Chương 442: The Shadow War

Before my proxy could exit the subterranean Marrow Vault, two dark-robed Grand Necromancers intercepted my path, bowing deeply to invite me before the Council of the Pale Threshold. My proxy was escorted to the highest chamber of the cathedral — a grand, circular hall carved from black bone-dust stone. Sitting on elevated marrow-stone thrones were the seven Grand Necromancers who governed Necropolis-Beta.

They wore flowing obsidian robes wreathed in dark necrotic runes, their faces concealed behind silver masks carved with glowing runic eyes. Six of the council members sat in silent, respectful awe, assuming I was the high-level Auditor sent by their off-world High Command. However, the seventh member — an ancient, suspicious elder named Grand Necromancer Indar, whose eyes burned with two spheres of cold, green soulfire — leaned forward on his throne, his hands gripping a bone staff.

"Lord Auditor..." Indar spoke, his voice sounding like dry gravel dragging across a tombstone.

"Your unexpected arrival through the upper veil is most... unusual. The High Command's communication schedule indicated that the secondary audit was not slated for another two cycles. May we inquire why your proxy carries no formal seal of the Pale Threshold?" The hall went dead quiet. The other six council members turned their silver masks to look at me, a subtle wave of suspicion rising in the air. Inside of panicking, I immediately activated my [Micro-Glimpse].

In a fraction of a millisecond, my optical arrays projected millions of probabilistic silhouettes into the immediate future. My analytical mind sifted through the temporal streams, calculating every potential conversational branch and inspecting how Indar would react to different phrasings. I saw Indar raise his staff in suspicion if I answered too defensively. I saw the surrounding guards shift their stances if I hesitated for a single microsecond.

I closed the loop, selecting the exact line of causality that established absolute, terrifying authority.

"Are you questioning the High Command's deployment schedule, Indar?" I answered coldly through the proxy, my voice carrying a low, subterranean rumble that made the green soulfire in his eyes flicker.

"Or are you attempting to hide the fact that your Host Catalyst's soul-weaving equations are three weeks behind schedule?" I stepped forward, letting my physical density radiate a faint, terrifying weight that cracked the slate floor beneath my boots.

"I carry no formal seal because an Auditor of my rank does not need permission from a regional council to inspect a failing project. If you prefer, I can report your insolence directly to the High Seats before I continue inspecting your inner vault." Grand Necromancer Indar froze. The green soulfire in his eyes shrank, his posture instantly collapsing from suspicion into absolute, terrified servility.

"Forgive me, Lord Auditor!" Indar bowed his head so low his bone staff rattled against the stone.

"I meant no disrespect! Our devotion to the Prophet's vessel is absolute!" The remaining six council members bowed in unison, completely convinced of my authority.

"Your proxy may rest in the upper Meditation Spire while we prepare the final diagnostic slates for your review," the senior council leader offered respectfully.

"See that you do not keep me waiting," I commanded quietly. My proxy turned around, walking out of the council hall under complete, unbothered deference, and was escorted to a quiet, heavily shielded meditation chamber at the top of the central spire. Once the heavy lead-alloy doors of the meditation chamber closed, my proxy sat cross-legged on a stone mat, entering a state of dormant stasis. Back on Bastion, sitting cross-legged on my cultivation mat in my inner sanctum, I opened my eyes.

I stood up, adjusted my armor, and walked out of my sanctum toward the Hall of the Chronicle to meet with Kasian, Jeeves, and Leoric. Kasian's spectral form floated over the central projection array, displaying the copied metadata my proxy had extracted from the Prophet's memory-lattice.

"Master Eren," Kasian bowed as I entered.

"We have completed the initial decoding of the raw data-crystals your proxy recovered from Necropolis-Beta."

"What did you find?" I asked, leaning against the slate desk as Jeeves poured me a cup of warm tea.

"The research is extraordinary, but deeply terrifying," Kasian revealed, pulling up a multi-layered diagram of the Host Catalyst.

"The cult on Necropolis-Beta is indeed attempting to forge a composite soul gate to host the memories of an ancient pre-Shattering Transcendent. But we still found no reference other than those calling him 'The Prophet of the Pale Threshold.'""Who was he?" I asked, taking a sip of tea.

"According to the ancient records, he was a Peak Twelfth Tier Transcendent Warlord who commanded several necrotic legions during the pre-Shattering era," Kasian explained.

"He fell in a massive battle against another ancient faction but the records are obscure. The Necromancy Faction funding this cult has preserved his shattered memory-lattice for eons, waiting for the technology to forge a vessel strong enough to bring him back." Leoric looked up from his control console, rubbing his tired eyes.

