Chương 371: The Butcher’s Decree

The Seventh Abyss was no longer a silent cathedral of glass; it was a screaming engine of conceptual collapse, a room where the laws of nature were being methodically un-written by the friction of our auras. The atmospheric weight had surpassed the threshold of planetary survival. For any entity below Tier 6, simply existing in this radius would have resulted in their internal organs being turned into a slurry of unformatted quintessence.

The Radiant Saint, wreathed in the mirrored mass of my own star-cores, was a vision of synthetic divinity that nearly blurred my [Lattice Perception]. He looked like a record the System was frantically trying to prioritize over the actual history of the universe. His wings had transitioned into vast, oscillating sheets of flickering golden data, shedding geometric motes of light that buzzed in the air like high-frequency autonomous sensors.

Every movement he made followed a light-speed trajectory, his ivory staff striking with the calculated, neutron-dense statistical volume of my own Tier 8 physiology.

"Mirrors are easy to break, Saint," I grunted, parrying a triple-thrust that came from three different chronological vectors. The kinetic rebound was so powerful it physically forced the air out of my lungs, making the Star-Cores behind my ribs spin with a high-pitched, metallic whine that vibrated through the floorboards of the Abyss. My neutron-heavy mass in combination with my Body reinforcement was the only reason I didn't skid across the mercury ocean beneath us.

"Not when the Mirror has found a Source!" the Saint roared. His voice carried a harmonic vibrato that sought to shake my very atoms until my Soul Gate lost its seal. Beside him, the Titan Sovereign and the Shadow-Warden coordinated their authorities to cage my mobility. The Titan triggered a technique I'd never encountered in any library. It was a masterpiece of specialized mana manipulation. Every time my boots touched the glass, the floor beneath me existed half a second in the past.

My movements were out of sync with my weight, making every spatial adjustment feel like trying to nail a sprinting shadow to a crumbling wall. The Shadow-Warden capitalized on the lag. He unleashed [The Loom of the Martyr]. A forest of needle-sharp silver tethers erupted from his chest-casing, seeking the gaps in my Nullifying Veil with surgical intent. These weren't the standard mana-tethers; they were chronological barbs designed to subtract weeks of cultivation history from my timeline.

Each thread that brushed me tried to forcibly "Regress" my foundation, aiming to pull me back to a weaker threshold. I felt the burn — a conceptual fever that threatened to melt the glue of my Aeonic Medium. I was being siphoned, anchored to a false floor, and audited by a man wearing my own stolen stats as a costume. Then, the world blinked. One micro-second I was being engulfed by silver threads, the next, I was standing five yards to the left of the Shadow-Warden's trajectory.

The regression-threads whistled harmlessly through the space I'd occupied, and the Titan's fossilized gravity pulse slammed into a patch of empty air. A silver trail of mana-smoke hung in the air fifty yards away on a floating fragment of rubble. Anna was perched there, lowering her bow with a look of extreme mental exhaustion. She didn't look back at the chaos; her silver eyes were locked onto my position. She gave a quick, sharp wink, despite the sweat matting her hair from the Chronos-backwash.

"You were about to let that spider-monk peel your Star-Cores like an orange, weren't you?" Anna's voice chirped through our private link.

"Just came out of a reset, Eren. Please don't, I know you want to study their skills but it makes things really complicated… I won't have my Rewind again so be careful, my head feels like someone hit it with a mountain."

"I was just curious to see what his soul-threads tasted like, Anna," I projected back, a jagged, manic grin finding its way through the blood smeared across my chin.

"But I suppose I owe you one. Don't worry, I'll stop messing around and get serious, this guy's gotten pretty strong, huh. We really have to abuse your Rewind more often."

"Don't make me spend another century practicing it," she joked back before unleashing a triple-shot to cover Silas' retreat. I didn't waste the subjective second she had provided. I launched through a triple-translation of [Omnipresence], bypassing the "Standard Logic" of the Abyss entirely. I manifested within the Titan Lord's guard. He tried to swing his morning star, but the weapon moved with the agonizing sluggishness of his own geological lag. I reached for his chest with my right gauntlet.

I didn't wreathe it in Void or Flame. I simply activated the engine.

"Mine," I whispered. The [Void-Star's Hunger] took everything. I siphoned the magnetic authority holding his mineral cells together. In three seconds, the giant's massive torso lost reality's permission to be solid matter. It unraveled into a grey silicate-sand that I inhaled directly into my internal pillars. The Titan Lord shrieked, the sound echoing like a dying world, before his head simply disconnected from a neck that was no longer there. The Radiant Saint descended like a plummeting star to stop me.

He realized his meat-shields were being turned into mana-packets again, now that the tether has been destroyed. He triggered a technique that must have been a High Court contingency, emanating a Decree that was engulfed in their Divine essence. The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation. A wall of golden, heavy mana hit the area. My Star-Cores stalled. The Voidflame liquid in my arteries felt like it had been turned into leaden mercury.

It was a beautiful, legislative strike designed specifically for sovereigns who relied on a high-speed internal star. It attempted to freeze the Intent within my soul, demanding that my existence cease its orbit. The Saint's wings wrapped around us both, creating a dome of blinding photon-bars that locked our causality together. He was smiling — a terrifying look of unadulterated peace.

