Emperor of the Source

Adrian gazed at the three figures floating before him, their faces frozen for the briefest instant beneath the impossible pressure of the multi-colored storm that had erupted from his body.

Ignis, Balthazar, and Morwenna were not ordinary cultivators who would lose themselves to shock for long, but even they needed a fraction of time to process the sight of a single man wielding hundreds of arcane concepts without detonating himself from the inside.

The multi-colored storm of arcane concepts roared around Adrian's body like a newborn universe refusing to be bound, and in the next instant, he dashed forward. The void screamed beneath the force of his acceleration. Space, Force, Acceleration, Pressure, Wind, Lightning, and dozens of other arcane concepts aligned beneath his motion without needing to be fused into a divine concept, and for one terrifying microsecond, Adrian's figure vanished from perception entirely.

When he reappeared, the shifting multi-colored blade in his hand was already mere centimeters from Ignis's eyes.

Ignis's instincts saved him. His blazing broadsword moved before conscious thought could form, rising in a diagonal guard at the very last instant.

The edge of Adrian's blade crashed against it, and the impact sent a violent ripple of prismatic essence and golden flame tearing through the void. Ignis tried to retreat, but Adrian followed him as though distance itself had lost meaning.

The multi-colored sword became a storm of slashes, each attack carrying a different nature from the one before it. One cut burned with Fire, another bent space at the edge, another compressed Force and Impact into a razor-thin line, while another carried the tearing sharpness of Wind and the weight of Gravity together.

Each strike sang a different note, creating a dissonant symphony that made the void itself shudder.

Ignis, with all his bodily refinement, million years of training, and monstrous speed, could no longer fully handle Adrian's movements. It was as if Adrian had become several times faster than before, and the mighty Sect Leader of the Ashen Vortex Sect was reduced to a state where he could only block, block, and block again.

His jaw clenched tight, muscles straining beneath his armor as he parried another slash that should have taken his head. The broadsword in his hands trembled from the repeated impacts, hairline fractures spreading across its surface.

Balthazar and Morwenna saw the sight, and the shock in their eyes vanished almost instantly beneath cold survival instinct. They did not understand what Adrian had become, nor did they have time to understand it. If Ignis died here, then the balance would shatter, and one by one, they would follow him into death. The boy had already proven that every exchange fed him more strength, and this new state was not something any of them could afford to let continue unchecked.

Morwenna's pale face twisted with rare anger as she screamed, "USE AUTHORITY! Lock every concept you can detect from him. How dare he think of using mortal power to defeat us?"

At that moment, Ignis, still being driven backward under Adrian's relentless assault, released a violent burst of golden divine essence. The explosion forced Adrian several meters away, giving Ignis the fraction of room he needed. Without hesitation, Ignis pushed his authority outward and began locking every arcane rule he could identify within the chaotic storm around Adrian.

"Fire, Force, Acceleration, LOCK!" Ignis's voice thundered, each word carrying the authority and direct command that bent reality itself.

Fire, Force, Acceleration, Impact, Heat, Pressure, and every familiar offensive concept he could sense became targets of suppression.

Morwenna and Balthazar acted at the same time. Space, Life, Death, Gravity, Time, Water, Force, Blood, Pressure, Decay, Light, and countless other concepts were seized by their authority and forced into restriction.

Adrian immediately sensed the difference. The wills of the arcane concepts within him screamed, not in fear, but in fury. They were being forcefully locked down, their natural expression suppressed by external authority. The storm around him dimmed in several places, colors flickering as if chains had been wrapped around individual rules of reality.

And in that instant, Adrian understood the situation more clearly.

What he was doing now was not the same as his Source Form. It was not even an energy body state where a concept's will merged with his body and elevated his authority beyond conventional limits.

He was simply wielding all the arcane concepts housed within him at the same time. In theory, if another being had somehow mastered this many arcane concepts and possessed the energy capacity to channel them simultaneously, they could attempt something similar.