"Master, if this Necromancy Faction is actively fighting against the High Courts, could we potentially form an alliance with them? Enemy of our enemy, and all?" I didn't hesitate for a single second. I shook my head firmly.

"No," I said, my tone flat, absolute, and unyielding.

"I do not want to ally with them."

"May I inquire why, Master?" Jeeves asked respectfully.

"Because their philosophy is parasitic and vile," I said, my bottomless black eyes burning with a cold heat.

"They treat living beings as spare parts for a factory. They are stripping fifty thousand living captives of their soul gates, caging their core souls, and stringing their memories together to build a fake vessel for a dead warlord. They are no better than the High Courts who treat the lower sectors as fodder." I set my tea cup down, my thoughts raising deeper, more disturbing questions as I looked at the floating soul diagrams.

"It raises a far more terrifying question, Kasian," I mused softly.

"If this regional cult is building a composite Host Catalyst on Necropolis-Beta... how many other 'created catalysts' exist across the galaxy? Are the High Courts using the Samsaric Core to execute similar soul-weaving experiments in other quarantined sectors? I know these Necromancers are specialized in Souls but there may be others with similar resources…" Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"It is highly probable, Lord," Kasian agreed solemnly.

"The manipulation of souls, gates and inner worlds appears to be the central battlefield of the higher tiers." That evening, inspired by the pre-Shattering soul-weaving equations I had copied from the vault, I returned to my private sanctum to experiment on my own foundation. I sat cross-legged on my cultivation mat, entering a state of hyper-deep void meditation.

I decided to test a revolutionary, high-risk cultivation method — a technique inspired by the Master's research, the Ancient Flame re-forging, and my own unique abilities. I called it the Stretch-and-Deny Method. Normally, a cultivator's soul gate expands slowly over lifetimes of tedious, incremental core-rotations, life experiences, scarring and tearing, records achieved and so on.

Forcibly stretching a soul gate beyond its natural elastic limit would result in immediate, catastrophic soul-cracking, leading to permanent spiritual crippling or death. But, to win in the upcoming war, I didn't need to care about the standard limits, I had to surpass them. I opened my central Star-Core, channeling a concentrated stream of my evolved [Voidflame] — now infused with golden primordial soulfire — directly into the inner conduits of my soul gate.

I wove the entropic heat, intentionally forcing my soul gate's structural boundary to expand beyond its Ninth Tier Peak capacity. An agonizing, soul-shattering pain tore through my spiritual frame. Micro-fractures instantly erupted across my soul gate's lead-alloy architecture, my Star-Core shuddering violently as dark blood leaked from my nose and ears in the physical world. The agony was brutal — a white-hot, tearing sensation that felt like my very identity was being shredded from the inside out.

Most cultivators would have already collapsed into unconsciousness had they not had a formidable skill like [Primordial Shell]. I didn't flinch. The microsecond the soul-cracks appeared, I activated [Syntropy]. I flatly denied the timeline of the soul damage. I wove a pulse of my reserves of uncompiled quintessence, rewriting the causality of the cracks before the spiritual damage could settle into my foundation. It took massive amounts of energy, but thankfully I had plenty. The micro-fractures vanished instantly.

My soul gate didn't snap back to its original size; instead, [Syntropy] locked the gate into its newly expanded, wider structural state, fully healed and structurally reinforced. I breathed out a raspy, steaming breath, a slow, fierce smile spreading across my face. It worked.

By using my evolved [Voidflame] to forcibly stretch my soul gate's elasticity, followed by an immediate pulse of [Syntropy] to reject the timeline of the damage, I could permanently expand my soul gate's structural capacity at a speed that violated every law of standard cultivation. I repeated the process. For three hours, I subjected myself to an iterative cycle of intense, white-hot spiritual agony and immediate timeline-rewriting. The results were staggering.

My inner world's basalt continent expanded, the lead-alloy pillars I had erected on my inner bedrock becoming more dense. My soul gate's throughput multiplied, allowing me to process and channel raw, uncompiled Mana with zero friction. My control over my Domain's gravity fields scaled drastically, giving me a level of architectural mastery over my physical coordinates that felt absolute.

It would need testing, but if I could maintain this method of cultivation without negative effects, my Inner World could potentially surpass Transcendents within a few years without any Tier advancements. I sat on my cultivation mat, wiping blood from my chin, my star-cores spinning in a deep, hyper-evolved rotation.

