In the heart of that primitive cave isolated from the flow of time, Akira stood still. The sound of dripping water was the only rhythm breaking the absolute silence.
Before the stone pedestal, the aura of the Void surrounding Akira—which had swallowed an army and angels just hours ago—seemed strangely calm and docile before that temporal barrier protecting Rimuru's body.
Akira slowly reached out his hand. He didn't intend to break the barrier; he merely wanted to touch it, to feel the echo of the energy that had held this world together for five hundred years.
The moment his fingertips grazed the transparent surface of the barrier, time stopped completely.
There was no explosion, nor a blinding flash of light. Instead, Akira felt his consciousness pulled by an irresistible force, not to another place, but to another *time*. His "Azathoth" energy had connected with the "Akashic Records" embedded in this body, opening a window into the memories of the world itself before him.
***
**[The Akashic Vision - 500 Years Ago]**
Akira was no longer in the cave. He floated like an invisible ghost in the sky above the Jura Forest, but it wasn't the forest he knew. The sky was literally tearing apart like a piece of cheap cloth.
Through those cosmic rifts, ordinary angels did not descend; rather, massive "eyes" and entities transcending dimensions loomed down. Just a single glance from those entities was enough to make the laws of physics collapse. Gravity reversed, and the mana in the air began to burn. The true "Higher Administration" was intervening directly, with a power millions of times greater than the Tenma War.
And beneath that torn sky stood a single person.
A young man with bluish-silver hair, wearing a black coat, with True Dragon wings blending light and darkness unfurling behind him.
This was Rimuru Tempest at the peak of his divine glory.
From Akira's perspective, Rimuru's aura was so terrifying that the human mind couldn't comprehend it. If Akira currently possessed a "black hole," Rimuru in that moment possessed entire "universes" being born and dying within his eyes.
Akira watched Rimuru raise his head toward the cosmic rifts. He wasn't afraid; instead, his face bore a trace of sorrow and absolute rational coldness.
Akira heard an inner voice echoing in the vision, the voice of "Ciel", speaking directly to Rimuru's consciousness:
*"Master, our probability of victory against them is 100%. However, the mere collision of our energy with theirs in this dimension will result in the erasure of the Central World, completely annihilating Tempest into irrecoverable atoms."*
Rimuru smiled bitterly and looked back at the city he had built with love.
*"There is no meaning in victory if I lose those I want to protect, Ciel,"* Rimuru answered internally. *"If this world is too fragile to withstand our battle, then we will take the battle to where there is nothing."*
At that moment, Akira saw something that made him hold his ghostly breath.
Rimuru separated his divine "soul"—containing Ciel, his Ultimate Skills, and his true core—from his physical vessel. The physical body reverted to its original form as a small blue slime, falling quietly into a spatial rift Rimuru had previously opened (the Imaginary Space hideout).
As for Rimuru's divine soul, it transformed into a cosmic tornado of energy. He didn't attack the higher entities; instead, he *wrapped around them*. Rimuru swallowed the cosmic rifts, the entities, and the torn sky, dragging them all with him into the "Absolute Nothingness" beyond the boundaries of existence. Once outside, he locked the door behind him, bearing the burden of fighting the Administration in an infinite dimension all alone, leaving his body as an anchor to ensure the stability of the Central World and prevent its collapse in his absence.
***
**[Return to the Present - 99th Floor]**
The connection was severed.
Akira took a step back and fell to his knees on the damp cave floor, panting heavily. Cold sweat dripped from his forehead, and his left eye flickered erratically.
He wasn't panting from physical exhaustion, but from the weight of the truth.
Five hundred years... the entire world believed Rimuru had been defeated or disappeared, while in reality, Rimuru had been protecting their sky every single day, every single second, fighting a silent cosmic war in nothingness so that Tempest could continue to live.
Akira looked at the small, transparent slime body floating inside the temporal barrier. He no longer saw it as just a monster, but as the greatest sacrifice known to history.
"You left your vessel here to ensure the world you love wouldn't collapse..." Akira whispered, his voice trembling with a mix of awe and profound respect. "And I... I thought I had become the strongest. How naive I was."
Akira placed his hand over his chest, where the skill "Azathoth" resided. Now he understood why this skill had awakened within him. The Void hadn't chosen him to be a replacement god; it had chosen him to be the sword that severs the Administration's remaining arms in this world, to ease the burden on Rimuru in the great battle.
Akira stood up slowly, the look in his eyes changing. The quiet arrogance he had recently acquired vanished, replaced by a solid, fiery determination, as cold as space itself.
He walked with steady steps until he stood directly before the temporal barrier. He bowed slowly, placing his right knee on the ground and his hand over his heart, in a knight's bow to his true king.
"I swear to you, the true Lord of Tempest..." Akira said in a low voice, yet carrying the weight of a cosmic oath. "I will not allow any entity to defile the land you left your body to protect. I will uproot the Administration from this world, and I will guard the gate of your return... even if I have to swallow all the stars to pave your way home."
Akira rose and turned to leave the hidden cave, leaving the sleeping body in its absolute tranquility. The battle was no longer just about survival for Akira; it had become an "ideological war of reclamation." Tempest would no longer wait for death; it would bring it to the doorstep of the Higher Administration.