The first expert that came at him led with a technique.
A wide sweeping arc of condensed energy that carved through the air and scorched the stone floor beneath it — the kind of attack that was meant to create distance, to keep Socrates where cultivators preferred non-cultivators. Far away and manageable.
Socrates walked through it.
Not dodged. Not deflected. Walked directly into the sweep and let it break against his body as he closed the distance — and by the time the expert realized the attack hadn't stopped him, Socrates was already inside his guard with Bloodsucker driving upward through his chin.
He pulled it free before the body dropped.
Clean as always.
The next two came together — one high, one low, their movements coordinated with the practiced timing of men who had trained this combination until it was reflex. Energy crackled along both their blades as they closed in from opposite angles.
Socrates dropped low — the high blade passing over his head close enough to part his hair — and drove his shoulder upward into the chest of the one coming low, the impact lifting the man completely off the ground. He grabbed the man's sword arm mid-air and turned — using the body as a shield against the high attacker who couldn't stop his momentum in time.
The blade meant for Socrates found his own partner instead.
Socrates dropped the body and turned to the surviving one whose eyes had gone wide with the specific horror of what he had just done.
Bloodsucker settled that.
---
"Formation — close in—" one of the Foundation Establishment experts commanded, his voice cutting through the chaos as the remaining men began to reposition — pulling inward, tightening the circle, trying to take away the space Socrates was using against them.
They pulled out their swords simultaneously — the scrape of metal filling the air all at once like a single sound — and began channeling. Energy gathered around the formation in a visible shimmer, the combined output of multiple Foundation Establishment experts pressing against the space from every direction.
"CELESTIAL CRUSHING WAVE—"
The wave came from all sides at once — a coordinated release that compressed inward toward the center where Socrates stood, the force of it enough to reduce stone to powder.
Socrates drove Bloodsucker into the ground.
Both hands on the hilt — his muscles expanding against his tattered sleeves — and he pushed. Not outward. Down. Channeling the impact through the blade and into the earth beneath him as the ground cracked outward in a spiderweb from the point of contact, the stone floor fracturing under the redirected force.
The wave broke around him like water around a pillar.
He pulled Bloodsucker free and moved before the dust settled — crossing the distance to the nearest expert in two strides, the golden gauntlet closing around the man's face and driving the back of his skull into the stone wall behind him with a sound that ended the conversation immediately.
The wall cracked. The man did not get up.
---
They started throwing techniques from distance after that.
Smart. Cautious. The adjustments of men who had updated their assessment of what they were dealing with.
Arrows of condensed flame. Spears of compressed earth that erupted from the ground beneath his feet. A cage of lightning that tried to close around him from above — the electricity crackling and spitting in the cold night air, the smell of it sharp and metallic.
Socrates moved through all of it.
Not cleanly — not always. A flame arrow caught his left arm and burned through to something real. A spear of earth clipped his shoulder and spun him sideways. The lightning cage closed fast enough that he had to punch through the bottom of it rather than clear it entirely, his gauntlet taking the current and distributing it across the metal in a shower of gold sparks that lit up the space around him briefly.
He didn't stop.
Couldn't stop. Stopping was the same as dying and there were still too many of them.
He cut through the outer ring of the formation — Bloodsucker finding the gap between a raised guard and an overextended stance and taking it without hesitation. Then the next gap. Then the next. Each kill not elegant but certain — the kind of certainty that comes from a body that has been pushed past death so many times it has stopped negotiating with the possibility.
The numbers thinned.
Slowly. Expensively. Each one costing him something — a cut here, a blow absorbed there, the accumulating weight of a body doing what no body should reasonably be doing.
But the numbers thinned.
---
Shira watched from the edge of it.
He had positioned himself well — behind the formation, between his men and the altar, far enough from the center that he had watched everything unfold with the calculating distance of a man waiting to see which way the scales fell before committing his weight.
The scales were not falling the right way.
Elder Phenius was dead. His men were dying. The Son of Trueblood was moving through the formation like something that had been built specifically to dismantle it — and the golden armored creature standing beside Amelia in the corner hadn't moved yet, which somehow made everything worse.
Shira's hand went to his inner pocket.
He had carried this pill for years. Emergency use only — the kind of last resort a man keeps and hopes never to need because the cost of it is significant and permanent. A single use cultivation enhancer, refined specifically for crisis moments.
Master Realm. Temporary. But real.
He looked at Socrates cutting through the last of his men.
He swallowed the pill.
---
The change was immediate.
The energy came off Shira in a visible pulse — a shockwave that pushed outward from his body and cracked the stone beneath his feet, his aura expanding and deepening in the space of a single breath. The temperature around him dropped several degrees as his cultivation settled into its temporary new state and the full weight of Master Realm pressure began radiating outward.
Everything in the area felt it.
The remaining experts felt it and straightened — something to rally behind finally appearing in the chaos.
Sun Wukong felt it and turned from Amelia's corner, his golden eyes finding Shira with the measured attention of someone recalculating.
Socrates felt it — and stopped.
He stood in the wreckage of what had been a formation of nearly two dozen experts, breathing hard, blood running from more places than he had been keeping count of, and looked at Shira across the space between them.
Shira looked back.
The pressure coming off him was real. Not the permanent deep-rooted pressure of someone who had built their cultivation over years — but real enough. Real enough to matter.
"You've caused enough damage, Son of Trueblood." Shira's voice had changed with the cultivation — deeper, carrying more weight than it had before. He raised his hand and the energy gathered around it with a density that confirmed what the pressure had already announced.
Socrates rolled his neck once.
Took a step forward.
Sun Wukong moved at the same moment — stepping away from Amelia's corner, his golden armor catching the moonlight as he positioned himself between Shira and Socrates with the unhurried confidence of something that had been waiting for a reason to get involved.
"Master." Sun Wukong said without looking back. "This one is mine."
Shira looked at the Monkey King.
Then his eyes moved past him.
To Amelia.
Still in the corner. Still unconscious. Still unguarded now that Sun Wukong had stepped forward.
Something moved behind Shira's eyes — the calculation of a desperate man finding the only leverage left in a situation that had run out of every other option.
'One is a monster.. One is an unknown variable.. My chance of survival is she.. '