"You heard me right. I dare you to try to erase me at this very moment, use the full extent of Azathoth's Authority that you have available to you. Erase me, Betty. Try to erase me, and I'll show you just why you'll never be alone." You really really hope you aren't wrong about this.

"Fine." The silhouette of Betty finally agrees to your conditions. "If you're really willing to die to prove yourself, then I'll show you just why I was locked here in the first place." Her voice loses all emotion, as if she's tired of arguing with you. "I'm sorry."

Suddenly, you feel a tremendous pressure seeping throughout your body, like the very space that you stand in is trying to devour you in body and soul! You look at your hand, and you see it slowly being transformed into dust. You turn to look at the silhouette of the girl, the darkness finally gone from her body to reveal the shocked tear-stained face of your Servant... no, of your daughter. Clearly, the very fact that you weren't erased by this power immediately is proof enough that survival is possible! But how?! You're going to need to think fast, otherwise you really will be erased!

You can't feel your left hand anymore. It's gone completely. Erased from existence at a conceptual level. You don't even know if you'll be able to naturally regenerate it like this. But... You aren't done yet!

"I am truth given form!" You shout out the first line of your Reality Marble, and already, you can feel the pressure being exerted on you lessen every so slightly. You can still feel your left arm slowly beginning to unravel, and you can feel the sensation starting to occur on your right foot as well now, not to mention that there seems to be a hole opening up in the side of your body.

"I look upon... the falsehood of reality!" You have to take a pause before you can finish your second line, but thankfully, that too decreases the pressure and speed at which you are being eroded away into nothingness. You are forced to take a knee as your right foot finishes dissolving into complete nothingness. You... You have to keep going!

"An infinity of lies!" Once again, with every completed line, the power being exerted on you is resisted more and more, had you been anybody else. Had anybody else in the entire universe have attempted to resisted this supreme authority, then it wouldn't have mattered how powerful they were, they would've been picked apart and had their very concept erased. Types, Beasts, the Velber. Against this sort of power, no amount of strength would allow you to survive. This isn't something that can be survived with any amount of power!

"Blind to the beyond!" You finish your next line just as you feel your other hand beginning to vanish, as well as your foot. The erasure is slowed by a great deal. You're missing half of your lower torso, your right foot, your left arm, as well as both your right hand and left foot. To anybody watching this, they would assume that you were the one losing this battle of magic, and... perhaps you would be, if Betty were truly using the full power of Azathoth's Authority to immediately overwhelm your natural resistance to it, you doubt you would've been given the chance to actually speak any of your arias before having your capacity to speak be erased.

"I shall guide the way!" Despite missing a lot of your body now, you manage to remain kneeling, despite the physical impossibility of the action considering how horribly unbalanced you are right now. As you complete the fifth line, you finally feel the effects of the erasure cease. Of course, you're still missing a great deal of your body, and you won't be able to recover them like this. Even if this is just a projected body for you to use in Betty's dream world, you have no intention of allowing it to remain in such a state. You can see the complete shock on the face of the little girl who you just asked to erase you, clearly she thought that your erasure was a guarantee upon unleashing that power on you.

"A... perfect world of my own creation!" You finish your sixth verse, and you almost try to finish the Reality Marble as a whole before stopping. The pressure of the erasure has already passed, and your erasure has been undone. Attempting to deploy a Reality Marble in the inner world of somebody else... well, it would probably tear Betty apart, and you don't want that at all. Still, you've proven yourself very much capable of resisting the power of even the Authority of Azathoth... At least to the degree that Betty is capable of wielding it. You aren't under any illusions that against the full strength of that authority, nothing but a complete manifestation of your Reality Marble would be capable of saving you.

"How... How are you still alive?!" Betty, who clearly thought that nothing in existence would be capable of resisting that sort of power being wielded against them, is obviously shocked by your survival. "Nothing... Nothing in the world could survive that power!" She obviously didn't expect you to have possibly been able to survive that, and even if she's clearly happy that you not only managed to resist the erasure, but also recovered from the damage that it caused to you.

"The world? Probably not. Outside of the World? Again, probably not... But Outside of the Outside?" You smirk. "Well, Betty. You've got your answer right here. Something that you can't erase."

Part 22