Frostcrowned focused on the battle below. “I will open him for Hiu Le’s attack. Primal Queen, I trust you to fill the gaps and set up an anchoring formation. We’ll provide it with extra Dao, should his power prove too much for you alone.”

Their plant set, the trio stepped off and plunged towards the ground.

Qi, spirit, and Dao blazed them into comets of white, green, and blue.

A jungle erupted from the Primal Queen as she released her soul world into reality. Vibrant trees of colossal size sprouted from the ground, reaching towering heights in a span of moments. Animated vines and sentient briars punched from the ground, enveloping an area kilometers wide. Imaginary beasts created by her soul assumed thousands of haunting shapes, each a unique menagerie of venom, fang, and claw. Winter turned to tropic. Qi and Dao pulsed through that jungle, activating a formation that glued her soul world onto this reality and enforced her laws within it.

Frostcrowned approved of this through his Dao, strengthening Primal Queen’s domain further to segment her absolute authority over space.

Hiu Le released her own soul world. Space within a millimeter of her skin rippled with an iridescent sheen. Reality within her body warped, changing the nature of Qi and spirit, multiplying them again and again, and transforming all energy within her into that unnerving Pearl-Force of hers.

Frostcrowned approached Icemane’s soul world and unleashed his own technique.

The great mane of Wolfgod strewn about his wide shoulders came alive, whispering curses at its wearer, even as he drew on its undying strength. An armor of pale fur coated Frostcrowned’s thick limbs. His fingers grew into claws of [True Ice]. [Rage of the Winterking] transformed his blood. [Fangs of Woflgod] grew to fill his mouth, granting him permanent [Worldbite]. And, as he fell into and popped open his disciples’ soul world, long frost horns encircled his head with the [Crown of Winterking], granting him nigh absolute authority over all things cold.

Roaring, he plummeted into the Memetic Immortal standing above Icemane and met his fist with his claw.

Atmosphere cracked from the clap of the impact.

Ground crumbled into a massive crater. All buildings within half a kilometer's radius collapsed from the shock-wave.

Vines and greenery sprouted from the ground, enveloping chunks of fractured concrete before they had time to fall.

As the Memetic Immortal smiled and opened his mouth to speak, Frostcrowned whirled to the side and allowed Hiu Le’s strike to land.

Like a comet of pearly light, she came down, her fingers outstretched towards the white bearded man’s face.

Dust and Dao erupted, kicking up a cloud of chaos.

Blows were exchanged at speed exceeding even Frostcrowned King’s perception. Flashes of pearly light collided upon the very concept of muscle. Then something landed.

Hiu Le retreated and Frostcrowned King threw himself before her, catching a spine cracking blow with his back. Ground beneath his feet cratered and would’ve melted to sand if not for Primal Queen’s domain.

Her beasts and plants swarmed the man, whose right shoulder had been pearlified. The arm itself was on the ground, strewn in a mess of shattered shards.

“That’s great,” said the First Head of the Gigachad Sect, while strangling a beast the size of a house. “I always wanted to try fighting one armed. Come now, little Frosty. Let’s dance.”

“Steel your emotions,” Frostcrowned said to his companions. “Don’t allow yourselves to feel impressed by him.”

Primal Queen scoffed. “Of course not. Do you think this is my first time battling one of them?”

Hiu Le and Frostcrowned shot forward in tandem, colliding with the First’s wall of muscle in an eruption of blows which shattered the ground into a smattering of craters, pearlified crystal, and True Ice.

***

“Dark Arts Master Kevin of Neckbeardman sixty-nine, to join your body, soul, and cultivation with Silent Feather’s. Accept the soul talisman and swear upon it, your immortal love.”

Kevin placed his hand on the gold inscribed talisman. “Silent Feather. My first 3D waifu. Forever, I shall cherish you and stand by your side as your loyal husbando, white knight, and guardian.”

My intestines ceased their battle as Big Dick energy surged in the atmosphere.

I blinked, and the ceiling was gone, replaced by the open sky.

Wind blew out all the lights and nearly tore our clothes off, as something flew past at impossible speed.

Streaks of pearly energy flashed down, crystallizing huge swathes of the crowd where they stood. A beast with ten scythes for arms and another ten for a face erupted from the ground in a mess of gore and shattered pearl-statues of cultivators. Wooden planks and furniture sprouted into life with fanged flowers and long thorny vines automatically homing in on nearby throats.

