Chapter 185
The warfront stretched into a storm of steel, fire, and rot. The three guild battle wagons crawled forward like a living fortress, their iron wheels crunching over a ground drowned in corpses. At the front of each, a golem war bull strained against its bindings, unaffected by the carnage, for such creatures were forged only to obey. Each beast stood five feet tall at the shoulder, weighing nearly a ton, its body a fusion of stone, metal, and enchanted flesh. Plates of dark steel were grafted onto its hide, etched with runes that glowed faintly red, while cords of sinew and arcane bindings pulsed like molten veins beneath.
Its horns were not bone but jagged blades, curved forward like cleavers designed to tear through armor, and its hooves struck the earth like warhammers, shaking the soil with every step. The eyes, cold and lidless, burned with the pale light of their core crystal, giving the creature a soulless, unblinking stare. The groan of the enchanted armored war bull golems pulling the iron frames was like the bellow of titanic engines of bone and muscle, their movements precise and merciless, dragging the wagons through fields of ruin. Support units huddled close, their hands bloodied as they dragged the wounded into the wagons, while veterans circled them with scarred spears and dented shields, the beasts leading them forward through the storm.
Alexsei Sokolov, half-hidden in the second wagon, breathed with quiet strain, his wheelchair steady beneath him as ten humanoid golems of carved stone and iron stalked beside the column, their faceless heads scanning, their blades rising whenever the shriek of an undead broke too near. Archers loosed arrow after arrow, bolts tipped with fire and poison striking skulls with merciless precision, thinning out stragglers as the vanguard carved a path. Yet with every step forward, the air grew darker, the reek of necrotic magic thickening until the sky itself seemed to hang lower, pressing down with invisible weight.
Daniel fought at the spearpoint, every duel a brutal storm compressed into minutes. An Anchor rose, chained to half a dozen armored corpses that staggered like marionettes—and he dismantled them with blade, spell, and relentless speed. His movements were surgical yet feral, cutting apart tendons, smashing skulls, weaving through swarming claws. Each Anchor fell slower than the last, their power dragging him deeper into the mire, but Daniel's rage only honed sharper. His duels formed the unbroken rhythm of the advance, each Anchor a terrible drumbeat that drove the entire caravan forward.
But around him, the Lazarus fighters began to burn their names into the field as well. Charllote's fire-scorched blades carved sigils of flame through the air, each dagger strike bursting undead flesh in showers of embers. Jacob stood like a furnace unleashed, his magna-lava coursing over the ground, swallowing entire ranks of undead as if the earth itself had turned molten. Oliver's poison darts whistled over shoulders, felling horrors before they could close, while Farrah planted entire walls of living vines that twisted up from blood-soaked soil, shielding the flanks and splitting the enemy tide.
Rainey's insects darkened the air in a living shroud, millions of wings humming into a black storm that stripped the flesh off Anchors' guardians in seconds, leaving skeletal frames behind. Sabine lunged as a beast, her tiger-humanoid form tearing through the battlefield with claws that shredded bone, every leap breaking through a knot of resistance. Noah stood immovable, his body transmuted to steel, hammering undead into dust with bare fists, while Mary Kaye drove her shovel into the ground with seismic force, earth erupting in jagged waves that toppled the enemy by the dozens. Cody followed with shockwave bursts that rattled bones in their sockets, blasting entire groups apart with each strike.
And through the chaos, Natasha Sokolov and Borislav wove death from the edges. Natasha, calm as frost, loosed ice-laced bolts that froze Anchors' limbs in mid-swing, shattering them with cold precision. Borislav, poison magic coiling like a sickly fog, turned the battlefield into a graveyard within moments of his whispers.
As each clash unfolded, Daniel's duels and the Lazarus assaults began to converge. No longer separate struggles but a massive tide pressing inward, all roads leading to the last Anchors who clustered together at the heart of the field. The final guardians had sensed the inevitable and drawn together, a circle of towering, corrupted giants bound in chains of bone, their bodies surrounded by dozens of elite undead like priests guarding their gods. The sky blackened, the earth heaved, and the air quaked with necrotic pulses that shook the wagons themselves.
The guild's fighters, Daniel at the spear, advanced like a single organism—support wagons shielded, archers firing, veterans roaring, golems marching in lockstep—and the Lazarus bloodline burning like a storm in every direction. It all tightened into one single, brutal convergence. The last Anchors were waiting, their shadows towering, their weapons drawn, their power enough to shake the marrow of even the veterans.
