Chapter 451: An Immortal

The moment Noah spoke the word, the world outside vanished.

A sharp rush of air filled his ears before the silence of eternity pressed in. His boots met soft resistance — grass, endless and green, stretching farther than the eye could ever reach. The horizon was a painted line, curving gently as though even distance bent to the rules of this place.

The Domain.

The air here was clean, richer somehow, as if it had never known the taint of war or smoke. Noah inhaled deeply and felt his lungs lighten. For the first time since the fight with Arthur began, his shoulders eased.

A shadow fell across him. Then another. Then a third.

Three roars shook the field, rolling thunder that made the grass bow and ripple as if the blades themselves bent in worship.

Nyx came first — massive, red scales glistening under a light that had no sun. The dragon’s presence was commanding yet calm, his great wings tucked with practiced dignity as he lowered his head. His golden eyes gleamed with intelligence, sharp and steady.

Ivy followed, emerald scales catching the glow like living jewels. Her form was smaller, sleeker, her movements flowing with a gentle grace. Where Nyx radiated power, Ivy carried warmth. Her eyes softened when they found Noah, and her steps quickened, almost like she was hurrying to close the distance.

Then came Storm. The wyvern streaked overhead, black-and-blue wings cutting the air like blades. He didn’t bother with grace or solemnity. Instead, he dove straight for Noah with a shriek that split the quiet, his lightning-tipped tail crackling.

"Storm, No!! Please don’t—"

Too late.

The wyvern slammed into him, knocking Noah flat on his back in the grass. A weight pressed on his chest as Storm nuzzled against him, sparks flickering harmlessly across Noah’s coat.

"Off!" Noah wheezed, pushing at the overgrown lizard. "You’re heavier than you look."

Storm only chirped in response, maw gaping in something dangerously close to a grin. His tail flicked, releasing a playful snap of lightning that scorched the grass a few feet away.

Noah laughed despite himself. "Fine, fine. You win." He shoved one last time, and Storm bounded off him with a triumphant screech, circling overhead again.

Ivy reached him next, nudging her scaled snout gently against his arm. Her touch was careful, almost hesitant, as though afraid she might harm him. Noah reached up and rested a hand against the smooth emerald plates of her jaw.

"How are you doing, girl?" he murmured. "Better here, right? No more cages. No more chains."

Her eyes closed briefly, and though she made no sound, Noah could see it — the way her body loosened, the way her tail swayed lightly behind her. Content. Safe. Happy. A far cry from when he had first pulled her out of Vex Marduk’s beast trafficking ring, battered and muzzled, her spirit dimmed.

"You deserve this peace," Noah said softly, running his hand down her warm scales. "And I’ll make sure no one takes it from you again."

Nyx came last, lowering his massive head to Noah’s level. The dragon’s breath rolled like hot wind, carrying an unspoken question. His stare was intent, steady, like a commander silently awaiting orders.

Noah met his gaze and chuckled. "I know. You’re itching for a fight, aren’t you?"

Nyx blinked once, slow and deliberate. His wings shifted like a warrior loosening his stance, ready but patient.

"It’d be selfish of me to ask," Noah said after a beat. He patted Nyx’s scaled muzzle before stepping back. "If I let you out there, you’d jump in without a second thought. All of you would. But until I know what Arthur really is... it’s too risky. I won’t gamble your lives just because I’m desperate."

Nyx’s tail swished once through the grass. No protest, just acknowledgment. The dragon returned to the stone den Noah had once crafted for him, the structure rising naturally in the Domain like a mountain outcropping. Nyx coiled there, posture calm but his golden eyes never leaving Noah.

Storm swooped back down then, landing clumsily with wings beating the ground. He screeched, demanding attention, and Noah sighed.

"Alright, alright. You want something to chew on, don’t you?"

With a thought, Noah opened his void storage. A black rift formed beside him, swirling silently before coughing up a shard the size of a football. The Category 4 beast crystal pulsed with faint inner light.

Storm’s eyes lit instantly.

"Go on, then," Noah said, tossing it high.

The wyvern leapt, jaws snapping it out of the air. Lightning surged along his body as he bounded away, tossing the glowing core skyward only to chase it down again like a cat with yarn.

Noah shook his head, a smile tugging at his lips. "Never changes."

He straightened, brushing grass from his coat, then leaned back. The ground seemed to vanish beneath him — but before he could fall, a high-backed chair shimmered into being. He landed comfortably, elbows resting on the armrests.

Coins ticked softly in the back of his mind.

[Void Coins Balance: 89,740]

He had plenty to spare.

