The Strongest Student of the Weakest Academy-Chapter 432: The Beginning Of The End [XCIV]

The rest of the days were truly peaceful.

Aestrea spent the whole time with his lovers and friends, doing the most he could during that brief period of happiness.

But unfortunately, every kind of happiness would need to come to an end, as right now... the seal of the world had been broken again.

And of course, Aestrea had already sealed off that area and was now looking at a single god that hovered at the peak of the 8✯ True God Realm.

"...And who might you be?" Aestrea asked in a cold tone, already having both of his swords unsheathed, ready to fight at any given moment.

The man in front of him had brown hair and brown eyes, looking at Aestrea almost like it was looking at an ant.

"Do you even deserve to know my name?" he scoffed lightly, swinging his hand just for a blue spear to appear.

’...A God of Creation.’

Aestrea furrowed his eyebrows.

This was really going to get messy if he truly was going to fight this fucker, after all, God or Goddess of Creations were known for a single thing...

And that was... absolute authorship over existence.

Creation Gods did not throw techniques or spells.

A Creation God wrote outcomes.

Reality bent first, logic followed later, and resistance arrived last, usually as a corpse.

Space formed weapons before thought finished, laws rewrote themselves mid-motion, and causality obeyed command rather than sequence.

A battlefield against such a being never stayed a battlefield for long, as everything, including the battlefield itself, would turn against the challenger, in this case, Aestrea.

So...

Aestrea did not waste another second.

The moment the thought settled, his body was already moving.

One instant, he stood there, prepared to attack... in the next, the space behind the Creation God folded inward by half a breath, and Aestrea emerged from it like a ghost, Heavenly Swallowing Sword already swinging in a clean, silent arc aimed straight at the back of the man’s neck.

Fwip!

The blade passed through, but strangely... nothing really happened.

Aestrea’s pupils shrank.

The "body" in front of him shattered into blue fragments, collapsing into floating symbols that dissolved like mist.

A decoy.

Before his blade even finished its arc, the world lurched.

’...Did he rewrite gravity in that split-second?’

Up and down lost meaning as the sky folded beneath his feet and the ground rose like a wall.

Aestrea twisted midair, barely stabilizing himself as his surroundings warped into something wrong, angles bending in ways eyes should not follow.

A calm voice echoed from everywhere at once.

"You chose the wrong opening."

The Creation God stood several dozen meters away, completely unharmed, blue spear resting lightly against his shoulder as if this were nothing more than a lesson.

He looked... bored.

Aestrea slid back, his boots carving long marks into reality before coming to a stop.

"...You rewrote your own position."

The man smiled faintly. "I removed the concept of ’behind me’."

"Tsk," Aestrea clicked his tongue.

Of course.

Creation did not dodge attacks.

It edited conditions.

Zrrr...

The Heavenly Swallowing Sword hummed faintly, clearly displeased.

Aestrea shifted his stance, Midnight lowering while the Heavenly Swallowing Sword angled forward, his grip tightening.

"You know," Aestrea stated flatly, "most gods piss themselves once they realize that blade erases divinity."

The Creation God raised an eyebrow. "And you assume I still define myself as divine?"

The blue spear rotated once in the air.

The world responded.

The sky darkened, not from clouds, but from rewritten density.

Light itself bent awkwardly, stretching, slowing.

The air thickened like syrup around Aestrea’s limbs, trying to define him as something less mobile, less threatening.

Aestrea took one step forward.

The ground rejected him.

His foot sank halfway into space as if the floor decided solidity was optional.

"...Tch."

He pulled himself free with brute force, muscles screaming as resistance spiked several times higher than before.

Creation was not attacking yet.

It was observing and adjusting parameters.

"Interesting," the man murmured. "You persist despite unfavorable rules."

"I’ve lived entire lifetimes under worse," Aestrea smirked coldly.

He vanished again, but this time, he didn’t use his speed and instead tried to cut...

Fwip!

The Heavenly Swallowing Sword slashed downward, not at the Creation God, but at the space between them.

The cut devoured divinity, erasing the authority embedded in the distance itself.

The world screamed.

Aestrea stepped through the erased gap and appeared directly in front of the man, Midnight thrusting forward this time, aimed straight at the heart.

CLANG!

The blade struck something invisible.

No... it was... something conceptual.

A blue script-like barrier formed at the exact point of contact, characters flowing like liquid thought as Midnight screeched against it, sparks flying.

The Creation God did not move.

He simply looked down at the blade with mild interest.

"Violence is permitted, but success is not."

Aestrea twisted his wrist and slashed sideways.

Crack!

The barrier shattered, and in that moment, for a fraction of a second, the man’s chest was open.

Aestrea went for the kill, thrusting the Heavenly Swallowing Sword forward, but as he did so... the sword suddenly stopped.

