6 - The Two

Time passed slowly, and everyone around him eventually began to wake up, signifying the start of the day, and he finally got to eat, though he oddly found that he wasn't as hungry as he normally was.

But he obviously still ate and went to the prince's place to work.

He once again finished all his tasks in a timely manner, and he left without even meeting the prince.

He knew that the prince was absolutely pissed off at him and that he would finish what he started last time if Lin Hai appeared before him.

As for how much of his strength he would use, he would certainly use enough that he would break Lin Hai's bones and cause him to suffer. Or he might just make him suffer without breaking any bones.

After all, it was impossible for Lin Hai to figure out what the prince would do to him now that he had dared to fight back. All he knew was that it was going to be bad.

And he had figured out what that odd feeling was that woke him up early. It was a subtle killing intent from a place far away, and he was pretty sure that it was the prince who was thinking about killing him, though the killing intent faded away in the end.

He had no clue how he could figure this out, because he had never felt killing intent before, but it didn't matter since this was his instinct, and it wasn't exactly wrong.

He was young and extremely weak, but most importantly, he was doing something that nobody else wanted to do, so there was nobody who had ever wanted to kill him for any reason, but now that he had fought back, the prince might be thinking of killing him.

Little did he know that this killing intent hadn't come from the prince at all. Instead, it had come from something far more ancient and dangerous, something with the potential to change the course of history forever.

...

On the other end of existence, a battle was taking place, and it shook the heavens and the earth alike as mountains and rivers were destroyed merely from the aftershock of the battle.

The whole world where it took place was shaking, and space itself had started to crack under the sheer pressure generated.

On one side of the battle, the entire world had become a flaming hell as 'beasts' made of lava rose from the ground and charged towards the enemy, looking like the incarnation of hell itself.

Even though they looked like beasts, however, they were men and women that were just surrounded in a fiery power to make them look like that.

On the other side of the battle, angels seemed to appear from thin air as if descending from heaven, and they charged at the flaming monsters.

However, in the middle front of each side, high in the air, there floated one person each.

On the side of the flaming hell, there stood a handsome man covered in beautiful red robes, with long red hair that went down to his waist and red eyes that seemed to be wreathed in flames.

All around his body burned a bright sapphire flame that seemed noble instead of the chaotic lava creatures on the ground. Every move of his seemed to bring about the aura of a devil, but it was extremely noble, like the aura of a king at the same time.

On the other side, there was a woman clothed in long white robes, and she had white hair that went down to her calves with pale white eyes that seemed to be blind, but they most certainly weren't.

If the aura of the man could be said to be devilish but noble, then she could be said to be holy and aloof.

In her hand was a silver sword covered in gold inscriptions that seemed to be alive as they wriggled around and seemed to be magical in nature.

The sword was sharp enough to slice metal like a hot knife through butter.

Despite the battle taking place around them brought by their powers and the forces they lead, the two of them had only clashed a few times, but each time they clashed, the entire planet shivered.

Suddenly, the holy woman swung her sword, and as she did, the inscription patterns on it shined in a golden light as a wave of golden-white power covered the edge of the sword, quickly bringing forth a power that sent a shockwave through the entire battlefield in an instant.

The moment the power formed on the sword, even before she even actually slashed it, every lava monster on the ground in the path of the sword was sliced in half as a line spread through the ground, slicing the whole battlefield in half.

The line was so thin that it seemed these monsters had just fallen in half for no reason.

There were dozens of these lines going across the battlefield already, but this one was minor compared to those.

And the next moment, it was clear why as she suddenly swung the sword, bringing forth a devastating power the likes of which nobody but the red clothed man was capable of withstanding.

As she swung down, that devastating power formed into a nearly invisible golden-white wave that seemed to try to cleave the whole planet in half as the line through the battlefield instantly got ten feet wide as opposed to the few millimeters before.

Facing this wave of power from the holy woman, the red robed man simply raised up his hand, drawing in the air with his power, forming a few thousand ancient characters.

His movement was so fast that not a single person here was capable of seeing them except the holy woman.

As the characters were written in the air, they suddenly flashed with power as they became surrounded by sapphire flames that instantly spread out and formed a shield of sapphire flames before the man, and it seemed so strong that it was completely unbreakable.

As the shield formed, a seemingly infinite wave of flames burst out of it, attacking the wave from the sword of the holy woman, seeking to engulf it in eternal hellfire.

As the wave from the woman reached the shield, it had been weakened a small amount, but it was still mostly at full power.

However, as it struck the sapphire flame shield, it cracked inch by inch as it dug into the shield, ultimately breaking it while destroying itself in the process.

From this one clash, it was clear that the power of these two figures was about the same, because their attacks had destroyed each other with neither gaining even the slightest advantage.

