Villain: Ultimate Mutation System in the Alternate World - Chapter 680

Chapter 680: Peak of the World 15
The chamber closed the moment he crossed the threshold, its vast interior humming with something that was neither mechanical nor divine, but unsettlingly wedged between both.

Beneath his boots, interlocking plates stitched with sigils and circuitry pulsed to life, glowing faintly as he passed like nerves awakening after a long coma.

Towering arcs curved overhead, layering massive engines into ancient stone as if heaven and machinery had been forced into marriage. Every footstep echoed too long, too deeply. This wasn’t a room. It was a ribcage of technology.

The air tasted old—metal and ash and something else he couldn’t name, like rust dissolved in prayer.

Solmir inhaled anyway, forcing breath into lungs.

At the center waited a table made of darkness pretending to be steel, swallowing light instead of reflecting it.

From its base, thick cables sank into the floor, twitching with restless impatience, as if annoyed that timeless eons of silence had not granted them peace. They seemed almost alive—veins pressed into stone, arteries wrapped in layers of dust and time.

Atop it lay what countless seekers had risked everything to claim, the thing that had drawn blood and ambition across the ages.”

The gauntlet.

Not like an object.

Like a sentence being carried out.

Its form was closer to a god’s bones rebuilt into weaponized machinery.

Gold that glowed too warmly, as if lit from a source that wasn’t fire—or anything kind. Pale lines of light drifted beneath the surface like something sleeping inside it.

Jagged knuckles promised destruction rather than defense, and thin vents along the wrist released steady heat into the air. Beneath the plates, tiny mechanisms rotated with maddening patience, each movement packed with intent.

Five gems burned into it.

Crimson throbbed with the pulse of life and death intertwined, a heartbeat that could ignite or erase.

Abyssal blue stretched into endless depth, holding the weight of time itself in its silent pull.

Violet lightning crackled behind fractured crystal, raw energy that sought to rend reality apart.

Sickly green mist curled and twisted in the air, carrying decay, growth, and the whisper of unseen nature.

And at the center, a gem of absolute nothingness, a void that devoured light, sound, and hope itself.

Solmir exhaled.

Then drove his hand into the gauntlet.

Metal snapped like puzzles.

Plates split, folded, and locked around his arm, threading over muscle and bone as if reading them. Pain lanced through every fiber, but his focus and greed for more power kept it from consuming him.

Tiny gears rotated, embedding themselves into the pathways of his body, anchoring into nerves—but nothing vital broke. It was violent, yes, invasive, yes, but controlled by the gauntlet’s own intelligence.

He fell to one knee as vents tore open across his armor, vomiting steam the color of molten gold. Every pulse of power felt like a mountain being shoved through his heart.

It hurt.

Badly.

But it worked.

Metal sealed over his chest, a moving fortress forming inside him. His helm assembled last, crawling across his face in sliding plates until the world reshaped itself through eyes that did not blink anymore.

Then—

Click.

Quiet.

Final.

The integration was complete. He was not broken. He was… augmented. Dangerous. Divine, yet still biological.

And clenched.

A violent shockwave tore through the chamber, vaporizing stone, shredding engines, carving ruin where nothing had touched. Dust howled through the air and vanished.

He flexed his fingers, amazed at the sheer power coursing through him just from merging with the gauntlet. It was as if he had been remade—no longer the man he had been, but an entirely new being, forged in gold and energy.

“So this… is the level of a Highest God,” he murmured, his voice low but filled with force, and the chamber itself shivered at the sound.

His gaze lifted.

The summit of peak existence stared back at him.

And for the first time, he was not beneath anyone. He was level with them.

And rising.

“Now… the only thing left is to guard this power… with everything I am.”

Without warning, he twisted at the waist and snapped his arm through the air.

ZZZZZ!

A condensed beam of gold detonated from his gauntlet and tore across the chamber like the judgment of a newborn sun. The light bent walls, and split the darkness clean in two.

Reign, still masked in his humanoid form, was torn out of hiding—flung backward as the golden torrent ripped past, vaporizing the stone a hair’s breadth behind his head.

The beam didn’t stop—it tore through the canyon outside, carving a path of ruin that vanished somewhere beyond sight.

He skidded across the floor, feet carving furrows through the metal before he caught himself in a low crouch, cloak dissolving into drifting motes of shadow.

Solmir exhaled slowly, golden steam hissing from the vents along his body like a machine releasing built-up energy.

So he could see him now.

Not just with his eyes—but with whatever god-sense had been hammered into his bones.

Reign straightened, brushing imaginary dust from his shoulder, his lips already curling upward. Not out of fear but excitement .

To see the stealth he prided himself collapse under Solmir’s golden gaze only sharpened the thrill of the fight.

Unlike the radiant god, Reign remained bound by a restriction, a limit that made every strike a gamble.

“Congratulations,” Reign said, a lazy smile tugging at his lips as he spread his arms. “Impressive breakthrough… but tell me, why attack me? After all, I’m the one who brought all of this into play. You should be thanking me, not trying to erase me from existence.”

Metal shifted as he laughed inside the armor. The sound came out warped. Deeper.

“You think I’m naive?” he growled, voice low and hard. “I know you’re just waiting for me to let my guard down so you can steal this power from me. I won’t let you.”

“Steal that little trinket?” Reign’s laugh almost broke into full mirth.

The gauntlet was strong, yes, but it wasn’t even close to the treasures he had.

Just the pocket watch he carried could stop time. His divine Grail could bend reality. Lucifer’s black flame could erase souls, leaving nothing behind.