The bronzed doors descended from the skies. As though called upon by the Gods, its aura shook the very space it sat in. Somehow, it seemed to be caught between the bounds of fiction and reality, flickering with illusory and oh-so real lights.
Dyon had only just realized that this tribulation was his own. He could not see anything due to his eyelids being melted together, nor could his divine sense stretch outward due to his unresponsive soul, so he had no idea what was happening around him. His everything was consumed by an undying pain that wracked his body.
His muscles, or whatever cheap imitation that remained of them, refused to listen to his commands. Even when he tried to communicate with his inner world once more to slowly heal himself with the Holy type energy he had acc.u.mulated, he found that process to be even slower than it had been before. It definitely didn't help that his meridians were in shambles.
The feeling itself was horrible. He saw nothing but a dense blackness, heard nothing but an empty white noise he assumed his brain imagined, and felt nothing but an abyssal pain that could only have originated from the depths of hell itself.
Dyon suddenly laughed. Although it came out sounding even more horrid and deathly than Orcus' grating laughter, it was a genuine laughter nonetheless.
He found this entire situation funny. Hadn't he just been on top of the world? In the last almost three years, he had done nothing but win. He had an inconceivable amount of treasures sitting at his fingertips, he had his beautiful wife by his side every day, and he finally felt like he saw a road to victory for the impossible task that lay ahead of him.
He took everything into his own hands, even the plans of a Higher Existence, laid for trillions of years, fell before his designs. Everything was his. Yet, this petty, childish, and infantile so-called Heavens chose this very moment to shoot him down.
Dyon had heard of tribulations being f.o.r.c.i.b.l.y triggered after they had been avoided for too long, but who knew that he would be unlucky enough to be struck down at his weakest moment? How was he supposed to defeat a tribulation when he couldn't even see?
Who else in all of existence could claim to have been sneak attacked by the shameless Heavens if not Dyon? If he didn't know better, he would have assumed that he was being thwarted by an arrogant young master instead of the so-called Heavenly Laws.
"Screw you." Dyon muttered.
With a thought, a wrist band of dense black appeared on his wrist. It was too bad that his body was so badly mangled that unless one looked closely, it was impossible to tell where his skin stopped and the Dragon King started.
At that moment, an ancient laughter filled Dyon's ears. 'Look at you. You only call me out when you're about to die, nowadays. Are those Purgatory Flames? Tsk, the Heavens really don't like you. I didn't face such flames until I climbed my Transcendent Staircase.'
'Just tell me what's happening, I can't see.' Even Dyon's message to the Dragon King lagged. He could barely circulate his energy, how could he efficiently communicate?
'Seems like it's too late, but you're lucky. At least you won't have to move…' These were the last words Dyon heard before the bronze doors opened, shining down on his body. He couldn't help but snort at the idea that he was lucky.
'Lucky my a–"
Dyon's thoughts were cut off, he was thrust into a world he immediately recognized as his home. No matter how much time passed since then, Dyon had never called another place by such a title. Not when he survived the events of the World Tournament and not even when he reconquered the Soul Rend Sect.
This home… It was the place he shared with his parents when they were alive.
The streets were paved in concrete, the light posts stood five to six meters in the air, and well-maintained suburban houses, some of which even had white picket fences, lined the culdesac. The atmosphere was seemingly harmonious and peaceful.
Dyon stood in the streets blankly, his feet adorned with black flip flops he hadn't worn in ages, and his typical black sweatpants and crisp white T.
Unlike when he took the True Empath trials when he first met his Grand Teacher, Dyon was fully aware that none of this was real. He wasn't entirely certain if he was meant to be this aware or not, but that didn't stop his heart from feeling heavy – and maybe that was the point.
Outside of the trial, Madeleine and the beast babies watched on nervously.
"Just what will he face in this trial?" Madeleine couldn't help but ask.
"The War God foolishly didn't recognize the True Name of his constitution, even changing it to Battle God and creating a Title Legacy. When he faced this trial himself, no one is entirely certain of what he saw, but many guesses can be made." Little Yang said solemnly.
"Because he disdained the concept of War, he never put into perspective the kind of reverberating effects his actions had. He wanted to see battle as a single event in a vacuum, a place where he could vent his inner urges confidently then forget about what occurred the next day.
"However, true battles, or Wars, aren't like this. For every action, there's a reaction. For every death, there's a mourner and for every debt, there is a collector.
"What Dyon is facing now are those ripple effects… There are two possible outcomes. Either he's self-aware enough to accept the consequences of his actions, or they'll bury him."