White-grey energy swept across Adrian's skin, and his physical form dissolved into pure essence. The shift into Source washed away every emotion. Anger, fury, grief, and even the faint echoes of fear vanished. What remained was something utterly silent, an existence of absolute clarity.
The moment he shifted to Source Form, Adrian sensed things he couldn't before. He sensed that the rules of reality around him granted him a certain level of influence and authority over it.
Previously, whenever he entered Source Form, Adrian could control the surrounding essence to behave under his will, even overriding the enemy's essence if their will was weaker. He had never understood the mechanism behind that control.
But now he finally grasped the truth behind the sensation.
He wasn't controlling essence.
He was gaining authority over the rules that governed it.
The Source Adrian wielded now was much purer than ever, enriched by hundreds of basic galactic concepts and fifteen advanced ones. This didn't just unlock his perception to see the rules, but also the Source Form born with this was a much purer essence, which granted him higher authority than he wielded before.
What Adrian did not know was that even this state was only a sliver of the true Source. A fraction of a fraction, yet enough to terrify anything that sought to call itself divine.
...
Far away, in the unreachable depths of the Edge, where even ancient cultivators dared not wander, a lone structure floated. It was a relic from beyond the galaxy, the birthplace of the true Guardian Spirit.
Inside its core, the Guardian Spirit hovered in its true form, a humanoid silhouette of golden energy, far more complex than the spheres found in lesser structures scattered across the galaxy. Hundreds of projection screens floated before it, each displaying different sectors, different worlds, different battles.
This was the true Guardian Spirit. The ones on the lesser structures were merely a tiny part of it, fragments sent to guide and test.
Lines of data flowed like rivers of starlight across the screens. Essence readings, cultivation breakthroughs and demonic movements. The Guardian Spirit monitored it all with patient detachment, a vigil maintained for thousands of years.
Then one alert made the being freeze.
› Early Astral Stage-level energy detected
The Guardian Spirit jolted forward, "What? Astral Stage? No, no, no, this galaxy's peak cultivators only reached the Early Rule Stage. There is no way for an Astral being to appear out of nowhere!"
Its form flickered, processing impossibilities.
"Did an Astral being break the Void Emperor's barrier? But how could an Early Astral Stage do that?"
It rushed through the consoles, isolating the signature, tracing the source frantically.
The technology embedded in this structure was so advanced that it allowed monitoring of the entire galaxy from here. Within moments, it had the visuals.
A projection screen expanded, and it saw a white-grey silhouette standing against a cultivator.
The Guardian Spirit stared, "An energy life form in this galaxy?"
...
Back in the Drakthor sector, Arcton staggered as Adrian's Source Form turned toward him and deep within him, his rule core trembled.
He was not like the lesser beings who had no worldview, not even knowing the reason why their core trembled. He knew the reason, and that was what shocked him more.
"Natural suppression..." His voice cracked. "But how?"
Natural suppression! The kind only encountered when a lesser rule met a greater one.
Whatever Adrian wielded stood above even his divine concept. Not just a little higher, it was to the point that his rule core trembled!
Arcton clutched his chest, feeling the wrongness spread through his entire cultivation foundation. The divine concept he had forged over millennia now felt... incomplete.
Not just that, he felt he had lost some authority of his own divine concept.
"What is this concept?" He gulped, throat dry despite possessing a body that no longer required moisture, "How could it be so much higher than mine?"
He couldn't answer. He couldn't even make sense of this situation.
Arcton refused to accept the truth. He roared, "I wield a divine concept! You are nothing!"
He thrust his hand forward, and a divine spell formed instantly. A spear of prismatic essence bent the void around it, reality itself warping to accommodate its passage. The spell carved its own path through space, slicing through as it shot toward Adrian with enough force to erase multiple stellar warlords entirely.
The spear crossed the distance in a heartbeat; the attack reached him, but Adrian did not move.
Adrian extended one hand, and his consciousness brushed the rule symbols woven into the divine spell; each symbol dictated behaviour.