The crescendo had come. Daniel's blade burned with anticipation. The Lazarus siblings tightened their grips on weapons slick with blood and flame. Natasha nocked another frozen bolt, Borislav's poison thickened into green fog, and Alexsei's golems closed rank around the wagons.
The battlefield shook as if the earth itself was groaning. From the torn wound of the first gate, a tide of black rot poured endlessly, undead bodies crashing into the living with the force of an ocean wave. The stench of decay thickened until every breath carried the taste of grave dust. Daniel stood at the front, his blade dripping gore, his eyes narrowed and unyielding as he watched the tide swell higher and higher. His voice carried like steel hammered on an anvil:
"Hundreds of thousands. That's the number crawling out of this gate. Brace yourselves—this is only the first wave!"
The warning rippled through the lines like an electric current, the exhausted but unbroken fighters tightening their grips, shifting formations, and steadying hearts against despair.
Charlotte Lazarus lifted her fire-scorched blades, her face streaked with ash but burning with unyielding fire. She shouted above the roar of the horde, her command cracking like a whip:
"Lazarus Guild! Replenish your stamina now—no excuses! Heal every wound, no matter how small. We will not stop moving, do you understand? If you fall behind, the tide swallows you whole. Keep your blades alight, keep the fire burning!"
Mary Kaye Lazarus, her shovel grounded into the bloody earth like a war banner, turned to the members of the High Strategy Guild. Her voice was calmer but no less commanding, steady as stone:
"You've trained for this! Cast wide, hold your lines, and rotate the injured backward to the wagons. The earth is our shield and our weapon,let it carry us through this storm!"
Beside her, Jacob Lazarus' presence radiated like a furnace unleashed. His magna-lava pulsed at his fists, the ground trembling under his molten aura. He bellowed to the sub-captains: "Keep the lines staggered, don't cluster, or the evolved Anchors will crush you in swathes! Feed me your openings, and I'll burn them to ash!"
And in the midst of the chaos, Natasha Sokolov stood as the icy heart of the White Devil Guild, her crossbow glowing with frost, bolts of water and ice coiling like serpents around her. Her voice cut sharp as a frozen blade:"White Devil—control the flow! Slow them, freeze them, choke the field! Remember: zero deaths. If one of you breaks, the rest will fall. Stay sharp, stay alive."
Behind them, the three battle wagons thundered forward, pulled by war bull golems whose hooves cracked bones under their iron weight. Mounted on each wagon, the enchanted cannons rotated into position. Each was small but powerful, etched with glowing runes, and able to fire six times before a punishing five-minute cooldown. The roar of the first volley shook the field—blinding bursts of flame and shrapnel tearing massive holes into the sea of undead, flinging bodies skyward like blackened ragdolls. Four cannons per wagon meant twelve simultaneous detonations, and the shockwaves cleared entire corridors for the guilds to advance.
The respite was short-lived. From beyond the broken ranks of lesser undead, ten Evolved Anchors emerged, towering horrors that made the earlier monsters seem almost tame. Their hulking frames were swollen with unnatural growth, spikes of bone jutting from their backs and shoulders like jagged towers. Veins of crawling shadow pulsed beneath their pallid flesh, writhing like living parasites that fed on their fury.
They moved with terrifying purpose, their four arms now fused with grotesque weapons—massive cleavers, jagged spears, bone-forged hammers that pulsed with necrotic energy. Each swing cracked the air itself, shockwaves rippling through the field as though the world recoiled from their presence. When their feet struck the ground, the earth quaked, splintering stone beneath their bulk.
These were not mere beasts. They were siege engines given flesh, engines of ruin designed to crush armies by their existence alone. Their roars tore through the din of battle, shaking the lungs of all who heard them, forcing even veterans to grit their teeth against the rising tide of fear.
The frontline buckled under their advance. Shields bent, men staggered, spells shattered against their armored hides. Every strike from the Anchors sent fighters flying, their colossal weapons carving swathes of destruction as if the battlefield itself were nothing but clay beneath their wrath.
And yet, even as despair threatened to creep in, the guilds tightened their lines. The wagons had to move. There was no other choice.
