Chương 421: Sanctioned Silence

The strategy table in the Sanctum's central war-room was mapped with floating geometric projections of Node G-25-Beta. The hollowed iron asteroid pulsed on the slate, its outer perimeter wreathed in the pale-blue gravity-relays of the High Court's forward operating base. I leaned over the table, resting my weight on my hands as my optical cores scanned the complex spatial conduits. Beside me, Crys, Anna, Jeeves, Zareth, and Kasian stood in silent attention.

"The strike needs to be surgical and completely dark," I said, my voice carrying the low, quiet rumble of my Tier 9 foundation.

"They will be on high alert, so not a single packet of spatial data escapes that asteroid. The Six Sunless Citadels know we have breached their staging ground, but they will not be expecting us to attack. I will be taking the strike team in alone, backed only by my Echoes and Zareth's void-beasts." Crys immediately straightened, her scales flaring with a sharp, gold-pink light.

"Eren. I just stabilized my Ascendant core. My Crystalline Vibration can disrupt their communication arrays before they even realize we are in the sector. I should be at your side."

"I know you can fight, Crys," I replied, meeting her gaze.

"Your breakthrough in the trial proved your density is more than ready for a Tier 9 battlefield. But this isn't about raw combat power. It's about operational footprint. If something goes wrong — if they trigger an un-systemic overload or summon a secondary Transcendent presence — I can collapse my own coordinates through the fourth Void Layer instantly. Bringing additional physical Ascendants just increases our conceptual weight, making it harder to slip through their spatial-locks under the radar."

Crys pouted slightly, her brow furrowing, but she didn't push further. She knew the math.

"He is right, Crys," Anna agreed, her silver traveling robes rustling as she stepped forward.

"Eren's Omnipresence operates on a completely different frequency. If he goes in with high-energy proxies and hidden void-beasts, his true coordinates remain fluid. He can erase his presence the second the package is secured."

"Then what is my role?" Crys asked.

"You and Jeeves will hold the line at Bir-Z," I explained.

"I need you to oversee the construction of the Chrono-Stasis Lock in the deep basalt fortress. When I drag their Void-specialist and command officers back through the rift, I need that room completely prepped. The gravity-anchors must be set to zero-friction, and the Nullifying Veils active before we land."

"Consider it done," Crys said, her expression hardening into resolute focus.

"The fortress in Bir-Z will be a tomb for their mana before you even step onto the asteroid." I nodded, then closed my eyes, shifting my attention inward to my soul gate. The Anima Arch hummed softly in my chest, connecting my star-cores to the Trinity of Curses. We need to discuss the Prime System's quarantine architecture, I projected mentally, feeling Wrath, Gluttony, and Pride stir within my inner continent.

The Prime System is an absolute tyrant, Prince, the Leaden Titan's arrogant voice echoed from the [Crown of Pride]. It does not merely record data; it enforces reality through systemic permission. If an entity dies or casts a high-tier spell within its domain, the System logs the event directly into the universal Lattice. Which means standard spatial-cloaks are useless against its primary relays, I noted.

Up until now, secondary uncompiled systems and local challenge dungeons have felt like modular software running on top of a base operating system. But the Prime System is the foundational code. To guarantee zero data leakage during this raid, we have to create an absolute quarantine envelope. Feed the data-packets to me, boss! Gluttony's five obsidian hydra heads yup-barked in unison, wriggling enthusiastically around my black bracelet.

If any floating numbers or sneaky system-messages try to run away to the sky, I'll eat them! It is about causal resonance, Wrath murmured, manifesting on my shoulder as a tiny, two-inch amber moth glowing with the heat of a collapsed dwarf star. Eren's Ascension has somehow severed our connection to our main bodies, giving us our own consciousness, separate from our Origin's Will.

If Eren strikes a Tier 10 Ascendant, even with his impressive Veiling, the friction of their colliding Domains will create a shockwave in the local stasis. Eren must weave a domain bubble that replaces the local System rules with his own uncompiled authority. A localized blackout, I concluded. I will use my Prime Axiom's Nullifying Veil in conjunction with my Domain of the Ashen to project a massive, spherical void-well around the entire asteroid. I opened my eyes and looked at Zareth.