Not against the flesh of God...

The blade hung inches from the man’s body, frozen midair as if the future itself had been paused.

Aestrea felt it then.

A line of thought, pressing down on reality.

Outcome: Attack does not reach the target.

And the world agreed.

Aestrea’s eyes darkened instantly.

This was the reason he absolutely despised fighting against Gods with the Authority of Creation.

They could simply edit everything to their liking.

"Tsk..."

Aestrea pulled his sword back, his eyes locked onto the man in front of him.

The Creation God let out a quiet chuckle, shaking his head slightly as if amused by a child’s persistence.

"You felt it, didn’t you?"

"The correction granted by my authority."

He took a single step forward, blue spear dragging lightly through the air, leaving faint glowing trails behind it.

"You swing with intent," the man continued with a steady and detached tone. "But intent is irrelevant. I decide which results are allowed to exist."

Aestrea didn’t reply.

He changed his footing instead, Midnight lowering while the Heavenly Swallowing Sword angled to the side, his posture tightening.

The Creation God noticed it and smiled wider.

"Still thinking you can outplay creation itself?" he asked mockingly. "You are fast, yes. Sharp. Dangerous."

The spear lifted.

"But speed does not matter when the ending is written first."

He thrust.

The spear did not pierce space.

Space formed around it.

Aestrea reacted instantly, twisting his body sideways as the air where his head had been split open like paper.

A glowing blue line tore past his cheek, close enough that his hair was sliced cleanly, strands drifting down slowly.

He countered at once.

Midnight flashed upward, then downward, then sideways, creating a storm of precise strikes aimed at joints, neck, vitals, and every gap he could see.

Crack, crack, crack!

Each blow met resistance.

Barriers formed and collapsed in rapid succession, rewritten faster than his blade could follow.

Some didn’t even look like shields, just sudden changes in reality where Midnight simply failed to finish its path.

The Creation God stepped backward once, then another time, his spear moving in short, controlled motions, carving arcs of rewritten space that Aestrea narrowly avoided each time.

Despite the mocking calm on his face, his eyes had sharpened.

"...Annoying," the man muttered.

Aestrea lunged again, this time feinting high and cutting low, erasing divinity along the ground itself.

The floor vanished under the Creation God’s feet for a brief instant.

Aestrea went in.

The spear slammed down.

BOOM!

Aestrea crossed his swords just in time.

The impact blasted him backward, boots tearing long scars through the ground as he skidded dozens of meters away before stopping himself with a sharp twist.

The Creation God straightened slowly.

"You see? You cannot land a decisive blow. And I cannot strike you cleanly either."

He tilted his head.

"Your reaction speed borders on absurd. Every lethal outcome I attempt is rejected by your movement alone."

Aestrea wiped a thin line of blood from the corner of his mouth, eyes still fixed on the man.

"Lucky me."

"This is tedious."

The Creation God smiled faintly before raising his spear again.

This time, the world shuddered.

The sky dimmed as countless glowing blue constructs formed above as half-finished shapes of weapons, walls, and symbols, all hovering like unfinished thoughts.

"I will simply compress the probabilities and remove the paths where you survive."

The pressure hit Aestrea instantly, and instantly, he felt his sense of direction go wrong, as every movement he tried to make carried a faint resistance, as if the universe itself was telling him to stop.

He stepped anyway, and instantly, a spear appeared directly inside his guard.

"Shit!"

Aestrea twisted hard, but not enough.

SPLURT!

The blue spear tore through his shoulder, punching out the back in a spray of blood.

The force spun him sideways, and he crashed into the ground, skidding across broken earth before rolling to a stop.

The pain hit a second later.

"Agh... cough! Fucking hell..." Aestrea coughed, blood splattering onto the ground as his wound started to heal slowly.

The Creation God lowered his spear, watching calmly with a faint smile.

"There... at least, now I know that you can bleed," he said in a mocking tone.

Aestrea pushed himself up on one knee, breathing heavily, as he wiped the blood dripping from his lips.

But strangely... he was actually smiling, quite widely, actually.

"...Got it," he muttered.

"What?" The Creation God frowned slightly.

Aestrea lifted his head, his crimson eyes glinting faintly as he looked straight at the man’s spear.

"At first," Aestrea said slowly, "I thought you were untouchable."

He looked at his hands as blood still dripped from his shoulder.

"But you’re not rewriting everything."

The Creation God’s eyes narrowed.

"You rewrite outcomes," Aestrea continued. "But you still need an anchor. A tool.... something real to push those edits through."

He took a step forward.

"Every time you try to finish me," he added as his gaze locked onto the blue spear, "you use that thing."

Silence hung between them.

The Creation God’s grip on the spear instantly tightened.

Aestrea’s smile widened a lot.

"...That’s your weakness."