The path was clear. The cosmic irony was delicious. The Watcher, in its arrogant, millennia-long game of manipulation, had just handed me the one weapon in the multiverse that could permanently erase it from existence.
My objective was no longer just to collect the fragments. It was to seize the Primeval Edict from the clutches of the Static's influence, reboot it to its original, lethal programming, and then point it directly at the ghost in the machine that had been haunting me from the very beginning.
But the weapon was in hell. The Abyssal Plane. The heart of the Netherworld.
A direct assault was suicide. Even with my tri-core System and my authority over Time and Law, invading the home dimension of a cosmic power like the Netherworld was a fool's errand. I was powerful, but I was not yet a god of that magnitude.
So, I would not go as a conqueror. I would go as a thief.
I sat in the silent void, the corpse of the Eternal Arena my throne room. I needed a plan. A perfect, audacious, and utterly insane plan.
"Lia," I sent, my thought a clean, sharp command across the dimensions to my Echo, my queen on the Third Floor.
Sovereign, her reply was instant, her will a perfect mirror of my own.
"The empire is yours," I commanded. "Consolidate my power. Devour the lesser gods. Rule in my name. You are my anchor in this reality. But I require a distraction. A grand one."
Name it, she replied, without hesitation.
"The Architect," I said. "Its agent, the Duchess Vane, has returned to Aethelgard. The Architect believes I am still on the Third Floor. I want you to make it believe I am about to launch an all-out assault on its primary agent. Mobilize my armies. Send Corvus's assassins to harass the borders of Aethelgard's new game-space. Make a lot of noise. Rattle the Architect's cage. Keep its attention, and by extension, the Watcher's attention, focused firmly on a war that isn't actually happening."
A feint on a cosmic scale, she understood immediately. It will be done.
With my rivals distracted by a phantom war, I could make my move.
I needed a key to the Abyss. A door. And my past, a thing I had so recently scorned, was about to provide it.
I reactivated the Group System, the link to the ghosts of Aethelgard. I sent a message to the one entity there who was now, technically, my most powerful piece.
The message was for Seraphina. The vengeful spirit, now puppeteering the First Princess and commanding the loyalty of the Kaelen-Golem.
"Hello, wife," my message began, dripping with a mocking intimacy. "I have a business proposition. I know what you truly desire. Not the throne of a backwater world. But the reunification of your soul with your original body. A true resurrection."
I let the offer hang in the void for a moment. Her body, the original Seraphina Vane's, was now a soulless puppet of her mother, the Duchess, The Architect's true agent.
"I am about to make a journey to the Netherworld," I continued. "A place of soul-smiths and demon-forges. A place where such a resurrection might just be possible. I can open the door. But I need a guide. An anchor. The Kaelen-Golem you control is a creature of 'Karmic Abscess', born from a dynastic power that was tainted by a deal with the Shadow Lord. It has a natural, karmic resonance with the Abyss. It can act as a living tuning fork, allowing me to pinpoint a stable entry point."
"Help me get in," I concluded, "and I will help you get your body back. Refuse, and I will inform The Architect of your little ghost-in-the-machine routine, and it will delete you both."
It was a perfect offer, an appeal to her self-interest, backed by a threat of absolute annihilation.
Her reply was a single, hissed thought, filled with hatred and pragmatic acceptance. [When and where?]
The plan was set. Lia would create a grand distraction. Seraphina and her ghost-puppet would be my key. And I would be the thief who slipped into hell while everyone was watching the fireworks.
I used my authority over the collapsing Arena, the Chronaeternal Engine, to bend space and time, appearing in the void just outside the dimensional shell of Aethelgard.
The Seraphina-entity was waiting. The golden Kaelen-Golem stood beside the possessed princess, its eyes burning with a cold, hateful light.
"The deal is simple," I said, dispensing with pleasantries. "You will focus the golem's karmic energy. I will use my power over reality to tear open the hole. We step through, we find the Edict, and then we discuss your payment."
She agreed. The golem raised its hands, and a wave of pure, golden, yet undeniably tainted energy poured forth. I met it with my own, weaving the raw power with my authority over Law and Time, tearing at the seams of reality.
A vortex of screaming, blood-red energy, a portal to the Abyssal Plane, ripped open in the void before us.
"After you," I said with a mocking bow.
We stepped through.
The Abyssal Plane was not a world of fire and brimstone. It was a silent, cold, and infinite expanse of black, glassy stone under a sky of swirling, crimson nebulae. The very air was thick with the psychic screams of a billion devoured souls. And in the distance, a single, colossal structure dominated the horizon: a fortress-city of impossible, jagged architecture, radiating an aura of pure, malevolent power. The heart of the Netherworld.
And at its highest peak, a beacon of corrupted, chaotic light pulsed like a diseased star.
The Primeval Edict. And with it, Lin Feng.
But as we stood there, on the precipice of our insane heist, my System, now almost fully restored, finished a deep-level scan of our target. And it revealed a twist, a terrifying truth about what had happened to Lin Feng in his "ascension."
[!!! CRITICAL ANALYSIS COMPLETE: 'THE PRIMEVAL EDICT' !!!]
[The Static's corruption of the fragment is more advanced than previously assessed.]
[It has not just infected the System. It has initiated a 'Forced Symbiosis' protocol with its host, 'Lin Feng'.]
[The host's soul has been shattered and consumed. His personality has been erased. He is no longer a 'user' of the System.]
[He has BECOME the System.]
[The entity you are seeing, the beacon on that spire, is no longer Lin Feng, the World-Breaker. It is now a new, singular consciousness: a perfect fusion of a broken boy's hatred and a cosmic horror's nihilistic will. It is the first, true, self-aware avatar of The Static in this reality.]
[And it has been waiting for you.]