With that, he turned and walked out, leaving the room quiet behind him.
Mazikeen rose a moment later and followed Dravon, but she stopped at the doorway. She didn’t look at any of us at first. Her fingers tightened slowly, then she turned back.
"I lost most of my family to this rift," she said quietly.
Her voice didn’t shake, but that almost made it worse.
"Parents. Siblings. Cousins. Gone." She swallowed once. "And I’m not special. There are thousands like me here. Demons who lost entire bloodlines. Entire histories."
Her eyes hardened as she looked past us, toward the direction of the rift.
"Since the day that Eternal planted himself here with that tower, he hasn’t left. Not once. He just watches. Like a spear driven straight into our hearts." Her breath came out slow and heavy. "Every day we fight. Every day we die. And every day we hope someone, anyone, will finally hit back hard enough to change something."
She paused, then said the word like it was carved into her bones.
"Revenge."
Then she turned and walked out.
The room was silent after that with the kind of pressure that presses on your chest.
North was the first to speak. She stood up slowly, her jaw tight, her fists clenched so hard her knuckles had gone pale.
"Billion," she said. "We need to do this."
I nodded once.
"We will," I replied. Images of the battlefield flashed through my mind. The dead. The wounded. The tower standing untouched. "We will destroy them. Completely."
I turned away from the table and walked toward the room, my blood still hot from what I had seen in the core layer.
This wasn’t just a job for me also. It was personal.
******
I sat alone in the room and let the others drift off to whatever they wanted to do. I needed silence. I needed time. Saleos was not someone I could walk into blind.
That single strike he had thrown earlier kept replaying in my mind. The speed. The weight behind it. The way space itself had cracked when his fist landed. It had shown me enough to understand his ceiling was high, but not enough to know where it truly ended.
What bothered me more was something else.
How had he noticed Knight and me?
We had been hidden. And yet, the moment his attention sharpened, he had locked onto us with terrifying accuracy. That wasn’t instinct alone. That meant perception. Awareness.
I decided I would ask him directly once he was in our hands.
Until then, preparation came first.
I let my breathing slow and pulled Essence from the core. It flooded into my channels, dense and obedient. I didn’t hesitate. I pushed.
My plan was simple. I would push every major attribute past 7000.
I started with Constitution.
The moment it crossed the threshold, my body reacted violently. I felt a resistance, as if I had pressed against a wall I wasn’t meant to touch yet. My bones hummed. My muscles tightened, then loosened as they restructured themselves. It felt like my entire body was being reinforced from the inside.
My organs followed. Heart. Lungs. Blood vessels. Everything became tougher, more stable, less fragile. Even under extreme force, I could feel that my body would hold together longer than before.
The biggest change, however, came from my Essence channels.
They widened.
Not dramatically, but enough that the flow through them felt smoother, less restricted. Essence moved with less resistance. They also felt harder to damage, almost as if my body had accepted that higher output was no longer optional.
Next came Strength.
This time the change was immediate and obvious. My muscles tightened again, but this time with purpose. Every fiber felt denser, heavier, packed with potential. I clenched my fist, and the air around it trembled faintly, reacting to pressure that hadn’t even been released.
It wasn’t just raw power. It was control.
I could feel exactly how much force I could apply without wasting a single unit. If I struck now, I knew the damage wouldn’t just be big. It would be clean.
Then came Dexterity.
My body felt lighter, even as it grew stronger. Movements that once required thought now felt automatic. Balance adjusted itself without effort. My joints moved more freely, my reactions sharpened. I could already imagine how much easier it would be to fight in chaotic space, where direction meant nothing and momentum was a weapon.
Finally, Psynapse.
This one was different.
As I pushed Essence into it, my mind expanded outward. Thoughts layered over one another without colliding. Information flowed faster, cleaner. My awareness sharpened even more and I could feel an increase in the range of my perception.
The moment it crossed seven thousand, my perception deepened. Laws became clearer, not in definition, but in behavior. I could feel how space bent before it moved. How Essence reacted before it surged. How intent itself left traces.
I exhaled slowly, opened my eyes and let the Essence settle.
My body felt heavy, solid, grounded. My mind was calm, sharp, dangerous.
"This feels good," I muttered as I rolled my shoulder once, testing the new balance in my body.
There was no discomfort. No instability. Everything felt solid, grounded, as if my body had finally caught up to the weight of my will. But I didn’t let myself linger on that feeling for long. Strength without control was useless here.
My thoughts returned to Saleos.
Pulling him out would not be simple. Even if Dravon warned him in advance, I was certain Saleos would not submit quietly. A demon who had held a rift for so long would never accept being restrained without trying to turn the situation around. He would probe. He would test. And the moment he sensed weakness, he would strike.
I couldn’t allow that.
If I was going to take him, then the moment my hand closed around him, everything had to be decided. No room for resistance. No space for counterplay.
With that in mind, I closed my eyes and shifted inward.
The world faded, and my soul space unfolded around me.
The endless ocean lay calm, its surface reflecting faint lights from above. At its center stood my soul, vast and unmoving, like a silent guardian watching over everything I was and everything I could become.
I let my awareness sink deeper.
My gaze moved from the towering figure to the ocean below, and with a quiet act of will, I reached into its depths.
The water stirred.
Slowly, the time rune rose from the ocean, droplets of light sliding off its surface as it floated into the air before me.
I sat down cross-legged in front of it and steadied my breathing. Time was not like other laws. It did not roar. It did not burn. It observed. I let my thoughts slow until even the passing of moments felt distant. The rune rotated gently, each turn revealing layers of meaning, cause stacked upon effect, motion bound to sequence.
I didn’t try to force comprehension. I listened. I felt the flow between moments, the thin thread that connected one instant to the next. Saleos’s punch. My escape. The tower’s response. Every action had left a mark in time.