Justin continued.
"Mythical Tier.
Level 0-9 — Mythical Being.
Level 10-15 — Mystical Being.
Level 16-20 — Sovereign."
Dante noticed his father glance toward a seemingly empty corner of the room before letting out a quiet chuckle. The next instant, Justin's relaxed expression disappeared. His golden eyes brightened, and the office around them distorted.
It was as if the room itself had quietly slipped out of the world.
Justin shook his head with an inward sigh.
'This should barely be enough to keep me outside the reach of his skill. I've already annoyed him once... I'll probably owe him a favor after this.'
Dante, a wielder of Spatial abilities himself, immediately felt something change.
His body froze.
The space around him compressed.
His stomach twisted violently as though his organs were being folded into themselves. Every instinct screamed at him that reality itself had become unstable.
This was nothing like before when his father had tested Vexion... Justin had been holding back.
No...
A thousand million percent...
This was not the power of a Sovereign, it felt like the world vanished. To Dante, who understood the layers of space, he was dumbfounded. His connection to the world, the room, even normal space itself had been severed. There was no office. There was no ceiling, no walls—only never-ending darkness.
Not darkness born from the absence of light... but the absence of existence itself. He felt it. His connection to everything in existence had been severed as well.
Behind Justin floated an enormous circular void.
Perfectly round.
Perfectly silent.
A golden ring encircled its edge, the only source of light in an otherwise empty cosmos.
Nothing escaped it.
Not light.
Not sound.
Not mana.
Not even energy.
Everything that approached that endless abyss simply... disappeared.
The void rotated slowly, yet impossibly fast at the same time, making Dante's eyes ache as he tried to comprehend its movement.
His breathing stopped.
Every one of his skills instinctively fell silent.
His thoughts exploded into chaos.
"IS THAT A FUCKING BLACK HOLE!? ARE WE INSIDE THE FIFTH LAYER OF SPACE!? IS... IS THIS WHY I COULD ONLY REACH THE FIRST, SECOND, AND THIRD LAYERS!? BECAUSE THE ACTUAL FIFTH LAYER... IS IN A VOID? A BLACK HOLE!?"
Justin's calm voice echoed naturally throughout the endless darkness, as though nothing around him was unusual.
"Level 21-25 — Ancient Sovereign.
Level 26-30 — Resonant Lord.
Level 31-35 — Lawborn Sovereign."
The endless void slowly receded.
Reality knitted itself back together.
The office returned.
Dante staggered backward before dropping to one knee, coughing violently as air rushed back into his lungs.
Aurora herself took a slow breath, quietly healing both herself and her son before glancing toward Justin.
There was admiration in her eyes.
Even after all this time...
She still found herself awed by the man she loved.
Dante stared at his father in complete disbelief.
His thoughts had nearly become scrambled before Mental Dominion instinctively activated, restoring order to his mind.
…
Within the training room...
Vexion was sparring against Lexa.
The next instant—
Her body suddenly froze.
A violent pulse erupted from her without warning.
BOOM!!
Lexa was blasted backward before crashing through the far side of the room, striking the wall hard enough to lose consciousness instantly.
Vexion herself never moved.
She simply floated into a lotus position, panic filling her now darker crimson eyes.
The familiar connection...
It had disappeared.
The presence she could always feel...
Was gone.
Her breathing became uneven as she instinctively reached toward that invisible bond.
Nothing. She couldn't feel him. She couldn't find him.
For the first time since becoming his subordinate...There was only silence.
Tears welled within her eyes.
"Master..."
Her voice trembled.
"Please... be safe..."
She reached again. Again. Nothing. A third time she reached.
Suddenly—
She felt him the connection was faint. and distant. But there. The familiar warmth returned to their connection. Only then did the suffocating pressure surrounding Dante begin to ease. Vexion released a shaky breath, clutching her chest.
"...Thank goodness..."
The crimson glow within her eyes slowly faded back to their usual shade.
...
Several moments later...
Vexion finally noticed Lexa lying half-buried beneath broken stone.
"...Huh?"
She blinked twice before hurriedly flying over.
"Lexa!"
Quickly taking out several healing pills prepared by the palace physicians, she gently helped Lexa swallow two of them.
After several moments, Lexa slowly opened her eyes.
"W-What..."
Vexion frowned.
"I... don't know."
She looked around the damaged room in confusion.
"We were training normally..."
"Did your skill lose control?"
Lexa weakly shook her head.
"I don't think so..."
Vexion tilted her head.
"...Did mine?"
She genuinely couldn't remember.
After thinking for a while, she simply sighed before unconsciously copying Dante's usual mannerisms.
"I'm simply too weak to understand. No point losing sleep over it."
She couldn't help but giggle.
Master really could be strange sometimes.
Lazy when something wasn't worth thinking about...
Yet endlessly driven whenever something captured his interest. Sometimes the smartest schemer she knew. Sometimes an absolute idiot.
Still smiling to herself, Vexion helped Lexa back onto her feet before the two quietly resumed their training. Neither of them realized that what had just occurred had nothing to do with either of them.