothing, Tenebria.

And because of that, you spent your entire life thinking the only way to get full was to take from others.” I looked her in the eye.

“You stole the Gifts.

You stole the Crowns.

You stole the Realm.

You are a collection of stolen things.” I took a breath.

The Miasma in the air rushed into me, fueling my regeneration.

“I didn’t steal my power,” I whispered.

“I built it.” Tenebria’s eyes narrowed.

“I forged my sword,” I continued.

“I researched my magic.

I trained my body.

You eat the world because you’re terrified of being empty again.

You’re a thief.” I spat blood at her boots.

“I chose to cook.” Silence stretched between us.

Tenebria stared at me.

The respect in her eyes didn’t vanish, but it hardened.

It turned into something cold and final.

“Cook,” she repeated, tasting the word.

She stood up, looking down at me with pity.

“A romantic notion.

But in the end, the thief eats, and the cook starves.” She turned her back on me.

“I won’t kill you,” she said, looking up at the tunnel of water.

“That would be a waste of effort.

You’re broken.

Your weapon is dust.

You are no longer a threat.” She began to float upward, rising toward the surface.

“Lie here in the mud, Arthur,” her voice boomed down.

“Watch me dismantle your world.

Watch me eat your home.

And when everyone you love is gone, remember that you could have saved them if you had just taken my hand.” She reached the top of the water tunnel.

With a casual wave of her hand, she released her hold on the ocean.

“Drown.” The walls of water collapsed.

Millions of tons of dark, freezing ocean crashed inward.

I didn’t scream.

I didn’t try to swim.

I was too broken to move.

The water slammed into me with the force of a collapsing mountain.

The darkness was absolute.

The pressure was immediate and crushing.

I was pressed into the silt, the weight of the world squeezing the air from my lungs.

But I didn’t die.

The Blood of the Overlord inside me refused to let me perish.

It metabolized the Miasma saturating the water, keeping my brain oxygenated even as my body was crushed.

I lay there in the absolute dark.

Cold.

Alone.

Weaponless.

‘The thief eats.

The cook starves.’ Her words echoed in my mind.

She was right.

As long as I fought her using her rules-using power against power, force against force-I would lose.

She had more fuel.

She had more Gifts.

She was the Apex Predator.

But Akasha hadn’t told me to overpower her.

‘To defeat Everything, you must use Nothing.’ I looked at my hand in the pitch blackness.

I couldn’t see it, but I could feel it.

The nerves were dead, but the energy was there.

My right hand buzzed with the blue, orderly hum of Mana-the power of creation, of rules, of the System.

The power I was born with in this world.

My left hand buzzed with the violent, purple chaotic static of Miasma-the power of the Abyss, of breaking, of Tenebria.

The power I had inherited from her blood.

For years, I had kept them separate.

I had fought to keep the Miasma out.

I had treated it like an infection, a necessary evil to be contained.

Even when I used The Grey, I was using the Void to separate them, to keep the Light from touching the Dark.

But Tenebria held seven conflicting powers in one body.

She didn’t separate them.

She forced them to coexist through Will.

Why was I separating them?

Why was I trying to be a “Human Mage” or a “Grey Sovereign”?

‘Cook…’ I thought, a strange calmness settling over me despite the crushing ocean.

Cooking wasn’t about keeping ingredients separate.

It wasn’t about putting the flour on one side of the bowl and the eggs on the other.

It was about destroying their original forms to create something new.

Something that wasn’t the sum of its parts, but a transformation.

I closed my eyes in the dark.

I stopped rejecting the Miasma.

I stopped protecting the Mana.

I brought my broken hands together in the crushing dark.

Left laced with Right.

Chaos laced with Order.

The poison mixed with the cure.

I didn’t build a shield.

I didn’t build a sword.

I didn’t cast a spell.

I simply let them touch.

Deep in the abyssal trench, a spark lit up.

It wasn’t blue.

It wasn’t purple.

It wasn’t even the pale grey I had used before.

It was a color that didn’t exist.

It was a hole in the narrative.

And the ocean…

began to move away.