"So this is what Thoth meant..." I whispered into the quiet sanctum. Thoth had warned me that acquiring power at this speed carried a high percent chance of crippling my soul gate, and that I would have to bear an astronomical amount of suffering. He had been right, but I wonder if this was the extent of the pain since it did not seem so horrible... Without [Syntropy], this cultivation method would have incinerated my core on the first attempt.

But with my rejection Concepts, the pain was merely a temporary price for absolute, exponential growth. Over the next two days, I integrated this "Stretch-and-Deny" soul expansion method into my daily training routine, discussing its mechanics with Jeeves and Kasian as we refined my foundation. On the third afternoon, while I was standing in the Hall of the Chronicle reviewing planetary shield diagnostics, a sudden, sharp anomaly flared in my soul gate.

My [Echo of the Ashen] proxy on Necropolis-Beta had triggered an emergency signal. I froze, my eyes flashing as I immediately shifted a thread of my consciousness across four star sectors, taking direct control of the proxy's optical cores. The microsecond my consciousness linked to the proxy inside the Meditation Spire, my vision was engulfed in a blinding, catastrophic flash of white light.

A light-speed, orbital-tier beam of pure, sanctioned starlight slammed directly through the roof of the Meditation Spire, obliterating the top five floors of the central cathedral in a fraction of a millisecond. My proxy didn't even have time to dodge. The sheer, nuclear-dense kinetic shockwave tore through the spire's lead-alloy slate, disintegrating the stone and vaporizing the surrounding cultist guards in an instant.

Before my proxy's basalt-steel shell was completely pulverized by the strike, its optical sensors caught a single, vital data-packet of the incoming attack. The strike hadn't carried the dark, necrotic mana of the local cultists, or any other affinity I have seen on Necropolis-Beta for that matter. It carried a high-frequency, divine starlight signature wreathed in ancient, sanctioned Laws — the exact, unyielding energy signature of a High Court Diviner.

The orbital beam completely incinerated my proxy's physical shell, severing the telepathic connection and snapping my consciousness back to my physical body sitting in Bastion. I opened my physical eyes in the Hall of the Chronicle, taking a long, quiet breath as my star-cores slowly settled. Jeeves looked at me with immediate concern.

"Master? What happened to the proxy?"

"The clone was destroyed," I replied calmly, adjusting the collar of my dark cloak.

"By the local Grand Necromancers?" Kasian asked, his spectral form leaning forward.

"Did they discover your cover?"

"No," I said, a slow, sharp, dangerous grin spreading across my face.

"It wasn't the Necromancers. The attack came from very far. It was a high-tier strike launched by what I assume was the High Courts. They tried to hide their attack under extensive veiling but I could sense their Divine essence within the Void immediately." Kasian and Jeeves froze, exchanging bewildered looks.

"The High Courts?" Kasian repeated, shocked.

"Why would the High Courts launch an orbital strike against a subterranean meditation spire on Necropolis-Beta?" My mind connected the dots instantly. The High Courts' orbital diviners had been tracking the "Auditor" — the high-level emissary sent by the off-world Necromancy Faction. The moment my proxy stepped into the Meditation Spire, the Courts' scrying arrays locked onto the position and launched a preemptive strike to destroy the Auditor and stop the Necromancers from completing the Prophet's Host Catalyst.

They were actively engaged in a dark, high-tier shadow war across the outer sectors. The Courts were desperately trying to suppress the Necromancers' resurrection project before the quarantine veil dropped while making it look like it was purely internal. A cold, brilliant strategic plan formed in my mind.

If the High Courts believed my proxy was the official Necromancer Auditor, then my proxy's death inside the Pale Threshold's cathedral would be interpreted by the Necromancy Faction as a direct declaration of war by the High Courts, as long as they knew it was them. And if I played my cards right... I could manipulate both factions into escalating their shadow war into a full-scale, catastrophic conflict.

If the High Courts and the Necromancers were busy tearing each other apart across four sectors, the pressure on Sector Z-99 would drop drastically, buying Ferra all the time we needed to prepare for the War. I stood up from the slate desk, my dark cloak snapping in the wind, my star-cores spinning with an absolute, golden-veined [Voidflame] radiance. I looked at Jeeves and Kasian, my optical arrays flashing with a starless black and arterial crimson fire.

"Jeeves, prepare the Spire network again and let me know when it is ready," I commanded, a dangerous, confident smile touching my lips.

"The proxy gave us the data we needed. Now... it's time for me to pay Necropolis-Beta a real visit."