Emperor of the Source

"What is happening here?" Pyros muttered as he arrived near the battlefield where the sect leaders and Adrian were fighting, and for a moment, even his blazing aura faltered beneath the sight before him.

He had crossed through the deeper layers of the micro-dimension, expecting to find the final stage of the battle between the four sect leaders. For the past few minutes, every Peak Rule Stage being scattered across the sealed space had felt the violent bursts of energy erupting from this direction. The fluctuations had been so enormous, unstable, and unnatural that all of them had instinctively understood one thing: whatever was happening here would decide the fate of the entire war. Even those who had been locked in their own deadly battles abandoned their opponents and rushed toward the source.

Now, Pyros was not alone here. Every Peak Rule Stage being who had entered the micro-dimension had gathered near the fractured void where the true center of the battle had formed.

Even Yselia had returned. Her bodily wounds had healed, at least on the surface, but her aura was weaker than before. The earlier battle against Aerin, Lara, and Maelis, as well as the brief use of her energy body art as a distraction, had clearly devoured a significant portion of her willforce. She was still recovering, but even she could not remain away after sensing the abnormal storm tearing through this region.

But what they saw shocked them far more than any rumor could have prepared them for.

Adrian stood in the middle of the void, surrounded by a roaring multi-colored storm of arcane essence, attacking Ignis, Balthazar, and Morwenna at the same time. The three sect leaders, who had ruled the Andromeda Galaxy for millions of years, were not suppressing him with effortless dominance.

They were blocking.

Again and again, they were forced to defend against his slashes, forced to hold back the chaos around him, forced to spend authority and willforce merely to prevent the countless arcane concepts surrounding his body from erupting freely.

To every observer, the sight felt absurd. Adrian did not have a divine domain spread around him. He did not appear to be wielding authority in the conventional sense. Instead, hundreds of arcane concepts swirled around him at once, each strand carrying a different color, rule, and pressure.

No one understood how a single cultivator could wield so many arcane concepts simultaneously without tearing himself apart.

"Damn it," Pyros muttered, his analytical mind racing even through the shock.

He could not immediately understand what was happening. Adrian was wielding a vast number of arcane concepts, yes, but arcane concepts were still arcane concepts. They were mortal powers, foundations beneath divine concepts, not the authority of gods. Adrian had no domain active, which meant he was not even using the normal power of the Rule Stage.

So why were Ignis and the others only blocking him? Had they been strained so badly that their mana and willforce were already on the verge of depletion?

Pyros did not hesitate any longer. He dashed into the clash, his own domain igniting around him as he entered the overlapping battlefield. The moment his domain clashed with those of the sect leaders, the surrounding authority balance shifted violently, but he ignored it and immediately issued a direct command to reality, attempting to hold Adrian in place and lock down the arcane concepts surging around him.

It was a simple command, one Pyros had used countless times against mortal Stellars and weaker cultivators. Lock the rules and silence the mortal powers. Crush the opponent before they could even understand why their techniques had failed.

But the instant his will descended upon Adrian's storm, reality turned against him.

Pyros felt as if the universe itself had opened a bottomless mouth and begun sucking away his mana and willforce. The command did not settle cleanly. Instead, every arcane concept surrounding Adrian resisted, each one demanding a price far beyond what Pyros had expected. His consciousness blurred violently, blood sprayed from his mouth, and his domain became unstable as the backlash struck him with brutal force.

"How?" Pyros gasped, staggering backward in the void, his eyes wide with disbelief. His hands trembled as he pressed them against his chest, feeling the violent pulsing of his Rule Core beneath.

Adrian's gaze shifted toward Pyros briefly, and then he turned back toward Ignis with a faint smile. "It seems your people need the lesson as well."

Ignis's face twisted with fury, but for once, he did not respond to Adrian first. Instead, he screamed toward Pyros, "You fool! He is using hundreds of arcane concepts, and one of them is a Prime Arcane Concept! You cannot lock that with your reserves."

