In the depths of space many many lightyears away from the Milky Way Galaxy two immeasurably huge beings were shredding the universe and battling.
The first one, a being that looked very much like an English aristocrat who wore a black fancy dress jacket with a purple lace tie that had a large gold brooch with a round purple gem that glowed with a bright haze. An immaculate laced white dress shirt spotlessly covered his upper body. On his face was a decorated gold audience mask one might wear to a play. A large black top hat with a white rim hid most of his white hair. He wore black dress pants and purple aristocrat boots.
He wouldn't look that out of place in a nineteen hundreds theatre except for the fact that he was much larger than the countless solar systems that surrounded the fighters.
A bored look was fixed on his face as he didn't even bother to dodge the blows that rained down upon him. The one assaulting him was a golden automaton that was vaguely male humanoid in shape. He wore a dark blue naval ceremonial commander's dress, much like those of the eighteen hundreds English naval commanders, gold jacket and all.
To be precise, the man wasn't actually shredding the universe, it was actually the automaton doing the attacking while the man was doing nothing but being attacked. With each frighteningly fast attack, millions of solar systems met their abrupt end.
The man was getting beaten to a pulp, but after a few dozen repetitions of the same attack, he began speaking. His voice was bored beyond belief, and he sounded no worse for wear.
"Well then. I will regard these attacks as something that didn't happen" He said with no hint of pain or exhaustion.
When the man spoke, he snapped his fingers and all the damage done to him was undone in an instant, leaving him completely unharmed.
Just like that, everything that had happened to him and the universe around them was discounted as a dream that had never happened.
The automaton's blow that had annihilated millions of solar systems was frustrated to nothing yet again.
"This is boring, Why do you continue this pointless attack? Your master clearly thought better than just an attack like this when he made you?" The man questioned the automaton that continued its repetitive attacks.
Solar systems, Galaxies, Galaxy clusters, all were destroyed by the attacks of the machine. Yet just as they destroyed, a simple snap of the fingers by the ever bored man discounted it all as a dream.
While one might be frustrated by such repetitive attacks and lash out, The man was a different type of fighter. He enjoyed the spectacle, the flare, the show, and this was most certainly not a spectacle or flare, much less a show. It was boring. No matter how many times the universe was torn apart, the machine accomplished nothing.
"There must be more to this right? Some other meaning that I am missing?" The man asked, giving a sigh of disappointment, yet the machine said only one thing.
"Talk is pointless. I am a weapon aimed at you, and I will do exactly what I am designed to do" He said, his cold robotic voice betraying no emotion, simply stating his purpose.
"But that's not true, now is it Belphegor? Your creator and I have had many discussions before, and I know you have your own mind. You're not just a machine. If you were, I would have completely obliterated you from all space and time" The man said, beginning to feel that he was very much wasting his time.
At that moment, he let his guard down ever so slightly, and that was his folly.
In that moment, the massive machine man raised his right hand and with a bright flash, infinite universes, each containing infinite possibilities were created from the machine's power.
"My master programmed your fighting style into me and created many countermeasures to your abilities. Each of these universes will explode, taking the entire multiverse with it if you can't figure out the correct timeline in the correct universe to stop it" The machine explained to the man who frowned.
Nigh instantly, the universes disappeared, but that was expected. The man, Count D as he was known to humanity was more than capable of finding the timeline withing the infinite possibilities of the infinite universes, however, that was the point. In that short moment of distraction, the machine attacked again, the attack altering causality itself to change a tiny detail that the count usually would have seen if not for the distraction.
When the count snapped again, he missed the tiny change, and after everything was discounted as a mere dream, a tiny scorch mark was seen on his sleeve.
Upon seeing this, the count was quite pleased. He was pleased for the fact that there was a point to all of this. The machine, Belphegor had calculated that after the long and pointless battle, he could distract the count for a sneak attack. While it was far from any meaningful damage, it was now dedicated as a fact of reality and no matter what the count did from there on out, he could not change the fact that that attack happened.
Every time he set something as a dream, he had to be intimately familiar with everything in all of reality so he could restore it. So if he missed something, no matter how small, he couldn't discard it as a dream. That was what the machine Belphegor was counting on.
It was a battle of attrition, and it was only that way because the count had some modicum of respect for his master and was curious as to how his creation thought, acted, and operated.
Both the count and Belphegor knew that at any moment, if the count wished to end the fight, he could effortlessly, However, Belphegor had taken into account the count's age and habits.
The count was one of the oldest beings in creation, and was incredibly bored. For not only was he unfathomably old and powerful, he was honest to a fault and enjoyed the spectacle of things much more than the right, wrong, or efficiency of said things.
His go to tactics were to just let the opponent tire themselves out and give up after meaninglessly struggling to hurt him.
What Belphegor was surely aware of was the count he was fighting was merely an avatar of the count's true body that resided beyond the multiverse, however, that was fine. Well within prediction. This was his data collection. Preparation and an attempt at finding any possible weaknesses for when his master inevitably came to war with the true Count D.
The count sighed from within the world of dreams, seeing that the machine would continue to use this tactic until it damaged the avatar. Only one word escaped his lips in a silent whisper.
"Boring" He breathed out, and in an instant, Belphegor was reduced to nothingness.
Still, it seemed that the Machine Lord had gained more than he did from this. The data Belphegor had gained was passed on to the Machine lord in his own reality.
That's how it was for beings beyond even Legion Commanders. If they fought, all of reality would be unmade with simply their existing within it. It was why they used avatars and created underlings.
However, Count D was in a league of his own, even among the Lords and Ladies. He simply sought to experience enjoyment and didn't care where he got it or who he got it from. It was really the only reason he even cared the slightest about humanity.
Recently, in the last three millenia, he had taken interest in an earth that was under the sights of a goddess from another multiverse, Hardy as she was known in that reality.
Needless to say, The Count was quite amused by the scheming and decided to have some fun in that reality, but he would take his time.
Being overindulgent would only spoil everything, and leave him with a bad taste in his mouth.