The pirate vessel retreated instantly, its engines flaring as it accelerated to maximum speed. The ship's hull groaned under the sudden strain, vibrating violently as every system pushed beyond safe limits.
The ship lurched, space warping around its frame as the void drive engaged prematurely. Warning lights flooded the bridge, but no one cared. Survival outweighed protocol.
The vessel did not even slow down to retrieve the two pirates left floating in the void, abandoning them completely in its desperate escape. Within seconds, the ship vanished, folding itself into compressed space and disappearing from sight.
Silence settled over the void.
The two stranded pirates drifted helplessly, their bodies suspended in the endless dark. One of them opened his mouth, attempting to speak, but no words came out. Even forming words felt impossible under this pressure.
Adrian observed the scene calmly. He didn't do anything to stop the pirate vessel from escaping. He simply watched it fold into the void and vanish.
Actually, this outcome was exactly as he had planned.
He was not truly a Peak Rule Stage being, not in the strict sense the universe defined it. That much he knew better than anyone. His Source Domain granted him one hundred percent authority, yes, but his mana reserves, his Willforce capacity, his combat endurance, all of it fell far short of what a genuine Peak Rule Stage cultivator possessed.
And what he was doing now was the solution he had devised for situations like this, a method born from necessity.
His Source Domain granted him one hundred percent authority, but revealing that power openly carried extreme danger. Even the Guardian Spirit had warned him of the consequences of exposing it. If the universe discovered someone capable of wielding complete authority over reality, he would immediately become a target.
Yet his Source was the reason he stood here at all. It was his only true advantage. If he chose to hide it completely, if he refused to use it even in critical moments, then he would be no different from other cultivators in the face of the universe. And in this exact situation, that choice would have placed everyone aboard his ship in mortal danger.
That contradiction was the problem Adrian had spent years solving.
To solve this problem, Adrian had experimented extensively with his Source Domain over the past fifteen years. Through careful control and repeated testing, he learned how to suppress it deliberately, reducing the authority he outwardly wielded. And during the months of travel, he confirmed this method repeatedly using the Stage Detection System, refining his control to suppress his authority to precise levels.
Through this training, he also discovered a crucial limitation.
At first, the system could not read his Source at all. He appeared as nothing more than a mortal, with no divine concept detected. Only when he actively used his Source did the detection systems register him.
Second, no matter how much he suppressed his authority, the Source itself was always classified as an Ultimate-tier Divine Concept. That aspect could not be hidden.
But this limitation did not concern him.
By suppressing only his authority while leaving the concept tier unchanged, Adrian could present himself as anything from an Astral Stage being to a Rule Stage cultivator. This was not deception in the traditional sense. He was not faking power. He already possessed it and was merely restraining it.
Whether one called it suppression or deception did not matter. What mattered was that it allowed him to manipulate perception, and perception shaped survival.
One immediate benefit was the situation unfolding before him now.
Fear.
Adrian had learned this lesson long ago. You were only truly safe when others feared you. Back in the galaxy, the rulers respected him as the Supreme Emperor, and perhaps some genuinely respected him as a person now. But in the beginning, it was not respect that secured his position.
It was fear.
His overwhelming power had forced them to acknowledge him, and that fear had been the foundation upon which everything else was built. Adrian was certain this truth extended beyond his galaxy. The universe operated on the same principle.
That was why he had suppressed only ten percent of his authority.
At ninety percent, the Stage Detection System calculated him as a Peak Rule Stage cultivator, a level that would terrify Early Rule Stage beings into immediate retreat. He had been confident they would flee, and reality unfolded exactly as he had predicted.
Of course, he could have suppressed his authority further and appeared as a High Rule Stage cultivator, and that alone might have been enough. But Adrian refused to take unnecessary risks, because this solution had a flaw.
While his authority was genuine, his actual combat strength was not equal to that of a true Peak Rule Stage cultivator. Someone at that level, especially with an Ultimate-tier Divine Concept, would possess vastly greater reserves of mana and Willforce. Adrian might withstand one or two direct exchanges against a true Peak Rule Stage being, but beyond that, he would be completely drained and defenseless.
So his true strength, he assumed, was only Mid Rule Stage.
And the reason he directly showed himself as a Peak Rule Stage being was because the universe was unpredictable.
What if these seven Early Rule Stage pirates had chosen to attack anyway? What if they possessed hidden devices, forbidden techniques, or tools unknown to him? Adrian knew too little about the universe to assume safety.
