The laugh echoed throughout the world.

The next moment, the earth split apart, and a body came out of it.

It was Shang!

And he had fully recovered!

At this moment, even the Archivist became nervous.

They had all needed to attack Shang together to destroy him!

And now, they were back at the beginning, but with one difference.

The Archivist's Horn was gone!

Without his Horn, the Archivist's defense wouldn't be nearly as solid.

If Shang began to attack again, the Archivist might very quickly run out of Mana unless he decided to use two of his artifacts to defend himself.

Now, the Archivist needed the five Emperors!

Without the five of them, the Archivist would most likely not be able to win against Shang!

The Archivist turned to Kali, Abaddon, and Gregorio with a warning gaze.

They were not allowed to interfere this time!

The other five Emperors nodded with conviction toward each other and readied for another battle with Shang.

This one would be much more difficult, but it wasn't impossible to win!

And this time, they would make sure that Shang would die!

"Hahahahaha!"

The eyes of the Emperors opened in shock as another laugh came from below the ground.

The next moment, another spot in the ground broke apart, and what the Emperors saw made them believe that they had entered a nightmare.

A third Shang had appeared!

"Hahahaha!"

A fourth one!

Even the Archivist's eyes were filled with terror now.

With the Archivist's knowledge and experience, he could tell that all of these bodies were real!

All of Shang's bodies began to grin at the same time.

Then, they chuckled a bit as something new was revealed.

A huge black tendril came out of their backs and vanished into the ground.

The next moment, the tendrils waved around a bit, and the different Shangs flopped around like puppets.

The Emperors couldn't come to terms with what they were seeing.

They had been fighting a puppet?!

A mere puppet?!

Another tendril came out of the ground, but this one didn't have a puppet at the end.

The tendril was quite damaged, and based on what they could see, the Emperors could tell that this had been the tendril of the Shang puppet they had killed.

And then, a new Shang grew out of the tendril, who just echoed the chuckles of his brethren.

The world seemed to stop.

The Emperors looked with horror at the Shangs.

The Archivist looked with horror at the Shangs.

Kali looked with horror at the Shangs.

Abaddon looked with horror at the Shangs.

Gregorio was the only one that showed no reaction.

From the very beginning, this had never been a fight.

"HOW?!" Brutus Cesar shouted in desperation and horror. "HOW ARE YOU THIS POWERFUL?!"

"Hahahaha!"

The Shangsjust laughed.

Then, the ground began to shake again, but this time, the shaking was even more intense.

CRACK!

Gigantic cracks and crevices appeared below them, and the minds of the Emperors stopped working.

The next moment, a black mass became visible through the cracks, and just a bit later, small black swords slowly rose from the crevices.

Hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of different swords all rose from the crevices, each of them being swung by tendrils.

And then, the ground between them was turned into sand as some kind of grinding force rose upward.

One humongous black mass rose from the ground, and uncountable sharp blades were rapidly moving across its surface.

As the mass rose further, spots without sharp blades appeared.

The mass itself was already over ten kilometers wide, and the spots were over a hundred meters wide.

The spots were seemingly randomly scattered across the entirety of the mass.

Eventually, the black mass fully came out of the ground and hovered in the air.

It was round like a sphere.

The blades acted as a form of aggressive armor that destroyed everything that came near.

The tendrils came out from all over the sphere.

The next moment, the four Shangs changed shape.

Their tentacles, bodies, and swords vanished, and they transformed into four gigantic swords, all much bigger than the others.

One of the swords was over ten kilometers long and thin.

Another one had the shape of a saber and was of similar length.

Another one had two edges and was much wider and longer than the previous ones.

The last one was the biggest of them all, but it had only one cutting edge.

The Long Sword.

The Saber.

The Great Sword.

The Colossal Sword.

Silently, the gigantic mass of horror and bladesjust hovered in front of the Emperors.

The Emperors didn't do anything.

Right now, they were feeling something that they hadn't felt in an eternity.

Powerlessness.

Hopelessness.

They all knew that there was nothing they could do.

Just the sheer amount of Mana they were feeling was causing them despair.

This entire mass was at the Peak Eighth Realm.

However, that was considering the density of its Mana when one thought about a human.

This meant that every spot of this mass had the same Mana density as a Peak Mage King.

All the Mana of this thing added up would be able to rival a Mid Mage Emperor!

Earlier, Shang had managed to resist all of them with only about four Peak Mage Kings of Mana!

"Hahahaha!"

The cold laugh echoed throughout the world.

The next moment, the spots without blades started to tremble a little.

And then, they opened.

Eyes!

Hundreds of huge eyes!

And all of the eyes looked onto the Emperors and the Archivist!

This was Shang.

After realizing that his body was no longer confined to the rules of Aterium, he expanded it.

With more tentacles, Shang needed a wider torso, and a wider torso gave more space for more tentacles.

Controlling so many tentacles was straining the mind, which was why Shang had added more Entropy and Mana to his soul.

Shang's brain grew many times more.

But his head was now a weak point.

So, Shang pushed his mind and soul into his torso and got rid of his head.

However, Shang knew that he should still use his eyes to perceive his surroundings since there were abilities that could fool one's Spirit Sense, which was why he had created several eyes.

And things just continued like this.

More weapons, more power, more everything.

A vicious cycle.

Shang consumed more and more Abomination Kings, but instead of increasing the density of his Mana and Entropy, he just increased their volume.

Shang was essentially made of thousands of Abomination Kings that had all been fused together into one huge creature.

And this was what Shang had created after 22,000 years of experimenting.

And he was nowhere near done growing and becoming more powerful!