Now, only six remained on the battlefield.
All six were powerful—more than just survivors. They were legends in their own right. Each of them had carved through dozens of opponents to reach this point. Each one stood on floating platforms of reinforced law, surrounded by glowing auras and prepared to face whatever came next.
Asher stood in the center of the ruined arena. His cloak was torn in a few places, his boots stained with blood. But his expression hadn't changed. Calm. Focused. Unshaken.
He looked at the five opponents around him—his eyes scanning them quickly.
One was a titan-class monk of the Obsidian Temple, nearly three meters tall, covered in black armor made from living stone. His arms were wrapped in dimensional chains, and each punch distorted space. His title was Stonebreaker of the Deep Vault.
The second was a veiled sorceress from the Hollow Lotus Cult. Her aura pulsed with void, her spells built on forgotten truths. She floated in place, her body hidden under layers of shifting shadow petals. In one hand, she held a lotus made from devoured memories—it flickered with unstable power.
The third was a beast lord—an ancient lion-turtle hybrid from the Forgotten Wilds. Massive, armored in gold-plated shell fragments, and capable of channeling raw chaos energy. He growled low, and cracks formed in the air around him just from the sound.
The fourth was a knight dressed in white-gold armor, carrying a blade carved from the bones of a time-eater dragon. His shield bore the symbol of the Eternal Wall, a forbidden bastion known for training one warrior per century. He stood still, but the space around him felt… untouchable.
The fifth was something stranger.
It was a man—or maybe a machine—covered in rotating rings of scripture and steel. A construct from the Spiral Codex. He had no face, only a circular array of runes and lenses. His hands flickered through thousands of motions each second, writing laws mid-air and erasing them just as fast.
Asher looked at each of them. He tilted his head slightly and narrowed his eyes.
'Forty percent should be enough,' he thought. 'Maybe less, if they're sloppy.'
He took one step forward—and vanished.
The battle began instantly.
The monk reacted first, smashing both fists down and releasing a ripple of collapsing space. Stone arms grew from the air itself, trying to grab Asher as he reappeared behind the veiled sorceress. But Asher moved before they could even finish forming.
He raised two fingers—and the sorceress's lotus shattered.
Her body pulsed outward as she screamed, parts of her vanishing as if being erased. She tried to retreat into a higher dimension, but Asher reached out, grabbed her ankle mid-phase, and yanked her back. His palm struck her chest once.
Her cultivation core cracked—and her body collapsed into dust.
The link to the origin of this information rests in Novel~Fire. (n)et
The beast lord roared and charged, tearing apart the space in front of him with sheer force. He lunged, mouth open, chaos energy building like a singularity inside. He unleashed a breath of pure destruction.
Instead, he held out his hand—and absorbed the blast into a blood vortex. The energy circled him harmlessly. Then, with a gesture, he turned the vortex into a focused beam and fired it back. The beast lord raised his armored arms to block, but the crimson blast punched through him.
His body broke into glowing shards before he even hit the ground.
The knight moved now, teleporting forward with perfect form. His sword swung in a slow arc—but time around it moved faster. Asher barely ducked under the blow as the blade sliced the air where his neck had been.
The knight followed with a shield bash that distorted gravity.
Asher let the hit land.
He was thrown back—spinning through two floating platforms—but landed smoothly.
He straightened his back, cracked his neck, then raised one hand.
A blood spear formed in his grip and shot forward with perfect precision. The knight blocked with his shield—only to find the spear wasn't physical. It passed through the metal and struck his inner spirit directly.
The knight stumbled. Asher was already beside him.
A palm to the back. A twist of law.
The knight's armor shattered into particles, and he dropped to one knee, unconscious. Asher didn't finish him off—just stepped past.
The monk returned, both arms blazing with dimensional force. He leapt high and dropped with a full-body slam that could flatten entire cities. The ground beneath Asher cracked and cratered.
Asher stood in place, raising his arms to block. The impact sent a shockwave through the entire arena, but Asher's feet didn't move. He caught the monk's fists in both hands—and held him there.
"Nice try," Asher muttered.
The monk's arms shattered up to the shoulders. Then Asher kicked him in the chest. The titan flew across the battlefield, crashing through four broken platforms before finally vanishing in a burst of red light.
Only the construct remained.
It hovered in place, not reacting. Its rings moved faster now—writing laws, calculating possibilities. It released a sphere of raw logic—an attack that bypassed defenses and targeted intent itself. Asher felt his vision flicker, his thoughts beginning to unravel.
For one second, everything stopped.
"You're not the first machine to try this."
He activated a deeper layer of the Bloodlit Dominion—channeling his Sovereign Authority. His thoughts cleared, and the logic sphere froze.
Asher pointed two fingers at the construct. Bloodlines of ancient rebels coiled around his arm—ghosts of forgotten fighters, bound to his will.
The laws around the construct buckled. Its rings stopped spinning. Its core dimmed. And then, piece by piece, it collapsed into itself, falling like a broken astrolabe.
And across the battlefield, that final opponent stepped forward.
He hadn't moved until now. But as the dust settled and five powerful cultivators lay defeated, the sixth figure lifted his head and met Asher's eyes.
Valeris stood up in the balcony. "That one… is different."
Veyra nodded once. "Now we'll see how far Asher really plans to go."
And Asher smiled for the first time.