Even through his blurry consciousness, Pyros's eyes widened. "Prime Arcane Concept?"

Of course, he knew what Prime Arcane Concepts were. Every serious cultivator who had reached the Rule Stage knew at least the rumors. They were not ordinary foundational rules. They were among the oldest and most powerful structures of reality, concepts that stood beyond normal arcane truths and shaped the way other rules interacted.

Each Prime Arcane Concept was a pillar upon which lesser concepts rested.

But how could a discarded Major Sect disciple wield one? Or had they been wrong all this time? Was Adrian not a discarded disciple at all? Did he still have an active background behind him? Was he from some force even stranger than the ones they had assumed?

The thoughts rushed through Pyros's mind, but his consciousness was too blurred from the backlash to organize them properly.

The others who had arrived heard Ignis's words as well, including Yselia. She stared at Adrian, disbelief flashing across her pale features before it hardened into something colder. She could barely believe what she had just heard, but she understood one thing with absolute clarity.

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If Adrian was allowed to remain alive, then all of them would eventually die.

Whatever hatred she had for Hestia, whatever pride she had as the Sect Leader of the Everlasting Pill Sect, all of it now bent beneath survival instinct.

"So what if it is a Prime Arcane Concept?" Yselia screamed toward the surrounding Peak Rule Stage cultivators, her voice sharp and desperate. "An arcane concept is still mortal power without authority. If all of us join together, we can kill him. Move forward, or do you plan to wait until he kills the sect leaders one by one?"

The gathered Peak Rule Stage beings heard her command, and their expressions shifted. Some were mercenaries hired at astronomical prices. Some were leaders of subsidiary sects under Ignis, Balthazar, and Morwenna. Some were opportunists who had entered this war believing the outcome would bring them a share of the Andromeda Galaxy's future.

Their motivations differed, but their thoughts quickly aligned.

Adrian was dangerous. He had to die before he became something none of them could control.

One by one, they dashed forward.

Among them were also the two Peak Rule Stage subsidiary sect leaders Nightshade had brought under his banner. They moved as well, but unlike the others, their direction was not toward Adrian. They rushed toward Nightshade's position, intending to regroup with him first and understand his plan before committing themselves. They had seen enough to know that entering this clash blindly could mean death in a single exchange.

…

Far away from the battlefield, within the UNI-Hub, Vaelon sat comfortably inside his private chamber, one arm resting lazily against the side of his seat as a massive holographic screen floated before him.

The display showed the ongoing war in real time, focusing especially on the battle inside the micro-dimension. As an Astral Stage member of the UNI-Sect stationed in the Andromeda Galaxy, Vaelon possessed observation privileges and tools far beyond anything the local sects could imagine. A sealed micro-dimension might be invisible to the armies outside, but it was not beyond the eyes of the UNI-Sect.

At first, Vaelon had watched the war only as entertainment. He did not care who gained supremacy over the Andromeda Galaxy. Whether Ignis, Nightshade, Balthazar, or Morwenna won, none of them could truly threaten the UNI-Hub established within the galaxy. Local rulers changed. Minor and upper minor powers rose and fell. But the UNI-Sect would always remain.

But as Vaelon watched the battle between Adrian and the sect leaders unfold, the casual amusement in his eyes slowly changed into interest.

The screen showed Adrian wielding hundreds of arcane concepts at the same time without destroying himself. The multi-colored storm around him was not a visual trick, nor a projection created by some artifact. Each color corresponded to a different arcane truth, each strand carried its own will, and yet none of them rebelled against him.

"How did he make the wills of so many arcane concepts obey him?" Vaelon muttered, leaning forward slightly for the first time since the war had begun.

That question interested even him, an Astral Stage cultivator from the UNI-Sect.

Then the feed showed Adrian activating the Arcane Concept of Causality, invoking the relationship between cause and effect, turning the wounds on his body into mirrored injuries upon Ignis and Balthazar.

Vaelon rose from his seat immediately. "A Prime Arcane Concept?"