Players screamed as shields cracked and armor shattered, their bodies flung back dozens of feet like ragdolls under the sheer force of the Evolved Anchors' blows. Bones snapped, lungs emptied, and the earth shook with every impact. Yet even in the chaos, the guild lines did not break.
Healers moved like lifelines in the storm, hands glowing as they dragged the wounded back from death's edge, mending shattered ribs, knitting torn flesh, forcing breath into broken lungs. Stamina potions were passed from hand to trembling hand, poured down throats before exhaustion could collapse the line. Tankers staggered but did not fall, planting shields in the soil even as blood dripped from their lips, buying seconds that stretched into eternity.
Frontline fighters covered for one another like cogs in a great machine—one shield rising where another fell, one sword striking where another arm faltered. Every movement was practiced desperation, years of discipline and instinct channeling into survival. The roar of the Anchors pressed down like a mountain, but still they stood.
The wagons groaned forward, wheels creaking, every step bought with sweat, blood, and stubborn will. The battlefield was no longer simply a clash of steel and shadow—it had become a test of endurance, a war of attrition where even a moment's hesitation meant collapse.
Daniel dove headfirst into one of the Evolved Anchors, his blade carving a brutal line into its knee before twisting upward in a flash of steel, tearing through sinew and bone. The monster staggered, but Daniel did not slow,he pressed forward with terrifying purpose, dismantling it piece by piece as if he were not fighting, but performing an execution already decided. Undead swarmed him in blind desperation, clawing, biting, stabbing, yet he moved through them like smoke and steel—untouchable, relentless, inevitable. Every Anchor that crossed his path ceased to be an enemy and became only a body waiting to fall.
Above and around him, the Lazarus bloodline unleashed their fury, their presence turning the battlefield into a storm of destruction.
And at the forefront of that storm stood Addison Lazarus,the retired elder, mother of Charlotte, once the leader of the Eastern Lazarus Guild. At fifty-seven, her hair bore the silver threads of age, yet her body moved with the precision and strength of a warrior who had survived wars that would have broken lesser souls. Each swing of her blade was a tempest, sweeping aside not only the undead but the despair that clung to her allies.
Her strikes were not wild fury, they were storms in rhythm, controlled and deliberate. Her blade cleaved Anchors apart with the practiced weight of decades, her footwork flawless, her eyes sharp as steel. Every motion reminded all who watched why she had once been counted among the rankers of legend. For Addison, age had not dimmed her; it had refined her into something sharper, colder, unshakable.
Where Daniel was inevitability, Addison was resilience incarnate, the storm that refused to fade, the living proof that the Lazarus line was forged in something unbreakable.
Charlotte's fire blades carved burning arcs, Jacob's lava rivers split the enemy into melting screams, Mary Kaye shattered the earth beneath the undead to swallow them whole, and Natasha froze an entire wave mid-charge, shattering them like glass.
The battle wagons advanced under constant guard, cannons rotating as gunners reloaded, firing again and again until the ground was a cratered wasteland of ash and broken limbs. The support units never ceased, dragging the injured to safety, splinting bones, sealing cuts, pumping healing magic through their comrades. Veterans barked orders, archers on the wagons peppered the field with arrows, and Alexsei's ten humanoid golems marched in cold precision, their blades flashing as they cut down stragglers that broke through the lines.
But the gate still bled corpses like an endless wound. The battlefield was no longer measured in victories or losses, it was measured in the rhythm of survival, the pounding heart of guild leaders keeping their people moving, and the silent certainty that if they stopped for even a breath too long, they would be drowned in blackness.
Clearing the residential district was the hardest part of the first quest. The Anchors had fallen, but their corpses only clogged the streets, and behind them surged an unending tide of shrieking undead spilling out of crumbled homes and shattered courtyards. Every window was a mouth that spat horrors, every alley a trap waiting to spring. The guilds pushed forward in formation, step by step, blades and spells flashing in the choking dusk. Daniel knew the clock was already ticking, only when the district was purged would the barrier fall, and only then would they have the thirty precious minutes of reprieve before the second gate opened. Beyond that gate lay the industrial quarter and the workforce barracks, where harder, crueler things would be waiting.
