The blood sphere of The Executioner's Block erupted from Ren Hanshin's body, expanding outward at the speed of sound, but it did not shatter the tall bookshelves of The Infinite Library. As Jubei had warned, the Universal Livestream System could not process two conflicting laws occupying the same space. The cosmic software violently glitched.
[SYSTEM ERROR!]
[Domain Overlap Detected. Physics Engine Override.]
[Creating 'Paradox Zone'.]
[Collab Stream initiated. Both Conceptual Laws are now active.]
The endless void of the Library was suddenly bathed in a suffocating crimson light. The gravity within the dimension multiplied by thirty. The millions of glowing, hovering grimoires that filled the air were yanked downward. They crashed into the invisible floor, the deafening sound of millions of tomes slamming against the ground echoing through the Paradox Zone. The books burst open, their pages fluttering in the gravity dense air.
Aurelius, who had been floating fifty feet above, was dragged out of the sky like a shot bird. He slammed onto the ground, his white robes tearing as his knees buckled. Blood began pouring from his nose and ears as his mortal internal organs struggled to function under the crushing weight of a Demigod's gravity. But Aurelius was smiling. His teeth were stained red, but his eyes glowed with arrogant certainty.
"You fool!" Aurelius gasped, leaning on his diamond staff just to keep his spine from snapping. "Gravity changes nothing! My Domain is active! The thousand spells are already locked onto your spatial coordinates! I know how you will try to block them!"
The one thousand Void Implosion spells, unaffected by gravity because they were constructs of the Library, suddenly constricted. They detonated all at once.
It was a supernova of pure, destructive blue magic. The space where Ren stood was erased, folding inward on itself with enough force to crush a mountain range into a marble.
[The God of Fate screams! Her hands slam against the glass of her cosmic screen!]
[God of Fate]: REN!!!
The smoke and magical fallout slowly began to clear in the thirty-fold gravity.
Aurelius let out a wet, rattling laugh. "Absolute Omniscience... You cannot fight a man who knows you are already dead..."
"Your books are out of date, Aurelius."
Aurelius's laughter died in his throat, his glowing blue eyes widened in pure horror. Standing ten feet outside the blast radius, untouched by the implosion, there was Ren Hanshin. The Embrace of the Weaver was slightly singed at the edges, and a thin line of blood trickled down Ren's cheek from the sheer shockwave, but he was alive. His crimson eyes burned in the red tinted library.
"How?!" Aurelius shrieked, frantically waving his hand. The flying books on the ground flipped open, their pages glowing as the Grand Magus tried to read the data. "My Library calculated your speed! It calculated your Divine Agility! It was impossible for you to escape that radius in time!"
Ren slowly wiped the blood from his cheek.
"You calculated my speed," Ren said coldly. "But you didn't calculate my concept."
When the thousand spells had detonated, Ren hadn't tried to run. He knew his Agility wasn't fast enough to escape a trap with that intensity. Instead, he had condensed his Executioner's Block tightly around his body and used the Severance of Destiny to cut the space beneath his own feet, allowing him to drop through the spatial coordinates and reappear outside the blast radius.
He had severed distance.
Aurelius gritted his teeth, panic setting in. "It doesn't matter! I will just cast it again! I will cast ten thousand! The Library knows your mana reserves! It knows your muscle tension! You cannot swing that scythe without me knowing where it will strike!"
Aurelius spun his diamond staff. Dozens of massive, shimmering arcane circles manifested in the air around him, generating homing spears of ice.
"You will step to the left to dodge," Aurelius declared, his eyes shining bright as he read Ren's future intent from the Domain's limitless data, "and then you will attempt a slash!"
Ren stepped to the left. He lunged forward, bringing the scythe up for a vertical slash. Aurelius smiled triumphantly. A shield of condensed mana appeared in the path of Ren's scythe, absorbing the blow, while three ice spears shot toward Ren's exposed flank.
Ren was forced to awkwardly twist his body, using the handle of his weapon to shatter the spears, but the sheer force pushed him back.
[Warning: Host has taken minor frost damage.]
[God of Fate]: He is reading your mind! He is cheating!
[God of Fate]: Ren, please! He knows what you want to do before you do it! You cannot win a game where the opponent sees your cards!
Ren landed softly on his boots, his breathing remaining level. He looked at Aurelius. The Grand Magus was bleeding from the gravity, slowly dying from the pressure, but as long as the Library fed him Ren's intentions, Aurelius could counter any attack until Ren made a fatal mistake.
'Omniscence. The concept of knowing what the opponent intends to do.' Ren closed his eyes.
The chaotic noise of the magical array, the hum of the gravity, and the frantic, red text of his chat box slowly faded away. He remembered the muddy courtyard of the ruined Shinto shrine. He remembered the blind old man with the wooden sword.
"You telegraph every punch," Jubei had told him. "Your mind is loud. You stare at the shoulder before you strike. You shift your weight to match your desire to kill. You must learn the Flow. You must strike without intent."