For a moment, the room fell silent around him. Then the pieces began arranging themselves in his mind. The owners of Prime Arcane Concepts had always been special. Their relationship with the foundations of reality was different from that of ordinary cultivators. If Adrian possessed a Prime Arcane Concept, then perhaps that was why the wills of so many arcane concepts were willing to obey him.

"Such a potential kid should not die in a place like this," Vaelon murmured, his eyes narrowing with calculation. "If trained properly, he could become an excellent elder candidate for my UNI-Sect."

The moment the thought settled, Vaelon vanished from his private chamber.

He appeared outside the UNI-Hub, floating in the void beyond its protected structures. Then he blinked again. Each blink carried him across an enormous distance, folding the void beneath his feet as if the galaxy were nothing more than a map beneath his gaze. In only a few movements, he arrived near the center of the Andromeda Galaxy, where the great battlefield raged in all directions. The distant light of warships, domains, and divine spells painted the void in violent colors beneath him.

Just as Vaelon was about to blink again and enter the battlefield directly, he clicked his tongue and turned his head toward a humanoid silhouette made of golden energy floating calmly in the void.

"Sylas?" Vaelon said, his eyes narrowing. "What are you doing in my sect's territory?"

The golden silhouette turned its gaze toward him, and though it had no ordinary flesh, the expression it carried was unmistakably amused. "When did this become the UNI-Sect's territory? Just because you built your little hub here does not mean the galaxy belongs to you, Vaelon."

Vaelon's expression cooled. "It does not matter what wording you prefer. This galaxy is where I am stationed, and matters here fall under my control."

Sylas shook his head slowly, the golden light around him rippling like liquid flame. "Do whatever you want with this galaxy. I do not care about its local wars or who becomes king of this little pond. But do not even think about touching that kid."

Vaelon let out a short laugh, though there was no warmth in it. "And what right do you have to speak for him? He is merely a minor sect elder. If I choose to recruit him into the UNI-Sect, I do not need your permission."

"Who said he is a minor sect elder?" Sylas replied calmly. "Did you not read his data properly, Vaelon? That kid is not from this galaxy. If he is not from Andromeda, then where do you think he came from?"

Vaelon's gaze sharpened. He suddenly remembered that detail. Adrian was not originally from the Andromeda Galaxy. Even his first UNI-OS registration location had been recorded outside Andromeda's regulated space. At the time, it had looked strange, but not important enough to investigate deeply.

Now, with Sylas standing before him, that information changed shape completely.

Was Adrian connected to the Void Sect? 𝗳𝚛𝚎𝚎𝘄𝕖𝕓𝕟𝕠𝚟𝚎𝕝.𝗰𝕠𝐦

Sylas saw the realization forming on Vaelon's face and continued, his voice calm but carrying a warning that left no room for misunderstanding. "He is under my Void Sect. Do not dare think you can reach your hand toward my younger generation. Return to your little hub."

Vaelon's anger surged instantly. For a moment, the void around him tightened, and the authority of an Astral Stage cultivator pressed outward in a silent wave.

But as quickly as it appeared, he suppressed it. He knew Sylas. More importantly, he knew he could not win a battle against Sylas.

After a long, cold stare, Vaelon turned away. "This is not over."

Sylas smiled faintly. "It is, unless you want to make it something larger than it needs to be."

Vaelon said nothing more. His figure blinked once, then vanished into the void, retreating back toward the UNI-Hub.

Sylas remained alone near the battlefield. He turned his gaze toward the micro-dimension, and the seals and locks of the artificial space offered no resistance to him at all. His sight pierced through them effortlessly, reaching the battlefield within, where Adrian stood wrapped in a storm of countless arcane concepts while the Peak Rule Stage beings around him prepared to attack.

For a moment, Sylas watched in silence.

Then a faint seriousness entered his golden eyes.

"It is good that you are hiding your true power, kid," he thought. "If you had revealed everything here, even I might not have been able to save you today."