[Last Episode:She settled in to watch]
Chapter 122, Episode 122
[Inside Death — Satanael's Confession]
Leo: Okay, soup discussion aside—
[Satanael]
「I never confirmed soup.」
Leo: —you've been dodging something. I can tell. You get quieter right before you dodge something.
[A pause. Satanael's blue eyes, steady as they'd always been, shifted somewhere just past Leo —]
[Satanael]
「You're right. There's something I haven't told you.」
Leo: Go on.
[Satanael]
「Even if I finish the rebuild right now — even if I pull you back into the living framework this exact moment — it won't be enough.」
Leo: What do you mean, not enough.
[Satanael]
「I mean that in my current state, bonded to you the way I currently am, I cannot carry you to a level that beats Voriath. Isaac is already struggling against him, and Isaac has spent this entire war escalating past every ceiling he had」
[Leo went very still.]
Leo: Then what is.
[Satanael]
「There's a power I've been holding back. Dont think because i didn't trust you with it. Because it isn't something you can simply be given. It has to be earned, piece by piece, and the process is not gentle.」
Leo: Tell me.
[Satanael]
「Taiji Collapse.」
[The words sat in the space between them with a weight Leo hadn't felt from any of Satanael's other abilities —]
Leo: Taiji???.... The hell is Taiji
[Satanael]
「Its a unique special ability. Taiji is the supreme cosmic principle. The single source every opposing pair in existence comes from and returns to — being and non-being, light and dark, life and death basically a harmony that holds them together, the balance that lets both sides of every duality exist at the same time without canceling each other out.」
Leo: A harmony and non existent so what about Collapse??
[Satanael]
「Collapse is what happens when that harmony is undone completely so every duality loses its meaning and folds into a single point that isn't chaos and isn't order. It's the zero-state. The place where reality, logic, and space-time all rest on cosmic balance, and that balance simply stops being true.」
Leo: So Taiji Collapse is—
[Satanael]
「The undoing of the universe's ultimate truth. An absolute void where no duality, no principle, nothing that depends on balance, can ever function again.」
[Leo sat with that]
Leo: You want me to wield that.
[Satanael]
「Yes, i want you to become someone capable of wielding that, and then decide, every single time, not to let it become what its name suggests because Taiji Collapse isn't a weapon you point and fire. It's an authority over the thing that makes authority possible in the first place. Voriath's power comes from the space-between, from the eleven-twelve gap. But even that gap depends on Taiji holding its own balance. If you can touch the collapse itself—」
Leo: I can touch what his power is built on top of.
[Satanael]
「Yes.」
Leo: Okay, then How
[He exhaled — or did the version of exhaling available to someone without lungs.]
[Satanael]
「Five steps. None of them are quick, and none of them are safe. But we have time here, in this space between existing and not, and this is the only place I'd trust to teach you this without the risk of it going wrong in front of a war.」
Leo: Then let's start.
『Step One — The Pushing』
[Satanael]
「First, we push. Your force and mine, against each other, directly. It's a raw fact of what you are pressed against the raw fact of what I am.」
Leo: That sounds like it's going to hurt.
[Satanael]
「It is going to hurt.」
Leo: Cool. Great. Let's go.
[Satanael raised a hand, and Leo felt something in the space around them gather —]
Satanael's Force — Applied Directly.
[Leo felt the source's full weight land against him]
[He pushed back]
[The two forces met and held]
Leo: This is — a lot—
[Satanael]
「We havent even reach anywhere yet, your already whining like a little kid. Keep pushing. This is the foundation. Everything after this collapses if the foundation isn't solid.」
Leo: Are you trying to insult me or something..
[Leo gritted his teeth — figuratively, in a space with no teeth to grit — and pushed harder.]
[The pressure built. And built. And then, gradually, began to settle into something that wasn't a fight anymore. A shape]
[Satanael]
「Good. Step one is done.」
[Leo, breathless]
Leo: That's step ONE?
[Satanael]
「Yes, were you listening to what i was saying back then...」
Leo: There are FOUR more of these?
[Satanael]
「Yes.」
Leo: Great. Wonderful. Love this for me.
『Step Two — Linking to Taiji』
[Satanael]
「Now we reach for the principle itself. Taiji doesn't live in the framework, doesn't live in the space-between, doesn't live anywhere you could point to. It's underneath all of it. You have to find the thread that connects you to it and take hold.」
Leo: How do I find a thread I can't see, are you trying to kill me??
