Emperor of the Source

Aerin materialized within the micro-dimension, and the moment her body crossed the boundary, the entire void seemed to press down on her mind like an invisible ocean.

She staggered almost immediately, unable to float properly as her balance collapsed beneath a level of willforce pressure she had never experienced before. Her hand shot out instinctively, grasping at nothing, trying to steady herself against emptiness. Outside, millions of warriors were clashing across the galactic battlefield, countless domains and authorities grinding against one another in a storm large enough to shake star systems, but even that chaotic battlefield had not felt like this.

Here, inside the sealed space where Peak Rule Stage beings fought without restraint, the pressure was far denser, sharper, and more suffocating. It was not merely mana or divine essence pressing against her body. It was the accumulated weight of beings who had lived for hundreds of thousands or even millions of years, their wills honed through endless battles, failures, victories, and survival. Against that, Aerin's own willforce felt painfully young. Her vision blurred at the edges, and her thoughts scattered like leaves in the wind.

For a moment, she understood with brutal clarity that she had overestimated herself. She was a Mid Rule Stage cultivator who had lived only around five hundred years inside the time formation, and even most of that life had been protected, guided, and shaped by people who loved her.

Compared to the beings fighting here, her experience was shallow. Her willforce, despite all of Hestia's training, could not compare to those who had endured the weight of entire sects and galaxies for ages. The thought came to her sharply, almost like a warning from the rational part of her mind. She should leave. She should admit that this was too much, return to the open battlefield, and find another way to contribute.

But the thought had barely formed before she clenched her fists and forced it down.

"No! Would Uncle ever return like this? Would he step back just because the enemy was stronger than expected? No. He would move forward until he found a way," she thought, as she forced herself to remain upright in the void.

Aerin slowly lifted her head and looked ahead. Before her stretched a vast, empty expanse without stars, planets, or warships, only endless darkness contained within the artificial walls of the micro-dimension. The sight struck something old within her, dragging up memories she had never fully forgotten. The UNI-Hub. The sealed space. The helplessness. She remembered being trapped there with her parents, too fragile to do anything, too weak to resist, able only to watch as danger closed around them. Her small hands had clutched her mother's robes whilst violet energy gathered around that man's hand. Back then, she had been nothing more than a child who could scream and hope someone stronger arrived in time.

That memory burned through her hesitation. This time, she was not that child. This time, she had trained, struggled, bled, failed, and grown. She would not enter another sealed dimension only to tremble.

She steadied herself under the willforce pressure, gathering her scattered thoughts piece by piece around a single point, the way Hestia had drilled into her again and again, until her mind stopped trembling.

The pressure did not disappear, but she stopped letting it throw her thoughts apart. Once her body stopped swaying, she began moving forward through the empty void. For a long while, she could not see anything. Her perception stretched outward, but the micro-dimension was far larger than the one she had been trapped in long ago, and the battlefield inside seemed scattered across a scale that made even Peak Rule Stage combatants feel distant. She continued forward, following faint fluctuations in divine essence, until at last a familiar aura brushed against her perception.

Crimson Vital Dominion.

Aerin turned immediately and flew toward it. As she drew closer, the empty void ahead began to flare with crimson and gold light. The pressure grew sharper, more focused, and soon she saw the source of it. Lara and Maelis were fighting Yselia.

The sight made Aerin's heart tighten.

Both elders had their domains expanded around Yselia, whilst Yselia's own domain covered them in return. The three Peak Rule Stage domains overlapped violently, twisting the rules of reality into unstable layers.

From what Aerin could understand, Maelis was focusing on countering and suppressing Yselia's authority, using her own domain to keep Yselia's rule modifications blocked. Each time Yselia tried to alter reality, Maelis's will slammed against it, forcing equilibrium.

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Lara, meanwhile, was taking the offensive, turning afterimages into real strikes, accelerating her movements, and trying to overwhelm Yselia through layered attacks.

Yet even with her authority suppressed and negated by Maelis, Yselia was still fighting.

She moved with terrifying speed, slipping through Lara's attacks with movements so precise they looked almost casual. Lara's afterimages became real and struck from several directions at once, but Yselia twisted between them, her blade flashing with such smooth control that even suppressed, she looked like a predator surrounded by children.

Whenever she counterattacked, Lara had to use defensive authority techniques immediately, burning through mana and willforce just to escape a single exchange.

