I turned around and looked at Aurora. Her eyes were practically glowing bright, eager, shining the way a child’s eyes did when they finally saw their favorite toy after waiting all year.
"Thanks," I said with a small smile.
Below us, suspended in the air, all the workers from inside the fortress: Ferans, Nagas, elementals, and more hung trembling in chains made entirely of lightning. Aurora’s control over it was delicate and precise. No burns. No injuries. Just fear and crackling energy.
"I’ve gathered all of them," she said, still staring at my face with that curious intensity of hers. "It was easy work."
I nodded and finally pulled open the pile of notifications I had been ignoring.
[Level Up!]
[Level 320 → Level 343]
A twenty-three level jump. Not bad for wiping out a million weaklings.
The next notifications continued:
[Quest Update]
Objective 1: Investigate the base | Reward: 10 Merit Points | Status: Done
Objective 2: Capture the traitors | Reward: 20 Merit Points | Status: Done
Objective 3: Kill Abominations and Phantoms | Reward: 100 Merit Points | Status: Done
Objective 4: Destroy the base | Reward: 500 Merit Points | Status: Pending
[You have earned your first Merit Points. You will be placed into the Transcendent Merit Rank Board.]
[Would you like to display your name publicly?]
I instantly answered, "No."
A second prompt appeared:
[State your name:]
I blinked and paused. It was asking for a merit codename, the name that would appear on the ranking board across the universe.
Aurora tilted her head, still watching me with silent interest.
Well, the whole point of this journey was to slay the Eternals, so I mentally gave the system the name that fit that goal best.
[State your name: Eternal Slayer]
A pause.
[Name taken. State your name:]
I stared for a moment, then sighed.
Even this damn system suffered from this.
I tried again.
Eternal Hunter. Eternal Predator. Eternal Ender. Eternal Reaver. Eternal Nemesis.
Every single one was rejected.
Apparently, the title of Eternal-killer was extremely popular.
I kept trying, eleven more attempts, each more ridiculous than the last until finally, something clicked.
A name that wasn’t about chasing Eternals...but about standing above all of them.
Something bigger.
Something that declared my position in the universe.
[State your Name: Prime Monarch]
A soft chime answered me.
[Name accepted.]
I smiled.
Prime Monarch. The Monarch of the Prime Universe.
It sounded right. And something about it felt right.
A title not of a hunter but of a ruler.
[Current Rank : XXXX69]
I ignored the rank completely. I was just getting started. There would come a day when my name sat at the very top of that board.
Aurora tilted her head slightly.
"What are you thinking?"
"Nothing," I said. "Come on. Let’s go check out our captives."
I flashed downward and appeared in front of the trembling group. Every single one of them froze the moment they saw me. Their eyes went wide, fear, confusion, and disbelief all mixed together.
Before I could even open my mouth, another system prompt chimed.
[You have captured Prime Universe traitors. A runic seal has been placed on them to prevent information leakage. Send them to the system-assigned prison for interrogation.]
A glowing portal tore open beside me.
The reaction from the captives was immediate. All of them exhaled... in relief.
I blinked.
Relief?
I reread the notification.
’What the hell?’ I shouted inside my head.
The system had a built-in delivery service for criminals.
I turned toward the captives, annoyed.
"What are you sighing about?" I asked one of the Nagas.
He swallowed hard and tried to straighten himself. His voice trembled as he replied,
"Nothing... I... I was just afraid we’d die in the battle. I’m happy to cooperate with the investigation. Truly. But... I can’t speak. The seal on us blocks everything."
I scanned him with my perception.
Nothing. No seal.
Either the seal was invisible to my senses... or I simply wasn’t skilled enough to detect it.
I made a note to learn how to enter someone’s mindspace properly. That was going to be important later.
"All right," I said, waving my hand. "Get lost."
A ripple of force swept through them, lifting the entire group like dust in the wind and tossing them straight into the portal.
One by one, they vanished into the swirling light and then the portal snapped shut with a soft crack.
"Let’s go back, Aurora. You wait in the core for now. I’ll introduce you to the others later."
"All right," she replied softly... and her body dissolved into blue particles before flowing straight back into the Null Core.
I turned my gaze across the ruined asteroid. Deathmist still drifted like pale smoke over cracked stone. Only the fortress and the three teleportation gates remained standing.
Time to clean up.
I lifted my hand and willed the Star of Origin awake. A deep pulse answered from within my core, and a powerful suction force erupted outward.
All the leftover deathmist across the asteroid jerked violently then surged toward me from every direction. Like a living black hole, I pulled everything in: the mist, the residue, even the faintest traces of corrupted energy.
The Star drank it all.
Within seconds, the entire asteroid was stripped clean. No deathmist. No corruption. As soon as the deathmist vanished, natural Essence rushed in to fill the vacuum. I grabbed hold of it and twisted my will.
Essence spiraled around me, forming a cyclone.
I activated Fractured Unity.
Violet Essence burst out from my body, mixing with the storm of pure energy around me until a head-sized brown spinning sphere condensed in front of me.
My work here was almost done.
I flashed and appeared before the primary teleportation gate. The runic platform glowed faintly when I touched it, and I recalled the coordinates I had seen earlier in the fortress documents.
Armus.
I entered them into the runic interface. The gate responded with a low hum. Then I slipped the spinning Essence sphere into a small pocket of slowed time, letting it hover safely in front of the fortress.
With everything ready, I took the unconscious duo and stepped forward into the portal. Leaving the ball of destruction behind.
Light swallowed me whole. Colors twisted and bent, ripping past my eyes like a river of distorted space.
A heartbeat later, I emerged back into the drifting pocket space above Horus, the exact spot where I had disappeared earlier.