I exhaled once.
"[Sovereign Reversal]."
Two spinning portals tore open, one above my head, one under my feet. The stolen force vanished into the generator core, the portals vibrating under the strain. Cracks ran across their edges as if they were glass about to shatter.
I felt the moment they broke. The redirected energy ruptured through the collapsing portals and slammed into me.
A roar of black lightning engulfed my entire body. It crawled into every gap in my armor of Essence, its tendrils trying to snake into my body. I repelled it with my Essence flaring outward in violent pulses.
But even with that, the impact tore me open. Several wounds burst across my skin, deep slashes of scorched flesh, burned lines, smoking cuts.
My regeneration activated instantly.
Wounds closed almost as fast as they opened, skin knitting together instantly. A few seconds later, only faint scorch marks remained.
I lowered my hand slowly, smoke rising from my fingers.
My eyes met Number One’s hollow gaze again.
"So," I said, voice calm, "that was the talent you devoured."
The phantom tilted its head, black mist leaking like breath.
"I’ve killed a phantom with a talent before," I continued. "How many more you got?"
Number One didn’t answer my question. Instead, its form blurred and it vanished.
It reappeared behind one of the remaining phantoms like a shadow snapping into place. Its arm plunged straight through the phantom’s back and out its chest, gripping its core. The victim didn’t even have time to scream before the devouring began, deathmist pouring into Number One like a tide being pulled backward.
I couldn’t help but chuckle. "I can do that too," I said quietly.
I stepped, my wings trembled slightly and space folded. I appeared behind another phantom just as it tried to turn toward me. My hand cut through its chest with almost no resistance, fingers closing around its core. The phantom froze, its form shuddering.
"Devour."
The Star of Origin trembled in response. The phantom’s body burst apart from the inside, dissolving into ribbons of deathmist that were sucked instantly into my palm before being dragged into the Dawn Core.
One moment it existed. The next, nothing remained.
The last few phantoms saw us, Number One on one side of the asteroid, me on the other both consuming their kin with terrifying ease. Panic rippled through them. Their deathmist flared erratically as they tried to scatter in different directions, desperate to escape.
But it was too late. I moved. Number One moved.
We caught up to the fleeing phantoms in a heartbeat. Within seconds, the entire upper battalion of phantoms was gone, their remains devoured into either my core or Number One’s.
The asteroid went eerily silent for a moment, just the rumbling, the distant roars of confused abominations below, and the churning deathmist drifting through the air.
Then Number One turned its featureless face back toward me again. I could feel the change in its aura, thicker deathmist, sharper pressure, a rising pulse of strength from devouring its own kind. It was stronger now. Much stronger. Somewhere in the mid to high 380s.
Stronger than Vaelix. Stronger than any of my summons.
"For me," I murmured, "this is already over."
The phantom didn’t respond. It simply whispered.
"Domain... Endless Storm."
A black ripple spread outward from its body, rolling across the asteroid like a curtain of night.
Space scratched. Air twisted. Lightning - violent and hungry began to churn inside the expanding dome of its domain.
In the next heartbeat, the world darkened. Above me, storm fronts formed instantly, swirling and shifting.
And then the lightning came. A spear of black light cracked down from the sky toward my head. I shifted half a step to the side, letting it hit the ground below killing even more abominations.
A second bolt followed, horizontal this time, cutting through the air like a blade. I raised my sword and diverted it.
Then came dozens of beams. Vertical, diagonal, spiraling, zig-zagging through the air with chaotic patterns. Each one carried enough destructive power to reduce a beginner Transcendent to ash.
I slipped through them effortlessly. The beams crashed around me in a steady rhythm, tearing chunks of the asteroid, vaporizing abominations by accident, leaving molten scars wherever they struck.
But none touched me. The phantom watched with growing agitation as the storm intensified. The domain thickened. Lightning grew wilder, faster, angrier.
Number One’s body suddenly dissolved into smoke and reformed directly above me. Lightning teleportation. Its hammer was already raised, black sparks dancing along its surface as it dropped toward my head.
I lifted my sword.
BOOM!!
The hammer slammed into the blade like a meteor. The impact tore a crater into the air itself, shockwaves rippling in concentric rings. The ground far below split open. Abominations were blown away like dust.
I didn’t move. I tanked the attack completely. Number One flickered back, retreating several meters with a caution it hadn’t shown before. The domain’s storm clouds churned nervously around it.
I exhaled once and shook my head.
"Your domain is good," I said, "but not good enough. I don’t even need my full domain to crush it."
I lifted my hand.
"Let me show you... what a true domain looks like."
"Domain."
A ripple spread from me. The storm clouds above were torn apart, shredded like paper caught in a cosmic wind.
Behind me, an ancient, colossal silhouette began to appear. A massive stone tablet, weathered, primordial, older than anything this asteroid had ever felt, descended through the torn sky. Its presence alone pushed the entire domain to its knees.
Then the pressure hit. A crushing, suffocating weight that made the entire asteroid groan. Number One’s domain collapsed instantly, as if someone had stomped it out of existence.
The raging storm froze mid-motion. Black lightning halted in place like suspended threads of glass. Deathmist stopped churning. Then everything shattered. The storm broke apart into harmless dust. The lightning unraveled into faint lines.
I let my domain fade just as easily.
Silence fell.
Number One’s grip slackened. One of its hammers slipped from its hand and tumbled downward, bouncing off the cracked floating rocks.
But even with that realization, the Executor’s Halo wrapped around it like a suffocating chain. The pressure of the Original Command pressed down on its existence. Its body trembled violently, an involuntary response, the instinct to defy me forcing itself through a will that was already breaking apart.
It wasn’t trying to fight anymore. It was being forced to.
A miserable state.
I stepped forward slowly.
"Let me put you out of your misery," I said.
Number One didn’t run. It didn’t raise its remaining hammer. It didn’t summon lightning or deathmist.
It simply stood there, trembling, unable to move forward or back.