The district itself fought them as much as the undead did. Narrow streets funneled the spearhead into choke points, forcing Charlotte and Sabine to cut a path with relentless speed, while Noah stood like a wall against the tide, his steel skin braced against claw and fang. Farrah's vines spread across walls, pulling down collapsing roofs before they could crush their allies, while Rainey's swarms filled the sky, blotting out the evening light in a storm of wings. Behind them, Addison roared commands and cleaved through anything that broke past, his halberd's blade painted black with ichor.
Every house had to be checked. Every courtyard had to be burned. The evolved undead were cleverer here, using the labyrinth of streets to circle behind the spearhead, striking from rooftops and storm-drains. Natasha Sokolov froze entire balconies into icy coffins, while Mary Kaye shattered hidden tunnels with her shovel's earth-breaking swings. Emma's voice never stopped, calling out weak points, marking hidden ambushes, keeping the front from being overwhelmed.
But the cost was brutal. Players were dragged screaming into doorways, torn apart in the shadows of their own torchlight. Others were poisoned by unseen claws, their bodies collapsing before healers could reach them. Still, no one broke ranks. Step by bloody step, the united guilds advanced, their banners tattered, their voices hoarse from battle cries, until the main square of the residential quarter finally came into view.
It was there that Daniel halted, blade dripping, his chest heaving. The square was piled high with corpses, the last resistance breaking under the combined might of guild steel and magic. Horns sounded again, three short blasts. The signal. The system itself confirmed it.
Quest Update: Residential District Cleared. Timer Activated: 30 Minutes Until the Second Gate Opens.
The guilds collapsed into what cover they could find, drinking potions, bandaging wounds, gathering their dead. For thirty minutes, the city would be silent. And then the industrial quarter would awaken, factories, forges, and barracks where the true nightmare soldiers slept.
Daniel stared at the looming second gate, its chains already trembling in anticipation. He muttered under his breath, not for his allies but for himself.
"Thirty minutes of mercy. After that, hell opens again."
The air still reeked of blood and burning wood when the system message faded. Players collapsed where they stood, drinking potions, binding wounds, or simply trying to catch their breath. For many, the thirty-minute reprieve sounded like salvation. But Daniel wasn't looking at the tired faces of his allies, his eyes were locked on the second gate. The colossal wall of blackened steel and stone groaned like a living thing, its chains rattling with the weight of what waited behind it. Every instinct told him the moment it opened, they would be facing a slaughterhouse.
He tightened his grip on his blade, its runes still glowing faint from the Anchor's blood. "We don't wait," he said flatly. The words cut through the exhausted murmurs like a knife. "If we give them thirty minutes, they'll pour out prepared. Armored. In formation. And they'll crush us." He lifted his head, voice rising so it carried across the guild lines. "Healers, mages, tanks form a barrier. Hold the wounded, guard the rear. Everyone else prepare to move. The second gate falls by my hand."
A ripple of shock moved through the camp. Addison barked a short laugh, half mad, half thrilled. "There he goes again, rushing headlong into death!" But even as he said it, he spun his halberd into readiness.
Charlotte wiped her fire blade against her sleeve, eyes narrowing with a dangerous smile. "Then let's not waste time."
Jacob Lazarus slammed his hands together, magma veins lighting up his arms, molten cracks spilling between his fingers. "If you're serious, brother, I'll split the walls open for you."
Farrah was already spreading her hands, roots digging into stone, preparing to shield the healers with living barricades. Rainey's swarm coiled overhead in a restless halo, hungry for new prey. Sabine shifted, fur breaking through her skin as she dropped to all fours, her tiger form snarling in anticipation.
The White Devil guild moved with equal purpose, Natasha drawing her icy sigils into the ground, freezing the cobblestones beneath her, while Fedorova summoned gusts to feed the flames and clear the smoke. Radinka hefted her axe onto her shoulder, smirking as if the very idea of waiting thirty minutes offended her.
Daniel raised his gunblade high, its steel gleaming with the reflection of the battlefield's flames—then, without warning, the weapon shimmered and dissolved into motes of light, vanishing into the depths of his storage. His hand was left bare, palm open to the storm of death and smoke around him. He gave a sharp command for the path to be cleared, his voice cutting through the clash of steel and the groans of the dying.