For a moment, Noah just sat. The field swayed, dragons moved, and time itself slowed. The Domain bent the flow of minutes and hours; what could be days here would be mere breaths outside. Enough time to think. Enough time to plan.

And that was exactly what he needed.

---

"Alright," Noah muttered to himself. "Start from the top."

’Lucas trapped somewhere inside Arthur’s shadow’s realm. Alive, hopefully, but unreachable until Arthur himself was dealt with,’

Arthur’s abilities...

Noah leaned forward, steepling his fingers. "Shadow teleportation. Sinking inside them like liquid. Then lightning. Then metal." He ticked them off mentally. "Three powers. Not one. Not copies of techniques — whole abilities."

He frowned.

"It doesn’t add up. A normal awakener gets one. Maybe two if they’re freakish, system-bound, or mutated. But three? No... that wasn’t random."

He thought of the battle, the way Arthur’s shadows swallowed even void energy, how his lightning burned hotter, sharper than most.

Noah tapped the armrest. "Maybe he isn’t copying abilities. Maybe he’s copying... energy."

The thought stuck.

Humans had cells. Cells carried void energy — the original source, the thing that let the first awakened break past humanity’s limits. That energy expressed differently for each person: lightning for some, flame for others, shadow for a rare few.

So what if Arthur wasn’t taking the powers themselves... but the fuel? The energy signatures stored in the body?

"Like... buckets," Noah said aloud. "Everyone has a bucket filled with void energy. Arthur isn’t stealing the bucket. He’s just siphoning water into his own. One person’s lightning, another’s shadow, another’s metal. Mix them all together, pour into his own container, and suddenly he has access to all of it."

He sat back, considering.

"Could he stack infinitely, then? Just keep absorbing more and more until he bursts?"

For a moment, hope flickered. Then he shook his head. "No, stupid. If it were infinite, he’d have collapsed long ago. His body would tear itself apart. Energy burns cells when overloaded — I’ve seen it happen with Albright. There’s a limit."

He pinched his nose, discarding the idea.

"Alright, then what if... what if his cells are different? Modified? Engineered to store multiple kinds without breaking?"

Noah leaned forward in the chair, elbows on his knees, eyes unfocused as he thought aloud.

"Alright, Arthur... what the hell did you do to yourself?"

The simplest answer was usually the right one. People didn’t just sprout new powers out of nowhere. There had to be some kind of modification.

Genetic tweaks? Possible... Still, what if Arthur had found a way to reinforce his cells so they could hold more void energy without tearing themselves apart? That would explain the stacking—

—but no, that reminded him of something else. On Lilivil Prime, creatures had collapsed the moment their cells were overstrained. If Arthur had gone that route, he’d be rotting from the inside out.

Noah shook his head. "Too clean. Too stable. If it were just DNA splicing, he’d be breaking down from the inside out."

What about viral infusion? His mind flicked back to Lilivil Prime with the space elves. Arthur’s research lab had half-living beings that could copy powers for a few hours before they burned themselves out. Arthur had been there too. He’d set up operations, experimenting on anything that breathed, trying to unlock whatever made those creatures tick.

"If he cracked even a piece of that research..." Noah muttered, "...he could’ve grafted those traits into himself." A chilling thought. But the flaw was obvious: the creatures on Lilivil Prime died fast. Arthur wasn’t decaying. If anything, he was thriving.

"Not that either."

His thoughts jumped to another memory—Arthur’s rampage on that machine world. A whole civilization of sentient constructs dismantled because Arthur tried to force something unnatural into them. Kelvin had practically broken himself rebuilding it with technopathy. If Arthur was willing to butcher worlds just to test theories, then he wasn’t relying on something simple.

Noah frowned. "Biomechanical grafts? Nanotech? No, doesn’t fit. I didn’t see any augmentation—his body moved too naturally."

He considered drugs, performance enhancers, specialized therapies. All possibilities, sure. But drugs wore off. Therapies had limits. Nothing explained the bottomless pit Arthur had shown.

Noah exhaled slowly, tapping his fingers against the chair arm. Every theory kept hitting the same wall. None of them explained how Arthur’s shadows swallowed energy.

Then the thought came, slow and reluctant.

"...unless it isn’t void at all."

"Could Arthur’s shadows be infused with chi?" Noah muttered. "Shadow-chi, fused with void... like my null strike with chi layered over. That would explain why erasure didn’t work. Different energy base. A hybrid."

Storm screeched again in the distance, tossing the glowing crystal skyward before diving after it.

Noah sighed. "If that’s the case, then erasing him won’t work. Not directly. And... do I even want to?"

That thought sank heavier than the rest.

For one, Lucas was trapped in Arthur’s shadows. Who knew what it meant for Lucas if Noah erased Arthur?