The only difference was that Adrian was not forcing the wills of these arcane concepts into obedience. They were obeying him willingly, flowing through him without the brutal mental burden that should have torn an ordinary cultivator apart.

That meant he did not need to spend much willforce controlling them. His true burden was mana, the immense cost of sustaining so many concepts in active expression at once.

Adrian laughed, not caring about the mana cost or their suppression.

The sound echoed strangely through the void, layered with dozens of conflicting tones that should not have existed together.

He moved again, this time toward Balthazar. Even with many of his concepts locked down, he was still terrifyingly fast. His speed had dropped compared to the first overwhelming burst, but the multi-colored sword still tore through the void with lethal precision.

Balthazar raised his obsidian gauntlets and blocked the incoming strikes, each collision sending violent tremors through his massive arms. But he could only block. His authority was being poured into suppressing the arcane concepts around Adrian, and because of that, he had effectively reduced himself to a state without authority in direct combat. By his own definition, he had become a mere mortal relying on body, weapon, instinct, and technique.

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And that was exactly what Adrian needed.

He had forced them into a dilemma. If they stopped suppressing him, he would regain the full chaotic freedom of his arcane concepts, and they had already seen that they could not handle that. But if they continued suppressing them, then their own authority became shackled to the act of restraint, stripping them of the very advantage they had used to grind him down moments earlier.

From the side, Ignis roared and slashed toward him, his blazing broadsword descending with furious hatred, "You bastard!"

His face contorted, veins bulging along his temples as golden flames wreathed his entire form.

Adrian twisted away from the edge, his sword scraping along Balthazar's gauntlet before snapping upward to intercept Ignis's strike. The collision drove him back, and several golden flames bit into his shoulder and chest, but he remained smiling even as blood spilled from the wounds.

Far from the clash, Nightshade watched the entire exchange from within the shadows, his eyes narrowing as he waited for the perfect opportunity to strike. He could see the battlefield shifting in a way the others were too furious to fully grasp.

Then Nightshade noticed Morwenna suddenly coughing up blood. A strange smile appeared on his lips. He understood what was happening.

Dark red droplets floated from her pale lips, crystallizing in the void like tiny rubies.

Using authority to suppress arcane rules looked simple from the outside, especially when experienced Peak Rule Stage beings performed it. But it was never simple. Adrian was not wielding one or two concepts. He was wielding dozens upon dozens at the same time, possibly more than a hundred in total, when including weaker layers.

Did Morwenna, Ignis, or Balthazar possess complete knowledge of every arcane concept Adrian had released? Did any of them have a specialized authority technique capable of suppressing that many concepts efficiently?

The answer was obvious.

No.

Without enough knowledge of the arcane concepts they were suppressing, they were relying on direct command. Direct command could force reality to obey, but the cost was always heavy, especially when the command opposed a powerful rule.

Nightshade already knew Adrian possessed the Arcane Concept of Time, and Time was not some ordinary rule that could be chained casually. The will of Time was not easy to suppress. Reality itself was charging the three sect leaders heavily to maintain the locks, draining their mana and willforce every passing moment, and that burden was making them weaker, slower, and more vulnerable than their pride allowed them to admit.

Nightshade vanished into his shadows.

The darkness swallowed him whole, leaving no trace of his presence.

When he reappeared, he was already behind Morwenna, one dagger thrusting toward her back with silent precision. Morwenna was in a weakened state, her focus divided between suppressing Adrian's arcane concepts and keeping her domain stable.

She did not sense Nightshade until the attack had already landed. The dagger pierced her back, and the shadow wrapped around its edge carried an authority technique that expanded the wound violently. What should have been a narrow stab tore open into a gruesome hole through her abdomen, dark blood and pale grey essence spilling into the void.

"Gah—!" The sound ripped from her throat, raw and shocked.