In the clouds above, flashes of reality trembling techniques projected the four combatants into titanic silhouettes as if they were the Greek gods of old.

My Dao recognized the Zeus among them, a man with an outline as familiar as my reflection.

He was the first among us.

Raw gratitude filled my chest. I resolved to repaying the legacy of his bruhness to the best of my ability.

Thunk.

A frazzled cultivator trying to flee the chaos of destruction, the rain of stray lesser-deity-level attacks, and strange jungle beasts collided with my chest. “Stand aside, mongrel!” he shouted, face red, Qi coalescing around a dagger.

“Watch your tongue, that’s my man you’re talking to!” Nelly emptied my leftover pink-poison-water on his face.

“Gaah!” The man ran off, clutching his melting face.

“A little ruthless.”

“My hand slipped~”

“Fine. Stay close.” After a split second analysis of my surroundings, I waded the chaos of death and panic around us to the closest spiritual beast, one that was locked in combat with three decently powerful cultivators of rivaling sects.

“Stand back,” I said, causing them and the nightmarish beast to flinch. “This one will be my steed.”

“Grawr?” asked the beast, its three-way split maw of endless teeth splitting open at a curious angle.

Behave now organs, I said to my quarreling insides. You may have punched each other, but you’re still bruhs.

Bruhs they might have been, but they were not yet Chads.

Battle royale of organs resumed. I grit my teeth, accepted the pain, and mounted the beast with [Down Blyat] whilst it was confused. I pulled Nelly on top with me and saddled her in front of me. The monster began bouncing like a mad bull.

“Yee-haw~”

“Nelly, the beast feels similar to your bloodline. Place your hands on its skull and try to reach for its core with your Qi. I believe your power has the potential to control it, and I know you have the strength to do it.”

Wedding venue spiraled around us as the beast did jumpy pirouettes in the air, fighting in vain to dislodge my legs from its neck.

“Wahooo! Hahaha, this is the best! What’d you say? Oh, touch its skull-core-thingamajic, okay sure let’s try.” Her face wrinkling, Nelly reached out with her Qi, while grunting with intense focus.

“Keep it up! It’s working! You can do it!” I had zero clue whether or not it was working, as I couldn’t properly sense Qi.

But encouragement is never in vain.

A bloom of green sparked beneath her palms. Qi surged through the monster as both it and Nelly howled in unison, their eyes bleeding with light of spring. Dull mud-green scales peeled off of the beast, replaced by long fur of grass and flowers.

“Who-ho-ho-hoo… T-that’s a new feeling.” Nelly chuckled, shivering. “Yup. Where to?”

I pointed at the ceremonial altar, where Kevin and Silent Feather were caught in a pitched fight against a sibling of Nelly’s new pet.

“Hyaa! Onwards Bonko!” She kicked imaginary spurs.

Acceleration flattened her against my chest. Limbs as long as street lights carried us over in seconds.

I picked Nelly up and hopped off, landing beside Kevin just before Bonko smashed into the side of its kin and the two beasts became a brawl of claws.

“Titan, was that your…”

“A senior bruh,” I replied to Kevin. “The first of us. And I think the crystal lady is the one from TV. We need to act fast if we want there to be anyone left after they’re done. Distance is the only defence against forces of that magnitude. Silent Feather, can you recruit any of your surviving clansmen to help with evacuations outside?”

Kevin lifted his eyes off of a phone-screen. “Uh, Titan… I suspect evacuation might not be an option.”

He flipped the screen over to a shaking live-stream of a wall of writhing greenery rising up into the skies next to a sign reading ‘Arriving in Townberg’.

“Transport formations aren’t working!” one cultivator shouted to another.

The bomb shelters had been destroyed in the initial apocalypse. The only place capable of withstanding so much as a sneeze from the forces battling above was Happyland.

But Happyland couldn’t fit all of Townberg.

I grimaced.

My duty was foremost to Happyland that I’d sworn to protect, but over the recent months, I’d got to know the people of Townberg. I had laughed with them, made new acquaintances, new friends, and even a new bruh. They were my people just as much as the folks of Happyland.

Time slowed to a crawl as I focused on Big Braining the dilemma, though I already knew what I had to do. It felt too soon, but that’s how things go sometimes in life. I’d hoped to act as the spearhead a while longer, but all good things must come to an end sometime.

