Facing a Tier 9 Ascendant in a fair fight was suicide for anyone still within the Tier 7 threshold. It wasn't just a matter of mana reserves or physical power and speed; it was a conceptual Authority mismatch. True Ascendants move according to the private laws of their own Inner Worlds, ignoring the basis of Conceptual reality. Facing three of them at once, regardless of whether I possessed a Hybrid Soul forged in the Void and tempered by the Flame, was pure insanity.
But I had never once intended to play a fair game.
The three streaks of silver light grew larger against the grey obsidian sky of the siphoning floor. As they approached, I could feel their collective authority attempting to preemptively colonize our Domain. It was an imperial presence — the heavy scent of cold lavender and stolen quintessence turning the air into a suffocating velvet noose. My [Void Emperor's Omnipresence] hummed a warning, a frantic vibration in the sub-space layers of my consciousness.
"Don't let them set the tempo," I whispered, the weight of the dark silver relic heavy in my pocket. I reached deep into the center of my core, activating my most desperate fail-safe.
[Glimpse of a Path.]
I waited a few minutes until they arrived within the vision. It was difficult to perceive their true Souls without shattering the Glimpse but I used a new method where I integrated Sylvaris teachings to try to subtly detect it without overwhelming my senses. As I widened my perception within the simulation, I looked not at their weapons, but at the "Strings" connecting them to the simulation.
And that's when I noticed the flaw — the blue, shimmering threads of systemic clamping.
[System Logic Synchronization Validated.]
[Environmental Protocol: Regional Parameter Threshold enforced.]
[Enemy Constraint: Tier 9 Authority clamped to Nodal Aspirant standard. Inner Worlds Contained.]
The realization hit me like a burst of dopamine. The Prime System wasn't making it easy, but it was being fair to its "lab rat." By anchoring the Ascendants' absolute Authority to my own, it had locked their Inner Worlds behind a door. They couldn't pull me into their private heavens where they could rewrite physics on a whim. They were stripped of their primary advantage, left with Tier 9 techniques and vast mana reservoirs, but physically constrained to the Tier 7 ceiling.
A jagged grin touched my face. I could see a route where I didn't end up as a smear on the floor.
I attempted to peer deeper into their cores, to see the source of their mercury-light or mind-scrambling mist without triggering any divination or Time manipulation contingencies they might have. But the moment my [Void-Lattice Perception] attempted to catalog their high-tier Essence patterns within the vision, my mind screamed. The Glimpse was straining. It couldn't render that much high-end conceptual data without collapsing.
The silver light flared into a blinding monochromatic roar, and the vision shattered. My consciousness snapped back to reality, reeling from a massive sensory overload that left my eyes bleeding silver tears and a three-day clock ticking in the corner of my vision.
"Vision's gone," I grunted, blinking away the static. "But the game is on."
The silver streaks were five seconds from impact.
"I need those empty slots filled right now," I hissed, blood dripping from my chin onto my null-steel collar. The psychic toll was pushing me, but I reached into the partitions of the [Vault of the Void], retrieving two ancient, dark-silver skill-scrolls I had bought during the Celestial Auction for this exact moment.
I utilized the Zeroth-Tier [Symphony of the Animus Arch] to act as the glue. Instead of a brute-force system download, I used the harmonic resonance methods I'd perfected on Crystal City and mana methods from Sylvaris. I "listened" to the frequency of the skill crystals and tuned my internal conduits to mirror their shapes, integrating them with the subtle elegance of Sylvaris arts.
[Skill Acquired: Abyssal Stillness (Epic) (Altered).]
[Skill Acquired: Titan's Bone-Density (Epic) (Altered).]
The first, [Abyssal Stillness], felt like a mountain of ice dropping into a boiling sea. It was a passive mental and soul-ward that "Quietened" my interface. It wouldn't just resist a mental attack; it made my consciousness invisible to it. My soul-scape became a transparent vacuum, making it nearly impossible for psionics to latch onto.
The second, [Titan's Bone-Density], surged through my frame with the weight of liquid lead. It used my neutron-heavy biology to anchor me. I wasn't just heavy; I was unmovable. My bones became conceptual anchors of the material world.
