The world didn't just stop. It was preserved. The Demi-god Elidian's power didn't crash into the sanctum; it unfolded. A sphere of soft, golden light expanded from her, silent and inexorable. It did not destroy the debris littering the floor; it simply… ignored it. Shards of obsidian, frozen body parts, and splintered furniture hung suspended in the air, fixed in place like insects in amber. The very sound died, creating a pocket of profound, unnerving silence. The chaos was not banished; it was put on pause.
Jade's knuckles were bone-white around the haft of his scythe. He watched a single, crystallized droplet of Titan blood hover an inch from the floor, shimmering in the golden light. His Obsidian Core, a moment ago a supernova of restrained violence, was forced into a low, humming idle. The urge to Obliterate was a distant, muffled scream under this gentle, overwhelming authority.
Seraphina was the first to break the new silence. She did not turn. Her voice was a shard of absolute zero, so cold it threatened to crack the very air.
"You bring a sun into my house of shadows, Emissary," she whispered, each word dripping with ancient venom. "You think your light can burn away covenants written in blood before your System was a glimmer in a god's eye? He is mine. By law and by vow. A claim you cannot unmake with pretty light."
As she spoke the word "vow," Jade felt it. A psychic band of frozen iron tightened around his soul, a palpable, chilling reminder of the chain he had willingly clasped.
The Demi-god, Elidian, turned her head a fraction. Her gaze was not confrontational, but pitying. "Your house is built on graves, Seraphina. And your covenants are chains that keep the dead quiet. I do not offer him freedom from you. I offer him a truth that exists outside your gilded cage."
Then, Zero spoke. His voice was low, but it carried a new, sharp edge that made Jade glance at him. It wasn't the flat monotone of pure logic. It was colder, tighter, a blade being slowly drawn.
"Her power doesn't just pause the fight," Zero said, his silver-green eyes fixed on Elidian, the void-black veins within them seeming to pulse. "It rewrites the local rules. She's not asking for a conversation. She's asking for access. And we don't know what she'll delete while she's inside." His gaze flicked to Jade, just for a moment, but the message was clear: This is a different kind of threat. Be careful.
The protective warning, so uncharacteristically direct, sent a jolt of surprise through Jade. Since when did the void concern itself with what might be deleted from him?
Elidian's smile was a subtle, knowing curve of her lips. She ignored them both and took a single, silent step forward, her focus entirely on Jade.
"They see a weapon to be wielded or a specimen to be cataloged," she said, her voice a melody that resonated in the bones, not the ears. "I see the question burning in the heart of your frozen star, Jade. The question the System itself fears. Let me show you—"
"Enough, Elidian."
A new voice. It was not loud, but it was everywhere, like the grinding of continental plates. The golden light shuddered.
A man stood beside her. He had not arrived; he was simply there. He was colossal, his form seeming to wear the night sky itself, a tapestry of swirling nebulae and distant stars woven into the fabric of his simple, dark robes. His eyes were twin black holes, ancient and consuming. Where Elidian was a gentle sun, he was the silent, immeasurable void between galaxies.
"The Conclave did not authorize a revelation," the stellar demi-god intoned, his voice a gravitational pull on their very souls. "You overstep your mandate. You would unravel a sealed prophecy for a sample?"
Elidian's serene mask finally cracked, showing a flicker of frustration. "The variables have changed, Orion. He is not what we projected—"
"And that makes him more dangerous, not more entitled to our secrets," Orion, the stellar demi-god, boomed softly. His void-like eyes settled on Jade. "The offer is rescinded. The Conclave will not barter truths with an unproven anomaly."
The golden light vanished. The suspended debris crashed to the floor all at once, the sound a shocking cacophony after the silence. The spell was broken. The bounty was still active. The 24-hour clock was still ticking.
Jade felt a surge of cold fury. They had dangled a secret in front of him and then snatched it away. Treating him like a child.