If I asked myself whether I’d set the people around me up for success, the answer was yes.

If I asked myself whether I’d done my best to help them save themselves, the answer was yes.

If I asked myself whether they could do it without me, the answer was a resounding, absolute, without a shadow of a doubt: Yes.

Hope had been reignited in the hearts of the people, and they would carry that torch to victory. I could’ve helped them in times of future hardship, but I wasn’t necessary.

And I’d had a good run, hadn’t I? Last few weeks with Nelly had been a life without regret.

A wide, calm smile spread on my lips as I looked at my companions. “We must act swiftly. Nelly, ride Bonko to Happyland and help secure the premise. Silent Feather, help evacuate civilians in the Downtown area.”

Nelly’s eyes narrowed minutely, gears of suspicion ticking behind them. Whether I was Big Brain or Smol Brain, she’d had a near supernatural understanding of my thoughts since childhood, and must’ve suspected something.

To leave no regrets behind, I snaked an arm around her waist and pulled her slender frame against mine, taking her in an embrace that left my lover’s eyes fluttering. “I love you Nelly, be careful, and be safe.”

“Uh-uh…” Scatterbrained from the kiss, she fumbled with her steps and climbed atop her steed, which had just finished killing its former kin.

Silent Feather and Kevin had exchanged goodbyes and the cultivator flew off on wings of Qi.

“I shall accompany you on this final stand,” said Kevin.

I grinned. “Before you finish your vows? I don’t think so. Besides, your Dao is that of Neckbeardness. What I have in mind requires pure Chadness.”

Kevin gave me a long stare of intense bruhness, then clasped my hand, gave me a bro-hug, and left with his trench-coat fluttering. “Burn bright my friend, burn bright,” he said.

That is exactly what I had in mind.

***

One intense Big Brain analysis later, at the tallest spot of the partially collapsed wedding venue.

Intense winds shook the skyscrapers of the city, tearing billboards off the walls and shattering windows. Every major blow of the battle around us made the gale flip directions. Three lesser deity level cultivators and my senior bruh moved kilometers in split instants between their blows. Even my intensely muscular eyes could only track them by the aftershocks, clouds of dust, and explosions of earth cratering power.

What I was about to do would either give my senior-bruh the edge he needed to win, or splatter my quarreling insides into gory mist.

Then again, if my senior bruh lost, the latter was happening either way once the lesser deities descended upon us for clean-up.

Trajectory of the combatants circled the Downtown in a pattern I’d already predicted and foreseen through Big Brain analysis. Their battle cut a crescent arch across the industrial neighbourhood, lining up with my position atop the tallest flagpole of the tallest building.

My guts began to calm their infighting as the flashes of marking the fight approached at supersonic speed. At the precise moment, when the most Chad-like of the blurred shapes was concealed by a wall of plants that suddenly spasmed into existence, I gathered air in my lungs and shouted, my voice booming deep and clear across the entire Townberg.

“Come! Show me a blow that can tickle the head of the Gigachad sect!”

I raised placed my hands on my hips. Tension of maximum flex spread from arms to biceps to shoulders to back and pecs, traveling down my body until I’d reached the full activation of [Sure You Wanna Do That, Bruh?].

Eyes turned upwards. Three pairs of lesser-deity level gazes snapped to me like death warrants. Beneath their notice, thousands upon thousands of mortals turned to look up at me.

Air rippled as intense Big Dick energy formed a vortex around me and pummeled into my body with the force of ten trucks. My insides rebelled at the stream of energy, barely able to withstand its density. My muscles swelled, steaming from internal heat. Stray snow-flakes fluttering past my jaw were cut before they realized it. My brain slowed the world around me to a perfect calm.

Three cultivators of immeasurable power pivoted mid-air, launching at me. First of them was a beast of a man, like a viking god of myth crossbred with Fenrir. Behind him followed a bolt of pearlescent light. Following them like a cape was a dryad of some kind and a gigantic tsunami of jungle.

Techniques were loosened.

My death warrants were signed, stamped, and mailed, waiting for delivery.

Unflinching, grinning, I watched them, channeling the storm of Big Dick energy into my defensive posture.

Thump of my heart grew into focus.

Slow and steady.

Consigned to its fate.

A grin formed on the surface of my heart as its bottom angled into a sharp jaw. My other organs immediately fell in line, recognizing the birth of the supreme Chad among them.

