Chapter 230: Absolute At Peak
The vision began again.
Once more, I stood in the void of space, among shattered asteroids drifting like forgotten debris. A strange stillness hung in the airāa silence that vibrated with meaning. I recognised the moment. I had seen it before. But this time, everything was clearer.
A figure stood motionless on one of the larger asteroids. Tall. Wrapped in a long, tattered cloak that swayed despite the vacuum. The edges were frayed, torn by time. Not a single part of his body was visibleāhe was completely obscured beneath that cloak, his face hidden by the deep shadows of his hood.
Chains slithered across his body, moving like living things.
They wrapped tightly around his arms, chest, and throat. Some coiled around his legs like roots, others floated in the air beside him, dragging behind him like forgotten burdens.
They looked ancientārusted in places, glowing faintly in others, each link etched with faint, unreadable inscriptions. I still couldnāt tell if they were restraints or something far more sacred.
His presence was wrong, no, heavier than wrong.
It felt like he weighed down reality itself, as if even space and time hesitated to move around him.
Then the darkness shifted.
Light flared across the void. The far side of the asteroid belt exploded with movement.
An army surged forthāan endless storm of power and terror. Ships shaped like curved blades cut across the stars. Beasts with molten eyes roared across the void, wings flapping in the vacuum.
Dragons. Titans. Demons. Warriors with obsidian wings. Armored giants. Beings made of shadow. Some carried war banners, others towered over their own legions. There were creatures I had never read aboutāmonstrosities built from laws themselves.
Millions of them.
Each radiated their own presenceāsome burned with fire, others distorted gravity just by existing. The sky was filled with raw, chaotic energy. They came from every race. Every realm. And they were all coming for him.
Still, the figure did not move.
And then he raised a single hand.
I held my breath.
This time, I saw it.
āAbsolute.ā
The word didnāt echoāit didnāt need to. It was simply true.
A golden pulse erupted from his body. Not light. Not energy. It was Essenceārefined, crystalline, impossibly dense. The golden wave spread out like a ripple through still water, stretching far beyond the asteroid field.
I saw the particles warp. The very Essence around him aligned, responding in worship.
This was his domain.
And it was vast, stretching farther than sight. It didnāt just surround the area. It rewrote it. The universe bent around him.
The army didnāt stop.
The first wave charged forwardādragons shrieking, ships firing beams of condensed light, demons cloaked in flame diving down in waves.
The man didnāt move. But I saw something new, something hidden in the air.
Tiny red runes began to appear.
Infinite in number.
They danced through the sky, weaving around every flying enemy, every war machine, every screaming soldier.
Each rune pulsed once, and then again, and then⦠they burned.
The laws changed.
They werenāt flying anymore.
The sky, the very concept of it, had turned against them.
And like marionettes with their strings cut, they fell.
Wings stopped flapping. Engines sputtered. Levitation failed.
Everything crashed downward.
Dragons slammed into asteroids, bones breaking like twigs. Ships exploded. Titans roared in surprise and pain as they hit the ground. Craters formed. Stone shattered. Lives ended in the blink of an eye.
I felt it this time, not just the impact, but the enforcement of a new truth.
The sky no longer welcomed them.
That was his first move.
But the army wasnāt finished. Not even close.
The second wave cameāraging with fury.
And they brought everything.
Beams of light fused with fire. Sound waves formed into blade edges. Gravity collapsed into singularity bombs.
Time fractals unfolded like mirrors, attempting to loop the battlefield. Space cracked under the weight of folded dimensions. Poison arrows, soul-devouring flames, war chants that broke the mind, illusions sharper than knives, laws twisted and bent with every attack.
The sky turned into a canvas of destruction.
And still, the man remained still.
He raised his hand again.
āRevert.ā
This time, the red runes appeared again.
The runes appeared from nowhere, infinite, circling and dancing through the storm. They cut through the chaos like divine threadsāspinning, pulsing, glowing. And then they acted.
The attacks didnāt explode. They dissolved.
Time shattered into harmless sparks.
The gravity bombs unraveled like sandcastles touched by wind.
The fire turned into soft rain.
The lawsābroke.
Everything that had been launched, every twisted spell and cursed strike, turned to shimmering mist.
The battlefield calmed.
Glowing fragments of broken concepts drifted down like snow.
And he hadnāt moved an inch.
Then⦠the light changed.
Behind the hooded figureās head, a circle of pure light began to form.
A halo.
It pulsedāslow, steady, commanding. Like a heartbeat that the stars could hear.
The army hesitated.
Fear gripped them.
I saw it. Even from this distance, I felt it.
Some backed away. Others trembled. A few dropped their weapons.
They didnāt see a man. They didnāt see a monster. They saw something older than both. Something the world had forgotten. Something it was not meant to remember.
But fear turned into rage.
A few couldnāt take it. They roared and charged again, burning with madness.
The man raised his hand one final time.
And this time, he whispered something.
I heard itāclear as day.
āRight to Exist.ā
The moment he spoke, the entire void reacted.
The red runes surged outward and turned goldenāfaster than thought. Each enemy was touched by oneābranded by a symbol far too complex to understand.
And thenā¦
They were gone.
No blood. No cries. No resistance.
Just bursts of Essenceālike stars flickering out.
One by one, ten by ten, then thousands. They ceased to be. It wasnāt death. It was erasure.
Their Right to be had been revoked. And the universe obeyed.
All of itādone without a single step.
Chains dragged softly behind him.
The halo burned brighter.
And silence returned.
Then the vision ended.
*****
I opened my eyes, but the vision lingered, etched into my mind like a brand. The sheer scale of what I had witnessed didnāt just awe meāit excited me. That manās power was overwhelming, but it wasnāt just brute strength. It was control. Precision. Dominion.
His domain had stretched so far, it could have enveloped my entire world. With a single command, he had affected millions. Not with a storm of attacks, but with a truth so absolute that reality itself bowed to it.
His strength clearly stemmed in part from his class, a class so far beyond my reach that it made even my recent evolution feel like the first step on a mountain I hadnāt begun to climb.
But more than that, it confirmed something important.
There was a Right to Exist.
I had already unlocked the Right to Insight. The Right to Isolate was still sealed. But now I knew there were othersāgreater ones.
And someday, I would unlock them.
Creation is hard, cheer me up!