[Satanael]
「You don't find it with your eyes. You find it the way you found the Eastern World in yourself when you had nothing else. You reach for the part of you that already knows what balance feels like, because you've been building it your whole life without knowing it had a name.」
[Leo closed his eyes — or the version of closing his eyes available in a bodiless space — and reached.]
[Nothing, at first.]
[Then, faint. A thread. just present]
Leo: I think—
[Satanael]
「You have it. Don't grab. Just hold.」
[Leo held.]
[The thread steadied.]
『Step Three — Balancing the Taiji』
[Satanael]
「This is the part most beings fail. Once you're linked, Taiji will test whether you can hold both sides of every duality at once without favoring either. Life and death. Victory and defeat. Hope and its absence. If you lean toward one, the link breaks and we start over.」
Leo: What... thats totally unfair and that sounds like the kind of thing that takes years to master.
[Satanael]
「It usually does.」
Leo: We don't have years.
[Satanael]
「No. We have whatever time death is willing to loan us. So you're going to do in minutes what most beings take lifetimes to understand, because you've already been doing an early version of it since you were twelve.」
[Leo felt the thread begin to pull both directions at once — toward the memory of every victory he'd had and every loss, toward the hope that had built the Eastern World and the grief that had started it, toward the possibility that Isaac would win this fight and the possibility that he wouldn't.]
[He didn't flinch from either side.]
[He held both.]
[Leo, quietly said]
Leo: They're not opposites. Not really. Not once you've lived through enough of both.
[Satanael]
「...No. They're not.」
[The thread steadied further. Balanced. Neither side winning, neither side losing, both simply present, held.]
『Step Four — The Trials』
[Satanael]
「Now the hard part.」
Leo: That was the easy part?!
[Satanael]
「Everything up to now was preparation. Now you give it what it needs to become real. Every power you carry — Our source abilities, the covenant, the forms, all of it — you offer it to the Taiji link because the Collapse has something to build itself out of.」
Leo: If I give up everything, what do I fight with while it's happening.
[Satanael]
「Nothing. You'll be as vulnerable as you've ever been, for as long as the trial takes.」
Leo: In death. Where things are already trying to keep me here.
[Satanael]
「Yes.」
Leo: Fantastic.
[Satanael]
「I'll be with you the entire time. That's the one thing I can promise.」
[Leo looked at him — the specific look of someone deciding, again, to trust something that had already earned it many times over.]
Leo: Okay. Let's do it.
[Leo — Surrendered]
[He felt every layer of himself peel away and pour into the Taiji thread — the covenant sword's warmth, the Afterlife's condensed power, every form Satanael had ever given him, the accumulated weight of everything he'd built himself into — all of it flowing out of him and into the balance point between existence and its absence]
[It was the most naked he had ever felt.
No sword. No source-borrowed strength. No Hyper Emperor. Just Leo, entirely Leo, standing in death with nothing as the trial began]
[And every time, Leo answered the only way he knew how.]
Leo: Yes.
『Step Five — Mastery』
[The trial ended the way most true things end — with a settling. Leo felt the surrendered power return to him, except it wasn't quite the same shape it had left in]
[It had passed through the Taiji link and come back changed, folded into something new]
[Satanael]
「It's done.」
Leo: Did it work?
[Satanael]
「See for yourself.」
[A system bar materialized in front of Leo — pale light, precise, hovering in the death-space like a window into something he'd never had access to before]
『System Bar』
Name: Leo Sebastián
Rank: Grand Emperor
Ability: Taiji Collapse
Stats:
Strength: 10
Durability: 5
Agility: 9
Intelligence: 7
Ability: 10
———————————————————–
Leo: ...I have a system bar.
[Satanael]
「You do now.」
Leo: You're literally the source in my chest. YOU are basically a system. Why does the system need its own system? What's the point of having a system inside a system, Satanael, that's — that's just systems all the way down!
[Satanael]
「Calm down the Taiji Collapse operates on its own layer, separate from what I am. It needs its own framework for measuring itself, because it isn't measuring you as a Hyper or a vessel. It's measuring you as a wielder of balance itself.」
Leo: And these stats.
