“The problem with fighting a god — or at least a weaker copy of one,” I grunted, parrying a sword strike that weighed as much as a small moon, “is that they cheat.”

  In the simulated environment of Floor 100, the Ascendant, who I learned was called Vasud of the Bandha, didn’t respond. It didn’t taunt. It merely shifted its grip. The six detached arms rearranged their configuration. The spear vanished; a massive warhammer took its place.

  Its constantly changing attack styles came with their own varied Concepts, this one seemingly a basic, heavy kinetic version.

  I used [Syntropy] to quickly seal a severed artery in my leg, the result of a misjudged dodge a few microseconds prior.

  “Bring it on, six arms,” I muttered, solidifying a Mana-Shield just as the hammer fell.

  The impact didn’t break the shield. It bypassed it, translating the kinetic force directly into the space behind the barrier. The resulting shockwave pulverized my torso.

  This went on for hours each Glimpse, his Concepts were constantly bypassing my Authority, even within my Domain, and his mana core felt endless. It was great practice, but I couldn’t shake off the feeling that I was being toyed with.

  My Glimpse eventually ended and my consciousness unspooled into the grey static.

  I woke up on the teleportation pad of the Bastion Spire, sweating and grinning.

  “Glimpse run 8,” I documented via my neural link to Jeeves. “The Ascendant construct possesses an Authority override for defensive constructs when using the Warhammer configuration. Noted. I’ll need to whip up spatial anchors within the Void next time.”

  It had been a month since I first peeked into Floor 100.

  The Ascendant wasn’t just a Tower boss; it was the most ruthless, unyielding instructor I’d ever encountered. Every time my [Glimpse of a Path] came off cooldown, I threw myself at the Ascendant construct. And every time, right as I thought I had deciphered its attack patterns, it unveiled a new application of Tier 9 Authority.

  It wasn’t really close and I was always losing, but the learning experience was incalculable. I was forced to refine my control of Essence, further pushing and honing my mana manipulation, solidifying my growth from “purely destructive” to “surgically lethal.”

  But I couldn’t spend all my time getting murdered by a six-armed clone. I had a planet to run.

  The “First Annual Ferra Sovereignty Tournament” was in full swing.

  Bastion had expanded into a true metropolis, utilizing the [Starlight Capacitors] from the Tower runs to power hovering districts and hard-light bridges. For the Tournament, we had converted the crater outside the main walls into a colossal, tiered Colosseum that would make the ancient Romans weep with envy.

  “How are the numbers looking, Lucas?” I asked, taking my seat in one of the Sovereign’s Boxes — a hovering balcony overlooking the four simultaneous sparring rings below.

  Lucas, wearing tailored administrative robes that actually made him look like a mayor, consulted a glowing slate. “Registration is over eighty thousand for the combat brackets alone. We had to implement pre-qualifier arenas just to narrow the field down to a manageable size.”

  “The rewards are drawing them,” Eliza piped up from a nearby couch, adjusting her glasses. She was holding a half-finished diagram for a new mana-stimulant. “Three days in the [Void-Marrow Spa] for Tier 3 winners? Direct tutoring with the Zenith masters? It’s not just a prize; it’s a career fast-track.”

  “That was the point,” I smiled, looking out at the roaring crowd.

  The Tournament was tiered. Tier 1s through 3s fought for resources and admission into the newly constructed Ferran Academy. Tier 4s fought for Elite Guild sponsorships. Many other rewards like gear, mana crystals and Quintessence Shards were given to the winners and standouts.

  And the Tier 5s… they were fighting for something bigger.

  “The Leadership bracket is tomorrow,” Anna said, joining us with two skewers of grilled Leviathan. She handed one to me. “Silas is terrified.”

  “He’s fighting?” I raised an eyebrow, taking a bite. “Against who?”

  “Korg’s Lieutenant. That heavily armored battle-mage guy who surrendered during the Council. Korg sent him to test our depth. He wants to see if we rely purely on you, or if our officers have actual fangs.”

