Chương 444: The Price of Power

Following the success of our initial false-flag operation on Necropolis-Beta, I met with Kasian, Jeeves, and Nyx in the Hall of the Chronicle to expand our galactic strategy.

"Kasian," I said, leaning over the floating three-dimensional sector map, "I need a curated list of outer-sector factions. But I want specific parameters."

"What parameters, Master Eren?" Kasian asked, his spectral form leaning forward over the slate desk.

"I want the most heinous, despicable, and predatory factions in the neighboring sectors," I stated flatly, my eyes burning with a cold heat.

"Slave-syndicates, blood-cults, soul-pirates, and warlords who butcher lower-tier populations for raw materials. If we are going to ignite a series of galactic shadow wars, I know it will still happen but I want us to try our best to not drag peaceful or innocent worlds into the crossfire. And also, I received a message from the Void System we need to discuss later on once we finish these preparations." Kasian nodded slowly, his spectral fingers rapidly sorting through the pre-Shattering databases.

"A prudent and principled boundary, Master. There is no shortage of vile factions operating outside the High Courts' direct supervision." I laid out the tactical blueprint for our campaign.

"We are going to deploy specialized [Echo of the Ashen] proxies disguised as arrogant, entitled 'Young Masters' and high-ranking Diviners from the High Courts," I explained, a dry, cynical smile touching my lips.

"They will travel to these vile factions' territories, demand ridiculous tributes, insult their leaders, and execute loud, theatrical 'sanctification' raids on their primary assets." Nyx stepped forward from the shadow-line, her dark eyes flashing with sharp, ruthless intellect.

"My Shapeshifter Clones can also assist, Master. While your proxies put on a loud, arrogant show, my shadow-clones can infiltrate their vault rooms, plant High Court artifacts as evidence, and ensure their leadership believes the Courts are systematically purging their assets."

"Precisely," I agreed.

"We will turn the High Courts' own reputation for arrogant, unyielding tyranny against them." While Kasian and Nyx refined the target lists and forged the necessary High Court credentials, life in Bastion continued with a warm, disciplined momentum. We expanded the Academy's elite cultivation classes, admitting thirty more promising young students — Ferran human refugees, S'skarr hatchlings, and Dweorg apprentices who had shown exceptional core-gate flexibility.

Rexxar, Nyx, and Jeeves joined me as guest instructors. Rexxar taught the students how to regulate kinetic impact during high-density strikes, Nyx instructed them in shadow-concealment and spatial-awareness, and Jeeves conducted classes on tactical logistics and resource allocation. Sharing cooked meals in the plaza, watching our family interact with the new students, and seeing the city thrive brought a grounded, peaceful warmth to my daily routine. One evening, Anna joined me on the high terrace of the Sanctum.

Tink hovered over her shoulder, vibrating with a warm, silvery light.

"Eren," Anna said softly, leaning against the basalt railing alongside me as the cool night wind swept over the balcony.

"I need to talk to you about my cultivation."

"What's on your mind?" I asked, turning to look at my sister.

"My time-affinity has been evolving rapidly through my temporal dilation sessions," Anna revealed, her silver eyes glowing with a quiet, profound light.

"It's no longer just about accelerating arrows or stepping through local time-slips. My conduits are continuing to interface with probabilistic timelines and fate-altering vectors." She paused, taking a quiet breath.

"I can already feel how to break through my bottleneck. I am going to trigger my trial for the Mythic Five within the next few months." I froze, my eyes widening as I looked at her.

"That's an incredible achievement, Anna," I said genuinely, pride swelling in my chest.

"But a Mythic Five trial attracts immense systemic attention. If the universal Lattice registers a Mythic breakthrough in Sector Z-99, High Court diviners will lock onto your coordinates instantly and scry for any connections to me."

"I know," Anna nodded.

"Which is why I can't push the breakthrough here on Ferra."

"We'll do it in an isolated, distant sector," I decided instantly, my mind calculating the logistics.

