Upita tilted his head slightly, as if something had finally clicked.
"My mistake," he said calmly. "I did not account for the fact that you possess the Right to Insight."
His gaze stayed fixed on me as he continued without pause.
"It is called Right to Insight, correct?" he asked. "How many such Rights have you unlocked, Executor?"
I did not answer.
Upita brought two fingers together, the ones closest to his thumb, and then slowly pulled them apart.
Reality responded.
A blinding glow erupted behind his head as two enormous runes flared into existence, rotating in slow, perfect concentric circles. They were not aggressive. They were precise. Controlled. Like tools designed for a very specific purpose.
He raised a single finger in front of him, tracing a symbol in the void.
"Edict Three," he whispered. "Foresight Lock."
A ripple spread outward, invisible but suffocating. The moment it touched me, I felt it. My vision did not blur, but something deeper dulled. The clarity I saw through Right to Insight weakened. Essence flows lost definition. Laws that had been crisp moments ago became hazy, like shapes seen through thick glass.
Even the sealing runes drifting in the void lost their sharpness.
He was not blocking my sight.
He was dulling understanding itself.
I scoffed internally.
Then I acted.
"Node Two," I whispered. "Activate."
Power surged through me instantly.
My stats spiked by ten percent across the board, but more importantly, my Psynapse roared awake. It felt like pressure building behind my eyes as perception expanded, tearing against the imposed dullness.
The fog resisted.
Then it began to thin.
Bit by bit, the haze receded as my Psynapse climbed higher and higher, forcing its way through the imposed limitation. When it crossed the eight-thousand mark, something snapped.
It felt like a veil being ripped away from reality.
The dullness shattered completely.
Not only did I see clearly again, but what Upita had tried to obscure became even more exposed than before. The structure of his sealing laws stood naked in my perception. Their layering. Their rhythm. Their points of tension.
Just looking at them began increasing my comprehension.
My head throbbed violently from the sudden influx, pain blooming behind my temples as too much information rushed in at once. I clenched my jaw and held steady, refusing to let it slow me down.
Upita’s attempt to suppress me had failed.
Worse for him, it had given me exactly what I needed.
Understanding.
The Eternal moved.
The moment his body shifted, a chilling fluctuation rippled outward from him, sharp enough to scrape against my perception. My Psynapse was running so hot that the world around him slowed, not because time itself changed, but because my mind was processing far faster than my body could respond.
I saw it all.
I saw the glow spread from his body, thin layers of sealing laws unfolding and wrapping around space itself. He wasn’t just moving fast. He was folding space in advance, sealing it into a smooth path so his movement would be instant, unavoidable.
Then he stepped forward.
To anyone else, it would have looked like a flash. A disappearance and reappearance. But to me, his body slid through folded space in slow motion, carried along a sealed corridor he had created.
He thought I wouldn’t see it.
He thought that by dulling my Right to Insight, I would no longer understand what he was doing.
He was wrong.
I saw every fold. Every seal. Every weakness.
And for a terrifying moment, I realized something else.
If I could move my body fast enough, if I could land even one properly timed strike while he was in that folded state, his body would fracture. Space itself would turn against him.
But my body couldn’t keep up.
My mind screamed commands my muscles couldn’t obey. Everything was happening too fast. So I did the only smart thing left.
I waited.
Upita arrived in front of me in a blur, his palm already extended. Sealing light swam across his hand, dense and layered, ready to crush, bind, and erase.
I didn’t move forward.
I waved my hand.
From the Dawn Core, three fractured unity spheres emerged, floating into existence between us. They were brown in color, rough and uneven, buzzing violently with compressed destructive Essence and distorted time flow. Each one hummed like it wanted to tear itself apart.
They hovered in a triangle just as the Eternal reached striking distance.
I met his gaze.
"You know," I said calmly, "I prepared these for the second layer."
His black glass eyes did not blink.
"I was going to use them to break the defense and push through to the core layer."
A faint smile tugged at my lips.
"But since you’ve decided to come to me..."
I raised my hand slightly.
"I’ll give them to you as a gift."
My Space Law activated instantly.
Right to Anchor flared.
Space locked.
The position of the three spheres was fixed absolutely, bound to a single moment, a single location. In the same heartbeat, I flashed backward, tearing myself out of the zone before the Eternal could react.
Upita arrived exactly where I had anchored them.
Right between the three spheres.
Distance opened between us. The void stretched wide. I lifted my hand.
"Explode."
The command echoed.
For a fraction of a heartbeat, the three fractured unity spheres folded inward instead of outward, dragging everything around them into a single point. Space screamed as it was compressed beyond tolerance. Time shuddered. Then the pressure broke.
A sunless detonation tore through the void.
A ring of distorted force expanded outward as a crushing wave of annihilation. The shockwave slammed into the second layer below like the fist of a god. Massive defensive platforms cracked apart mid-orbit, their anchored laws snapping one after another. Entire structures were ripped from their positions and hurled sideways, colliding with each other in slow, catastrophic arcs.
Debris filled the void.
Chunks of reinforced matter the size of mountains were flung outward, tumbling end over end. The deathmist that flooded the second layer was blown apart, scattered so violently that for a brief moment the stars beyond became visible again. Even the first layer trembled, its remaining platforms shuddering as if struck by a distant quake.
The battlefield went silent.
Not the silence of peace, but the stunned hush that follows overwhelming force. Even the rushing Eternal army faltered, formations breaking as abominations were swept away like ash in a storm. Demons across the core layer staggered mid-charge, bracing themselves against the backlash.
I remained suspended in the void, my cloak snapping violently around me, Essence flaring instinctively to stabilize my position. My perception strained, reaching through the fading chaos, searching for one thing.
Upita.
But before I could see whether the Eternal had endured or been torn apart...
A sharp chime echoed directly inside my mind.
A system notification unfolded before my eyes, cutting cleanly through the aftermath of destruction.
I froze because the timing was too precise.
Whatever that explosion had done...The system had noticed.
[Quest Assigned]
Objective 1: Close the grade 4 rift.
Reward: 10000 MP
Objective 2: Capture the Eternal
Reward: 50000 MP