The moment we stepped through the portal, I released a spatial ripple without breaking stride, hiding all of us from what was coming.
The other side came into focus.
We were standing above a dead planet. It wasn’t shattered, nor was it under some kind of apocalypse. It was just....exhausted.
Its surface was a dull gray-brown, scarred by ancient impacts and stripped of any atmosphere long ago. No clouds. No oceans. No tectonic movement. Just a lifeless sphere drifting through the void, slowly rotating, forgotten by stars and time alike.
Except it hadn’t been forgotten.
The planet’s surface had been deliberately reshaped.
A vast basin had been carved directly into the crust, as if a colossal hand had pressed inward and scooped the land away.
The depression spanned hundreds of kilometers, its edges smooth and unnaturally precise, layered with concentric terraces that descended toward the center.
Each level had been reinforced and flattened, forming wide platforms where structures and formations could exist without relying on subterranean support.
Gravity here wasn’t natural. It was stabilized across the basin alone, tuned just enough to keep everything grounded while leaving the rest of the planet inert and untouched.
At the heart of the basin rose the base.
A colossal tower stood embedded into the basin floor, seated upon it like a throne. Its foundation spread outward rather than downward, merging seamlessly with the carved stone beneath. The structure climbed high above the basin, tier upon tier of angular architecture stacked with deliberate symmetry.
Deathmist drifted around it in slow currents, gathering and dispersing as if breathing. Faint runic patterns traced the tower’s surface, etched into the material itself, glowing dully before fading and reappearing elsewhere.
It was similar to the tower I had seen on the asteroid base but much bigger.
"This base is bigger," I said quietly.
Far bigger than the asteroid base I had destroyed before.
Below us, spread across the carved surface and suspended platforms, were abominations, millions of them. They moved in organized flows rather than chaos, their distorted bodies trudging along marked paths, assembling, dispersing, reforming.
And similar to the previous base, phantoms were present here as well. Grandmasters and Transcendents moved among them, their signatures easy to distinguish. I counted the Transcendent auras almost casually as my perception swept across the basin.
Dozens.
And then there was one that stood apart.
An upper transcendent, positioned near the midsection of the tower.
Steve let out a slow breath. "Does it look like their headquarters by any chance?"
"No," I replied. "This is just a normal base."
I extended my perception, covering the entire base.
The lower blocks were administrative.
Connected directly to the tower were four massive portal gates embedded around the tower’s base.
One of them was the portal we had emerged from.
The other three led elsewhere.
Above the administrative section, the structure changed.
The upper tiers were training zones. Residual law fluctuations lingered everywhere. This was where phantoms refined coordination and trained.
This wasn’t a temporary installation.
This was long-term infrastructure.
Knight’s tail flicked once, the blade at its tip catching a faint reflection from the runes crawling over the tower.
"So," he said calmly, "do we start dealing with the problem now?"
"Yeah," I replied. "Go ahead. North, Steve, you can begin. Clear out the abominations, level up, and clean the place."
They didn’t waste a second. The moment I loosened my spatial concealment, both of them flashed upward, their presence finally revealed in the open sky above the basin. Their auras unfolded without restraint, cutting through the oppressive atmosphere of the base as they descended toward the swarming masses below.
Steve hit first.
Lightning tore down from the sky in jagged arcs, wrapping around his body as he fell like a spear. Shadows bled out from beneath his feet, folding into his movement, sharpening his silhouette. The moment his boots touched down among the abominations, his sword was already in motion. Each swing carried a conductive surge, lightning riding the blade’s edge before detonating inside whatever it struck.
Black shadows followed the cuts a heartbeat later, finishing what the steel and voltage had started. Bodies split, collapsed, or simply went rigid before shattering apart, the air around him screaming as lightning chained from one target to the next.
North dropped a breath later, quieter but no less lethal.
She didn’t crash into the horde; she slipped into it. Twin blades flashed in short, efficient arcs, her body moving in bursts that were almost impossible to track.
Wind curled around her legs and shoulders, not as a storm but as constant pressure, accelerating every step, every pivot, every strike. One blade cut, the other followed through the opening, her momentum never stopping. Abominations fell without understanding what had killed them, throats opened, cores split, limbs severed cleanly before the air itself finished tearing them apart. The ground beneath her began to score with intersecting lines, each one marking a path she had already abandoned.
From above, the horde broke apart.
Lightning and shadow carved a widening corridor of destruction around Steve, while North’s movement created dead zones where nothing survived long enough to react.
Phantoms shrieked orders, trying to regroup the masses, but the flow of battle had already slipped beyond control.
The carnage didn’t go unanswered.
Deep within the base, the tower reacted. Layers of dormant runes flared to life in rapid succession, their glow intensifying as alarm protocols cascaded upward through the structure. Deathmist surged along the tower’s surface, no longer slow and rhythmic but sharp and urgent, like a heartbeat driven into panic.
Grandmasters moved first.
They descended in coordinated bursts, phantoms clad in denser corruption, their forms more stable, more deliberate.
Bladed constructs formed in their hands, warped weapons that hummed with destructive laws as they cut into the battlefield, carving channels through the abominations to reach Steve and North.
Then the atmosphere shifted.
A single presence unfolded from the tower’s upper tiers, heavy enough that even the void above the basin seemed to dip in response. The upper Transcendent stepped forward, Its gaze swept the battlefield once as its eyes locked onto both of them.