A piercing, high-pitched shriek erupted from the guardian.
The sound ripped through the cave like a blade, vibrating inside Naro's skull before the attack even came. The guardian then lunged forward—its movement fluid, almost elegant, as if it were dancing through the air.
The strike aimed straight for Naro's throat.
Naro's pupils shrunk.
Blood Dash.
His body tore backward in a flash of red, the attack slicing through empty space where his neck had been a second ago.
He did not stop.
Naro clenched both his hands tightly.
His back split open—Bladed bat Nyx!
And a swarm of bladed bats burst forth, shrieking as they tore through the air. They crashed into the guardian in a storm of metal and blood.
Clang. Clang. Clang.
Useless.
The guardian stood unmoved. The white armor bore no scratches.
"Tch!"
Naro clicked his tongue, fury flashing in his eyes. This thing… Dracula thought grimly. It could rival lower-ranked immortals.
Even a rank 5 genius like Naro was being forced onto the defensive.
"There has to be a way…" Naro thought.
He surged forward.
His staff struck again and again—angled blows, feints, crushing swings. Each impact echoed violently through the cave. Slowly, cracks spread across the guardian's helmet.
Naro's breathing grew heavier.
His anger deepened.
He moved faster.
Faster.
His figure blurred, lightning-fast, every strike fueled by rage and refusal. He poured everything into the assault, as if sheer will could crush inevitability.
Nothing would stop him.
Not now.
Not this creature.
A pitch rang out—unfamiliar.
Naro reacted instantly, blocking the attack and continuing his barrage. His staff hammered the guardian without pause.
Another pitch.
Different.
This time—
Pain exploded through his arm.
Bone shattered completely.
Before his body could register it, another sound rang out—unfamiliar, again—
The guardian struck again.
Ribs collapsed. Naro was sent flying, blood spraying from his mouth as he crashed into stone.
He forced himself upright.
Blood Mend.
Blood energy flooded his body, knitting flesh and bone together while his vampire regeneration burned through his reserves. His aura plummeted.
No hesitation. It was now or never.
Blood Dash.
Naro reappeared before the guardian, smashing its head again.
Left.
Right.
Left.
Right.
Again.
Again.
Again.
The helmet shook.
Cracks spread like spiderwebs.
The guardian began to charge a new pitch.
Naro did not let it finish.
He dashed upward, spinning violently, blood energy roaring around him. Blood Generation Nyx surged as he twisted faster and faster, using the rotation to amplify his strength. Then—
BOOM.
The staff slammed into the guardian's head.
The sound thundered through the cave, echoing endlessly.
Silence followed.
"…HAHA!" Dracula laughed wildly.
"You won! You actually won!"
Naro stood frozen.
Where is the Asrith Sacrifice Nyx?
The silence stretched.
Then—
Metal scraped.
The guardian stood back up.
Its white armor melted away, flowing like liquid, revealing black-gold armor beneath.
A second phase.
Before Naro could react, a harmony of sounds erupted—countless pitches layered together, no longer single signals, but a complete orchestration.
The guardian moved.
And Naro was overwhelmed.
Kicks. Punches. Impacts from every direction.
He was tossed through the air like a broken doll.
Bones snapped.
Flesh tore.
Pain drowned thought.
Even Dracula's soul screamed under the strain.
"LEAVE!" Dracula roared inside Naro's mind.
"This isn't something you can win! Not now! Survive and come back!"
Naro understood this. In reality, victory was not granted to persistence alone.
There were battles where pride led only to annihilation.
There were times when advancing meant death, and retreat meant continuation.
Strength was not proven by dying meaninglessly.
It was proven by knowing when not to fight.
This was not his battle.
Not today.
Not at this level.
Naro activated Immortal Light Travel Nyx.
Light swallowed him.
A few breaths later, he collapsed outside the cave.
His aura was nearly gone.
His body broken.
His soul barely intact.
Naro lay there, breathing shallowly—alive.
And in this world…
That alone was a victory worth accepting.
...
Days passed.
Naro reached a deadlock. The guardian remained undefeated, and without passing it, the path to immortality was sealed. His strength wasn't enough; the battle had already proven that clearly.