"We'll use the Spire network to transport you to a veiled, un-catalogued world far beyond Sector Z-99. We'll mask your signature under your [Nullifying Veil] so the external organizers and diviners won't recognize your connection to me or the Void Star." To prepare Anna for her upcoming breakthrough and test her evolved time-affinity, we spent the next four days locked in high-tier sparring sessions inside the Cradle.

The Cradle's magnetic slate floor hummed with heavy containment barriers as I deployed three reinforced [Echo of the Ashen] proxies to act as moving targets for her. The sparring session was a breathtaking, terrifying demonstration of Anna's growth. I commanded my three proxies to attack her simultaneously, utilizing high-density spatial gravity-slopes and physical density strikes. Anna didn't panic. She drew her Mythic soulbound bow, her silver traveling robes rustling as her eyes flashed with pure temporal light.

She released three instant-hit time-arrows in a single microsecond. The arrows ignored flight time entirely, landing before her bowstring even returned to stasis. But what shocked me was her movement: when Proxy A launched a flank strike at her shoulder, Anna executed a probabilistic micro-rewind, resetting her physical coordinates by 1. 5 seconds to dodge the blow before it was even initiated. Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!

She wove through my proxies' attacks with terrifying, graceful efficiency, her arrows shattering their gravity shields and pinning their basalt-steel shells to the slate floor in less than thirty seconds. I stood on the balcony above the arena, letting out a low whistle of genuine amazement.

"By the Primes, Anna... you're becoming terrifying." Anna lowered her bow, wiping a faint wisp of silver sweat from her brow, a playful, victorious smirk spreading across my face.

"You thought I was just sitting around baking bread while you were galavanting across galaxies, brother?"

"I stand corrected," I laughed, stepping down onto the arena floor to inspect the shattered proxies. As we sat on the edge of the arena terrace resting after the spar, our conversation turned back to the upcoming false-flag campaign. Anna looked out over the empty arena, her silver eyes carrying a quiet, contemplative weight.

"Eren... even if we target the most vile factions, when those shadow wars ignite, innocents will inevitably be caught in the crossfire. Slaves, lower-tier workers, and children living in those sectors..." I looked at my sister, my analytical mind confronting the grim, unyielding reality of our war.

"I know, Anna," I said softly, my tone flat, honest, and filled with quiet resolve.

"And it's a weight I carry every single day. If I must play the villain in this universe to keep our people alive, then I will gladly carry that title. I hate the rules of this cosmos — a system built on sacrificing lower sectors to feed elite souls — but until I am strong enough to reach the top and rewrite those rules, I will resort to whatever action is necessary to ensure our found family survives." Anna sat silently beside me for a long time. She didn't scold me, nor did she judge my choice.

She simply reached out, sliding her hand into mine, sharing the quiet grief over what the harsh reality of the cosmos forced us to become.

"Don't forget your promise, Eren," Anna whispered softly, looking at me with absolute, unyielding trust.

"Grow strong enough to change it all."

"I won't forget," I promised quietly. Later that evening, Anna brought up another topic.

"Eren," she said, her silver eyes filled with intense determination.

"You told me about the Stretch-and-Deny soul expansion method you used in the subterranean core." I frowned slightly.

"It's extremely dangerous, Anna. It requires forcibly stretching your soul gate's structural boundaries until micro-fractures appear, then using instant timeline-rejection to heal and lock the expansion."

"I want to try it," Anna declared firmly.

"My time-affinity gives me a natural resistance to temporal friction, but my soul gate's throughput needs to be wider if I am going to survive the Mythic Five trial."

"Anna, the pain is white-hot agony," I warned, my thoughts flaring with worry.

"If a single micro-crack isn't healed instantly, your core could suffer permanent spiritual crippling."

"Then stand guard over me with your [Syntropy]," Anna said, looking at me with absolute resolve.

