Wrapped in a gentle layer of white-grey Source essence, the unconscious forms of King Elyras, Princess Mariska, Xeolze, the elite Elyrian guards, and the battered Crown Prince floated silently through the air. Adrian guided them, ascending from the ruins of the central plaza and gliding outward toward the Outer Commercial Continents.
Even though millions of cultivators had fainted and were in slumber, Adrian was not unseen.
High above, countless recording artifacts hovered steadily in the artificial atmosphere. Though their operators had fainted, the autonomous functions of the devices continued to track Adrian, their lenses pivoting to follow the white-grey robed figure as he calmly carried the winged beings through the sky.
And they were not the only ones watching.
Far away, two figures stood leaning against an archway. Chris and his companion, Daisy, were focusing on Adrian, not caring about their own state.
"Keep the artifact focused on him," Chris wheezed, his multiple hands trembling as he helped Daisy stabilize the projection.
Daisy wiped the blood from her chin, her eyes wide as she watched the magnified projection of Adrian flying away. "We need to transmit this entire sequence to Master Milan."
Adrian ignored them. To him, they were just reporters, and his current goal was to leave this place as quickly as possible.
He floated through the quiet Outer Commercial Continents until he arrived at a specific estate. He floated directly into the central hall, gently lowering the unconscious Elyrians to the floor.
Standing in the center of the quiet hall, Adrian closed his eyes and expanded his senses. Instantly, his mind brushed against a resonance. It was the anchor to the Elyrian Sanctuary's micro-dimension.
When Adrian had first arrived here, he couldn't detect this or even understand how the Elyrians opened a portal to a micro-dimension which had been severed from the universe. But now, as he knew the Prime Arcane Concept of Severance, he could easily detect this and understand the underlying logic of how the artifact the Elyrians had worked.
While the artifact severed the sanctuary from the universe, it was not an entire severance. The Prime Arcane Concept of Severance itself was a concept within the universe; therefore, it could never sever itself from the universe entirely. There had to be a tether. There were deeply hidden anchor points tying the micro-dimension to reality, existing in the microscopic folds of space that ordinary beings could not perceive.
These anchor points acted as keyholes. If someone needed to enter the sanctuary, they needed the correct key. For the Elyrians, their very bloodline served as that key, resonating with the artifact's intent to grant them passage.
But there was another way. Someone who had fully comprehended the Prime Arcane Concept of Severance could simply command the lock to turn.
Adrian extended his right hand. A silver-white light flowed from his fingertips. The pure essence of Severance pulsed in the air, as it interacted with the invisible anchor point hidden in the center of the room.
Riiip!
The fabric of reality yielded instantly. Space peeled back without a single trace of resistance, revealing a swirling vortex of luminous purple energy.
With a faint smile, Adrian wrapped the unconscious Elyrians in his Source essence once more and stepped through the portal.
The transition brought him immediately into the lush, life-rich environment of the Elyrian Sanctuary. The fresh scent of damp earth and blooming flora washed over him as he floated above the white-stone pathways.
He gently lowered King Elyras, Mariska, Xeolze, the elite guards, and the Crown Prince onto the soft green grass near the center of the sanctuary.
The moment the purple portal flashed open, the sanctuary was thrown into a state of alarm. High above, dozens of winged guards who had been patrolling the artificial sky immediately dove downward, their weapons drawn and their wings flared aggressively.
But as the guards landed and raised their spears, their eyes fell upon the figures resting on the grass.
"The King!" one of the guards shouted.
They rushed forward as he saw the motionless state of their King and the greatest warriors.
And then, the guards noticed a particular figure lying on the grass.
"The Crown Prince..." an older guard wept, falling to his knees as he stared at the royal heir they had believed was lost to the dark abyss forever. "He brought the Crown Prince home!"
A collective gasp rippled through the gathering crowd. Tears welled in the eyes of the veteran guards, their weapons clattering against the stone pathways.
The guards looked up at Adrian, unsure if their leaders were dead, dying, or permanently crippled.
"Do not panic," Adrian's voice rang out.
He stepped forward, his hands resting loosely behind his back. "They are not injured. They are merely unconscious because their minds were subjected to a severe willforce suppression in the hub outside. Their consciousness is currently in a state of self-preservation. They will wake up naturally once their willforce begins to recover."
Hearing that reassurance, the guards let out an exhale of relief.
"Is everyone here?" Adrian asked, addressing the kneeling guard captain. "Does this sanctuary hold the entirety of your civilization?"
The guard captain hastily wiped the tears from his eyes and shook his head, a deep sorrow returning to his features. "No, Senior. While the majority of our people are safe here... there are still hundreds of our kin trapped in the Outer Continents of the Providence Hub. They are locked inside the subterranean refinement factories, chained to the blood-extraction arrays."
Adrian's expression hardened slightly. He had come here to end the atrocity, and leaving even a single Elyrian chained in those factories offended his bottom line.