So Naro stopped forcing results and began forcing information.
He enslaved ordinary humans first, then weak vampires. Their value lay not in survival, but in exposure. One by one, they were sent into the cave. Naro observed from a distance, recording every pitch, every pause, every corresponding attack.
The results were disappointing, but expected.
Most perished at the first sound. A few survived long enough to trigger a second or third pitch. Weeks of sacrifice yielded only a handful of new data points. At this rate, fully understanding the guardian's attack system would take years, perhaps decades.
That timeline was unacceptable.
…
Naro shifted to another variable: endurance.
If he could not shorten the guardian's attack sequence, he would extend his own margin for error. He searched for Nyx that strengthened the body—bone reinforcement, muscle density, and structural durability.
After prolonged effort, he succeeded in refining Metallic Bones Nyx, a rank 4 transformation. His skeletal structure was reforged, becoming over ten times stronger than before. The effect was visible; beneath his pale skin, darkened bone occasionally surfaced. The change was not aesthetic. It was practical.
…
Time continued to pass.
The sacrifices continued, slowly expanding Naro's understanding of the guardian's sound-based system. Still, the data accumulated too slowly. The core problem remained unchanged: Naro could not survive long enough in a single battle to learn everything he needed.
That led him to consider time itself.
Naro had previously used a time path Nyx—the Ivory Moon Nyx. Replicating such power was unrealistic, but the concept could be reduced. He did not need to rewind months or years.
Seconds would suffice.
Minutes would be even better.
The idea took shape naturally.
"Returning Moment Nyx."
A one-time-use Nyx that forced the user into a temporal loop until a specific objective was achieved. Scholars used it to engrave knowledge beyond normal memory. Fighters used it to polish a single technique to perfection. The risk was well known.
Failure meant repetition.
Endless repetition.
But the function matched Naro's problem. He did not need to win immediately. He only needed to learn—to map every pitch, every response, and every opening.
Using it in combat was dangerous. Against the guardian, failure meant death—over and over again. If victory was never achieved, escape would be impossible.
Naro accepted this calmly.
Progress was never fair. The world did not reward effort equally, nor did it wait for readiness. Those who advanced did so by exploiting rules others feared to touch.
This was not recklessness.
It was optimization.
Naro concluded his planning with a simple understanding:
If strength was not enough, then repetition would compensate.
If time was limited, then time itself would be bent.
…
Time path was one of the most complicated paths in the Nyx world.
Naro understood this better than anyone. In his previous life, he had spent countless years and immeasurable immortal resources just to grasp its surface. Every improvement he made along the time path had demanded a price far beyond what other paths required.
Time path was not merely difficult.
It was divine.
Every other path obeyed rules.
Time path rewrote them.
Where other Nyx bent reality around the user, time path bent reality around everything. One misstep did not only affect the cultivator—it altered cause, effect, and sequence itself.
That was why so few dared to walk it.
Among immortals, time path cultivators were almost nonexistent. Those who attempted it rarely died outright. Instead, they became trapped—lost inside time loops, sealed within fragmented realms, or drifting endlessly through false timelines and dreams. Their bodies lived on, but their lives were gone.
Time path was not something you practiced.
It was something that consumed you.
Throughout the entire history of the Nyx Realm, only one person had ever truly mastered it.
He was not merely an immortal.
He was an anomaly.
His control over time had reached such depth that space and gravity fell under his command as well. Cause and distance bent before him. There was no being in the realms who could stand on equal ground.
He was a rank 9 immortal.
The Heaven-Defying Demon.
Also known as The Last Variable.
He had once shaken the entire structure of existence—but history erased him. His records faded, his techniques vanished, and even his name became something people debated rather than remembered.
Eventually, most stopped believing he had ever existed at all.
And because of that, time path itself was declared a dead end.
Even immortals above rank 6 used it only as a tool for cultivation, never as a true combat or ruling path. To them, mastery was a myth, and the Heaven-Defying Demon was nothing more than a story.
But Naro knew better.
Legends did not disappear because they were false.
They disappeared because the world could not afford to remember them.