The atmosphere thickened with tension as Linsley continued, "At this moment, my guns will only harm those who bear the greater sin."
Hearing those words, the villain scoffed, his confidence unshaken. His eyes hardened as he glanced at the hypocritical hero standing across from him.
He knew he wasn't innocent—far from it—but compared to that self-righteous pretender, his sins felt lighter. 'If I were judged against the average wasteborn, I'd die for sure,' he thought. 'But compared to him...'
On the other side, the so-called hero—his facade of calm cracking—began to tremble.
Beads of sweat glistened on his forehead, his eyes darting to the ten thousand gleaming black guns hovering ominously in the air. Each one of those bullets held the weight of truth, a power far beyond any excuse or lie.
The hero opened his mouth, desperately trying to salvage his image, to manipulate the crowd into seeing him as the beacon of justice. "This... this is unjust! I've only protected—"
Linsley cut him off with a cold, dismissive glance. "I am the Overlord. My word is the decree of this world. Your title as royalty holds no sway over me."
His voice was calm but heavy with authority. "No one beneath me has the right to talk back."
The hero froze, his attempt to control public opinion crumbling. There was no higher law than an Overlord's decree in the Diviner World.
Without another word, Linsley raised his hand and pulled the trigger.
In that instant, the sky darkened as ten thousand bullets rained down every millisecond, a torrent of blackened power crashing upon the hero and the villain. Each shot blurred into the next, a ceaseless storm that lit the battlefield with bursts of lethal energy.
The villain stood firm, the bullet barrage barely touching him, his sins dwarfed by the hero's far darker deeds.
Though the rain of bullets grazed him, he remained mostly unharmed, feeling the weight of judgment pass over him. He knew it wasn't his righteousness that had spared him, but the fact that the hero's crimes were far greater than his own.
This was no mere Overlord; this was someone accustomed to ruling, not only with his power but with the prestige of his lineage.
The air itself seemed to bow in his presence, rippling with tension as he touched the ground softly, his aura shaking the earth even before his feet had landed.
His face was contorted with fury, but it was not the face of a man grieving a grandson—it was the face of one whose pride had been wounded.
He glanced at the lifeless, scorched remains of the hero—the charred husk that had once been his grandson—with disgust rather than sadness.
For him, the honor and insult to his bloodline mattered far more than the life lost.
His eyes flickered toward Linsley, brimming with contempt, as though Linsley were nothing more than an insect daring to scurry across his path.
"You dare," the Overlord's voice boomed across the wreckage, laced with venom, "lay a hand on my grandson? A mere child like you should know better than to cross the direct line of royalty."
The crowd that had gathered to witness the confrontation could barely stand under the suffocating weight of the Overlord's flux pressure. Even the stronger nobles in the vicinity felt their bones creak, their flux cores trembling under the oppressive force.
Many wasteborn and inferiors had already collapsed, bowing their heads low as if awaiting the mercy of a god. The gap in strength was obvious—this new Overlord was far beyond anything they had seen before.
His flux surged outward in waves, dwarfing the Level 9.1 pressure that Linsley had released earlier. The sheer weight of his Level 9.3 flux was almost unbearable, making the previous battle between the hero and villain seem trivial in comparison.
The force of his presence shattered nearby debris into dust and sent powerful gusts of wind spiraling through the streets.
With a look of self-satisfied arrogance, the Overlord stepped forward, his feet leaving shallow craters in the stone from the intensity of his power. His robes shimmered, reflecting his status as someone untouchable.
His voice rang out again, dripping with condescension, "You think your pitiful Level 9.1 Overlord status makes you my equal? Boy, you have no idea what true power is. I'll teach you what it means to stand against real royalty."