"The Courts do not recognize a fire without a permit, Voidling. You are just an error that was permitted to dream for far too long." He raised his hand, palm wreathed in the mirror-echo of my own Deletion flame, aiming directly for my solar plexus. Inside the geode of my heart, the doors of the Silos blew outward. I felt the leashes of the trinity snap. I reached into the Kennel and the Forge seated behind my ribs, projecting my will with the absolute Authority of the Crown of Pride.

I felt the Curses react to the sunlight of the Saint's decree. Gluttony roared with a manic, ecstatic anticipation. Wrath pulsed with a blistering, indignant fury at the mention of Permits. They didn't speak in any language, but their emotions were a flood of slaughter-red and starless black.

"Guests…" I murmured, letting my true signature flare until the golden radiance of his Decree began to blister and char into black soot.

"Class is out. Let's make it count." The floor of the Seventh Abyss dissolved into an opening maw. Gluttony emerged first. The colossal five-headed obsidian Hydra erupted from the shadows, letting out a joyful, world-shattering bark from every head simultaneously. It acted like it was entering a festival of feasts, ecstatically yelping. I could feel the creature's immense glee as its dinner-plate-sized eyes locked onto the Shadow-Warden's elite attendants. One head inhaled a group of ten Tier 7 Grave-Singers.

They simply vanished into a neck that looked like a moving sewer-pipe. The Hydra wagged its mountain-sized tail, its obsidian scales shimmering as it methodically cleaned the ballroom floor. It was happy to be useful, its presence consuming the air and the light with equal appetite. Simultaneously, from the white-white geode near my core, the Wrath-Sprite ascended. She manifested on my left shoulder, barely two inches tall, glowing with the heat of a collapsed white dwarf.

I felt her sharp annoyance — a visceral, high-frequency indignation that anyone dared try to bottle our Soul-Gate while such a loud mouth was speaking. She looked at the Saint's wing-shield and let out a chirp of pure, concentrated entropy. The sprite vanished. A pillar of liquid cataclysm exploded where she stood. She expanded into the mountain-sized winged terror I had been training with. Her horns, wreathed in Alecton's arterial flame, blotted out the entire Abyss-ceiling.

She released a wave of uncooled vengeance that bypassed physical shields, setting the very souls of the coalition survivors on fire from the inside.

"Puny things!" her presence echoed into their minds — a feeling of being judged by the heart of a supernova. I stood in the center of the wreckage, my Star-Cores spinning at a velocity that warped the colors of the nebula above. My allies moved in perfect coordination with the madness.

Lucas provided an immovable golden wall to prevent our backline from being vaporized by the Sprite's heat, while Rexxar grappled the remnants of the Titan's faction, his laughter booming as he used his [Event Horizon] to carve the granite into chips. The Radiant Saint backed away toward the empty high-thrones. His synthetic divinity was flickering. He saw his coalition being reduced to snacks for an obsidian dog and firewood for a fire-goddess. He realized his Mirror had limits.

He had copied my stats, but his soul didn't possess the capacity to carry the Weight of the Flame, and he didn't expect the Curse Trinity. He slammed his staff into the floor, triggering a desperate, terminal soul-sacrifice to alert the masters above the Abyss.

"The Horizon sees all!" the Saint shrieked, his skin cracking into a roadmap of gold Essence-leaks.

"I am only a servant of the Court! A thousand more shall follow! You can burn this world, you can hide in your nothingness, but the Architects will never stop until your home is erased from the tapestry!" He began his final chant — a liturgy meant to invite a Tier 12 purging-beam from his Holy Sponsor. I appeared within his arm's reach before his staff could hit the stone a second time. I used the full authority of the [Void Emperor's Omnipresence] to occupy the coordinate of his heartbeat.

I caught him by the jaw and the divine golden link at his neck.

"You should have asked for a bigger leash," I whispered. The Saint's face went hollow as I shoved the liquid Voidflame directly into his star-gate. I reached for the very Identity recorded within the System and pulled. I siphoned his synthetic mass, his stolen statistics, and his high-court training manuals into my own star-core. He was a masterpiece of a vessel. And I Consumed his Essence until he was just an empty jar.

With a final, sickening sound of conceptual fracturing, the Radiant Saint's foundation buckled and imploded. The gold-light eyes turned to dark stone. His wings shriveled into black, powdery ash that was inhaled by the Liquid Flame beading on my fingertips. I stood there in the wreckage of the Court, my black armor wreathed in a silent, pulsing corona of the [Voidflame Apocalypse]. I felt heavy — the silos in my soul were swollen with the high-grade essence of five Sovereigns and elites.

I was sitting on a pile of God-corpses, my presence alone turning the spatial glass of the room into smoke. Silence claimed the Seventh Abyss for the last time. I looked at the Ring of Wrath on my hand. It was red, sated, and calm. I looked up toward the thrones — five empty chairs sitting in a cemetery of their own hubris. The Great Crucible was ending. Ferra was no longer a mud-rock or a newcomer world.

As I felt the Star-Core within me anchoring its own Law upon the fabric of space, I knew the shepherds were done with their inventory. Ferra had arrived. And the universe would have to learn to live with the Silence. The portal home opened — a calm, deep blue that matched the color of a sunrise. I adjusted the weight of my crown, tucked my demons back into the dark, and walked toward the light, ready to see which of the "Thousands" were brave enough to present me with the next bill. The Crucible was hopefully over.

And on my scoreboard, there wasn't a single soul left to pay.