The silver streaks hit the floor with a concussive boom that sent basalt shrapnel flying like bullets through the Veresian ranks.
The smoke cleared to reveal three monsters.
The woman, who introduced herself in the Glimpse as Pharia, had hair of liquid mercury that slithered over her shoulders and faceted, insect-like silver eyes. Beside her was Xylex, a literal monolith of a man with skin resembling cracked shale and limbs that radiated planetary mass. Between them was Orobus, the Mind-Weaver, his slender frame draped in a veil of humming amethyst smoke that smelled like ozone and forgotten nightmares.
"Class is in session," I whispered.
I used [Omnipresence] to simply exist directly above Xylex. I swung the two massive obsidian blades wreathed in the screaming Flame. I didn't have to hide it anymore. My dual nature exploded into the air — the Flame of Entropy mixed with the silence of the Void.
I brought the blades down with enough kinetic energy to pulverise a country. Xylex roared, attempting to manifest a shield of compressed gravity, but my flames instantly deleted the "Permission" for his mana to hold form within the Lattice.
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The blades bit into his granite-hard shoulders. Golden blood — dense, hot, and metallic — sprayed across my face. It tasted like wealth and stolen stars.
"He is warded!" Orobus screamed.
The Mind-Weaver flared his purple veil, sending a massive ripple of psionic malice toward my soul. It should have mind-wiped a planet.
The psionic wave struck me and... was lost. It found nothing to grip, disappearing into the infinite emptiness of my internal continent. Orobus' facets flickered in a microsecond of genuine mortal confusion.
Pharia, the mercury-mage, lunged. She touched the floor, and ten identical copies resembling her erupted from the stone. They seemed to share her stats, her aura-signature, and had dark, mercury-slick reflections of my swords.
The clones lunged in a synchronized wall of my own potential violence.
The battle-mania I'd been repressing for subjective years burst its gates. I could fully unleash. I could finally become nothing but claws, teeth, and biting nothingness. I parried three decapitating strikes from the clones, used a micro-gravity pulse to trip a fourth, and then took a brutal cross-slash from a fifth that opened my chest from collarbone to hip.
I felt the agony — the visceral, red-hot thrill of my own heart beating against open air — and I laughed. I was covered in a mix of my own blood and the liquid starlight Pharia was bleeding.
Alecton, watching from the periphery, let out a unified, guttural roar that matched the Drums of Wrath. He saw me being shredded — my left forearm severed at the wrist by Pharia, my lungs collapsed by a backhand from Xylex — only to see me grinning through the gore.
"Let's dance!" I shouted, grinning through bloodied teeth.
Using [Syntropy], I reversed the effect of all of their strikes. Reality warped backward two seconds. My forearm zipped back onto the bone; my lungs re-inflated with a wet hiss; my chest-wound vanished. I drew on the spent energy of their attacks to refuel my fire.
Suddenly, the cavern's atmosphere turned a dark, pulsing crimson. The divine approval of Wrath was no longer a hint — it was a literal ocean of atmospheric force. The planet itself recognized a struggle of sufficient Vengeance and offered a buffet. My white-gold fire roared, absorbing the ambient rage until it turned a deep, blood-gold hue.
Alecton, seeing me laughing while being forcefully disassembled by hostile gods, couldn't hold back and stay on the sidelines. He discarded his broken spear and launched like a crimson comet.
"FLAME BROTHER! LET US RECLAIM THE SKY!"
He provided the anvil. Alecton crashed into Xylex, pinning the monolith giant in a wrestling grip that would have atomized a regular human. He drew so deeply from his Wrath-Ring that his own skin charred to the bone as they tumbled through the obsidian pipes.
"I'll anchor him!" Alecton spat through a jaw half-burned away.
I manifested a focused sphere of Void directly inside Xylex's chest cavity, utilizing [Omnipresence] to ignore his mana barriers and physical density entirely. Then, using [The Void-Star's Hunger], I didn't just drain mana — I began drinking everything. His physical structural Essence, his entire Core, his cultivated Body, even his own Soul.
I fully intended on making them feel how the people they've kept starving and hopeless felt for so many centuries.
Xylex shrieked — a high-pitched grinding sound of glass on stone — before he imploded inward, his Tier 9 structural data filed away into my inner library. His mass collapsed into a pebble that I crushed into grey soot.
Pharia and Orobus looked horrified.
A few more minutes of desperately using many of the cards they held only to be rebuffed by my naturally high resistances due to the [Hunger] and newly acquired skills. The little that did get through got reversed by [Syntropy] right away.
After realizing that I was not running out of mana any time soon, they tried to escape into the sub-layers of the Lattice. They were Apex predators who had suddenly realized they were just the biggest fish in a small tank.
"Where are you going?" I asked, smiling.
Using the spatial authority of [Omnipresence], I hardened the vacuum. The strings of reality went rigid, forming an inescapable net. Pharia slammed into a wall of invisible force where a door to the void should have been.
I appeared behind her and caught her mercury-neck in my left hand and engaged [Gluttony]. The black bracelet on my arm didn't just vibrate; it shrieked in excitement, somehow converting the atmospheric Fury into raw power. It latched onto her conceptual light and began to drink like it was starving.
She flaked away into starlight-dust before she could finish a prayer.
Only Orobus was left. The mind-specialist huddled on the floor, his smoke dissipating, his facets dim and weeping ichor. I walked toward him slowly, the sound of the planetary drums reaching a bone-shaking crescendo in the background. My tattered armor hung in scraps, exposing my roadmap of Syntropy scars and the terrifying white-gold engine rotating in my ribs.
"You are not gods," I told the Mind-Weaver, his mental shields fluttering like wet paper. "You're just parasites with big piles of essence."
I opened my hand and let [The Void-Star's Hunger] take him. I inhaled his centuries of meditation, his intricate mental traps, and his high-tier light-speed cognitive frameworks. It was a dizzying rush of Tier 9 Concepts that almost overwhelmed my Soul before the [Symphony] smoothed the ripples.
The cavern finally, truly fell silent.
The siphoning cables gave one final, spasming throb — a massive backflow of essence as the local grids failed — and then went stone cold. The drain on the Veresian world had been severed.
I stood in the center of a wrecked cathedral of iron and glass. My breathing was a jagged, metallic rasp. I felt weighted down — not by injury, but by the raw volume of three Tier 9 Ascendants currently being partitioned and stored within the obsidian continent of my Soul.
Alecton was lying on his back near the base of the spire. He was a horrific sight — most of his tattered mantle gone, his torso half-incinerated from drawing too hard on his ring. Yet, a serene, terrifying peace rested on his obsidian face.
I walked over and sat on the stone beside him, leaning my back against the basalt.
"In flames... and fire," Alecton wheezed, blood bubbling on his lips as he offered a shattered, proud grin. "They died like vermin... did you see it, Eren? They couldn't even put up a fight against whatever you used…"
"I saw it," I said, placing a blood-stained hand on his shoulder. I used [Syntropy] one final time — not to restore his youth, which I had tried and found out was Soul related — but to solidify his remaining spirit so he wouldn't go out in the dark.
I looked up at the ceiling. The lavender hues of the Aegis were being devoured.
The sky above the central spire surrendered to an Indigo darkness so dense it made my soul-ward hum in defensive preparation. The true Master of the Planet had arrived — the Architect of the siphons. A Peak Tier 9 presence manifested in the air, landing fifty yards away with a pressure that caused several Veresian soldiers at the far end of the cavern to vomit from the mere atmosphere of the being.
He wore robes of void-silk that rippled like oil and held a staff carved from the bone of a universe-shaking beast.
"Big boss is here," I whispered, reaching into my soul. My Flame instantly reacted, the grey Entropy converging with the deep blood-red of Wrath.
The Lord of the Shattered Chain hauled himself to his feet using his glass spear as a crutch. He leaned into me, sharing the burden of standing. He grinned at the approaching god, a predator that had finally seen the king bleed.
"Burn them all," Alecton whispered.
"Every last one of them," I promised.
I flared my Domain, the white-gold light illuminating the abyss for miles, pushing back against the Indigo shadows of the Tier 9 Lord. Class was about to end, but I was going to make sure the master didn't survive the graduation ceremony.
Round two began with the sound of thunder.