I chuckled. Last requirement of the Chadorgan stage was to perform a Chadtastic deed. I’d not planned this to be how I ascended to Chad Core realm, but I couldn’t help but feel the soul-deep satisfaction of completion wash over me, buzzing my brain with sweet post-workout endorphins.

I understood why there were so few Alpha cultivators now. When the world called out to us, we answered without hesitation.

My new Chadformed heart thumped its first new beat. It was deeper than before, like a wall-sized metal cong compared to a triangle. Blood and Big Dick energy pulsed through my veins at a hundred miles per hour, filling me with power that made me feel as if I could rip the Moon out of the sky.

Before me, the number of pearlescent lances had multiplied to millions. Qi-projected jaws of a wolf the size of a mountain followed in their wake, sucking air towards a void-black maelstrom in the beast’s maw. From the ground, the buildings, and clouds themselves, vines thick as bridge cables grew towards me, aiming to skewer me with what looked like formation anchors of impossible complexity.

“Couldn’t ask for a better end,” I said.

“This isn’t your time yet, bruh.”

My eyes flicked to the side, spotting a wrinkled old Gigachad of immense stature, a head taller than even I. Where his arm had been rendered into a stump, pearly veins snaked into his flesh, pulsing with corruptive energy. His remaining hand clapped my shoulder as he spoke with the voice of deep tectonics.

“Congratulations on finishing the Chadorgan stage, bruh. Sixth chose well. We couldn’t be prouder of having a bruh like you at the helm of the Gigachad sect. But you’re a trillion reps too early to steal the stage from an old bruh like me.” His scraggy white beard twitched as he grinned with the power of a sun, his blue eyes thinning to thin happy slits.

Secrets within H*-Man action figurine had spoken of him.

“First?” I asked.

“First.” He nodded.

I glanced at the bolts of energy, now approaching us even slower than before. I’d not had time to ask ‘how’, when the old man already answered.

“It’s called [Bruh Moment]. Takes quite a lot of Big Dick energy to activate and requires you to do something that shocks reality itself, but that isn’t too hard if you know where to push her.”

“I see. Impressive.”

“It’s useful, though Frosty there seems to be channeling Dao for his [Worlfreeze]. When he does we’ll be moving at roughly equal speeds.”

“Let them. Nothing can match two bruhs united.”

First laughed a hearty ho-ho, rubbing my shoulder. “Yes. Yes. My Dao is screaming yes, but no. Not this time, bruh. The amount of Big Dick energy you’re channeling is a tad too risky for you. Think of it like adding too much to a rep. Except instead of tearing muscles by pulling a new maximum once, you’re tearing yourself down with every second that passes. Pass over the torch, let an old man burn today, and make sure that when the time comes for you to blaze, you’ll make a flame that sets galaxies on fire instead of one city.”

Respect and awe swelled in my chest. First was a true Chad. I couldn’t argue with his logic, yet my nature wouldn’t allow me to stand aside and let him die.

“I…”

“Shake my hand, Titan.”

I clasped his remaining hand and felt the vortex shift directions. Through my admiration of his Chadness, my Big Dick energy now surged to him.

First straightened his already straight back past limits of logic. His muscles flexed further, his chin sharpened, and his beard flourished into majesty. Fire burned in his eyes as he turned towards ‘Frosty’, who’d suddenly sped up to match us.

“Say hello to Fifth if he’s still around,” said First.

I experienced a moment of confusion, before he slammed my chest with [Alpha Slap]. World lurched backwards around me. I slammed through three walls and a tree, landing in a heap of snow in Happyland.

“Titan!” Nelly pulled her steed to a halt right before me.

Stars swirled in my head as I sat upright to watch the most bizarre sight.

First’s hand reached out for us, casually ignoring proportions, scale, and distance. His palm grew titanic, shielding us from the sun. His fingers buried into the earth around Happyland and grasped the entire asylum off its roots like it was rock. Then, with an over-shoulder toss, First head of the Gigachad sect threw us.

Sky and Townberg vanished. A loud slurp replaced them with pure chaos and abstract. A second slurp rocketed us out before my eyes grew used to the liquid vomit of colors. With a foundation shaking thunk, Happyland Asylum landed on of a natural mountain terrace, overlooking a horizon of verdant valleys, pillar-like mountains, and two mountain-sized dragons wrestling in the sunset.

“Magical Chinaland!” Nelly cheered, nearly exploding from exuberance.