[Satanael]
「Are low. Deliberately. Taiji Collapse just took root. You have to grow into it.」
Leo: How do I grow into it.
[Satanael]
「You're going to have to work your ass off.」
Leo: You just cursed.
[Satanael]
「I've picked up things.」
Leo: From WHO.
[Satanael]
「You, mostly.」
[Leo opened his mouth to respond to that and found he didn't actually have a comeback, which was somehow more offensive than losing the argument outright.]
[Satanael]
「The stats rise through use. Specifically, through combat here, in this space. Death has its own inhabitants — beings that exist at the edge of the border, feeding on things that wander too close to the line. Fighting them, and beating them, is how the Taiji Collapse learns your shape.」
Leo: So I need to fight things. In death. To level up a system that exists inside a system that's inside me.
[Satanael]
「Yes.」
Leo: This is the strangest sentence I have ever said out loud.
[Suddenly the ground — or the equivalent of ground in a space with no ground — began to ripple]
Leo: What the... something is wrong
[Shapes emerged from the not-quite-darkness]
[Things that had never been alive in any sense the living world would recognize, drawn by the fresh disturbance of a newly-formed Taiji Collapse link]
[Satanael]
「Here they come. Bone Wraiths first — low-tier border feeders, they'll test your reflexes more than your power. Behind them, Hollow Serpents, which hunt in packs and try to overwhelm through numbers rather than individual strength.」
[Leo could see them now — and more than see them, he could read them, faint numbers hovering over each creature the way the system bar had hovered in front of him.]
『Bone Wraith』
Stats: 1 / 1 / 2 / 1 / 1
『Hollow Serpent』
Stats: 2 / 1 / 3 / 1 / 2
[Satanael winked — an actual wink, casual and a little smug — at Leo.]
[Satanael]
「Free stats. Go get them.」
Leo: You're enjoying this aren't you
[Satanael]
「A little.」
[Leo raised his fists — no sword yet, nothing yet, just himself — and moved.]
[He blitzed the first Bone Wraith before it finished forming, and it dissolved without complaint, feeding a faint pulse of warmth back into the system bar hovering at the edge of his vision]
[Leo then smirked]
Leo: easy peesy...., these creatures aren't stronger than I think.. it's gonna be hard to level up my stats to fully gain the Taiji collapse
[The Hollow Serpents came in a coiling mass and he tore through them with the loose, comfortable ease of someone shaking off rust, one after another, barely slowing down.
System notification]
[Something chimed — not a sound exactly, more a feeling of confirmation — and Leo watched, stunned, as a new line appeared beneath his stats]
『System Bar』
-New Ability Unlocked-
『Taiji Collapse of Authority』
Leo: Wait, what— a new ability
[Satanael]
「Read it.」
『Taiji Collapse of Authority』
「This ability grants absolute command over all fundamental forces in existence. By channeling the collapsing state of Taiji, the user overwrites any divine or mortal domain instantly. Laws, mandates, and supernatural hierarchies bend entirely to the user's presence. Opponents find their own authority revoked, rendering them completely powerless in response」
[Leo stared at the description, then at his own hands, then at the stats — which had jumped, all five categories simultaneously spiking to ten times their previous values.]
Leo: That's — that happened from killing Bone Wraiths?!
[Satanael]
「The first unlock is always the fastest. The system rewards the initial breakthrough generously. It gets slower from here.」
Leo: I don't care, this is incredible, I feel—
[He flexed his hand and felt it — an actual physical sensation of more, of the ceiling of what he was capable of simply not being where it used to be.]
[Shatter Nebula appeared in his grip, summoned by instinct, and along its edge, faint threads of Taiji energy — black and white, coiled around each other in perfect balance — wound themselves into the blade's existing light]
Leo: Okay. Okay okay okay. Let's go again.
[Satanael]
「There will be more. And they'll get harder.」
Leo: Good. I want harder.
[Satanael smiled — and then, without ceremony, his human form began to fold inward, light gathering and compressing, until the white-haired man was gone and in his place was a familiar warm presence settling back into Leo's chest, into the sword, into every part of him at once.]
[Satanael, now from inside]
[Satanael]
「I'll fight alongside you like this. Easier to guide you in real time.」
Leo: You're back to being a voice.
[Satanael]
「A voice with better information now. Watch your left.」
[Leo turned, blade already moving, and cut down a Hollow Serpent that had tried to flank him.]
