Galaxy's First Ruler

The Devil opened his eyes, but even he hadn't seen this much Darkness in his entire life.

There was no Mana around him, and billions of Creatures of Darkness kept howling from near to far as if a parasite had entered amidst them. The Devil looked down and found his entire body had lost the presence of solidity and reality. But there was a black mist rising out of his ethereal body, and he could see the faces of hundreds of Darklings he had absorbed in the third Plaza.

Their home and their kin were calling to them. And as soon as he realized what place deserved to be called their home, unimaginable terror struck his head.

'RUN!!!'

It didn't even take any effort for the word to come up to him, as it was more of an instinct.

The Devil neither cared for the directions nor for the reason of his arrival at this senseless and timeless place. All the logic, reasoning, and pride got overcome by the emotion of absolute dread. The Devil made a round turn and started to run, like a prey smelling the scent of a predator.

It was like a man trying to run underwater. Even Aldrich, whenever he had arrived here, never tried to run or move, but only guided his body in a direction following the call. The Devil, however, had no access to those memories. The way the purple-haired horned Devil flailed his arms and legs looked quite comical. Alas, there was no one to take pleasure in this once-in-a-lifetime type of scene.

But the Devil couldn't go very far.

A tremendous force pulled him back as if a rope was tied to his waist, jerking him on the impact. No speed was comparable to which he had been traveling at that time. All teleportations, Blinks, and Dimensional ruptures also seemed to pale in comparison. The distance that Aldrich used to travel in hundreds of thousands of years, got compressed in mere seconds.

Hush!!!

The Devil's head jerked again, and he heard an endless sound of flutter behind him. A shiver ran down his spine, and with a horrified look in his purple eyes containing golden rings, he slowly turned around. Sweat couldn't appear on his ethereal body, but the Devil felt wetness all around him. The fate he was trying to avoid after he visited his old friend, seeing the Endless Black Veil flutter in front of him, seemed inevitable.

Behind the Veil, the Devil could feel a Being, calling whom massive would be an insult. There was an ever-present smile on that faceless Being, and the Devil perceived that there was even a smirk.

Huff! Huff!

The Devil's breathing went out of control and he was about to say something when the Black Veil gave an out-of-rhythm flutter. This flutter differed from the uniform undulations on it, and it happened right in front of him.

"WAIT!!! You Fucker, What are you doing?!"

The Devil's chest bulged and kept bulging outward as if someone was blowing air into a balloon. And just when it couldn't expand anymore, it exploded.

BANG!!!

The Devil's body wasn't real, so there wasn't any actual flesh or blood that had burst out of him. But not even he had expected the thing that came out. As his chest returned to its previous state, he saw a ball of another Black Veil, incomprehensibly tiny compared to the other Veil. It was like someone had wrapped a piece of black cloth around a large ball.

The mass of ball-like Black Veil opened layer by layer, and the form of a person took shape inside it. His hairs were completely white, and there was a hole in the middle of his forehead. All around him, the Creatures of Darkness rejoiced at this figure's arrival. And as he opened his eyes, the Devil saw his white pupils staring right at him.

This being, was Aldrich Guo.

*

Aldrich opened his eyes, and the first thing he saw was a tall black being with purple hair and purple eyes. But there were two golden rings in those eyes, brimming with Justice. He noticed the two horns and the deep look of fear and dread on his face.

Aldrich turned his head left and gave a glance to the Endless Black Veil and the hint of a colossal Being towering behind it. A low chuckle escaped Aldrich's mouth as he again looked at the Devil and muttered.

"Haha, well! I would have never thought that you would die so early."

"What… What do you mean?!"

The small black veil wrapped around Aldrich's naked body as he heard the shocked voice of the Devil. A smirk came upon his face as Aldrich asked.

"Humph! Do you think I would have just let the matter of a Devil possession go? Just that easily?!"

"Im… Impossible! I know all your memories and thoughts. Even at the last moment, you did not know that I had been corrupting you."

The Devil was indeed right, and Aldrich knew it. But Aldrich knew even more than he had shown outwards. His face became grave as he muttered, like stating the truth.

"Dreams are inadvertently related to Thoughts; Like Dreams, Thoughts can be Real or a Hoax."

Aldrich's words, full of the Law of Darkness echoed around him. The Devil raised his hand and pointed a finger at him.

"You…"

But Aldrich cut off his words and continued.

"You know that all my life I have been trying to master my thoughts to gain lucidity in dreams. But only after coming to this place did I realize that there was an inherent relationship between dreams and thoughts. After mastering Law of Darkness during my time here, I put all my time into controlling my thoughts. And then after hundreds of thousands of years later, an insight came to me. I could just break my thoughts apart and attach them to something else. Something that was and also was not a part of me. Like this Black Veil."

The Devil staggered and brought his hand down, but Aldrich didn't show any mercy and kept bombarding the Devil's mind with facts.

"I knew that there was a gargantuan difference between some laws. Like the Law of fire and the Law of Darkness. The former seemed empty and lonely, while the latter was complete and whole. And then I came into contact with the Law of Devil. In an instant, I got to know that it was on par with Darkness. But I had no means to master that Law and even millions of years didn't seem sufficient for it in this place. So you can imagine when I saw an opportunity to master another Law how happy I was."

For the first time, the Devil calmed down. His head drooped as the scenes just after Aldrich's resurrection flashed through his mind.

"So the reason you took Devil's aura out of Sha and kept it on your clothes…" The Devil muttered.

Aldrich didn't pity seeing the hopelessness of the Devil and completed his words.

"Yes, it was to allow you to corrupt me. I had already used the Black Veil to separate my thoughts related to you and this place."