The void-caller stood near the shadow-line, his pale hands tucked into his dark sleeves, his hollow eyes gleaming.

"Are your Guests hungry, Zareth?"

"They have been scratching at the doors of the fourth layer for cycles, Lord Ascendant," Zareth replied, his voice sounding like dry autumn leaves.

"They smell the ancient, stagnant essence of the High Court's paladins."

"Then let's give them a stage," I said. Ten minutes later, I stood in the silent vacuum hovering three miles above Node G-25-Beta. The hollowed iron asteroid hung in the dark like a jagged metallic tooth, its pale-blue gravity-relays casting a cold glow over its iron surface. I raised my right hand, my star-cores spinning up into a quiet, maximum-density rotation. [Prime Axiom's Nullifying Veil] flared outward, combined with the spatial boundary logic from my [Voidflame] Sunder evolution.

A colossal bubble of pitch-black void-essence expanded from my palm, sweeping across the three-mile asteroid in a fraction of a millisecond. The bubble snapped shut, sealing Node G-25-Beta inside an absolute, hidden Void-well. To the outside universe, the asteroid simply vanished from the Lattice, its previous coordinates blending in with the surrounding space. Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!

"Phase one complete," I muttered into the soul-link.

"Deploy the vanguard." Behind me, five high-energy [Echo] clones materialized, their basalt-steel armor forged by Leoric to match my physical density. They ignited their internal engines, blazing toward the front gates of the asteroid base like crimson-and-black meteors. At the same time, Zareth carved a series of runes in the void. A massive tear opened in space, revealing the deep, churning chaos of the Deep Void Layer.

Zareth's "Guests" poured out of the rift — monstrous, amorphous masses of writhing shadow and floating geometric monoliths that bled entropic cold. The void-beasts slammed into the outer defense grid, absorbing kinetic and energy strikes fired by automated turrets. The frontal assault was loud, violent, and terrifying. Alarms blared across iron corridors as bone-white paladins poured onto the gantries to fight off the swarm and my five Echoes.

While the garrison was occupied, I used my [Void Emperor's Omnipresence] to translate my physical body directly into the heart of their command core. I appeared in a massive vaulted chamber of polished magnetic slate. In the center stood the lead Void-specialist — a gaunt humanoid wreathed in dark purple robes, his face covered by a silver-lead mask carved with runic backdoors.

Guarding him were four elite Tier 9 Archons and a single, towering presence that made the air freeze into razor-sharp ice: the base commander, a Tier 10 Ascendant of the Sunless Order clad in heavy white-gold plate armor.

"Ah, Eren Kai himself has arrived! Send the signal!" the Tier 10 Commander growled, his voice carrying the weight of a collapsing mountain.

"Good luck with that," I laughed as I descended. The moment my boots touched the floor, he unleashed his Inner World. Reality was overwritten as his domain super-imposed itself over our coordinates. We were suddenly standing inside a boundless, white gallery filled with towering marble pillars. The physical laws of space rewritten: gravity was locked into a rigid downward vector of ten thousand atmospheres, and the air turned into an unyielding gel.

Even though I was sure of my quarantine lock, I still didn't use my [Voidflame], avoiding unshielded deployment that might leave residual entropic or man radiation a High Court diviner could track. Instead, I relied on my newly evolved [Primordial Shell] and absolute physical density. I began to weave my own Inner World directly over his gallery. A crushing, neutron-heavy gravity field flared from my body, the basalt weight of my inner continent slamming into his white-gold domain.

Marble pillars cracked and shattered into powder under my pressure.

"What... When have you Ascended? And such power…" the Tier 10 Commander gasped, his knees buckling as his gravity-vectors were crushed by my sovereign authority. I didn't answer. I stepped forward, activating my [Micro-Glimpse]. An amethyst silhouette flashed in my vision, showing me his next ten seconds of movement. He was preparing to swing his warhammer in a sweeping arc while his Void-specialist attempted to activate a soul-escape talisman. I acted before his thoughts could translate into action.

