The Inner World Association headquarters hadn't been this loud in decades.
Holographic projections hovered above the circular chamber—seismic data, mana fluctuation graphs, satellite imagery of the Forest of Blackreach reduced to a scarred wasteland. Voices overlapped, sharp and panicked, every tone carrying the same unspoken fear.
"This is unacceptable—" "He caused a continental-scale disturbance—" "If this gets out, we'll lose authority—" "He's a walking disaster—"
A fist slammed into the obsidian table.
Silence fell instantly.
President Alaric Voss stood.
He didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to.
"I'll make this very simple," Alaric said, his gaze sweeping across the council like a blade. "Anyone here who intends to remove Drax Magna—"
He paused.
"—will remove themselves from this Association first."
Murmurs erupted again, sharper now.
"You're protecting him?" "He nearly destabilized reality!" "What happens when he loses control?"
Alaric's eyes hardened.
"Control?" he echoed. "You're still thinking like administrators."
He tapped the table, and a new projection appeared—two domains overlapping, reality tearing at the seams.
"This wasn't recklessness," Alaric continued. "This was interaction. Two inner worlds collided. One of them belonged to a dragon who has ruled that forest since before this Association existed."
He looked around the room.
"And the other withdrew voluntarily."
That landed harder than any shout.
"If you believe the Inner World Association can manage him," Alaric said quietly, "you're delusional."
He straightened.
"But if you believe we need him to survive what's coming—then you're finally thinking clearly."
No one spoke.
"Meeting adjourned," he said. "And let me be clear—Drax Magna is not our weapon. He is not our problem."
A faint, humorless smile touched his lips.
"He's our warning."
The forest was quieter now.
Not peaceful—just emptied.
Drax walked through the ruins with his hands clasped behind his head, boots crunching over scorched earth and crystallized soil. The air still carried traces of abyssal essence, bending shadows slightly as he passed.
He stopped.
Lifted his hands.
Looked at his palms.
They were steady.
Too steady.
Drax slowly closed his fingers into fists.
"I'll need a few stronger dungeons," he muttered, more to himself than anything else. "Second stage won't come on its own."
Power pulsed beneath his skin—silent, patient, endless.
Inner worlds weren't equal.
Most people never realized that.
Some inner worlds stalled early—Stage One, maybe Stage Two at best. Fragile constructs. Limited growth. Borrowed authority.
Advanced inner worlds were different.
They evolved.
They had stages.
Stage One users could partially exude their inner world—manifest fragments into reality. Pressure. Presence. Influence.
Stage Two was an entirely different existence.
A fully unleashed inner world.
Complete domain control.
A single Stage Two inner world user could overwhelm fifty Stage One users without effort.
The gap wasn't linear.
It was absolute.
Drax exhaled slowly.
His Abyssal World was already bending those rules.
Right now—partial release alone had shaken a continent.
He could already erase cities if he wanted to.
And that wasn't even his true form.
Because Drax Magna wasn't just an inner world user.
He was something older.
Something named.
A Monarch candidate.
The Thirteenth Monarch.
The Monarch of the Abyssal World.
The Abyss wasn't a place.
It wasn't a realm.
It was an endless principle.
And Drax wasn't borrowing it.
He was it.
His abyssal essence didn't clash with defenses—it ignored them.
Regeneration failed.
Conceptual protections unraveled.
Even abstract safeguards were eaten away.
Absolute erasure wasn't an ability.
It was a consequence.
Because the Abyss had no edge. No bottom. No final boundary.
It expanded.
Endlessly.
And when Drax fully ascended—when he claimed the mantle of the Thirteenth Monarch—
There would be no scale that could measure him.
No limit to chart.
No ceiling to break.
Because the Abyss would continue growing.
And so would he.
Drax opened his hands again, feeling the power coil and settle, obedient and infinite.
"Yeah," he said quietly, starting to walk again. "Second stage soon."
Far away—
Beyond nations.
Beyond associations.
Beyond dragons and monarchs alike—
A presence stirred.
An entity seated atop a floating citadel of light and law opened its eyes.
Its gaze pierced distance, fate, and probability itself.
"…Interesting," the World Ranker murmured, fingers tightening slightly.
For the first time in centuries—
The rankings trembled.