Obediently, the fighters around him shifted aside, forming a circle of open space. In that moment, the air thickened, as though the world itself paused to watch. A massive sigil bloomed into existence beneath his feet, its size expanding outward in glowing arcs of blue and violet flame until it encompassed the entire cleared ground. Thirteen smaller sigils spun to life around it, orbiting the greater circle like moons around a sun, each etched with lines of arcane geometry too intricate for mortal hands to carve. They floated in deliberate patterns, weaving together in rhythm, resonating with the pulsing heart of the larger seal.
Daniel reached into the storm of death itself, drawing on what lay hidden in plain sight the thousands of corpses scattered across the battlefield. Each lifeless shell still carried faint remnants of mana, the final flickers of the people they had once been, lingering like dust motes in the wind. Fire, frost, lightning, shadow, light dozens of arcane flavors hung in the air, weakened but unclaimed, waiting to be harvested. With the vast sigil as his anchor, Daniel gathered them, threads of colorless power rising from the corpses in faint shimmering streams, tugged toward him as though the battlefield itself were exhaling its last breath into his waiting grasp.
Through the lens of his evolved Resonant Perception, the world unfolded in ways no ordinary eyes could ever see. To Daniel, reality was no longer just light and shadow but a living tapestry of energies and structures. He saw the faint skeleton of mana running through every body, the cracks and breaks in bones, the tearing of muscles, the flicker of weakening life in the wounded. He saw the flow of power weaving between objects, the way a broken shield still hummed faintly with protective enchantments, the way shattered swords bled scraps of elemental heat. Even the earth itself was a body, veins of ley energy threading through its depths, pulsing softly beneath the carnage. In every direction, structures of both living and non-living forms were laid bare, patterns of strength and weakness, balance and fracture, all visible with crystalline clarity.
To those watching, it looked like Daniel stood at the center of a storm of light, threads of spectral energy rising from the corpses like smoke drawn to a flame, weaving together above his head. To him, however, it was a symphony thousands of broken notes, discordant but salvageable, waiting to be conducted into something greater. His eyes burned with the reflection of it, every flicker of mana, every weakness in his enemies, every hidden vein of power in the land itself revealed, leaving him not just a warrior but a master of the battlefield's very essence.
The air convulsed as Daniel lifted his hand toward the heavens, the great sigil at his feet pulsing like a living heart. The thirteen smaller circles spun faster, their rotation drawing streaks of raw light across the air, until they became ribbons of color—thirteen distinct hues representing thirteen primal Arcane Elements. Fire smoldered in deep crimson, lightning flickered in violet arcs, frost shimmered in pale azure, and others bled their essence into the void, weaving together in impossible harmony. The battlefield itself seemed to recoil, the very sky splitting into fissures of white as the gathered energy tore at the fabric of existence.
And then it began.
From the center of the vast sigil, a sphere of blinding plasma ignited—dense, furious, and unstable. At first, it was no larger than a soldier's shield, but as the thirteen elements fed into it, the sphere spun faster, devouring light, devouring sound, devouring the air itself. It grew, not like a simple explosion, but like a new star being born, its radiance washing across the battlefield in waves of scorching brilliance. The thirteen arcane sigils became its orbiting engines, each flaring brighter as they poured their essence into the vortex, accelerating its spin until the plasma blurred into a storm of annihilation.
This was not the Plasma Vortex Daniel had once wielded—wild, overwhelming, and destructive. This was Plasma Genesis, the perfected form, an absolute rewriting of reality's laws. The thirteen elements did not clash, they harmonized, their opposing natures forced into balance by Daniel's Resonant Perception, each weakness feeding another's strength. Fire sharpened lightning, lightning hardened ice, shadows cloaked light, and light burned shadow away—the eternal contradictions collapsed into a single unified law of destruction. The plasma sphere howled, its voice a choir of stars collapsing, and within its heart was nothing but erasure.
When Daniel released it, the world cracked.
The plasma did not surge forward like a projectile; it expanded, unraveling the battlefield in a spiral of blinding devastation. The ground tore apart in a helix of molten rock, corpses and remnants vaporizing before they could even scream, their mana flickering once before vanishing into the newborn star. Fortifications dissolved as though time had fast-forwarded their decay by centuries, steel running like water, stone melting into rivers of glass. The sky itself seemed scorched, clouds reduced to cinders, the air screaming as it twisted under forces it was never meant to endure.
For those who watched, it was not a man standing at the center of the carnage. It was a god, rewriting the battlefield with a single stroke, erasing the old and forging a new law of existence: that nothing could withstand Plasma Genesis. In its wake, there was no wreckage, no ruin, no survivors—only silence, and a scar of pure white glass carved into the earth, as if the world itself had been branded by Daniel's will.