However, even though these attacks had neutralized each other, the wave that went above and below the fiery shield also killed thousands of lava monsters on the ground, and the flames that came out of the shield killed thousands of angels in the air, though both of them were uninjured.

At the same time, the sound from the clash alone was so loud and strong that it pushed back every person on both sides by more than a hundred feet, while the whole world shivered, with earthquakes erupting all over the world as a result of the clash.

If not for the size of the planet, it would've been destroyed. It was a hundred times the size of earth, making its volume a million times higher. Even the gravity here alone was enough to pulverize the earth into dust if it came too close.

It just went to show just how strong the people fighting here were that they were able to withstand this level of gravity and make it look like it made no difference.

And yet a planet of this size had been shaken by the battle of the two people.

The strength of these two people was simply unimaginable. In fact, it seemed that this entire world was just a battlefield as similar fights were taking place all over it, though only this battle had these two leaders.

The two people were actually fighting many miles above the battlefield, but their power was just too strong. If they fought closer, everyone in the battle below would be dead by now.

These two people were known as "The Two" for being the two strongest people of this realm.

Even their forces were hundreds of billions of time stronger than the kingdom where Lin Hai resided, with even their bottom members being able to destroy the kingdom with ease.

In fact, one of them would be able to destroy the entire earth if they were there, because the sheer size of this planet was just too much for them to destroy, but they could still shake it despite it having a million times the volume of the earth.

Suddenly, just as they were about to attack each other again, both of them stopped their movements and looked in the same direction, seemingly staring off into the sky.

However, both of them had the same expression at this moment, which seemed to be a mix of confusion and wariness, because they had both just sensed a tiny bit of the power of Lin Hai's heart.

The wave of power was so infinitely small that both of them barely noticed it, and it seemed to come from infinitely far away, yet they still felt it.

It was actually the wave of power from when Lin Hai had awakened the power of the Ruby Heart, the moment he touched the ruby ball in his 'dream'.

But they were so far away that it had taken multiple days for that wave of power to reach here, even though it was moving at a thousand times the speed of even light.

Sensing this power, both of them doubted their senses, but after looking at each other and seeing that the other had sensed it, they were confident that it was real.

As they looked at each other, the red robed man spoke for the first time in this battle, "Something from the higher realms. It seems that the stability of this realm is under threat."

Hearing this, the woman only nodded her head solemnly.

Both of them knew what an object of the higher realms could do, as one had appeared a thousand years ago, and both of them had to work together just to barely stop that object before it grew too powerful.

That object was a sword, and it gave the power of gods to its owner, allowing the person wielding it to get to the level of these two even if they would never be able to do it on their own.

Currently, that sword was being suppressed with the force of an entire supermassive star as a formation was set up using an entire star as the power source just to slowly eat away at its power so that it could be destroyed.

For a thousand years, that sword had been subjected to the entire concentrated power of that star, but still a tiny remnant of it remained behind. From this, one could see its power.

Despite being in the core of a star for a thousand years, it still hadn't been destroyed, and instead, the star was actually starting to be destroyed by it instead, and they were prepared to set up another formation to strengthen the star to keep it going.

The sword of the holy woman was nowhere near the level of that sword, and if she had it, she might've been able to get to the higher realms, but the threat it possessed was too strong, as it corrupted its holder until they were nothing but a vessel to hold the sword.

Even she wouldn't be able to resist the corruption, showing just how dangerous something from the higher realms was.

Suddenly, both of them erupted with killing intent that seemed to shake space itself as a bloody mist covered the whole planet.

But just as fast as that mist appeared, it vanished, as it transformed into a bloody wave that traveled in the direction that they felt the power of the Ruby Heart come from.

It was only when that wave of killing intent had reached Lin Hai that he woke up and felt uneasy.

If he was before that killing intent at that battlefield, he would've been instantaneously wiped from existence, but since it was so far away, that killing intent had dispersed and only left behind a faint feeling that he only felt due to the wariness of the Ruby Heart towards those two.

Little did Lin Hai know that he had somehow alerted the two most powerful beings of this realm of his presence.

He simply continued his duties as a slave for the day instead, not knowing just what kind of people now wanted to kill him.

And in his ignorance, he thought that the killing intent had come from the prince, who, in front of those two, wasn't even an ant to an ant to an ant for them. He was even less than a speck of dust in front of those two.

Lin Hai luckily managed to get through his duties for the day quite quickly and went back without seeing the prince, mostly because he was sure that there was something going on, because suddenly all the highest level people in the castle had suddenly become nervous, which he noticed.

He even heard a few people talking quietly to each other about invaders. He had even managed to hear mention of the possibility of there being a war soon.

(Please read the author's thought, it is important)