The moment the last of the blue particles tore free of the cube and entered my Dawn Core, the world inside me shuddered.
For a heartbeat, I thought it was the same unstable quake I had always felt here but no, this was different. This time the shaking did not come from weakness. It was a roar of something breaking free.
The volcano of Assimilation blazed like never before. I could feel my understanding of Assimilation expand in an instant, like my mind had been cracked open and filled with more than it should ever hold.
All around me, the void began to ripple.
Where there had once been empty nothingness, new lands began to appear. Barren stone plains stretched outward, ridges of mountains pushed through the black, and dry riverbeds carved themselves across the newborn earth.
They were lifeless for now, yes, but it was still land, proof that my inner world was no longer crumbling apart but trying to grow.
Then I felt it. A pull. Something heavy, ancient, rising from beneath the void.
I turned, and there it was: an island slowly climbing upward, torn out of the darkness.
Unlike the others, it did not blaze with the energy of a law. No volcano, no flow of fire, lightning, or space.
Instead, this island was cracked, scarred, and veiled in a mist so thick it hid its center from me.
It looked dead and yet I felt a presence pressing down on me just from looking at it. As if the island itself carried the gravity center of the world.
The earthquakes stopped. For the first time since I had awakened the Dawn Core, the land was steady.
The trembling that had plagued this world was gone. Instead, there was a faint hum, like a heartbeat pulsing through the islands and the air.
I exhaled slowly.
I stared at my hand. It was the first time this chain had shown any kind of reaction. That... wasn’t me. That was the chain. Whatever it was bound to, it had its own will, and it had just reacted.
Just as the last of the changes settled, a crisp notification rang out in my mind.
[Fallen Dawn Core has Awakened. Current Status: Incomplete Awakening.]
My brows furrowed.
"Still incomplete?" I muttered under my breath.
The window shifted, displaying the new details.
Function 3: Awaken Dawn Core [Incomplete]
– Core Quality: Low → Low+
– Generates Energy from law conflicts
– Laws: 9
– Energy: Blue
That was it. The only visible change was the core quality ticking up by the smallest margin.
Then another string of prompts followed.
[Minor Law of Assimilation: Level 4 → Level 5]
[Transcendence Quest Unveiled]
The familiar cryptic lines appeared again, repeating what I had seen before, but this time carrying the stamp of completion.
The Dawn stirs.
Yet a spark cannot awaken without a flame.
Within you lies the Core that longs for revival.
Beyond lies the heart of another world, pulsing with stolen breath.
To ascend, you must decide: Will you devour what sustains another, or let the Dawn remain a husk?
Objective: Awaken the Dawn Core by feeding it a World Core.
Progression: 1/1
[Transcendence Quest: Complete]
And then silence.
I let out a slow breath, staring at the fading words. The quest was marked complete, but the core itself claimed to be only partially awakened.
It left me confused. On one hand, the Dawn Core was no longer "fallen." It had awakened—at least in name. On the other hand, the notification made it clear the awakening wasn’t finished. I had succeeded in devouring the world core, but something still held the process back.
Before I could think further, the familiar tremor shook the inner world. The chain tattoo on my arm flared alive once more.
My eyes widened as the black chain ripped free of my skin and darted forward. It vanished into the mysterious tenth island that had appeared earlier in my Dawn Core world. The island shuddered, glowing faintly, and then the entire place lurched.
The ground cracked, the islands shook, and I was thrown out of the inner world entirely.
I gasped and opened my eyes. I was back in the void space of reality, my palms still pressed to the spinning cube, the world core.
But this time, something new happened. The chain erupted straight out of my chest, a shadowy coil, and snapped onto the cube in my hands. With an almost casual dominance, it wrapped around the blue crystal, branding it with a faint tattoo-like mark.
Then, just as suddenly, the chain retracted, sinking back into me, back into that mysterious tenth island.
The world core, however, did not shatter. It simply floated in my hands, quiet and indifferent, spinning slowly as though nothing had happened at all.
Yet I knew something had changed.
I could feel it, an invisible tether linking me to the world core. Not just a connection to its Essence, but control over it. My hand tightened around the cube as the realization struck me: with nothing more than a flicker of my will, I could make this core explode into nothingness.
Just as I was about to dig deeper into this strange bond, I caught something faint, a whisper, or maybe something like a whisper.
"Hmm?" I tilted my head, straining my senses.
The sound came again, crackling like faint static. I closed my eyes, focusing harder, and then I recognized it. It wasn’t the world core. It was Silver.
"What happened?" I pushed through the haze of Essence, sharpening my connection.
And then I heard his voice clearly in my mind.
"Billion? Where are you?"
Relief and tension flooded me at once.
"Silver? What happened?"
"It’s an emergency," Silver’s voice rang sharp and urgent. "Phantoms have invaded."
My eyes widened, my heart sinking into my chest. I didn’t waste another second. I pushed Essence into my Psynapse and let the new connection with the world core guide me. Information rushed at me in overwhelming waves, a storm of energy and signals.
"Psynapse Fracture," I muttered.
My consciousness split, doubled, expanded and the process finished in an instant. The overload was gone. My mind cleared, sharper than ever, and in that razor clarity I found Silver’s exact location.
Without hesitation, I used the core to tear open space and stepped through.
The void bent, and the next breath I was standing right in front of Silver.
His wings beat once, scattering Essence through the air, his eyes locked onto me.
"Where?" I asked, my voice flat, my jaw tight.
"Capital," Silver answered grimly. "All the Grandmasters are in danger. Even North and Steve are there."
My teeth clenched. The pressure in my chest turned into molten anger. I climbed onto his back.
"Let’s go."