He snapped his fingers.
The mist transford. Deep golds and violent crimsons bled into the air until the entire summit beca a canvas, and a world I had never seen blood outward like ink dropped in still water.
Looking up, I saw a view that was out of this world.
The sky was wrong—too many moons stacked like pale coins at different heights, each casting its own shadow across a landscape that shouldn’t have worked but did.
Mountains floated. Rivers ran upward. Cities built from jade and compressed starlight clung to the sides of clouds.
"My world," he spoke, his voice carrying without effort across the painted air. "Beautiful, wasn’t it?"
Past tense.
Then the towers ca.
I watched them erupt exactly the sa way they must have erupted in mine.
"We thought it was an invasion," he continued, moving through the projection like a man walking through an old mory.
"Every god mobilized. We assud there was a source—sothing we could fight, negotiate with, destroy."
He stopped beside the image of a tower so tall its peak disappeared beyond the projection’s reach.
"And while everyone else held councils and sent scouts to towers —" A grin surfaced on his lips "—I climbed."
"Of course you did."
He glanced over, pleased. "Floors fell. Bosses died. I walked through all of it. Not just because I was the strongest." A pause, entirely for effect. "Well. Partly because I was the strongest. Mostly because I was the most outstanding."
"You’re not humble aren’t you?" I shot.
"I’m many things, and humble is not one of them. I do hold the title of unrivaled under heaven."
"Unrivaled? Funny, because I want that title too."
"You have to defeat first."
"Of course I do," I said.
He glanced over, smiled and continued.
The projection shifted.
A floor materialized around us—a space that was all flas.
And in the center of it—a god with six hands.
Not one I recognized, but the projection made his presence felt even as an image, a weight in the air that pressed against my chest and made my bloodline stir with sothing between recognition and warning.
"You fought this guy?"
"We fought to the death." he confird.
The projection showed nothing of the battle itself. Just before—and after. Two gods standing across from each other. Then he stood alone.
"I won the battle, but not the war." He paused. "Winning that battle opened a door to sothing greater or worse, depending on how you see it."
"What was on the other side?" I asked.
The mist blood white.
He looked at sideways. "What do you think was on the other side?"
"If I knew, I wouldn’t be asking."
"Fair." He snapped his fingers again.
The colored mist contracted—pulled inward like sothing inhaling—and what replaced it had no shape I could describe accurately.
Not because it was invisible or hidden, but because the concept of shape simply didn’t apply to it.
It was presence without form. Awareness without a face. The mist swirled around the edges of it in slow, almost reverent patterns, like weather forming around a pressure system too large to see whole.
My bloodline didn’t recoil this ti.
It went silent. Completely. Like an animal playing dead.
"That," he pointed, "is what was waiting behind the door. They call themselves the Architects."
"Architects," I repeated slowly, turning the word over. "What are they exactly?"
"Beings that exist outside of what you and I would call reality," he answered.
"They don’t live in worlds like ours. They observe them. They construct these towers and seed them across different worlds, different dinsions." He exhaled through his nose. "And they watch what happens."
"So they’re just an observer?"
He pointed at . "You’re close. But not quite. They said they weren’t allowed to interfere with reality. It’s so kind of law. They didn’t even want to get involved. The only reason they stepped in was because of the Irregulars."
"Of course, that doesn’t change the fact that their way of handling this was to trap powerful people like so they could breed even stronger ones."
I touched my chin, thinking. "So these Irregulars forced them to act. Does that an they’re planning to build an army to fight the other party?"
"Yes," he nodded. "These towers were ant to push beings to gain power they wouldn’t normally reach. For example, this world wasn’t supposed to have supernatural abilities—"
"—The Architects destroyed worlds with superpowers and converted their essence to power up towers sent to other normal worlds—practically sacrificing one to strengthen dozens. They kept doing it until they created enough people with godlike abilities."
Damn, that was intense way of solving a problem. Now I was curious about their enemy.
