The Savage Lands blurred beneath Ren Hanshin into a smear of green and brown. He was flying through the sheer force of his Divine Agility. Every time his boots touched the canopy of the massive prehistoric trees, the wood shattered, and he launched himself another mile through the golden sky, moving like a thrown stone across the surface of the continent.
As the humid wind tore at his face, Ren's mind kept drifting back to the scorched obsidian arena, and the horrific realization of what he had done.
'Thirty-seven percent.' The number burned in his mind like a physical brand.
He hadn't just cast a spell to wipe out Gideon's army of two thousand. He had opened a back door in his own soul. The Weaver's Loom was the name the system provided to his mortal comprehension, but as the chaotic, divine memories bled into his mind, Ren understood its true nature.
It was the Sovereign Domain of the God of Fate. Among the celestial entities of the highest realms, it possessed a legendary name: The Tapestry of Genesis.
It was the primordial dimension where the threads of every living being in the universe were swirl, measured, and cut. By concentrating it, Ren was wielding the probability of the cosmos, but that legendary power was not free. It demanded a currency far more than Mana Points. It required synchronization. Every time Ren summoned The Weaver's Loom, every time he allowed her Sovereign Domain to bleed into the mortal realm through his body, he had to pay the toll with his own identity. The cost of that apocalyptic red ocean was his autonomy. If he opened that door again to save himself, the God of Fate's obsession would rush in, overwriting his thoughts, his memories, and his will, until "Ren Hanshin" ceased to exist, replaced by a fleshy puppet controlled by a Yandere Goddess.
"Never again," Ren whispered into the roaring wind, his crimson eyes narrowing. "I fight with my own hands. My soul stays mine."
The temperature in the air plummeted. The humid heat of the Savage Lands gave way to a biting cold. Ahead of him, dominating the northern horizon, there was a mountain range encased in a shimmering, ethereal blue blizzard. The snow swirled in patterns, forming large arcane runes in the sky.
CRUNCHHH!!
Ren landed on the edge of a frozen cliff, his boots crunching loudly into the ice.
He exhaled, his breath forming a white cloud. The Embrace of the Weaver coat shifted its properties, wrapping him in an intense, intimate warmth.
The crimson chat box popped up, its edges frosted over by the magical chill, but the text inside was burning with familiar heat.
[The God of Fate is wrapping her arms tightly around your neck to keep you warm.]
[God of Fate]: The air here is foul. It reeks of cheap tricks and arrogance.
[God of Fate]: Do not exert yourself, my king. You do not need to play his little puzzle games. Just open your soul to me. Let me summon the Tapestry. I will turn this mountain range into red dust in a second.
Ren stared at the red text. She was tempting him. She wanted him to use her power so she could sink her claws into his mind.
"I told you," Ren said aloud, his voice calm and unyielding. "I'm keeping the door closed. I don't need the Tapestry to kill a man."
[The God of Fate pouts. Her fingernails dig into your shoulders.]
[God of Fate]: Stubborn boy. But that is why I love you. Fine. Break his toys with your own hands. But if you bleed, I am taking the reins.
Ren swiped the chat box to the side of his vision. He pushed his Divine Perception forward, skimming the blizzard. The mountain was a massive array of S-Rank traps. Space was folded over itself. Gravity fluctuated wildly every ten feet. Hidden mines of mana lay buried beneath the snow, waiting for a single misstep.
"Aurelius." Ren spoke the name of the Avatar of Magic softly. The Chosen of the God of Magic hadn't bothered to hide his identity. He had broadcasted his location by turning a mountain into a monument to his intellect.
"I know you can hear me," Ren projected his voice, infusing it with his Divine Mana so it echoed through the howling blizzard.
The swirling snowflakes paused.
The blizzard parted slightly, and fifty yards away, a massive holographic projection appeared. It was a man wearing shiny white and gold robes, holding a staff forged from a continuous diamond. He looked down at Ren with eyes that calculated thousands of variables per second.
[Name: Aurelius]
[Class: Grand Magus of the Arcane Truth (Legendary)]
[Level: 88]
[Sponsor: The God of Magic]
"The Anomaly," Aurelius's voice resonated from the ice, smooth, and dripping with condescension. "I must admit, your performance against Gideon was entertaining. A brute beating a slightly larger brute, but you made a critical miscalculation coming here, Ren Hanshin."
Aurelius tapped his diamond staff against the floor. "Silas relied on stealth, which you severed. Gideon relied on force, which you redirected. But Magic is not a sword, nor is it a shadow. Magic is the code of reality, and here, in my sanctum, I have rewritten the code."
Aurelius sneered, adjusting his pristine white gloves. "You cannot use your gravity domain to crush what you cannot reach. I have folded the space between you and the peak of this mountain eight thousand times. Every step you take will trigger an arcane reaction that will freeze your cells to zero. You are a rat in a maze, and I am the architect."
Ren didn't blink. He reached out his right hand, and the crystallized blood scythe shattered the cold air as it formed in his grip.
"Kaelen talked just like you," Ren said calmly. "Right before I cut him in half."
Aurelius' face changed in genuine fury at the mention of the avatar that Ren had killed in the Blood Moon Labyrinth.
"Kaelen was a flawed man!" Aurelius roared, the blizzard rising up. "I am the zenith of arcane truth! Die in the cold, Anomaly!"
BOOM!! BOOM!!
The hologram vanished. Instantly, the mountain reacted. The snow beneath Ren's feet erupted into jagged pillars of ice, shooting upward at the speed of sound, aiming to impale him. Ren didn't try to fly. If space was folded eight thousand times, launching himself into the air would only trap him in a spatial loop.