Then again, at the same time, Arthur was a monster.

But that same mentality was something he could relate to at some point in his life. Left alone by his parents, raised by a cleaner instead of his parents. Forgotten while they ran off to the Ark, humanity’s military hub, chasing glory and leaving him behind.

He understood abandonment. He understood anger.

Maybe that’s why some part of him still sympathized.

But sympathy didn’t erase the truth: Arthur had to be stopped.

Noah stood, pacing slowly through the grass. Ivy trailed at his side, head lowered, brushing against his hand every few steps. Nyx watched silently from his den. Storm cackled in the distance with his crystal.

"I need to contain him somehow," Noah muttered. "If he stacks powers, I need to cut off the fuel. Box him in. Limit what he can use. Keep him from pulling Lucas deeper into that shadow pit."

His mind spun through options.

Rip his shadows apart? Too risky. Didn’t work last time.

Overwhelm him with raw force? Pointless. Arthur thrived in chaos.

Starve him of energy? Maybe... but how?

Every idea rose, then collapsed under scrutiny. He shook his head each time, discarding them like broken tools.

He paced across the endless grass, boots brushing through the stalks as he thought aloud, more to himself than to the dragons lounging nearby.

He started with Lilivil Prime. The half-living beings they found there could copy powers, yes—but only temporarily. "They had the talent for a few hours at most," Noah muttered, "then it burned out, and their bodies collapsed under the strain. That’s why they died so fast."

He stopped, rubbing the back of his neck. "What if Arthur has the same limitation? What if what he copies isn’t permanent?"

The idea made his pulse quicken. He thought back to his earliest days after awakening. When he first got his system, his void blink hadn’t been infinite—it came with a cooldown. He remembered the frustration, the way the ability felt locked after each use until the timer ticked down.

"Maybe Arthur’s the same," Noah whispered. "Maybe his copied powers only last for a set window before they fade. And when they fade, he needs... fuel."

His eyes widened as the thought spiraled. The heads of the families. Every last one had disappeared during their prime years, around forty or fifty. Not when they were weak. Not in decline. When their power was at its peak and their void energy most refined.

"That’s why he takes them," Noah realized. "Not to kill them outright. To keep them."

A cold shiver raced down his spine. He could picture it now—Arthur hoarding family heads like livestock. Living batteries. A steady, renewable source of void energy and talents, locked away until he needed to copy them again.

Storm’s playful crackle of lightning in the sky pulled him briefly from his thoughts, but the theory kept gnawing at him. It fit too well. It explained the disappearances. It explained Arthur’s bottomless arsenal. And if it was true, then Arthur wasn’t just dangerous—he was operating on a level of planning and patience that spanned generations.

Noah clenched his fists. "He’s immortal. That much is clear"

But immortality wasn’t just a gift—it was a curse written into every stolen year. How many kingdoms had Arthur seen crumble? How many families had withered to dust while he stayed the same, harvesting the next head, the next generation?" Noah felt a chill as he realized Arthur wasn’t just fighting for dominance. He was fighting to outlast time itself.

Immortality wasn’t free. Even he knew that: no energy could exist without balance, without cost. For Arthur to live that long, to feed that consistently, he had to be relying on something—an ability, a technique, maybe even one of the original gifts.

And that was when guilt struck him, sharp and cutting.

"Damn it, Noah," he hissed under his breath. "You should’ve looked deeper before this mission. You should’ve dug into the originals’ abilities. Learned their exact powers, their flaws. At least then you’d know what you were up against."

His pacing slowed, breath coming heavy with frustration. For all his strategizing, for all his caution, he’d walked into this fight blind on the most important detail. And Arthur was exploiting that ignorance masterfully.

At last, he exhaled. "He might just be the strongest human alive right now. Honestly, maybe even stronger than me, even if I went all out,"

His hand curled into a fist.

"But that doesn’t mean he’s unbeatable."

He turned back to his dragons. Nyx’s golden gaze locked with his, unflinching. Storm zipped around in circles, shrieking with delight. Ivy pressed closer, warm and gentle.

"I have a plan," Noah said to them, voice firm. "And maybe soon... you’ll all be getting some fresh air."

Nyx rumbled low, approval in the sound. Ivy’s tail swayed lightly. Storm dropped the crystal at Noah’s feet with a proud chirp.

Noah bent, patting Storm’s snout. "Thanks, buddy."

He straightened, bouncing lightly on his feet, the way a boxer loosened his stance before a match. His gaze lifted to the skyless horizon.

Time to go back.

"Domain," Noah said.

The endless grass rippled once, then folded in on itself.

And the world outside rushed back to meet him.