"Fine," Jade said, his voice dropping to a deadly whisper. His violet eyes glowed with manic intensity. "Then get out of my way."
He looked past the demi-gods, at the recovering Dragon-kin, the wary Titan, the other ascendants gathering at the shattered entrance. The hunting pack was reassembling.
Elidian and Orion exchanged a look, then simply faded from existence, leaving the problem to solve itself.
The chaos erupted anew.
The Titan woman let out a ground-shaking roar and charged, her fist pulling back to pulverize him. At the same time, the wounded Dragon-kin, enraged and humiliated, drew a breath, his chest glowing with incandescent heat.
Jade didn't speak to them. He spoke to the void, to the hunger in his soul.
"Observer's Eye."
His crimson eyes bled to a luminous, calculating violet. The world slowed, becoming a tapestry of flowing mana streams and projected trajectories. He saw the Titan's kinetic energy as a roaring orange wave, the Dragon-kin's building fire as a swirling vortex of red. He saw the perfect intersection.
He didn't dodge the Titan. He met her.
Pivoting on his back foot, he used her own colossal momentum against her. As her fist sailed past his head, the wind tearing at his hair, he dropped, his scythe sweeping in a low, brutal arc.
The black star-iron blade didn't just cut; it shattered the stone beneath her feet. The floor erupted upwards in a spray of pulverized rock. The Titan, caught mid-lunge, stumbled forward, her balance annihilated.
In the same fluid motion, Jade was already rising. The Dragon-kin unleashed his torrent of fire. Jade watched it come in the slowed time of his Observer's Eye—a raging, incandescent river of death that warped the air with its heat.
He didn't retreat. Instead, he dropped into a grounded stance, both hands gripping the World-Eater's haft. He drove the butt of the scythe into the stone floor with a crack that echoed through the sanctum. The pale bone haft vibrated violently as he channeled the Obsidian Core's power through it, forcing the weapon to become a conduit, an artillery piece.
The black star-iron blade flared with violent, chaotic purple energy, the air around it screaming as reality strained.
"Obliterate."
He didn't swing. He torqued his entire body, and a focused, spiraling lance of annihilating energy erupted from the scythe's tip. It wasn't a wave; it was a drill, a concentrated beam of pure negation that tore through the heart of the firestorm.
The effect was instantaneous and surgical. The lance pierced clean through the center of the magical conflagration, and the fire around the hole instantly destabilized, its structure unraveling before it could reach him. The spell collapsed inward, then exploded outward in a harmless wash of heat and shimmering mana that licked against the walls.
The precise, devastating application of power, using his scythe as a fixed firing platform, was far more terrifying than any wild, sweeping blast. It was the difference between a brawler's punch and a sniper's bullet.
Before the Dragon-kin's shocked expression could even fully form, Jade was already moving, yanking his scythe free and flowing into his next motion. He used the rising debris from the Titan's stumble as stepping stones, launching himself into the air. He spun, a specter of white hair and black steel, his scythe hooking around the Dragon-kin's remaining good wing.
A sickening crunch of bone and membrane, and the creature fell from the air with a strangled cry.
Jade landed silently in the center of the room, his scythe held low. His chest barely heaved. Around him, the other ascendants—Beast-kin, humans, lesser mages hesitated, their courage faltering. He had dismantled their two strongest champions in three flawless, brutal motions.
He wasn't just fighting. He was conducting a symphony of destruction, and every motion was a note of pure, terrifying perfection. The aura of carnage and latent Oblivion around him was so thick it was hard to breathe.
He was the epicenter. The main event. And the cold, arrogant voice of Alter-Jade whispered back into existence in his mind, purring with satisfaction.
"Look at them hesitate. They came for a bounty. They found a reaper. Let the clock tick down. Let them all come. They are but whetstones for our true edge."
The hesitation of the remaining ascendants lasted only a second. Greed, fueled by the Divine-grade bounty, overpowered survival instinct. A pack of Beast-kin, emboldened by their numbers, surged forward in a wave of fang and claw. A squad of human ascendants, their armor gleaming with defensive enchantments, advanced behind them, spells crackling at their fingertips.