He bent his knees and activated Jubei's Flow. He slipped through the gaps between them. His Divine Agility allowed him to perceive the trajectory of the magic before the ice even formed. He moved like a dark phantom, weaving through a forest of spears.
BOOM!
A massive magical circle, fifty feet wide, lit up beneath him.
[System Warning: S-Rank Spell 'Void Implosion' triggered!]
The air pressure inverted, attempting to crush Ren's body into a single point. Ren gripped the scythe and concentrated a fraction of his Divine Mana into the blade. He didn't expand his Domain outward. Expanding The Executioner's Block into a sphere would consume too much energy in a space where the laws of physics were already hostile.
Instead, he did something only a Demigod with martial control could achieve. He compressed his domain. Ren forced the crushing gravity and the concept of 'Severance' to wrap tightly around the edge of his scythe, creating a micro domain that coated the crimson blade like a dark halo. He swung the scythe into the center of the shining magical circle beneath him.
CRACK!!
The 'Void Implosion' spell was cleanly cut in half. The magical circle shattered into harmless blue sparks, the inverted air pressure equalizing, causing a gust of wind that blew the blizzard back.
"One," Ren counted. He dashed forward, moving up the steep, frozen ridge of the mountain. The higher he went, the more frantic Aurelius' traps became. The Avatar of Magic unleashed everything in his arsenal. The missiles which are made of plasma, invisible tripwires that triggered time stops, and spatial rifts designed to tear Ren's limbs into different dimensions. It was a beautiful display of magical supremacy. For any other Avatar, even Gideon, this mountain would have been an impenetrable tomb.
But Ren Hanshin was the Executioner. He didn't try to out-think the spells. He simply cut it. Every time a spatial rift opened, Ren swung his micro domain coated scythe, severing the tear in reality and forcing it to sew itself shut. Every time a plasma missile locked onto him, he stepped into its blind spot using the Flow and cleanly sliced its mana core in two before it could detonate.
He was a blur of black and crimson, scaling the impossible mountain, leaving a trail of shattered, complex magical formulas in his wake.
[The God of Fate is watching you with wide, obsessive eyes.]
[God of Fate]: Your footwork... it is a dance of death. You are cutting through his mind, Ren. You are humiliating him without even using my Tapestry.
[God of Fate]: I want to kiss the sweat off your brow.
Ren ignored the chat box, his breathing remaining steady. He reached the halfway point of the mountain. The snow here had been cleared away, revealing a courtyard made of polished, enchanted blue ice.
Standing at the far end of the courtyard, surrounded by four massive, levitating prisms, was Aurelius. The physical body of the Grand Magus. Aurelius was no longer smirking. His flawless white robes were ruffled, and he was sweating profusely, his hands gripping his diamond staff so hard his knuckles were white. He had just watched Ren effortlessly destroying spells that took him a decade to learn.
"You... you aren't trying to escape," Aurelius stammered, stepping back slightly as Ren stepped onto the ice. "You are just breaking the spells! That is barbarism! It defies all laws of arcane logic!"
"Logic," Ren said, resting the handle of the scythe against his shoulder. "You spent your whole life reading books, Aurelius. You forgot how to bleed."
Aurelius's face twisted into an ugly snarl of panic and rage.
"I am the Avatar of Magic!" Aurelius screamed, slamming the base of his diamond staff into the ice. "I dictate the laws of this world!"
[System Warning: Legendary Avatar 'Aurelius' is forcing a Domain Manifestation!]
[Hostile Domain Detected: 'The Infinite Library'.]
[Conceptual Law Enforced: Pure Omniscience and Spell Replication.]
The icy courtyard vanished. Ren found himself standing in an endless dimension of towering bookshelves that stretched into the dark void above. Millions of shimmering, hovering grimoires rotated through the air like a flock of birds. Aurelius levitated fifty feet in the air, his eyes glowing with blue light.
Inside The Infinite Library, Aurelius' law allowed him to read and replicate any spell, any movement, and any physical action his opponent made. He knew Ren's heart rate. He knew the angle Ren was going to swing his scythe before Ren even twitched a muscle.
"I see everything!" Aurelius's voice boomed from every direction at once. "I see the energy gathering in your legs! I see the trajectory of your blade! You cannot hit when I already know that you are coming!"
Aurelius pointed his staff at Ren. Instantly, one thousand Void Implosion spells manifested in a sphere around Ren, leaving zero blind spots for escape.
"Checkmate, Anomaly," Aurelius sneered.
The crimson screen flashed, the text turning into a frantic red.
[WARNING: CRITICAL THREAT DETECTED!]
[God of Fate]: REN! OPEN THE DOOR! LET ME OUT! IF ALL ONE THOUSAND SPELLS DETONATE, YOUR DIVINE VITALITY WILL NOT HOLD!
[God of Fate]: I AM TAKING CONTROL!
Ren felt a terrifying, burning heat erupt in his chest. The brand of the Weaver began to spread up his neck. The dual-resonance in his mind turned into a scream as the Goddess attempted to hijack his soul to summon the Tapestry of Genesis.
"I SAID NO!" Ren roared, with an agonizing display of willpower, Ren slammed his walls shut, pushing the Goddess' invading consciousness back. The brand on his neck sizzled and receded slightly. He was going to break the Grand Magus himself.
Ren lowered his scythe, looking up at the thousand glowing death traps surrounding him, and then at the floating, arrogant Avatar of Magic.
Aurelius claimed his Domain gave him Omniscience. He claimed he could see everything Ren was going to do.
"You see everything?" Ren whispered, a chilling smile spreading across his face. "Then look closely."
Ren closed his eyes, and poured his Divine Mana Core into his own soul.
"Domain Activation," Ren commanded softly. "The Executioner's Block." The blood sphere erupted.