  “We have to make sure Silas does not take it too far and freeze his blood or something…” I said casually.

  Below us, a match began in Ring 2. A young S’skarr warrior, moving with fluid, liquid grace, was fighting a heavily armored human wielding a steam-powered maul.

  “That S’skarr,” I noted, activating a subtle scrying field. “He’s redirecting kinetic force. It’s similar to Borvo’s Kinetic monks.”

  “That’s Ssil’ar,” Jeeves supplied the information. “Seventeen years old. Self-taught, primarily. Survived the extreme tutorial alone for a year. A highly adaptable prospect.”

  “Flag him for an interview,” I told Jeeves. “I want to see him in the advanced theoretical tactics class next cycle.”

  It wasn’t just combat. On the far side of the Colosseum grounds, the crafting pavilions were buzzing.

  Leoric was overseeing the Forge Competition with Megmus and some other Zenith masters. Currently, thirty aspiring smiths were trying to temper Void-Steel without accidentally causing a local implosion.

  Leoric was also judging the Artificing tournament.

  “No!” I heard Leoric shriek faintly over the roar of the crowd, amplified by sound-mana. “If you attach a fire-rune to a wind-capacitor on a Void-Steel box without a dampening buffer, you don’t get a flying rocket-chariot or whatever you said, you get a highly motivated bomb!”

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  “It’s a robust community,” I smiled warmly. The prosperity felt real. The air wasn’t tense with the threat of annihilation; it was thick with the scent of ambition.

  But my ambition lived on Floor 100.

  Later that night, the city slept. The tournament rings were dark.

  I stood in the safe zone of Floor 99. The golden gate pulsed ahead of me.

  I had done some prep work this week. Specifically, regarding the nature of the Vasud construct.

  I recalled the meeting I’d had with Kharonus a few days prior. The demon lord of my personal Dungeon, whom I had essentially bound to a subservience contract.

  “The Ascendant?” Kharonus had rasped in my mind, his demonic form currently suppressed into a small, floating orb of crimson energy I kept on me while his main body was still in his Sanctum within the dungeon. “It is not alive, Lord of the Void. It is a memory. A high-fidelity copy generated by the System, fueled by the localized Ley-Lines.”

  “But it acts intelligent,” I had pressed. “It converses, it learns and adapts. It seems a lot more desire-driven than any of my Echoes or Arthur’s clones.”

  “Because the soul fragment of the original being was stamped into the code,” Kharonus explained lazily, swirling in his containment sphere. “The real Ascendant is likely dead or long ascended beyond this iteration of the cosmos. The System uses these ‘Phantoms’ to test aspirants. They possess the combat intelligence of a Tier 9, but they lack true spontaneity. If you are creative enough... you may be able to exploit it. Also, before you ask, that thing is nothing like me, he is a respawning, manufactured construct while I am a Soul Remnant of my Original. While I have sworn loyalty to you Lord, I can still never purposefully act against the interests of the Origin.”

  He has become a lot more talkative and amenable once we signed our ‘Please Just Don’t Eat Me’ treaty.

  I looked at the gate.

  “Exploit it,” I whispered.

  This definitely is a good opportunity to improve my [Armory] at the very least.

  For the past three days, I had been obsessively working on evolving [Armory of the Ashen Soul] into Legendary. The core component was allowing the constructs I materialized to carry traces of my own Skills passively, making them active sub-systems rather than just shiny weapons.

  [Glimpse of a Path.]

  The simulation swallowed me.

  I stood on the plasma star again.

  Vasud of the Bandha floated above the Singularity-Throne. The six arms detached and spun, locking onto the weapons.

  “What are your intentions?” the voice of the construct boomed.

  I didn’t answer. I didn’t attack directly either.

  I extended my hands.

  “Armory.”

  I didn’t summon a sword. I materialized thousands of miniature, floating blades — silver needles formed from condensed starlight, infused heavily with [Apex Mana Authority].