So he chose caution.
Suppressing only ten percent of his authority ensured maximum intimidation with minimal risk.
On top of this, he now got something invaluable.
These two pirates were perfect test subjects.
Arcton had been too weak to serve as a useful reference, while the Demon Emperor had been an anomaly far beyond standard metrics. But these Early Rule Stage cultivators, wielding Mid-tier Divine Concepts, represented a realistic baseline for the universe.
Through them, Adrian could finally determine how much mana and Willforce it would cost him to suppress, fight, or erase beings at this level. That knowledge would allow him to refine his strategies, adjust his authority suppression more precisely, and prepare for the deeper dangers awaiting him in the universe.
As he considered this, movement flickered at the edge of his perception.
The two pirates had recovered enough to act. Their bodies shifted, essence flaring around them as they prepared to flee. They knew there was no chance of victory.
Adrian did not allow them to flee. Space folded beneath his will, and he crossed the distance in an instant, appearing directly in their path.
Both pirates froze mid-motion, their eyes wide, "No—"
Desperation overtook them, and both pirates activated their divine domains. Prismatic light erupted from them, expanding outward in overlapping spheres. The void around them shimmered as their authority took hold, seventeen percent each, enough to suppress weaker beings.
Even facing what they believed to be a Peak Rule Stage being, they noticed something unusual. Adrian's domain extended only thirty meters around him.
And they were outside that range. So they could wield nearly all of their seventeen percent authority, and they intended to use it to escape.
They immediately commanded reality within their domains, altering the rules of space to amplify their speed. The void around them bent, folding inward as their will imposed new laws upon the fabric of existence. Space compressed ahead of them, stretched behind, creating a tunnel of distorted reality that would propel them forward at impossible velocity.
This technique drained their mana and Willforce rapidly. They both had such low authority, and manipulating the space rules with it was wildly inefficient. Each second cost them reserves they could not afford to lose. Still, survival mattered more than conservation.
In a sudden burst of distorted space, the two pirates surged forward at extreme speed, crossing Adrian's position before he could react. The void warped around them, their bodies blurring as they shot past him like meteors.
By the time Adrian turned, they were already far away, rapidly shrinking into the void.
For a brief moment, Adrian was genuinely surprised.
He floated motionless, watching their retreating forms grow smaller and smaller. His Source Domain pulsed faintly around him, still active within its thirty-meter radius, but beyond that radius, he had no control.
"…Interesting," he murmured.
With his source eyes, he could see what these pirates were doing. They were simply compressing the distance ahead of them and moving through it. This was the same logic Adrian had built into the starship he was travelling right now.
But he saw a significant difference in this. The starship utilized the space concept, and it compressed distance by following the natural rules of space. But natural rules had limits. The rules were basically commandments on how a concept should work, and for every natural concept, it had a limit that even Adrian couldn't bypass naturally.
So the starship he had was compressing it within the limits and could only travel at a certain speed. But, opposite to this, the pirates were doing things differently. They weren't following the rule; they were altering it. Using their authority, they had temporarily altered the rule of space within their domains, changing the natural compression limit entirely. They were forcing the universe to allow something that should not be possible.
This method of using authority was completely new to him. In the Milky Way, no one had demonstrated such a technique. Arcton had wielded his divine concept through direct combat, overwhelming force applied through spells and domains. The Demon Emperor had relied on raw power and devouring threads.
In the universe, it seemed such applications were common.
Adrian's gaze remained fixed on the distant specks of light where the pirates continued their escape.
He could have stopped this if his Source Domain were larger, then the pirates would have been within its range, and their authority would have been suppressed. Even if they tried to manipulate the space rules with their suppressed authority, he could have also used his authority against it and negated their escape entirely. The pirates had simply recognized his domain's limited range and exploited that weakness, using their authority to manipulate space beyond his reach and escape.
This showed one of Adrian's clear weaknesses.
And more importantly, Adrian realized that mastering how to use authority would be essential moving forward.
He had spent years refining his Source Domain, learning to suppress it. But he had never truly explored the full scope of what authority could accomplish. He had used it to erase enemies, to nullify attacks, to dominate concepts.
But he had never used it like this, to alter reality's rules in subtle, creative ways.
This encounter had just given him his first lesson in the universe.
Learning authority usage and expanding his Source Domain size were also as important as increasing his energy fuel.