The God of Underworld-Chapter 318 - 17

The clash between Indra and the possessed Vritra was the final, desperate concerto of the Hindu universe.

Indra, standing on a conceptual precipice, was a magnificent, tragic figure of defiance. With his single, functional arm, he wielded the golden spear, striking with the speed and precision of a hundred thunderstorms.

"Hahaha! This is like our previous battle! You accursed dragon!"

Although he said that, this battle is no longer the same as their previous battle.

The Vritra he was facing now was no longer merely the concept of drought; it was a vessel for Outer One chaos, its immense serpentine body moving with non-Euclidean malice.

"Know your place, ant!" The outer one declared as it attack.

Each movement violated the laws of the fading universe, and every strike from its massive head, studded with gnashing mouths, carried the weight of pure chaos.

"Hahaha! Come on! You think I’m afraid of you!? I am Indra! Lord of Heaven! And I will carve that name deep into your soul" Indra fought with the savage courage of a god who had nothing left to lose.

He knew every weakness of Vritra from their original, epic battle, but this creature was different—it was animated by alien thought.

He managed to weave bolts of lightning around his spear, striking the countless eyes of the dragon, causing the Outer One fragment within to shriek in psychic pain.

But the sheer, overwhelming mass and chaotic power of Vritra were too much.

The dragon slammed its corrupted form down, crushing the area around Indra with a localized gravitational field.

Indra managed to leap clear, but the force of the impact shattered the remaining armor on his chest and sent him crashing into the ruins nearby. 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

"You are predictable, little god!" the voice of the Outer One fragment roared through Vritra’s thousand mouths, a chilling blend of ancient Sanskrit and alien static. "Your courage is admirable, but your powers are insignificant!"

Vritra coiled, its body momentarily covering the vast, silent forms of Shiva, Brahma, and Vishnu—the unconscious Trinity.

The dragon raised its head high, preparing the final, decisive strike, an attack that would erase Indra completely from the ravaged cosmos.

Indra pushed himself up, his remaining hand clutching the spear.

He was dizzy, bleeding profusely, and could feel his conceptual form beginning to fragment under the sheer dimensional stress.

He knew this was the end.

But he didn’t fear, instead, he simply grinned, ready to die fighting, ready to be erased if it meant one last glorious act of defiance.

"Heh...Hehehe...! Come on! I can take it!"

But before Vritra could bring its massive maw down, the air around the ancient temple shattered.

From the ground where they lay, the three greatest gods of the Hindu universe moved.

Brahma, the Creator, his face drawn in unimaginable pain, focused his last reserves of creative power.

"Indra! Do not resist!"

Using the full conceptual weight of his authority over creation, he forced a conceptual bubble of pure Existence around Indra, a fleeting, infinitesimally brief moment of ultimate structure that momentarily repelled the chaotic influence of Vritra.

"Brahma?!" Indra exclaimed in shock.

Vishnu, the Preserver, his body leaking light from a thousand wounds, pushed his hands outward, momentarily slwoing the flow of time and space around Vritra’s head, infinitesimally hindering the dragon’s final strike.

It was a perfect moment of calculated preservation, buying less than a second of survival.

"Urgh-!? W-What is this?! Time?!"

The outer one wasn’t give any time to think as Shiva, the Destroyer, whose body was scorched black from the initial battle, rose with a silent, terrible majesty.

"Take this, and know of my power, fragment!"

He used the last, raw, desperate essence of his power to initiate a localized, conceptual Destruction Wave—the opposite of Vritra’s own chaos.

It was a single, pure, contained wave of annihilation directed not at the dragon, but at the Outer One fragment’s control node within Vritra’s spiritual core.

The combined, agonizing effort of the Trinity was not an attack designed to win, but an attack designed to save.

The conceptual bubble propelled Indra backward, away from Vritra’s maw.

The momentary slow-down of time allowed him to use the impulse, carrying him into the safety of the ruined perimeter.

The destruction wave, though it did not kill the fragment, struck with enough purity to disorient the entity controlling Vritra.

"RAAARRGHHH!!!" Vritra screamed—a sound of confusion and blinding pain—and staggered back, its immense, black coils twitching wildly, its attention briefly diverted from Indra to the agonizing reality of its own host body’s rebellion.

Indra, sprawled amidst the rubble, watched the Trinity.

They had saved him, but the cost was absolute.

With the last of their energy spent, Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva stumbled, almost collapsing, their divine forms fading, the light leaving their eyes.

They were not dead, but conceptually exhausted, falling into a divine sleep from which they might never wake.

Indra pushed himself onto his knees, his jaw set in cold, furious determination.

The Trinity had bought him a sliver of time, a momentary distraction, and he would not waste their final sacrifice.

He focused his remaining power, preparing to deliver the final blow.

But before he could move...

"Indra," Shiva rasped, his eyes burning with the last flicker of his boundless destructive power. "Can you keep the brute occupied for a minute? No, thirty seconds will be enough."

Indra, still reeling from the impact, forced his fragmented body upright, lightning crackling around his spear.

