My perception did not distort or blur as it had during previous visions. Instead, my perception was displaced entirely, pulled away from my physical body and anchored somewhere far beyond the boundaries of the hall. I found myself suspended above a vast planet, observing its surface from a distance that allowed me to witness its entirety at once.
The world below was alive, its oceans stretching endlessly across the curved horizon, its continents rooted firmly in place beneath drifting cloud formations.
As I looked deeper, I saw a thriving civilization as well. Interestingly, the race living on the planet was the Elves. The strongest among them was an Upper Transcendent, and there were multiple Upper Transcendents present there.
For a brief moment, nothing was wrong.
Then the ocean stopped moving.
It was not gradual. The waves did not slow or weaken. They halted completely, frozen in place as though the very concept of motion had been stripped away. The surface remained suspended unnaturally, locked in a state that could not exist under normal law.
Seconds later, fractures spread across the frozen water, not like cracks in ice but like the unraveling of space itself. The ocean crumbled into fine particles and dispersed into nothingness, leaving behind empty absence where it had once existed.
The effect spread.
Mountains that had stood for who knows how long began to collapse, not falling under gravity but disintegrating as though gravity itself had ceased to function. Rivers vanished mid-flow. The atmosphere thinned and tore apart.
It took me only a few instants to understand what was happening.
The planet was not being attacked by an external force. Its governing laws were simply ceasing to exist.
Reality was losing its structure.
One by one, every force that defined the world failed, until nothing remained to hold it together. The planet did not explode. It did not burn. It simply unraveled, its existence erased as the laws sustaining it died completely.
My perception returned instantly.
I stood once again within the checkered hall, my body unmoved, my position unchanged. The black and white tiles stretched outward in perfect symmetry beneath the silent pillars. I did not understand what the vision was trying to show me. There was no sign of Theras, no sword, and not even the System present there.
So there was only one thing to do. Step forward.
I raised my leg and put it down on the first white tile.
Instantly a shadow rose from one of the black tiles immediately, condensing upward into a humanoid form whose structure pulsed with violent arcs of lightning. The energy did not originate from the environment. It generated internally, stabilizing its existence exactly as my own Generator Core stabilized mine.
At the same moment, I felt the restriction.
Every law within me fell silent except one.
Lightning remained.
Space did not answer. Time did not respond. Absolute remained dormant beneath the imposed condition. Only lightning flowed freely through my channels, as though the hall had isolated it deliberately.
And finally, the vision made sense. That planet unraveled because its laws ceased to exist. This was what this hall was about, the laws. But that raised another question: how was it related to the sword or Theras?
The shadow raised its arm and released its attack without hesitation. A concentrated beam of lightning tore toward me, its speed and density optimized for immediate termination. I met it directly, releasing my own lightning to intercept it before it could reach my body. The collision released a violent discharge that tore through the air between us.
I tilted my head slightly as I analyzed the shadow more closely, and it became immediately clear that it wielded the major law of lightning just as I did. Not only that, its comprehension was refined, its control stable. The lightning within its form did not leak or fluctuate unnecessarily. It remained condensed, contained, and obedient to its will.
The shadow raised its arm slowly, and the lightning around it began to converge. The scattered arcs condensed rapidly, compressing into a single point before extending outward, forming a long spear made entirely of pure lightning. Its surface crackled with violent intensity.
In response, I extended my own will.
Lightning surged through my channels and gathered in front of me, condensing and shaping itself according to my intent. The energy twisted and expanded, forming a violet trident whose three prongs burned with dense arcs. Unlike its spear, my construct did not rage outward. It remained perfectly stable, its destructive capacity restrained within its defined structure.
The shadow launched its attack.
The lightning spear burst through the air toward me. I released my trident at the same moment, sending it forward.
The two constructs collided.
For an instant, the lightning spear resisted, its structure attempting to maintain integrity against the superior compression of my attack. Then the trident broke through.
The spear shattered completely, its condensed form unable to withstand the force behind my construct. My trident continued forward without losing momentum and struck the shadow directly.
Its body convulsed as the lightning penetrated its core.
Its structure unraveled instantly. Cracks spread across its form before it disintegrated entirely, its body collapsing into nothingness as the lightning consumed it from within.
A law fragment remained suspended where it had stood.
I activated Abyss Core and devoured the fragment. Its comprehension of the lightning law flooded my mind, and in response, the volcano within my Dawn Core that represented the elements began flowing with even more lightning.
On the tile that the shadow had stood a human male soul stood. Just like before he bowed and then dispersed into particles of soul energy that merged directly into my own.
My soul compressed further, its density increasing without altering its size.
I stepped forward again.
White tile.
Black tile.
Another shadow rose from the black tile, its form darker than the others, its outline unstable as faint distortions flickered around it. The moment it fully formed, I felt the shift within myself. Lightning fell silent and only space responded.
The shadow lifted its arm and made a simple horizontal slash through the air. There was no visible blade. Instead, a single black dot appeared in front of it.
The dot moved toward me.
As it traveled, it split.
One became two. Two became four. Four became dozens. Each black point spread outward, surrounding me in a wide arc before converging inward at once.
The moment they reached my proximity, they collapsed.
Each dot distorted violently, folding inward like miniature voids, pulling everything toward their center. The surrounding space bent unnaturally, the floor beneath them cracking as the collapse intensified. They were not striking me physically. They were devouring the space I occupied, attempting to erase me by removing the structure that allowed me to remain there.
I nodded slightly. It was a clean attack that even I liked.
I released my response.