"I am not letting you carry the burden of spiritual pain alone while I sit safely behind your shields. I am doing this, Eren. You can help me, or you can watch me do it alone — but I am not stopping." I looked at her fierce, stubborn eyes and realized that trying to stop her was impossible. She was my sister, built from the exact same unyielding determination that drove my own soul.

"Alright," I sighed, a wave of protective worry washing over my chest.

"We do it under absolute supervision." We sat cross-legged opposite each other inside my private sanctum. Anna opened her central core, channeling a concentrated stream of her evolved temporal mana directly into the inner conduits of her soul gate, intentionally forcing its structural boundaries to stretch beyond their natural capacity. An agonizing, soul-tearing gasp escaped Anna's lips.

Micro-fractures erupted across her soul gate's architecture, her face turning pale as dark blood leaked from her nose in the physical world. The agony was brutal, her body trembling violently under the white-hot spiritual pain.

"Anna, stop!" I yelled, my gauntleted hand reaching toward her, ready to cancel her core-rotation.

"It's already too much!"

"DONT YOU DARE STOP ME!" Anna gritted her teeth, her silver eyes snapping open, burning with pure, terrifying willpower.

"Please. Just help me heal the cracks!" I held my breath, pushing my protective worry aside, and channeled a precise, concentrated wave of [Syntropy] directly into her soul gate. The silver light of my rejection magic bathed her core, flatly denying the timeline of the soul damage. The micro-fractures vanished slowly, her soul gate locking into its newly slightly expanded, wider structural state.

Anna gasped for air, wiping the blood from her chin, her body shaking from the intense pain — but a brilliant, ecstatic smile broke across her face as she felt her core's expanded throughput.

"That wasn't so bad. Maybe your pain tolerance is just lower than mine," Anna laughed as she coughed up more blood, her voice raspy but triumphant.

"Let's go again." For two hours, we engaged in the iterative, agonizing cycle of stretching her soul gate and immediately denying the damage. By the end of the session, Anna's soul gate throughput had expanded by almost half a percent, her core capacity showing the potential to scale to a level that would eventually support her upcoming Mythic Five breakthrough. As she rested on the cultivation mat, sipping warm mana infused tea to recover her spiritual fatigue, we brainstormed ways to adapt the technique.

"This exact method is too dangerous for normal cultivators," I noted, analyzing her diagnostic data.

"They don't possess my [Syntropy] to reject soul damage in real-time. And even if they did their Souls wouldn't be able to synergize so well with the temporal properties of it. But if we dilute the entropic heat and combine it with Leoric's spatial-soaking baths, we could design a far safer, gradual soul-stretching protocol for Bastion's Vanguard soldiers in the future."

"A new training protocol for Ferra," Anna agreed, smiling warmly. Three days later, our preparations for the off-world expedition were complete. Nyx, Anna, and I gathered in the Sanctum's central vault, accompanied by a small squad of shadow-scouts.

The goal of this expedition was twofold: first, it served as a high-tier trial run to test Anna's combat synchronization and Nyx's shadow-infiltration setups in an active sector; second, we intended to visit a remote, low-tier world controlled by a vicious slave-syndicate, launching our very first "Arrogant High Court Young Master" false-flag campaign to spread destructive rumors about the Courts. Jeeves stood beside the Spire console, reviewing the spatial diagnostic slates.

"The Spire alignment is complete, Master. The dimensional tether has locked onto the outer boundary of Sector M-09." Anna adjusted her Mythic bow on her shoulder, her silver eyes glowing with confident, quiet power, while Nyx melted into my shadow, her shadow-blades prepped and ready. I adjusted my dark cloak, my star-cores spinning in a deep, hyper-evolved rotation, my optical arrays flashing with a starless black and arterial crimson fire.

We stepped onto the Spire platform together, ready to play the villain, spread chaos among our enemies, and forge the path toward our family's freedom. I took a deep breath, looked at my sister, and stepped into the light.