The rune on the mirror glowed softly, waiting for my command. I stood there in my soul realm, the blue-violet light gently washing over me as I tried to steady my thoughts.
Breaking a limit wasn’t a small choice.
Even with my boosted soul, I could feel how heavy the mirror’s presence was... how dangerous it could be if I chose poorly.
I took a slow breath and began eliminating options one by one.
The first thing I considered was my Essence and Essence control. But the moment I focused on that, I knew it was pointless.
My affinity was already infinite. My control had surpassed anything normal even before I entered the chained realm.
And now, with my soul strengthened, I could feel a strange clarity—like the Essence around me was part of my own body. There wasn’t another layer to break through.
Not a meaningful one. Even if the mirror severed some hidden limit, the difference wouldn’t matter. So I pushed that thought aside.
Then, I moved to the laws.
At first, that sounded tempting.
If I could cut the limit on one law, maybe I could push it beyond what even most Saints could dream of.
But as soon as I looked deeper, the mirror responded with clear information: It could break the limit of only one law.
One. Only one.
I had nine. Breaking one and leaving the other eight behind would create an imbalance and worse, it would be wasteful. My comprehension was already extreme. Every day inside the secluded realm I had refined each law further without help.
And if I truly needed to understand something deeper, my soul alone could now push me through that barrier. There was no point in forcing the mirror on something I could already achieve naturally.
So I discarded the idea of using it on my laws.
Next came my physical body.
I paused a moment, considering it carefully.
My stats had soared long before I reached Transcendent. I had already passed the threshold for physical evolution back when I killed Vaelix. Even now, as Essence continued fusing with my muscles, bones, and organs, I could feel a strength settling into me.
Would breaking a limit here matter?
Not really. Not when I already had enough physical power to crush most enemies with a single strike. The mirror would only help if I was weak. But I wasn’t weak.
So I left that aside as well.
Then came the null core. A part of me wanted to choose it immediately. The null core was... strange. Unpredictable.
Breaking its limit could give me something rare, maybe even something I could not comprehend.
But something in my chest tightened.
The chained fallen.
He created the core.
And I didn’t like that.
Upgrading the null core with the mirror felt like letting him make decisions for me.
Even if unintended.
Besides...I had my talent upgrade waiting for me in the future. I knew it would affect the null core.
So I hesitated, then stepped back from that choice. Not now. Not for this.
Next came my talent.
I stared at the mirror, focused on the talent I was born with: the generator core. I wanted to push it higher, past anything the universe had written. That sounded right. It sounded powerful.
So I willed the mirror to show me the soul energy required.
And when the number appeared, I froze.
I had barely half.
Only half.
Even after reaching a ninety-nine-foot soul, even with the ocean of soul energy churning through me...I was far, far from what this limit needed.
The message was clear: This target was beyond me right now.
I clenched my jaw and exhaled slowly, letting the disappointment fade. Not everything could be solved instantly. I would grow stronger. I would gather more soul energy. One day I would come back and break this limit too.
But not today.
Finally, only one thing remained.
The dawn core.
My attention drifted toward it instinctively, and the mirror brightened as if agreeing with my thoughts.
The dawn core was special. My laws fueled its volcanoes and generated energy when they collided with the world’s laws. That energy fed the generator core and increased my Essence output.
It was my inner world in a way. It was as mysterious as the null core. The ability to devour the world cores. And it was still incomplete. That was something I could target instantly with the limit breaker.
If I broke the dawn core’s limit now...What would happen? More volcanoes? Stronger laws? Better energy production? Or something entirely new?
I looked at the soul energy requirement. For the first time, the number was perfect. Not too low. Not too high.
Exactly right.
Everything aligned.
I took a long breath and made my choice.
The rune on the mirror burned brighter than before, and a sharp beam of light shot out. It struck the center of my chest and went straight into me, heading directly for the dawn core.
My vision blurred for a moment, and I focused, letting my consciousness sink into the core.
In the next instant, I stood inside the dawn core’s inner space.
The familiar sight greeted me, the floating volcanoes that represented each of my major laws, all glowing faintly with their own colors. Around them stretched the endless barren land I gained after upgrading the core earlier. And, hidden at the very center, was the strange black volcano, shrouded in that thick black haze that refused to reveal anything.
But before I could study anything deeper, the dawn core trembled.
A deep vibration rolled through the entire space, and I looked up just in time to see the black sky tear apart. A bright beam of light descended from above. It slammed into an empty patch of land near the corner.
The whole dawn core shook violently.
For a second, I honestly thought the entire thing might collapse.
Where the beam struck, a new rune began forming, carved out of light itself, its structure exactly like the one I had seen on the mirror’s surface, but larger and far more complex. The rune pulsed slowly, and the moment it stabilized, the dawn core reacted.
The world inside began expanding.
Not slowly, violently.
The barren land trembled and started stretching outward, but only for an instant. After that, the ground simply ended. There was no more land forming. Instead, pure void expanded endlessly, spreading in every direction like a horizon being torn apart.
The beam felt like it was pushing against the limits of the core itself, forcing it to grow wider and deeper.