Far beyond the mortal battlefield, where the fabric of existence thinned into veils of timeless ether, six Elder Gods watched. They had observed countless wars, countless heroes, countless acts of magic so mighty that they could reshape kingdoms, but this was different. When Daniel unleashed Plasma Genesis, all six rose from their thrones of eternity. The power that unfurled below was not simply destructive; it was transcendent, a language of unmaking so absolute that even they—upper beings woven of pure law and cosmic authority, felt a tremor of dread.
The star of plasma expanded, rewriting the world in a radiant spiral of annihilation, and the gods felt the weight of it pressing against their essence. Had it struck them directly, had they been within that storm, even their immortal cores would not have endured. For the first time in ages uncounted, they tasted the possibility of death.
Then came the residue.
The lingering afterglow of Daniel's attack did not fade into silence but instead shimmered like a vast, fractal scripture inscribed upon reality itself. Patterns of sigils unfolded in infinite recursion, layers upon layers of arcane syntax woven together so tightly they defied comprehension. The magical language written into Plasma Genesis was not meant for mortal minds, nor even for divine. The Elder Gods reached out with their perception, expecting to decipher, to reduce, to analyze. Yet what they saw broke their eternal certainty.
It was not words, nor glyphs, nor divine runes. To them, it was raw information—streaming endlessly as ones and zeros, cascading strings of binary that slipped through their godly comprehension. They were beings who had shaped suns, carved mountains from void, and dictated the laws of causality, yet here they stood, unable to pierce the code of a mortal's creation. The structure was too dense, too alien, as if reality itself had been reprogrammed by a foreign will, one outside the architecture of the cosmos they had once believed immutable.
The gods exchanged no words at first. Their gazes fixed on Daniel, who stood in the silence of his devastation, haloed in the luminous residue of his spell, his Resonant Perception still burning. His presence seemed impossibly vast, as though he were no longer bound to flesh and blood, but standing between mortal and divine, bridging the gap with sheer force of will.
Finally, one of the Elder Gods whispered, his voice trembling across eternity:
"This… cannot be mortal sorcery. This is… the unspoken Origin law The scaffolding of existence itself."
Another god, usually unshaken, clenched his hand upon the armrest of his throne. "No… it is worse. It is the kind of code that even we cannot rewrite."
And in that moment, the six understood: Daniel had not merely cast a spell. He had intruded upon the sacred domain of creation, reached into the foundation of their reality, and rewritten its song. Plasma Genesis was not just destruction, it was proof that a mortal had touched the very loom of existence, and forced it to bend.
At the same time, deep within the unreachable folds of eternity, where even gods dared not trespass, one of the slumbering Primordial stirred. The airless void around the Twin Thrones shifted, the fabric of creation itself bowing as if it recognized its true master. Upon the higher of the two seats, the High Coequal Supreme Being remained still, a vast silhouette of silence and authority, older than stars, older than the gods who thought themselves eternal.
No words passed His lips, no gesture of command moved His hand—only a faint smirk curved across His unfathomable face. That single ripple of expression was enough to send echoes through the cosmos, like a stone cast into the sea of infinity. The six Elder Gods who watched Daniel froze, their immortal perception instantly aware. They felt the weight of that smirk as one feels the crushing gaze of an endless sky.
Yet they did not react. They dared not. For they knew well that their very existence hung upon the whim of that Being. A whisper from Him could dissolve their thrones into dust; a stray thought could unmake the essence that sustained them. Their power, which had always seemed absolute, now felt brittle and hollow beneath the shadow of His presence.
And still, He did not rise. He did not speak. He merely watched—watching Daniel, the mortal who had reached into the lattice of reality itself and painted over its code with his own will. The faint smirk remained, carrying no warmth, no mockery, only a strange acknowledgment, as if the Primordial saw in Daniel something not even the Elder Gods could name.
The six dared not ask, but a silent understanding passed among them: if the Supreme Being had chosen to open His eyes fully, even for an instant, the act alone would erase not only Daniel, not only the battlefield, but perhaps the entirety of the layered cosmos they presided over.
And yet, He only smirked, and allowed the reality to continue.