"Watch over your King," Adrian instructed.
Without waiting for a response, space folded around Adrian, and he vanished from the sanctuary, stepping back through the anchor point and into the Hub.
Emerging in the Outer Commercial Continent, Adrian ascended high into the artificial sky. He closed his eyes and unleashed his Source Domain.
Because the entire population of the Hub was currently unconscious from Androxus's golden light, the ambient interference was non-existent. Adrian actively filtered through the millions of beings, searching for the specific, luminous vitality signature of the Elyrian bloodline.
He slowly found them. Scattered across five massive subterranean refinement factories in the Outer Private Continents, hundreds of Elyrians lay slumped in their chains, their minds knocked out by the residual wave of the will.
"Found you," Adrian whispered.
He channeled his Source essence, directing it through the fabric of space. The white-grey light materialized deep within the subterranean blocks, gently wrapping around the unconscious bodies of the enslaved Elyrians.
In the sky above the Hub, Adrian raised his hand.
Hundreds of flashes of spatial distortion erupted simultaneously. The unconscious Elyrians were teleported out of their dark prisons and directly into the sky around him, safely enveloped in floating spheres of Source essence.
Adrian expanded his perception one final time, doing a meticulous sweep of the entire hub. Only when he was certain that not a single Elyrian remained outside their home did he turn around.
With a flick of his wrist, he shifted the hundreds of floating captives through the spatial rift, transferring them safely into the lush grass of the micro-dimension.
Adrian stepped back into the sanctuary, the purple portal sealing shut behind him.
The Elyrian civilians and healers were already rushing forward to tend to the newly arrived captives, weeping tears of joy as families were reunited. Adrian did not stay to watch the emotional reunions.
He shot straight upward like a beam of light. He flew high into the artificial sky of the micro-dimension, stopping only when he reached the zenith of the sanctuary, right beneath the invisible canopy of the Severance artifact.
Adrian looked down at the sprawling, beautiful cage the Elyrians had built for themselves.
He took a deep breath, accessing his current reserves. His mana was in good state, since the only major drain was from the Erase command. His willforce, even though it was not full, had recovered some after devouring Tenyz.
Adrian's Source domain expanded across the entire micro-dimension.
"Teleport this micro-dimension, and every being within it, to the Azure Garden in the Virelith Galaxy." Adrian issued a direct command. "Destroy all traces of my presence here, and erase every spatial and conceptual tether linking the Elyrians and this sanctuary to the Providence Hub."
The universe answered his command, and the toll was catastrophic.
Adrian felt an instantaneous drain as nearly three hundred million mana units were violently ripped from his Mana Sea. The scale of the expenditure caused a sharp ache to spike behind his eyes, but his mind held the command steady.
Immediately, the entire micro-dimension shuddered. The artificial sky turned a blinding white as the rules of Space, Severance, and Continuity were rewritten in a fraction of a microsecond.
With a soundless flash, the Elyrian Sanctuary vanished from the coordinates of the Providence Hub, leaving behind nothing but an unreadable blank space in the fabric of reality.
…
Outside, in the Outer Commercial Continent of the Providence Hub, the rented mansion that had served as the physical anchor for the sanctuary suddenly imploded. The structure collapsed into fine ash, blowing away in the artificial wind until not a single brick or rune remained. Every trace of the Elyrians was wiped from the Hub's history.
For a few minutes, the Providence Hub remained locked in an eerie silence.
But the silence did not last.
Beyond the Hub's atmospheric barriers, the void of space was already beginning to ripple. New starships were dropping out of their warp trajectories. They were a mix of pirate vessels and opportunistic scavengers. Since the live were still active, they knew every single event that transpired within the hub, and this was the perfect opportunity for them.
The newly arrived starships descended cautiously, their scanning arrays sweeping over the sprawling hub.
When they found out the presence of the white-grey robbed figure was gone, their greed overtook them.
"That person is gone, and the sect is dead!" a pirate captain roared through his ship's communication channels, staring at the unguarded vaults of the Outer Private Continents, which held millions of years' worth of accumulated wealth. "The Hub is defenseless. Take everything!"
Thousands of scavengers and rogue cultivators poured out of their ships, swarming the unconscious merchants and unprotected storefronts. The looting began immediately. Energy blasts shattered the doors of high-end alchemy shops like the Verdant Crucible. Pirates turned on one another, fighting bloody skirmishes in the streets to claim the abandoned treasures of the Ethereal Providence Sect.
Fires began to break out across the Outer Continents, smoke rising to choke the artificial sky. The grand intergalactic hub, which had once dictated the fate of the surrounding galaxies and harvested the blood of the innocent, descended into absolute, violent anarchy.
Adrian had merely killed their leader and erased their army. He didn't need to lift a single finger to destroy what remained.
The universe's own greed had already begun to ravage the Providence Hub, tearing the empire of the Yiphraens down to ash.