The three men stood suspended within the domain where time itself had nearly ground to a halt.
Krishna (thinking): It appears he has shared his temporal perception with us. Our relative velocities are now identical. Our relative perception has been reduced to zero.
[Kae]: Now that the curtain of the past has been drawn back, I believe an exchange of truths is in order.
[Pratik]: Stop right there!
Pratik screamed, cutting Kae off mid-sentence.
[Pratik]: Master, do not listen to him! He... he is going to wage the Pikra War against us soon . He—
Pratik froze.
A terrifying realization hit him.
If he revealed that Krishna was destined to fall in the Pikra War, Kae would instantly know his grand strategy was on course to succeed.
Would speaking the truth fracture the timeline and create an irreparable ripple?
Yet, that was precisely what Kae craved above all else.
Kae desired deeper intelligence regarding the Pikra War; while he knew the ultimate outcome, he still lacked precise details on the path to his victory.
If Pratik leaked the desired knowledge now, Kae could easily extrapolate the rest of the puzzle.
Realizing the danger, Pratik clamped his mouth shut, saying nothing more.
[Krishna]: "Rest your mind . I am aware."
On his part, Krishna had long since grasped the shape of the future—not through luck, but through cold, calculated deduction and a trick of his own.
Four years prior, upon the desolate planet Devoid, Kae and Krishna had crossed paths with a young man named Yash, who had accidentally slipped backward through the streams of time (as recorded in Chapter 12).
There, the future had been laid bare before them.
Though Yash had subsequently engaged Krishna and wiped his memories—doing the exact same to Kae—the truth had not been lost.
The entity Krishna had met on Devoid was merely one of Kae's clones.
Kae had discreetly routed the incoming data packets straight into his primary, original body, preserving every fragment of knowledge.
Krishna, however, possessed no such clone buffer. His mind had been wiped clean.
How, then, had he reclaimed the lost memories?
The answer lay in a technique universally dismissed as useless: Writing Magic.
Because writing magic required complex, uninterrupted spatial manipulation and absolute user concentration, most sorcerers deemed it entirely impractical for combat or real-time intelligence gathering.
But Krishna had seen a different application.
While his physical body stood in a high-stakes meeting on Devoid, his real consciousness was linked to a dormant clone back on Earth—a clone sitting in a meeting , possessing barely any power save for a faint connection to spatial coordinates.
As future Yash spoke of the coming epochs, Krishna's remote consciousness subtly manipulated the air, guiding a simple ink pen left resting on his office desk.
While the meeting unfolded light-years away, the pen moved across a sheet of paper, transcribing every syllable, every warning, and every detail of the future.
The moment Yash finished his discourse, Krishna severed the spell.
Upon returning to Earth, Krishna found his mind completely blank regarding planet Devoid.
But upon stepping into his office and reading the handwritten chit, the truth rushed back.
He had successfully outmaneuvered a temporal memory wipe, hiding his foresight from the rest of the world to preserve the delicate balance of the main timeline.
A masterclass in long-term deception.
Yet, how had Kae deduced that Krishna still held those memories?
It was elementary.
If future-Yash had deliberately traveled back to leak the future, why go to the absurd length of erasing their memories afterward?
It defied simple logic.
Unless... it was a deliberate performance.
Yash knew that someone as calculating as Krishna would inevitably discover a loophole against a standard memory erase.
Therefore, the wipe was nothing more than theatrical compliance—a way to satisfy the laws of temporal mechanics before returning to his native era.
Kae had perceived the chess move instantly, engineering the present confrontation to draw Krishna out.
Their eternal rivalry had always been a grand game of chess.
The fundamental difference?
Kae kept his Queen safely tucked behind a wall of moving pawns, while Krishna intercepted every threat directly with his Queen, refusing to sacrifice a single piece.
[Krishna]: ***********
Those few murmured words struck Pratik like a physical blow.
His breath caught in his throat.
He stood paralyzed, utterly mortified.
Across from him, Kae's expression flickered.
For the first time in two thousand years, the permanent, unreadable smile on the Asura Ruler's face wavered.
With a sudden mental snap, Kae shattered the temporal domain.
BOOM!
The transformed Leader-Ranked Sorcerers unleashed their might, tearing the courtroom apart from the inside out.
Pratik's defensive barriers shattered like glass.
Several shockwaves clipped his physical form, tearing flesh that regenerated instantly via his plasma traits.
Kel and Lila were hurled backward like ragdolls, while Grimori, Mala, and eventually Pratik, Kel, and Lila lost consciousness entirely.
Tego, Sunita, Gaku, and Lai materialized instantly, teleporting the unconscious bodies out of the burning palace.
Meanwhile, Kara found himself swarmed and locked in a brutal deadlock by multiple transformed Leaders.
Kae's summoned monsters were vaporized in a single heartbeat.
Believing the ruler was now vulnerable, the remaining Leaders lunged forward as one, closing in on Kae.
He merely smiled.
[Kae]: Range Shiftling: Devil's Paradise.
A suffocating, bottomless pitch-black darkness swallowed the entirety of the Burning Palace.
The lunging Leaders froze mid-air, entirely paralyzed.
The sheer horror of the pressure settled over them.
Only the raw, absolute authority of an Asura Community Ruler could manifest something so utterly godlike.
In that singular moment, the truth dawned upon them.
[Kae]: Allow me to introduce myself properly. I am Kae, Ruler of the Monster Realm and Master of the Asura Community.
The absolute darkness curdled, transforming into a searing, spectral hellfire.
It wasn't attacking their flesh.
It was targeting their very souls—inflicting an excruciating agony as if invisible hands were attempting to rip their spirits apart from their physical shells.
Krishna, Arun, Kajal, and Treta remained completely frozen within the field.
Yet, unlike the others, they did not show a single trace of panic.
[Arun]: This Range Shiftling... it bears the exact signature of Angel's Paradise, the forbidden technique of Master Gomo Taka .
Arun noted, his voice unnervingly calm.
[Kajal]: You mean...?
[Treta]: Indeed. Treta replied, his tone darkening.
He is none other than Sir Gomo's most brilliant student—the one who cast off the Sorcery World two thousand years ago.
Within this domain, execution was absolute.
Or so everyone believed.
Kae (analyzing quietly): If my calculations hold, Krishna's ultimate technique—Zeroth Dimension—possesses the capacity to nullify any supernatural phenomenon.
Should he choose to deploy it, Kae's RANGE SHIFTLING will collapse instantly.
Yet, if he does so, it will simultaneously strip the transformations from every single Society Leader present.
At that exact microsecond,Kae will be free to slaughter them without resistance.
It hands Kae an unanswerable advantage heading into the Pikra War.
Why would Kae not lose his own sorcery? Because Zeroth Dimension cannot strip away raw physical dominance. Even stripped of magic, Kae's physical output will allow him to pulverize every Leader on this field in less than a zeptosecond.
In truth, even a zeptosecond is an overstatement.
Conversely, if Krishna chooses to withhold Zeroth Dimension, Devil's Paradise will consume every Leader regardless.
The checkmate is absolute. No matter the variable, the board belongs to Kae.
There is a microscopic, 0.8% probability that Krishna, given his nature, might actually utilize Zeroth Dimension to save his allies.
He is no sentimental fool. He views reality through cold, utilitarian metrics. He possesses barely a trace of emotional resonance.
There is no logical reason for him to risk—
[Krishna]: Range Shiftling...
Kae's eyes dilated for a fraction of a second.
[Krishna]: Zeroth Dimension Mark II.
Mark II?
To be continued...
---