Chaos and Order - A Multiverse Fanfic

Chapter 1066 1066: Super Intelligence vs. Ad Infinitum!

Even if Darth Kars' mind was writhing in pain because of suddenly losing a chunk of his mindscape, he realized a bitter truth.

The Forest Vault's door wouldn't last one moment pressed between two worlds.

So, shocked, with rage lingering across his face, Darth Kars had no choice but to lift his hand and let the man standing on the other side open the door wider.

Still grabbing the abomination's hair tightly, he backed up, retreating a few steps.

The massive door opened, and a figure entered the Forest Vault.

It was a man with black eyes and black hair, wearing a black jacket over black jeans and boots. Even as the door slammed shut behind him, he seemed to suffer no effect from the Vault's sleepiness curse, his gaze observing all and everything with an uncanny precision.

Instantly, Darth Kars calculated that this person was like him!

So… the Five-Crowned Prince has a Super Intelligence-like Ability, too, he concluded, burying the pain within him. Because if his conclusion was true, then he couldn't afford to show the slightest mark of weakness, lest the enemy take advantage of it.

But there was one question that he couldn't help but ask himself, and failed to find an answer to.

Why did Red come to the Forest Vault? Why now?

Had Red been waiting for him to kill the abomination?

No.

That couldn't be it.

Had Red sensed that he had injured himself while trying to control the abomination's mindscape?

That could be it.

But how?

Darth Kars couldn't find an answer to that question either.

Anyway, it didn't matter, he thought. Red had come to the Forest Vault at the right time, it seemed. Because nothing would satisfy Darth Kars more than killing the abomination right in front of Red.

He had planned to torture the demon before.

But… this was good as well.

"There's only so far conspiracy can take you…" Darth Kars said, lifting the abomination in front of him, and looking down into Red's black eyes. "At the end of the day, raw strength will always prevail."

Red kept quiet.

That false calmness couldn't faze Darth Kars, though.

Grinning, half in madness and half in rage, the 12th Floor Contestant lifted the abomination even higher and prepared to squeeze.

No matter how fast Red was, he would never be able to match Kars' raw Agility.

Sadly, it didn't seem that Red was even planning to move… at all!

And that, if he dared to admit it, bothered Darth Kars.

It bothered him enough to resist the urge to press his fingers into the woman's skull.

It bothered him enough to quash the madness and anger, making him thirst for blood and slaughter.

It bothered him enough to finally see a hint of a smile on Red's face; the smile that he hadn't noticed before, as if it had been using his unusual state to hide itself.

"Go on…" Red said, openly displaying his smile now. "Do it."

"…?" Darth Kars saw the Five-Crowned Prince take a step forward, taking his hands out of his pockets.

"Kill her," Red said, his voice echoing in Kars' mind strangely. "Crush her skull. Rip her apart. Drown yourself in her blood. Pull out her spine and smash her bones!"

Darth Kars saw himself doing exactly that.

The world had gained a reddish hue in his eyes.

Anger. Spite. Lust. Malice. Contempt. Vengeance.

Darth Kars had known these emotions. He had hated these emotions. He had despised these emotions.

Then, he had accepted them, becoming a Sith.

These were the exact emotions that fueled his hold on the Force even in timelines that didn't belong to the Star Wars Bubble.

But the emotions he was feeling now…

No.

They felt wrong.

In name, they were the same, but with a different spin; a counter spin.

Darth Kars stumbled back, feeling powerless suddenly. His hold on the abomination's head loosened, and she fell. He couldn't have cared less, though.

Once again, he grabbed his head with both hands, this time.

"ARGHHHHHHH!" Darth Kars roared, realizing what was happening to him. "GET OUT! I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING! I SAID… GET OUT!!!"

There was so much power in his voice that it shook the entire Forest Vault, sonic booms echoing far and wide, rumbling from horizon to horizon.

Meanwhile, Red, grinning vilely, continued to walk forward.

…

Inside Darth Kars' mind, the Echo, taking Black's form, looked at the world of mutated beasts.

Roars. Cries. Screeches. Unimaginably loud growls.

Darth Kars' mindscape was in chaos… yellow crystals bobbing up and down in all the beasts' eyes.

The Black-Echo stood silently amid the beastly chaos like a ghost, effortlessly hacking into the mindscape's defenses and gathering information.

If it had done it from outside, then invading Darth Kars' mind wouldn't have been this easy.

It wouldn't be like the case of Betty Shaw, who had willingly let the Echoes become a parasite in his mindscape.

Because Darth Kars was a high-level member of the Hyperspace Raiders with the Force at his disposal. No matter how subtly the Echo might have bugged his mindscape, Kars would have noticed, locking everything.

So, falling back to the schemes, through Meg's mind, the Echo conspired to invite Darth Kars to her mindscape.

And the moment the fool had tried to decipher Hastur's statue, before deciding to abandon his consciousness in panic, the Echo had used it to directly appear in the main mindscape… bypassing all defenses.

With Darth Kars' Super Intelligence, and the Force letting him know of these kinds of subtle attacks intuitively, even such a conspiracy shouldn't have worked against him.

However, there was one thing that the 12th Floor Contestant lacked.

There was one thing where no 12th Floor Contestant could even come close to Kai and Black, perhaps.

Mindscape.

Not just the mindscape, but its sheer versatility.

Super Intelligence could be Darth Kars' greatest trump card.

But where Super Intelligence would end, becoming an Elite Ability, the Ad Infinitum started… as a mere Elementary one.

Now, all of Darth Kars' secrets lay open to the Echo.

No matter how deeply he had hidden them, or by what method.

Slowly, but surely, the Ad Infinitum would rip his mindscape apart…

… making a fool out of the 12th Floor Contestant for a record third time!

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