In essence, Yselia was fighting Lara, who still had access to authority, whilst her own authority was being completely blocked by Maelis. That alone revealed the terrifying depth of her combat experience. Yselia had not lived for millions of years as a sect leader by relying only on authority. Her body, instincts, timing, and battle sense were all honed to a level Aerin could barely comprehend.

Yselia laughed as she moved between Lara's strikes, her voice cold and mocking. "You may have reached the Peak Rule Stage, but you still fight like newborns who borrowed crowns too heavy for your heads."

Her blade deflected three simultaneous attacks without breaking rhythm.

"Let me see how long your little energy fuel lasts. The moment your mana and willforce are depleted, that is the moment both of you die!"

It was during that brief moment of speech that Yselia sensed something nearby. Her gaze shifted, and her eyes landed on Aerin.

For a fraction of a second, Yselia looked amused. She did not recognize Aerin, but the crimson robes made her affiliation obvious.

"Oh?" Yselia said, her lips curving with cruel interest. "It seems a little child has sneaked into a battlefield where she does not belong."

Hearing that, Lara and Maelis instantly shifted their gazes. The moment they saw Aerin, horror flashed across both their faces.

"Aerin!" Lara shouted, her composure cracking for the first time since the battle had begun. Her afterimages collapsed as her concentration broke. "Why did you enter this place? Leave immediately! Your willforce is too fragile to endure this battlefield."

Maelis's domain flickered, her suppression wavering for just an instant.

Aerin opened her mouth to respond, but Yselia moved before she could speak.

The Everlasting Pill Sect leader seized the opening with ruthless precision. In one burst of speed, she bypassed Lara and Maelis, slipping through the narrow moment their attention had broken. Dark blue essence exploded beneath her feet as she accelerated, closing the distance in a heartbeat. Her full, suffocating Peak Rule Stage authority and will pressed toward Aerin like a descending sky, and a lethal strike followed in the same instant.

Aerin reacted on instinct, trying to raise her own domain, trying to form a spatial displacement, trying to command the surrounding space to bend just enough for her to evade.

But Lara's warning had been correct. The willforce pressure inside this place was already straining her concentration, and when Yselia's full intent crashed into her, it shattered what little stability she had managed to build. Her thoughts fractured, her spells unraveled, and her authority command collapsed before it could form properly. The daggers fell from nerveless fingers. For one terrible instant, she was left paralyzed in the void, exposed before a strike she could not evade.

"No!" Lara's scream tore through the void.

As Yselia's fatal attack descended, time seemed to slow for Aerin.

"In the end," Aerin thought, her eyes widening as the blade filled her vision, "I am not Uncle. I can't create the miracles he can."

Helplessness gripped her, yet even as the thought formed, even as the blade descended, she did not regret entering this place.

She had chosen this. She had entered this place knowing it was dangerous. Even if she died here, even if everyone called her reckless, stupid, and arrogant, she had at least refused to remain safely behind others whilst the true battle decided everything.

At the final instant, her collapsing spatial command shifted her body half a step out of alignment, turning a strike meant for her heart into her arm instead.

Yselia's blade slashed through her left arm.

Pain exploded through Aerin's body as her arm was severed cleanly and sent spinning into the void. The force of the strike threw her backward like a broken doll, blood scattering in crimson droplets around her. Her scream caught in her throat, strangled by shock.

Lara and Maelis reached her almost immediately, Lara moving faster than thought as she caught Aerin's body and activated the healing ring on her finger. "Hold on, Aerin. Hold on."

Starlight-coloured essence poured into Aerin, flowing over the severed wound, reconstructing flesh, bone, and nerves with desperate speed. The arm began to regenerate, and the bleeding stopped, but Lara's face only grew paler.

Aerin's eyes were closing.

Lara understood what was happening immediately. The healing ring could mend flesh, blood, bone, and organs. It could neutralize poison and stabilize life force. But Aerin had clashed directly with the will of a Peak Rule Stage being, and Yselia's willforce had not merely pressured her body. It had struck her consciousness.

Willforce was said to be the energy of mind, intent, resolve, and consciousness itself. If that foundation shattered completely, then physical healing meant nothing.

Losing consciousness in such a state was not sleep. It was a kind of death no ordinary recovery spell could reverse.