  I let them hang in the air like a localized storm.

  The Ascendant swung its hand. The bow appeared in its grip. It drew an arrow of light and released it, an attack meant to turn my chest into a crater.

  “Disperse.”

  The thousands of needles moved, not intercepting the arrow, but moving into the path of the Arrow’s specific trajectory.

  The arrow passed through the needles. But as it did, the infused Authority disrupted the mana structure. The arrow degraded from a Tier 9 sniper shot into a gust of warm wind.

  Vasud’s galaxies-for-eyes narrowed.

  “Little tricks.”

  It charged.

  This time, I felt the rhythm. The weapon lag. The delay.

  It switched to the staff and started casting another massive gravity well.

  Glitch the system.

  Before it could finalize the shift, I used my [Void Walk] in conjunction with a further Time slowing mechanic — a rapid micro-jump derived from Anna’s influence that allowed my teleports to be faster than even Ascendants could perceive. I appeared directly beside the construct.

  I pressed my palm to the gap where the staff met its shoulder joint.

  [Apex Mana Authority].

  I targeted not the attack, but the conceptual binding holding the specific limb together. The limb began to vibrate violently, the System’s attempt to manifest the attack battling against my command that the limb shouldn’t exist.

  A split second later, Vasud recoiled. For the first time, it didn’t just reposition; it broke structure. The arm flickered out of existence briefly to reset.

  “Got you,” I grinned.

  I ignited [Domain of the Ashen Phoenix] point blank. I followed with [The Void-Star’s Hunger].

  The combined forces bit deeply into the Ascendant copy. It roared, its pristine armor cracking. My mana was draining rapidly, but the entity’s reserves were being rapidly consumed, replenishing my pool. I finally landed a solid, undeniable hit.

  It was working. I was grinding it down. Its movements were getting sloppy, its code stuttering under the paradoxical weight of fighting absolute Void.

  I raised my hand for a final [Void-Lance].

  And then… the Ascendant stopped moving.

  Its broken arm reformed. But not back into its regular place. It absorbed the weapons into its body. The sword, spear, bow, staff, chalice, and book merged into a singularity orb in its chest.

  The heat of the room evaporated. It turned impossibly, terrifyingly cold.

  “Ah,” I breathed, realizing my mistake.

  I had pushed the construct out of its standard logic loops and forced it to initiate a new protocol.

  The god spoke, but not as the Guardian. The voice changed entirely — deep, hollow, seemingly a pre-recorded message from the Ascendant it copied.

  “Reset.”

  The sphere exploded with pure, undeniable gray light.

  It wasn’t gravity or damage. It was absolute structural silence. It rewrote the arena, removing all elements of existence that weren’t under its Domain. My Mana shield vanished. The heat from my Domain evaporated. My heart stopped pumping. The lattice strings governing my biology simply detached.

  The simulation froze mid-death. The data overload snapped the cord.

  I lurched awake in the command tent of Floor 99. My heart was slamming against my ribs at three hundred beats a minute. The physical strain of the simulated death almost caused an aneurysm before [Syntropy] kicked in, stitching the shockwaves in my brain together.

  “So…” I wheezed, lying on the stone floor, trying to convince my lungs to start taking in air again. “Phase Two is… interesting.”

  I wiped sweat from my forehead.

  The Ascendant was still unbeatable at my current power. The sheer overpowering Tier difference combined with an ‘Area Wipe’ meant I couldn’t dodge by just entering the Void; I had to out-Authority it.

  But as I checked my interface, I smiled. My perception of the final move had taught me volumes about Domain mechanics, and especially the edict aspects of mana control from within. I felt the final wall for my Armory shake violently, it was about to break through into the realm of Legend.

  I stood up.

  The Guardian wasn’t dead. But the gap between us was shrinking.

  And I had all the time in the world to practice.

  “Okay, Vasud of the Bandha,” I grinned, staring at the Golden Gate. “You got lucky today. We’ll pick this up in a few days after the semi-finals.”