The faint smirk lingered on the face of the High Coequal Supreme Being, subtle yet vast enough to reverberate across the lattice of creation. It was not amusement, nor mockery, but recognition. For what Daniel had unleashed the swirling heart of Plasma Genesis and its multilayered, binary residue, was not new. It was ancient. Older than gods. Older than stars.
The Supreme Being alone remembered.
Long before the thrones of the six Elder Gods were carved, before galaxies took their first breath, there had been a Forbidden Script, a primal architecture etched into the foundations of reality itself. It was a coding language of existence, a song that shaped all laws, too dangerous to leave in the hands of any who might wield it freely. Even the Elder Gods, powerful beyond measure, had only been permitted fragments, illusions of authority. The full tongue had been sealed, layered beneath eternity, so deep that no mortal or divine being was ever meant to rediscover it.
And yet, Daniel had touched it.
The residue of his Plasma Genesis was not random brilliance nor reckless sorcery; it bore the unmistakable fingerprint of that hidden tongue. The way the sigils had spiraled into perfect symmetry, the way the thirteen Arcane Elements had not clashed but harmonized as if obeying a greater law, the way the attack itself unraveled into streams of ones and zeros every pattern was proof. Daniel had stumbled upon the latticework of the First Language, the very script the once singular Supreme Being had used to sketch the skeleton of reality itself.
And though the High Coequal Supreme Being sat alone upon the greater of the Twin Thrones, the seat of highest authority, His presence was incomplete. The vast chamber of eternity echoed with silence, for the harmony that once defined the Thrones had been broken. The other half—the twin who had once shared the crown of sovereignty, who had balanced His will with an equal yet opposite essence—was absent. That twin had long since withdrawn into slumber, a retreat so profound it lay beyond the fathoms of time itself. The silence was not simple rest; it was deeper than the abyss, older than void, heavier than death. It was the kind of silence that weighed upon the fabric of existence, leaving even gods uncertain whether the twin still dreamed or had simply vanished into dimensions unnamed.
Yet even in His solitude, the High Coequal Supreme Being understood. His perception was not bound by form or hour, not shackled to the fragile chains of space. It extended across the corridors of reality like an endless tide, touching all things mortal and divine, unraveling every layer of causality until even the smallest ripple could not escape His notice. And in that perception, He recognized it—the faintest of signatures, subtle yet unmistakable, woven into the path of the young noble lord.
It was not His own hand guiding the mortal. No command of His, no decree, no whisper. This touch belonged to the absent half, the other seat of the Twin Thrones. It was the mark of a will He had not felt in countless ages, a presence thought long lost to stillness, now flickering once more. Though it had not awakened fully, its influence threaded through Daniel like unseen strands of fate, gently steering him toward truths no mortal should ever glimpse, truths sealed away before the first stars were born.
The Supreme Being's gaze lingered on Daniel, though to any other it might have seemed indifferent. But in His silence there was recognition. A faint smirk curved across His face—not of mockery, nor pity, but of inevitability. He alone remembered what the missing half represented. He alone could sense its design moving, shaping, unfolding through the mortal who dared wield the First Language.
The six Elder Gods trembled in His presence, their divine perception reduced to fragments. They saw only what they could endure, and dared not question. But the High Coequal Supreme Being knew the truth: His twin had not been erased. It had chosen its instrument. And that instrument was Daniel.
Yet the Supreme Being did nothing.
No word. No decree. No erasure. The Supreme Being simply watched, that faint smirk unmoving, as if to acknowledge the hidden hand at work and the mortal who carried its mark. For even in incompleteness, there was recognition: if a counterpart had chosen Daniel as a vessel, then to interfere would unravel designs older than creation itself.
So stillness reigned. The six Elder Gods dared not question the silence, dared not ask why judgment was withheld. They only knew what they had always known, if the will of the Supreme Being demanded it, Daniel would vanish in an instant. Yet no such command came.
Instead, the mortal's path was permitted to continue, as though this move had already been inscribed in a game far beyond the comprehension of any god.
That was why the smirk lingered.
For the six Elder Gods could not decipher its meaning. They could only gape at the alien strings of data unfurling before them—baffled, paralyzed, afraid. To their sight, Daniel was an aberration, a flaw against the order of all things. But to the Supreme Being, every flicker of Daniel's creation stirred echoes long buried. It was not a threat. It was irony. