Chương 357: The Weight of a Blessing

The crimson sands of the Dying Veil whispered a low crunch beneath my boots as I walked. Every footfall on this designated world echoed with a dry, parched rasp of essence being slowly leached back into the planetary mantle. Above us, the sky was a deep, unyielding violet, lacking both moons and starlight, casting the horizon in a perpetual, dying twilight. My team landed in a tight circle behind me. They didn't need to be told what to do, the moment we arrived, everyone instantly started on their tasks.

They had sensed the shift in atmospheric weight the moment we exited the portal. At the far end of the plain, roughly half a mile away, the silence was focused into a singular point. The messenger of the Hollow Suns stood waiting. He did not look like Lord Sargon or the demonic commanders of Ignis-7.

He was a being draped in heavy, ceremonial silks of pristine white that flowed like they were made of lead, with four wings composed of translucent glass prisms that somehow reflected the light and focused it at the same time. He stood nearly ten feet tall, a statue of geometric elegance. But it was his signature that caught my throat. Through my newly refined Tier 8 perception and [Void Emperor's Omnipresence], I looked past the white silks.

He was at the absolute peak of Tier 9, vibrating with the density of an entire star. Yet, draped across his neck and anchoring deep into his Star-Core was a thread I couldn't ignore. It wasn't a standard mana-conduit or a soul-bond. To my Lattice eyes, it appeared as a singular, golden chain of absolute logic that reached into the sky, disappearing through the atmospheric veil toward the Higher Courts I had seen in my vision.

The person known as "The Holy One" was essentially a biological receiver for a Tier 11 or higher broadcast.

"Lord Eren Kai," the Messenger spoke, his voice resonating through the mana rather than the air. It was a pleasant, harmonious sound that felt like it was trying to stitch its way into my heartbeat.

"The reports concerning your development did not account for the sheer mass of your soul. A Class-S Structural Deviation is an understatement."

"Who's holding your leash?" I asked, keeping my tone casual as I rested a hand on my belt. Beside me, I tried to force a needle of awareness into the future. [Glimpse of a Path.] The vision didn't even start. The moment my soul attempted to split a thread of causality, a wave of cold, authoritative static slammed back through my mental gates. The golden chain on the Messenger's neck flared, acting as a type of firewall.

I winced, a thin line of blood trickling from my nose, which I quickly reversed with an injection of Syntropy.

"No free looks today, then. Fine. Guess we'll do it for real," I whispered.

"Your concern regarding 'leashes' displays a tragic lack of understanding regarding the Architecture," the Messenger replied, his six glass-winged attendants flanking him with rhythmic, clicking movements. They were all Mid-Tier 9 Ascendants, their presences weighing on the team behind me until I flared my own [Omnipresence] just enough to cushion the friction.

"What you perceive as a chain, I cherish as a blessing. A link to the Prime Logic that ensures this chaotic sector does not simply unravel into a soup of raw energy."

"A real blessing should usually come with the option to say no," I countered.

"I'm more interested in the Courts that sent you. Why the Hollow Suns? Why wait until now to drop the act and start challenging our people?" The Messenger chuckled, a melodic chime of sound.

"Points are a metric for infants, little King. We are here to evaluate a dissonance. A ripple has been felt in the upper waters of the Lattice. You have been building a foundation that ignores the harmonic progression decreed by the Courts. My masters simply wish to see if you are a stable addition to the registry... or a cancer that needs to be cauterized." He gestured to the surrounding red dunes with a broad, sweepingly polite motion.

"The Law of this Trial is Duels. Seven of my aspirants shall face seven of yours. Victory for the Faction is secured through individual merit. We shall settle the points through blood, cleanly." I looked at my elites. I felt the vibration of Anna's core, the steady thrum of Lucas' shield-anchor. They were ready to die for the Ferran ledger, but looking at the Mid-Tier 9 attendants — entities that had likely forgotten what it felt like to have a heartbeat — I knew the odds weren't in our favor.

Not for a team with an average of Tier 6. A small, clinical grin pulled at the corner of my mouth.

"War is never done 'Cleanly,' O Holy One," I said, stepping five paces forward into the crimson sand.

"I'm the representative of my faction here. And since you've come all this way just to audit my stability... you can forget about the duels. I'll take all seven of you myself." The Messenger's prism-wings flared with a sudden, mocking pulse of golden starlight. The six attendants let out a unified sound that was somewhere between a metallic screech and laughter. The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

"Arrogance born of isolation," one of the attendants noted, a creature wreathed in frost-fire who looked like a mix of a silver-skinned elf and a bird.

"To think a non-Ascended mud-dweller could even perceive the trajectory of a Master's strike, let alone parry seven. Perhaps we should simply Soul-Crack him now to save ourselves the effort of trying to..." Before I could move, a light touch on my shoulder made my Star-Core jolt.

"Wait, Eren," Anna whispered into my mind. She was standing right behind me. She looked paler than usual, her silver eyes glowing with a frenetic, flickering intensity that made the air around her physically tremble. I realized then she was under a tremendous amount of stress.

"I was able to use my [Weaver's Rewind]," she communicated through the link, the words clipping as she fought the chronos-feedback. I froze.

"When?"

"Twenty minutes ago. Subjectively," she breathed, her forehead glistening with sweat.

"In the first branch of this fight, you tried to duel that first elven attendant to show your skill... he used a veiled Skill-Nullification field. He got a drop on your gravity before we realized his artifact was a resonance-anchor from a Tier 10 Forge. You won, but he scorched your right arm and was able to record your Syntropy for the Messenger to see." Anna took a shaking breath, leaning against the riser of [Final Word] to stay upright.

"You told me that if we get a reset, I should share this... he has a structural fracture in his second mana-core. A byproduct of forced Ascension in a core-sector world. When he launches his strike, he pulls mana clockwise from the ambient field. If you rotate your Void pull against that grain... his core won't just stall. It will cave in."

"Thank you, Anna," I projected back, feeling a surge of profound relief and tactical heat that she had my back. The fact that she had burned her high-tier reset just to give me an advantage in a fight against them must have meant the stakes were higher than just discovery or rankings. I turned my focus back to the silver elven attendant.

"Start with the little talkative one on the left," I suggested to the Messenger.

"Let's see if he's better at fighting than he is at reading the ledger." The Messenger inclined his head, amused.

"Pharian. Provide the Aspirant with a demonstration of the Courts' mercy." Pharian, the elven attendant, blurred. He was purely using kinetic speed for his fast movement, utilizing a Peak Tier 9 light-based sprint. He appeared ten feet from me, a silver lance wreathed in the flickering static of his null-field appearing in his grip. He struck. A wall of silver, heat-suppressing mana roared forward. To anyone else, it looked like a monolithic beam of light. But I looked at the "Grain."

I saw the clockwise intake Anna had described. I didn't move. I didn't summon the black blades. I simply extended my right palm toward the incoming lance and engaged the [Symphony of the Animus Arch] while hiding it with my new Veiling methods. Unwind, I commanded the air. Instead of meeting his shield with power, I created a massive, counter-rotational gravity sink that turned counter-clockwise directly in his path. The Vacuum snatched the Pharian's intake Gate. The feedback was catastrophic.

I watched through the [Lattice] as the elf's high-tier nullification field was caught in the opposing torque. The mana that was supposed to fuel his armor was pulled backward into his own conduits. His second mana-core, already fractured by a lack of proper refinement, couldn't handle the dissonance. The sound of his soul breaking echoed across the Dying Veil like a collapsing sun. Pharian's silver skin violently blistered as his own Ascension mass rejected his frame.

I manifested a single obsidian dagger made of neutralized Nothingness and micro-jumped. I materialized within his guard, touching the flat of the blade to the spot just below his breastbone where the dissonance was thickest.

"You missed a spot on your armor," I whispered. The Void's Hunger did the rest. Pharian dissolved into a mist of grey, unformed data before he could even register the agony of his collapse. One minute of the duel, and a Tier 9 attendant had been sent back to the dark without me even sweating through my carapace. The Messenger's wings went rigid. The prisms turned from gold to a sharp, aggressive crimson.

The other five attendants stopped laughing, their various elemental auras — frost, magnetic storm, solar decay — erupting from their silken robes with a sudden, desperate violence. They had been playing an exhibition. Now, they were looking at a slaughter.

"Guess I might have been a little wrong," the Messenger rumbled. His face, usually a mask of geometric harmony, twisted into a predatory sneer that betrayed his frantic, sub-systemic masters.

"You aren't a pioneer world leader. You are an agent of them… but how did you manage to steal a Seat at the table?"

"I have no clue what you are talking about. But have fun auditing this," I shouted. The remaining six attendants didn't wait for a signal. They lunged together in a tri-force formation designed for continent-erasure. The sand beneath us simply stopped being matter and turned to ash as their authorities converged.

"Everyone, to the anchor!" I projected to Lucas. I threw back my head and laughed, a sound fueled by the Ring of Wrath humming a bloody tune in my star-core. For a month I had been muting my voice, quieting my liquid flame, and hiding behind veils just to keep from drawing the gaze of monsters in the sky. But they were already looking.

"I told you," I roared as the black-red liquid of my Tier 8 foundation began to surface along my jaw, boiling away the air.

"I'll take you all myself!" I raised both hands, drawing upon the [Sovereign Omnipresence], ignoring the distance and the kinetic delay of their charge. The Battle for Oribos was no longer a tournament for the Crucible. It was a war against the heavens.

"I WILL LOCK THE LATTICE!" I screamed at the Messenger, my black-red eyes locking onto his golden chain.

"AND THEN, I'M GOING TO SEE EXACTLY HOW MUCH WEIGHT YOUR BLESSING CAN CARRY BEFORE THE LINK SNAPS!"