Jade didn't wait for them. He flowed into them.
His scythe was no longer a tool; it was an extension of his will, a whirlwind of black steel and annihilating purple light. He didn't just parry the Beast-kin's claws; he hooked a leading paw with the curve of his blade and, with a brutal twist, used the creature's own momentum to fling it, screaming, into its packmates. Bones snapped. The sound was wet and final.
A human mage unleashed a volley of arcane missiles. Jade didn't dodge. He met them with a contemptuous, horizontal sweep of his scythe.
"Obliterate."
The words were a whispered curse. A crescent wave of hungry, purple-black energy met the glowing missiles. They didn't explode. They were unmade, their magical structure dissolving into harmless, fading sparks before they could reach him.
Then he was among them.
The beauty of his movement was a horrifying contrast to the carnage he wrought. He moved like liquid death, his white hair a stark banner in the chaos. He was a artist, and his medium was ruin. When a human swordsman lunged, Jade didn't block. He sidestepped, his free hand snapping out to grab the man's wrist. There was a sickening crack as bones shattered. Before the scream could leave the man's lips, Jade's scythe, in a reverse grip, swept upwards.
It was not a clean cut. The star-iron blade, humming with malignant energy, ripped through armor, flesh, and bone. The man came apart in a shower of gore that painted Jade's face and white hair in a grotesque, crimson tapestry. Warm blood splattered across his cheek, a stark, violent contrast to the glacial cold in his violet eyes. He didn't flinch. He didn't wipe it away. He wore it like a crown.
He was a mad god at play, and the sanctum was his altar.
He moved through the remaining attackers, a phantom of impossible speed and precision. Each swing of the World-Eater was a masterpiece of devastation. He wasn't just killing them; he was dismantling them, proving the utter futility of their existence against his. The onlookers—Seraphina, Zero, even the recovering Titan, could only watch, mesmerized by the terrifying, beautiful horror of it.
Then, as the last human mage fell, bisected from shoulder to hip, a profound silence fell. The only sound was the drip of blood from Jade's scythe and his own steady, unhurried breathing.
A chime, clear and absolute, echoed in the minds of every ascendant in the Sanctuary.
24-Hour Bounty Period: Concluded.
Target: Jade [Self-Conqueror] - Status: ALIVE.
Objective: FAILED.
Bounty: [Divine-grade Artifact, 50,000 Soul Shards, Title: System's Hand] - CANCELED.
Sanctuary-Wide Directive: [ANOMALY NEUTRALIZATION] - RESCINDED.
All hostile actions against the target are now in violation of Sanctuary Peace Protocols.
The message hung in the air, a final, stark verdict. The hunt was over. They had failed.
Jade stood amidst the carnage, drenched in the blood of his would-be executioners, his scythe still humming in his hand. The violet light in his eyes slowly faded back to glacial crimson. The System had spoken. It had thrown the entire Sanctuary at him, and he had stood, drenched in blood, and proven himself unbreakable.
The quarantine on his divine skills remained. The World-Ender's thirst was still locked.
But in that moment, as the bounty was canceled, Jade knew one thing with absolute certainty.
He was no longer just an anomaly.
He was a precedent.
The message hung in the air, a final, stark verdict. The hunt was over. They had failed.
Jade stood amidst the carnage, drenched in the blood of his would-be executioners, his scythe still humming in his hand. The violet light in his eyes slowly faded back to glacial crimson.
A new, personal, and thunderous chime echoed only in his mind, its tone deeper and more significant than any that had come before.
Significant Feat Acknowledged: Survived a Sanctuary-Wide Bounty Hunt.
EXP Calculated...
LEVEL UP!
Jade: Level 9 > Level 10
You have reached a Milestone Tier.
AWAITING CLASS SELECTION...
AWAITING ELEMENTAL MANIFESTATION...