He grinned—a wild, bloody expression of arrogance mixed with exhaustion. "Thirty seconds? I can fight the overgrown lizard for another hour if I wanted, old man! Just tell me what you need done!"

Shiva’s lips curved into a proud, faint smile. "Then show me, Lord of Heaven. Let me see the might that once slew Vritra in his prime."

Indra gave a guttural laugh, spun his spear, and, roaring defiance, charged back toward the disoriented, thrashing form of the possessed Vritra.

Shiva turned immediately toward Vishnu and Brahma, his eyes conveying a thousand words.

Although they didn’t speak, they understand what each of them are thinking and nodded, their breaths shallow but their wills absolute.

Without a word, the three supreme deities maneuvered their broken forms into a perfect cosmic triangle.

Their individual divine authority—Creation, Preservation, and Destruction—began to flow inward, merging with agonizing difficulty.

The truth of the Hindu Trinity was complex: they had not always been separate.

They used to be one and the same—a singular, all-encompassing, supreme being, Para Brahman.

To birth the universe, that single entity had split its essence into the three distinct functional aspects.

In their prime, when unified, this entity was as powerful as a true Transcendent Being, capable of interacting with the fundamental concepts of reality on an absolute scale.

Now, as their universe died, they were forcing the impossible reunion, attempting to invoke the primeval, absolute power of Para Brahman one last time.

Meanwhile, Indra was fighting the inevitable.

He used sheer speed and calculated madness of someone who doesn’t care about his life to struck Vritra’s most heavily corrupted joints, disrupting the Outer One’s control.

But the dragon was a vessel of pure chaos.

Vritra retaliated with a terrifying, decisive strike, a massive, black claw, tipped with crystallized entropy, lashed out, piercing Indra’s chest.

"Grgh--!?"

It tore through the God of Heaven’s divine flesh, ripping out his lungs and the conceptual center of his heart.

Bur Indra didnt even flinch, instead he screamed in anger, the sound lost in the cosmic chaos as he drove his golden spear forward in a final, retaliatory cut, severing the dragon’s enormous claw at the wrist.

"RAAARRGHHH!"

He then leveraged the wound to escape, retreating backward, collapsing against a shattered mountain.

He gasped, but there was no air to pull into his devastated lungs.

The physical wound was horrific, but for a god of his stature, the loss of organs was survivable as long as his divinity held.

However, his divinity was also rapidly declining.

"Is it not done yet?" Indra wondered desperately, looking toward the faint, collapsing light where the Trinity was fusing. "I cannot hold on for much longer!"

Damn! He really shouldn’t have bragged to Shiva back then!

Vritra, having momentarily absorbed the lost power of its own severed limb, focused its vengeance.

Its thousand mouths began to chant again, and the familiar, terrifying formation of the compressed black hole, the attack it used that completely destabilised the universe earlier, formed at the maw.

Indra’s eyes widened in horror.

He strained every muscle, trying to launch one last, desperate attack, but his body seized moving.

"Wha—!?" He looked down at the massive, gaping wound in his chest.

The flesh around the torn area was dissolving, with a black, viscous liquid, laced with the miniature, terrible faces and eyes of the Outer One spawn, was actively eating his divine flesh.

The conceptual erasure of the primordial chaos was spreading from the wound, consuming his essence.

He immediately felt a profound, overwhelming weakness as he stumbled, collapsing fully onto the ground.

"No! No! Move!" he screamed internally, fighting the encroaching paralysis. "I need to stop that attack, or the entire universe will be erased!"

But his limbs refused to listen, shackled by the poisoning entropy.

Vritra roared in triumph, ready to fire the compressed black hole.

But the roaring suddenly became a terrified shriek.

Before Vritra could release the orb, a massive, golden hand—larger than the dragon itself—slammed down from the heavens.

It grabbed Vritra’s massive, chaotic head, its fingers easily crushing the corrupted bone and tissue.

The universe seemed to warp and recoil.

Then, before Indra’s shocked eyes, the figure attached to that hand descended.

It was a being of sublime, terrifying power, its size completely eclipsing the largest galaxies in their dying universe.

It was a fusion of light, fire, and absolute control: a massive entity with six arms wielding tools of creation and destruction, and three serene, focused heads.

Indra felt a rush of absolute awe—and a profound, familiar sense of unity.

He recognized the signature: the combined, pure essence of the Trinity.

Para Brahman had returned!

The immense being crushed the possessed Vritra in its colossal grip, scattering the Outer One fragment into inert dust, its roar ending in a wet, final conceptual pop.

Then, a voice, resonating with the sound of a thousand synchronized dimensions, echoed in Indra’s mind, bypassing his physical deafness.

"Indra! Heed my orders!"

The unified being did not wait for an answer as at pointed one of its immense golden hands towards the Hindu Heart—a shimmering, multifaceted conceptual jewel that had been hidden nearby.

"Prepare to grab the Heart. We shall open the final gate. Let us escape this destruction."

Indra’s eyes widened in shock hearing that.