He exerted his own authority over them.
The symbols flickered. Some resisted, and others bent immediately.
His authority was not complete over it, but it was enough to change its trajectory.
The spell froze mid-space, quivering as if struggling to obey two masters.
Then it curved.
Redirected, as though Adrian had simply rewritten the instruction that told it where to go.
The spear shot past him harmlessly, dissolving into scattered essence a thousand kilometres away.
Arcton recoiled, "You—you seized control of my divine spell?!"
Impossible! Divine spells were absolute!
Enraged, humiliated, Arcton unleashed another divine spell.
This one was denser, faster, reinforced by every drop of his mana. He poured his fury into it, his desperation, his refusal to accept what stood before him, "You will NOT mock me!"
The spell screamed through space, a lance of pure annihilation.
Adrian's eyes flickered, and this time, he used more than mere Source influence.
He invoked Absolute Source Order.
"Erase."
The spell dissolved soundlessly, its existence negated as though it had never been formed.
Arcton screamed, "NO! THAT IS NOT POSSIBLE! DIVINE CANNOT BE ERASED!"
But it had been.
Adrian moved with a slow, inevitable advance, as though nothing could hinder him.
That instant, Arcton felt death. He realised he couldn't do anything against a higher existence than himself.
Every instinct cultivated over millennia screamed the same message: flee.
He turned to flee, abandoning pride, abandoning empire, abandoning everything. He poured whatever remaining mana into a desperate escape.
But Adrian reached into space and the void simultaneously.
With his source influence, he sealed the surrounding reality, binding space like tightening a net and freezing void turbulence in place.
Arcton's body locked mid-flight, "STOP!" His voice cracked, "YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO EXIST—!"
His words cut off as his form compressed inward. The divine concept within him flickered erratically, its unified structure fracturing under pressure it was never designed to withstand.
Adrian closed his hand.
Arcton collapsed into a single point of distortion, his entire body, other than his head, condensed into a space smaller than a grain of sand.
Then it vanished, erased from existence.
...
Adrian released his Source Form as he watched Arcton's lifeless head float in the void.
The white-grey radiance faded, and his human form returned.
"Source influence and authority."
He understood clearly how this worked now. When in the Source form, the rules of reality granted his source a certain level of control, which was the Source influence.
Then the Absolute Source Order was an authority-type source spell, which allowed him to use Source influence anytime, even without being in the source form.
But if it was triggered while in the source form, it amplified the effect to overwhelming heights.
"But the mana consumption is too high now." Even with his increased mana reservoir, he felt the drain acutely. Controlling a divine concept required far more power than simply erasing lesser spells.
"I need to find a solution for this mana problem. I can't depend on the formation every time."
He glanced back toward the Origin Capital. The formation had sustained him during the fight, feeding him mana, but that was a crutch.
If he truly intended to use his source form and protect his people not only against the demons or the empires, but also against whatever lay beyond this galaxy... he needed a deeper well.
But for now, his attention turned towards Aethelia! "It's time to end this once and for all!"
...
Far away, within the hidden structure floating in the unreachable depths of the Edge, the Guardian Spirit stared in stunned silence.
Its golden form flickered rapidly, processing what it had just witnessed.
The Guardian Spirit knew this human. Adrian Blackwood, the anomaly who had entered the lesser structure and touched the Time Concept prematurely and survived. A paradox even by intergalactic standards.
It remembered the essence Adrian used inside the structure. It was unrecorded and something that stood above its own energy.
But that concept it sensed at that time, was not this strong. It was still under the astral stage, even the rule stage.
Yet now...
Now, it felt the energy resembled an astral concept.
"A pseudo-astral born naturally..."
Its voice echoed through the empty chamber, filled with something that might have been awe.
"The Void Emperor must be alerted... this is an exceptional seed!"
It turned toward a console buried deep within the structure's core, one that had remained dormant for thousands of years.
A direct line to the void emperor.
The Guardian Spirit hesitated only a moment, then it activated the beacon.