"Do you know anything about these so-called Irregulars?"
"Not personally, but I’ve heard about them from the other prisoners. They say that, like the Architects, the Irregulars also cultivate powerful individuals—."
"—But instead of building towers, they give mortals a cheat, letting them gain powers that would normally take centuries in a very short amount of ti."
Wait... why does this sound so familiar? A cheat... gaining power that fast... Motherfucker... it’s my system.
Calm down. It doesn’t look like he suspects .
"Are they really that dangerous?" I asked.
"I don’t know. But if those powerful beings were being forced to act, I can only imagine how problematic they must be. Honestly, the Irregulars haven’t touched my world, so to , the Architects are the villains—no matter their reasons."
"I completely agree with you," I nodded. "Just one question—if I beat you, they will summon , right?"
"Yes."
"Oh, so if I skip this fight, everything will be fine?"
"Not necessarily. Sooner or later, they will still destroy this world to recover what they spent and transfer it to a new one. They see everything as pieces on a chessboard."
A deep sigh escaped . "So, if I fight you, I’m screwed. If I don’t, I’m still screwed later. Hearing this just killed all my motivation to defeat you."
"Don’t worry about the future—there won’t be one. Now that you’re here, you either beat or I kill you."
His aura changed.
Golden light erupted from his fur, all at once—violent and imdiate. The pressure slamd into like a physical wall, forcing my bloodline to respond instantly just to keep standing upright.
He snapped his fingers and a staff materialized in his hand.
Golden. Ornate. The kind of weapon that looked ceremonial until you saw how he gripped it—stance perfect, every line of his body radiating combat experience that asured in eons.
So that was why he was so talkative.
He was confident I would die by his hand.
"I’m fond of ambitious young individuals like you. So I’ll kill you as rcy."
"rcy?" A laugh escaped before I could stop it.
Taking my stance, I let the Moonlight Dragon Spear settle into my grip properly.
"Sorry," I said, grinning despite the pressure bearing down on . "But I’m not really planning on dying today."
His expression didn’t change.
Then we both vanished.
BOOOOOM!
The entire summit cleared in an instant, pale stone suddenly visible for hundreds of ters in every direction, the cloud layer below us rippling violently from the force.
We separated and began exchanging high level martial arts moves.
Again. And again. And again.
Staff t spear in a rhythm that was too fast for most people to track. Each collision sent cracks spider-webbing across the stone beneath our feet.
Although he was far superior to in cultivation, my body was now enhanced by my dragon bloodline, and my magic.
He swung high. I ducked low, spear lancing upward toward his ribs.
While still in the air, he twisted his body. His staff spun in a tight arc and knocked my attack away.
Before I could pull back, he drove the staff forward. The tip ca straight for my throat.
Blocking barely in ti, I felt the impact reverberate through my bones.
He was strong. Faster than anything I faced so far.
Every movent precise, every attack calculated to force into positions where the next strike would land cleanly.
I wasn’t slow either.
Dark tendrils flowed around my limbs.
My speed doubled. Then tripled.
The world around slowed to a crawl as my perception sharpened. Every detail crystallized with perfect clarity.
"Moonlight Shadow Thrust!"
His eyes widened just slightly—the first one I had seen from him since our fight began.
Then he laughed.
Golden light blazed around him, his aura expanding outward like a second sun igniting at the peak of the mountain.
We closed the distance in a fraction of a second.
The tip of my spear t the flat surface of his staff.
Our collision cracked through the air like a thunderclap. It rolled outward, flattening the mist in a wide ring.
I skidded back three steps before I stabilized my footing.
A normal S-Rank standing anywhere near this collision would have been reduced to a corpse instantly.
Good thing I ca here alone, or I would have sacrificed my team’s lives for nothing.
Just from that exchange alone, only Alexa and the girls could have barely survived an attack from him—and that was with him holding back.
A wide grin spread across his face. "Let’s see how fast you are."
swoosh!
He moved again, this ti much quicker.
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