"This battle is not for me," Serius said in a calm tone. There was neither fear nor hesitation in his voice, just a truth he understood better than anyone.
He is powerful, certainly, but this is not a battle he can participate in. He is not even as powerful as an ordinary Eternal Warrior.
And if even one of the three most powerful Eternal Warriors was slaughtered by that monster, then isn’t going into this battle like a cow walking toward a hungry lion?
In the midst of the Celestial Temple, where the continent’s most powerful beings were gathered in one place, his sentence caused several gazes to fix on him.
"Now is not the time to back down," the Holy Emperor frowned and said. If needed, he wanted this boy to participate in this battle.
It would be even better if he got killed. Then perhaps his master might intervene for revenge, and that way they could defeat this monster.
But Serius simply shook his head. His eyes fixed on Daniel for a moment.
The being standing in the center of the temple, and even now, part of his attention was elsewhere.
"This battle does not belong to me, and if I enter it, I will only be a nuisance." He wasn’t lying; it was a completely logical excuse.
A brief silence followed. No one would easily accept such words from someone like Serius. In their view, perhaps this boy was weaker than them on the surface.
But as the direct disciple of a Half Step-Divine, how could he not have legendary tricks and trump cards?
But now that he himself admitted he had no place in this field, he then stepped back a few paces without further explanation and stood alone, like a spectator about to witness a clash of monsters.
They couldn’t force him either.
In the center of the field, Daniel looked away from Elisara for a moment and then glanced around indifferently.
No anxiety, no alertness. As if the gathering of the world’s most powerful beings before him was no different from the gathering of a few ordinary soldiers.
"Do you really want to fight? I should warn you, it won’t change anything. You will still lose. Only if you surrender now will you survive." Daniel preferred not to waste more time here.
The fruit was almost complete, and today should finally be the end. He preferred to be by the tree and watch the final moments.
"Haha, don’t tell me you’re scared, monster?" the Holy Emperor mocked.
"Surrender? Do you think we’re like those weak, lowly dragons? I will make you suffer for killing my children!" the Queen of the Elves shouted with hatred.
Daniel sighed and realized that before he could return to that tree, he might have to create a few more Fallen.
Then Ragnar was the first to move. His massive, dark, abyssal sword slowly rose.
Suddenly, all the sounds of the world disappeared. The rivers of light went out, the movement of the wind stopped, and even the sound of people breathing vanished.
And then...
[Void Cleaver.]
Ragnar brought his sword down, but nothing resembling an attack was released.
Instead, a black fissure formed in the space before him. A fissure unlike anything else. Along its path, there was no light, no mana, no air, not even the concept of distance. As if a part of the world was being erased from reality.
All eyes focused on that slash.
For the first time since arriving at the council, Daniel looked away from the distant horizon, and his golden eyes fixed on the fissure.
And that alone made Ragnar smile very faintly, because it was an attack that had managed to capture Daniel’s full attention.
He thought that if this simple attack could catch this being’s attention, then perhaps this battle might be easier than he had thought.
In fact, he didn’t want the other council members to interfere in the battle, but he knew they wouldn’t agree, because this was about saving the world.
But no matter. Perhaps now he could truly end this battle himself.
But before the fissure could reach him, thousands of silver runes exploded in the surrounding space.
Seraphina entered the field.
[Archive of Thousand Laws.]
The runes covered the entire temple like small galaxies. Each rune represented a law, each law represented a part of the world. And suddenly, reality began to change.
Gravity increased tenfold, time slowed in some areas, spatial pressure became so intense in some places that the temple’s massive columns began to crack.
The rivers of light changed their course, and the battlefield environment itself was rewritten.
Seraphina had no intention of attacking directly. She was building a world in which Ragnar could fight at full power.
And that alone showed why she held the title of the continent’s second-greatest Eternal Warrior.
But this was not the end. On the other side of the field, the Holy Emperor stepped forward.
The golden crown on his head began to shine, and thousands of sacred prayers collected over centuries in the world’s temples began to move.
[Imperium of the First Saint.]
Behind him, a massive image appeared.
The form of the First Saint.
A being who had founded the sacred civilization thousands of years ago. This being could be considered the first prophet of the gods.
Infinite light covered the entire field. Each step of the Emperor shook the ground, and each breath of his echoed through space like the sound of sacred bells.
For the first time, the laws of eternity around Daniel showed a very slight fluctuation.
Just a moment.
But that moment was enough to make the Emperor’s eyes gleam. At the same time, Sel’nora raised her white staff.
Her silver hair moved among the sacred lights, and then...
The continent responded.
[Heart of the Eternal Forest.]
The soul of the forest. Not a single tree, not a simple being, but the complete embodiment of nature.
White and green roots emerged from the heart of space.
Thousands.
Tens of thousands.
Millions.
The entire sky of the temple disappeared under their shadow. Each root carried the cycle of life. Each root tried to return everything to the world’s natural order.
As they moved toward Daniel, even the distant tree behind him reacted.
For the first time, two opposing concepts of nature stood before each other.
But the attacks were not over yet. Kyroth stepped forward, and his old eyes gleamed with blue light. Millions of magical formulas appeared around him.
Equations impossible for even the greatest mages to comprehend.
[Genesis Collapse Equation.]
But his goal was not destruction. He was trying to understand Daniel. The formulas spun around Daniel.
The structure of mana.
The structure of the soul.
The structure of the laws.
Everything was analyzed. And again, Daniel showed slight interest. His eyes fixed on Kyroth’s formulas, as if the aged scholar had managed to catch his attention.
But at that very moment, Seraphina and Kyroth moved simultaneously. The runes and formulas merged.
[World Lock Sequence.]
The entire space around Daniel was locked. Not a prison, not a simple seal, but the very coordinates of the world, the concept of place, the concept of presence, the concept of existing in a specific point – all were chained.
For the first time, Daniel truly stopped. His movement was halted, and the space around him was completely locked.
The Holy Emperor’s eyes widened. Sel’nora held her breath.
Even Elisara fell silent for a moment.
Hope. For the first time since the council session began, they could see real hope! Perhaps they could truly win!
And at that very moment...
Ragnar moved. He was angry that these bastards had turned his initial move into a group attack, but now was not the time to say anything.
The Holy Emperor positioned himself behind him. Light and darkness merged. The sword that cleaves the world and the power of thousands of years of faith.
[Heavenfall Execution.]
The sky split in half. Clouds were destroyed. Light and darkness compressed into a single point.
And then... all that force descended on Daniel. An explosion occurred that humiliated the very concept of explosion. The Heavenly Temple shook.
Thousands of massive columns broke. The rivers of light shattered. The laws of space disintegrated. Even the protective layers around the council’s headquarters were destroyed one after another.
Light swallowed everything. No one could see anything anymore.
Only absolute brightness.
Seconds passed.
And then... the light slowly faded. Silence returned. The council members stared at the center of the field.
At the point of impact. At where nothing should have remained. Even the temple was gone.
But there...
Daniel was still standing. Not wounded, not bloodied, not even under pressure. His clothes remained almost untouched.
His gaze was not even on the council members, but fixed on his own hand.
As if all these attacks were not worth his full attention. His golden eyes gleamed for a moment. His hand was slightly blackened and wounded.
He had stopped that attack with his bare hand, though he had also used the Law of Death.
"How is that possible?"
"How is he not even wounded after that attack?"
"This is impossible!"
Nevertheless, everyone was shocked that he hadn’t even gotten a scratch!