Morwenna moved away instantly, clutching her stomach as she turned a fierce, murderous glare on Nightshade.

Nightshade simply smiled from the darkness, his twin daggers dripping with her blood.

At the same instant, the suppression Morwenna had maintained over several arcane concepts loosened. She had no choice. If she continued dedicating so much of her authority to restraining Adrian while ignoring the hole in her body, Nightshade would finish her before Ignis or Balthazar could help. She redirected her power toward stabilizing herself, sealing the wound, and forcing the invasive shadow authority out of her flesh.

But that immediately became a danger for Ignis and Balthazar.

Until now, the three of them had maintained enough suppression to keep Adrian's chaotic state partially restricted. They had still wounded him, still forced him to defend, still kept him from exploding with the full freedom he had shown at the beginning.

But with Morwenna's portion of the suppression gone, the storm around Adrian surged violently. His movements became faster, and his sword slashes sharpened. Space, Force, Acceleration, and several other released concepts flared back into motion, making him much harder to strike and far more dangerous to block.

Ignis and Balthazar both forced their expenditure higher, issuing more direct commands to block as many arcane concepts as they could handle. The strain on them visibly increased, but neither dared to stop. Ignis roared as he slashed toward Adrian again, his golden flames raging with humiliation and fury. "Do not think you can win this battle with mere arcane concepts! I will show you the difference between a god and a mortal."

His voice cracked at the edges, desperation bleeding through the fury.

Adrian suddenly pulled back, putting distance between himself and the two sect leaders. His body was heavily wounded from the brutal exchange, slashed and burned in several places. Blood floated from his torn robes as it crystallized in the void, and many of the injuries remained open because the Arcane Concept of Life was still being locked by their suppression. Breath of Life could not be used, and the wounds that would normally have closed within moments stayed raw across his body.

Yet Adrian smiled.

"Still underestimating arcane concepts?" he asked, his voice calm despite the blood trailing from his lips. "It seems you still have not fully learned my lesson."

Ignis and Balthazar stared at him warily. Neither moved immediately. Morwenna, still recovering at a distance, narrowed her pale eyes, while Nightshade remained hidden nearby, sensing that Adrian was about to do something that none of them had accounted for.

Adrian's gaze focused on Ignis first, then shifted toward Balthazar. "You should have heard this before," he said softly. "Every cause has an effect, does it not?"

The moment the words left his lips, the void inside the micro-dimension changed.

Ignis and Balthazar felt it, but neither immediately understood what Adrian was doing. There was no massive authority wave or an overwhelming burst of power.

Adrian merely raised his free hand as he pointed toward the wounds covering his own body. Burn marks from Ignis's flames. Deep bruises and internal ruptures from Balthazar's gravity. Slashes carved across his shoulders, ribs, and arms. Each injury carried a history, a cause, a record of what had produced it.

His fingers traced each wound, leaving faint trails of prismatic light.

"Cause," Adrian said softly, gesturing toward the blood, the cuts, the burns, and the injuries that marked him.

Then he moved his fingers toward the two sect leaders standing before him.

"And effect."

He snapped his fingers.

The sound was sharp, impossibly loud in the stillness.

The moment the sound rippled through the void, Ignis and Balthazar's eyes widened in horror. Wounds tore open across their bodies instantly, appearing in the exact same places as the injuries covering Adrian. Slashes split through Ignis's flesh beneath his armor. Burns that should have belonged to Adrian alone erupted across Balthazar's massive torso. Bruises, ruptures, cuts, and internal fractures manifested as though the damage had been reflected through an invisible rule connecting the cause to its rightful effect.

"What—?!" Ignis's voice choked off as blood filled his mouth.

Adrian stood in the center of the void, still wounded, still bleeding, but smiling beneath the shifting light of countless arcane concepts.

"You call them mortal powers," he said, his voice carrying across the battlefield with amusement, "But you have spent your entire lives building thrones on top of them."