Leo: Nice catch.
[Satanael]
「I told you. Better information.」
[More of them came. Wave after wave, each one slightly stronger than the last, each defeat adding another faint pulse to the stats climbing steadily upward]
[Leo moved through them with growing ease, Shatter Nebula tracing arcs of silver-blue light layered now with the black-and-white threading of Taiji energy, the sword cutting not just flesh and concept but, occasionally, the faint edges of whatever passed for law in this space]
[And then the ground shook not from Leo's fighting. From something arriving]
[Satanael, tone shifting]
「That's not one of the small ones.」
[Leo turned toward the source of the tremor and watched something enormous take shape out of the not-darkness — towering, armored in what looked like fused bone and void-glass, carrying a Halberd nearly as tall as it was, its stats hovering above it in numbers that made the earlier creatures look like rounding errors.]
『Karnak』
Stats: 7 / 8 / 6 / 5 / 8
Leo: That's — that's a real jump.
[Satanael]
「That's the boss of this tier. Defeat it, and your stats rise significantly. It won't be gentle about the attempt.」
Leo: What am I working with.
[Satanael]
「Its Halberd can crush a skull or split a planet with the same swing — it doesn't scale the force, it just always hits at maximum regardless of target. Its defense is high, but its intelligence stat is comparatively low. It fights on instinct and raw force, not strategy. Bait it into overcommitting and you'll find the opening.」
Leo: Bait it how.
[Satanael]
「Let it swing first. It always swings first. Everything after that is reaction, and you're faster than it in agility.」
[Leo rolled his shoulders, tightened his grip on Shatter Nebula, and grinned — the specific grin of someone who had just been handed both a very dangerous problem and the exact tool to solve it.]
Leo: Try the new ability?
[Satanael]
「Try the new ability.」
『Taiji Collapse of Authority — Activated.』
[The Karnak roared —and swung the Halberd down with the full, unscaled force Satanael had warned about]
[Leo didn't dodge]
[He raised Shatter Nebula and, in the same motion, spoke the declaration the new ability demanded — not loudly, just certainly]
Leo: Your authority to harm me here. Revoked.
[The Halberd's swing landed but did nothing.]
[The strike simply arrived and found that the domain it had assumed it operated under — the domain where a Halberd swing carrying enough force to split a planet actually carries that force — no longer applied to the space Leo occupied.]
[The Karnak staggered, its own momentum betraying it now that the expected resistance hadn't come.]
Leo: There it is.
[He moved into the opening — fast, faster than the creature's low intelligence stat could track, faster than its instincts could adjust for — and Shatter Nebula came up in a clean arc.]
Galaxy Divide.
[The vertical slash split the Karnak clean down its center, sending each half into what looked, for a fraction of a second, like two entirely separate patches of space before both halves simply stopped existing]
『System notification.』
[The stats bar surged again — every number climbing hard, the specific climb of a boss-tier kill paying out exactly what Satanael had promised]
Leo: This is incredible.... my number boost up soo much after the fight.
[Satanael]
「Mind you, you can absorb the creatures powers and mimic their abilities and can add it to your own to make it permanent」
Leo: Ohh... I can do that too... alright then.. let me do that..
『System Notification』
-New Abilities-
『Copy Magic』
『Strength Amplification』
『Absolute Absorption』
『Power Inducement』
Leo: Copy Magic... perfect just what I needed...
[Leo smirked as Satanael spoke]
[Satanael]
「Just so you know, the copy magic is not strong as you think it can only copy the lower opponents and to be aware it can't copy multiple abilities as it has its limit」
Leo: ... are you trying to downplay me or something Satanael..
[Leo stood in the aftermath, breathing hard, staring at his own hand like he didn't quite recognize the strength currently sitting in it]
Leo: Satanael.
[Satanael]
「Yes.」
Leo: I think I actually understand what you're building me into now.
[Satanael]
「Good. Because there's more where that came from. And Isaac's still out there fighting alone.」
Leo: Then let's not waste any more time down here.
[More shapes were already forming out of the dark — creatures drawn by the noise of the Border Sovereign's fall, sensing the fresh disturbance in the balance.]
[Leo raised his sword, Taiji energy coiling bright along its edge, and smiled.]
Leo: Bring the next one.
To be continued.....