Using [Omnipresence], I stepped out of the path of his prospective strike, appearing directly in front of the gaunt Void-specialist. Before the masked figure could crush the silver talisman, I brought my gauntleted left fist down with absolute kinetic force. The strike shattered the specialist's wrist, sending the talisman clattering across the stone, while my right hand clamped onto his throat. I channeled a localized pulse of [Syntropy], flatly denying his ability to channel mana through his core.

The Tier 10 Commander turned his warhammer around in a light-speed thrust aimed at the back of my skull, the weapon wreathed in a conceptual skill designed to erase physical matter on contact. I caught the massive warhammerhead directly on my left shoulder-guard. The kinetic shockwave tore through the domain, shattering the floor for half a mile. But my [Primordial Shell] held firm, my compacted muscle fibers and dense bone structure absorbing the nuclear-dense strike with zero structural compromise.

The white-gold warhammer rebounded off my armor like a wooden stick against an anvil. Before he could pull his hammer back, a massive, multi-limbed void-beast burst from the floor beneath the Commander's boots. The shadow-leech wrapped its spatial jaws around his lower torso, pinning his limbs and disrupting his core-rotation. I stepped inside his reach, driving my open palm into the center of his chest-plate. I wove a concentrated wave of my Leaden Titan's unbending gravity directly into his sternum.

The white-gold armor caved inward. The Commander let out a choked gasp as a planetary weight slammed into his central core, forcibly halting its rotation. His white domain flickered and dissolved, returning us to the ruined command core of the iron asteroid. My five Echoes broke through the blast doors, flanked by a swarm of shadow-beasts, quickly neutralizing the remaining Archons. I held the unconscious Tier 10 Commander in one hand and the Void-specialist in the other.

"Zareth," I called out, my star-cores returning to a slow rotation.

"Clean up please. Strip every slate and server-array, then collapse the asteroid's structural core with your void-beasts. Leave nothing behind."

"With pleasure, Lord Ascendant," Zareth bowed. I wove my gravity-conduits into the fourth Void Layer, opening a coordinate-bridge directly to Bir-Z. Carrying both high-tier prisoners, I stepped into the rift. The spatial transition ended on the cold basalt floor of Bir-Z's subterranean fortress. The chamber was an absolute masterpiece of defensive architecture, wreathed in overlapping Nullifying Veils with a Chrono-Stasis Lock in the center. Crys and Jeeves were waiting by the control console.

"Eren!" Crys exclaimed as I stepped through the rift. Her eyes landed on the two captured figures.

"You brought the base commander back alive?"

"His Inner World was lacking," I said, tossing both prisoners into the Chrono-Stasis Lock. Jeeves pulled the primary lever, and the heavy basalt doors slammed shut. The zero-friction gravity grid ignited with a low hum, dropping the spatial dilation inside the cell to a crawl and freezing the prisoners into near-stasis. I stepped up to the viewing window, scanning the captured officers through my [Void-Lattice Perception].

I tried to slide a thin thread of my Animus Arch into the Void-specialist's mind, but hit a hard, impenetrable barrier. Inside their inner worlds, both prisoners had executed an ancient technique, withdrawing their consciousness into the absolute center of their star-cores, encasing their memories inside a hardened shell of soul-stasis.

"They're turtle-ing," I gritted my teeth.

"If I try to force my way through with raw mana or Voidflame, the pressure will shatter their soul gates, destroying their Soul shells and every memory with it..."

"How long will it take to break through their defenses safely, Master?" Jeeves asked.

"A long time," I sighed.

"It will require delicate, high-frequency soul-weaving to slowly erode their inner-world shells layer by layer. It could take weeks, maybe cycles of continuous effort to extract the full blueprint of their Runic Parasites, System backdoors, invasion routes and so on..."

"Then we had better begin immediately," a hollow voice whispered from the shadows. Zareth stepped into the light, approaching the viewing window. A slow, unsettling grin spread across his face, displaying far too many sharp teeth.

"Do not worry, Lord Ascendant," Zareth murmured, his fingers tapping against the glass.

"Soul-fortresses are delicate things... but I have Guests who are remarkably patient, and are excellent sculptors. They have been waiting a very long time for new toys to play with."