If Aurelius's Domain survived by reading Ren's intent, then the solution was simple. Ren had to stop thinking. Ren exhaled slowly. He let the muscles in his arms go limp. He stopped holding the scythe with a death grip, letting it balance loosely in his fingers. He cleared his mind of anger, of strategy, and of the desire to win. He became an empty, hollow vessel, reliant on the muscle memory burned into his cells by Jubei.
He opened his eyes. The crimson irises were blank, devoid of any emotion or killing intent.
Aurelius scoffed, raising his staff. "Giving up? My Library says you are experiencing a spike in adrenaline. It says you are going to try a sweeping horizontal strike next. It's useless!"
Aurelius cast a massive, layered barrier designed to counter a horizontal scythe swing. Ren didn't move horizontally. His body simply reacted to the opening in Aurelius's posture. Ren glided forward like a leaf on the wind. His boots made zero sound.
"What?" Aurelius gasped. He frantically looked at the pages of the open books floating around him.
The pages were blank. There was no data. There was no intent. The Infinite Library was desperately trying to read the mind of a man who was generating zero conscious thought. The Domain was returning nothing.
"No! The spell matrices! Read him! READ HIM!" Aurelius screamed, his composure shattering as he fired random plasma blasts in every direction.
Ren walked through the barrage. He let the Flow guide his shoulders, twisting his torso by fractions of a millimeter, allowing the lethal plasma to graze past his coat without touching his skin.
He was a ghost. Aurelius backed away, limping under the thirty-fold gravity. "Stay back! You cannot evade the Arcane Truth! I am the Avatar of Magic!"
Ren appeared in front of him, looking past him. Aurelius raised his diamond staff to block, attempting a desperate, physical parry. Ren swung at the Domain. He channeled his Divine Mana into the blade, infusing it with the concept of Severance. He brought the scythe down not on Aurelius's staff, but on the glowing blue tether that connected Aurelius's soul to the Infinite Library itself.
SNAP!!
The thin crimson crescent cleanly severed the Avatar of Magic's connection to Omniscience. The millions of glowing books in the dimension turned to dust. The endless shelves vanished. The Paradox Zone collapsed, the red and black Void shattering to reveal the freezing, snow covered courtyard of the Savage Lands mountain.
Aurelius fell to his knees in the real world. His diamond staff cracked in half, the magical glow dying. He looked up at Ren, his blue eyes wide with the terror of a man who suddenly knew nothing. His Omniscience was gone. He was blind in the dark.
"You... you killed the Truth..." Aurelius whispered, blood pouring from his lips.
Ren stood over him, the blankness in his eyes fading as his conscious mind returned. He looked down at the broken, arrogant scholar.
"There is no Truth," Ren said softly. "There is only the Executioner."
Ren reversed his grip on the scythe and drove the blunt end of the handle through Aurelius's chest, shattering his Mana Core instantly.
[Target Eliminated: Legendary Avatar 'Aurelius'.]
[The God of Magic is screaming in disbelief! His grand design has fallen!]
Aurelius's body turned to grey ash, carried away by the howling, freezing wind of the mountain.
[Paradox Zone Victorious!]
[Concept Assassination Successful!]
[Executing Conceptual Theft...]
[You have permanently absorbed a fragment of the Avatar of Magic's cosmic law.]
[New Passive Skill Acquired: 'Arcane Nullification'. You can now read and passively dismantle any magic spell below SS-Rank just by looking at its formula.]
Ren exhaled, his breath pluming in the cold air. He dismissed the Executioner's Block, releasing the gravitational pressure that had cracked the ice courtyard. He had done it again. Without using the Goddess' Tapestry, without paying the price of his soul, he had dismantled one of the strongest avatars in the Pantheon through pure martial mastery and raw willpower.
The crimson screen forced its way past the system notifications. It was slow, glowing with a soft, profound awe.
[The God of Fate is touching her lips, staring at you.]
[God of Fate]: I thought I knew everything about you, my King. But you hid your mind from a Domain of Omniscience.
[God of Fate]: You moved like a phantom. You were so breathtakingly beautiful that I forgot to breathe.
[The God of Fate has donated 300,000,000 Karma Points!]
Ren lowered his scythe. He felt a bone-weary exhaustion settling into his muscles. The Divine Vitality healed his wounds, but the strain of executing the Flow inside a Paradox Zone was immense.
[God of Fate]: Rest now, Ren. You have slaughtered an army. You have killed War, Death, and Magic. You have earned a moment of peace.
Ren looked up at the golden sky. Three down. Three of the major sovereigns had lost their Champions. The Draft was practically over. Only minor avatars remained, scrambling in the dirt, terrified of the 'Blood-Soaked Tyrant'.
But Ren knew it wasn't over. Somewhere on this massive continent, the Avatar of Light was gathering his holy forces, and somewhere else... hiding in the shadows, waiting for the perfect moment to strike... was the Avatar of Mischief. Ren dismissed his scythe and pulled the Embrace of the Weaver tighter around his shoulders to block the biting wind.
"Three left," Ren whispered to the empty mountain, "and then I take the Crown."
He turned his back on the ashes of Magic and began his descent down the frozen peak, ready to hunt the remaining chosen.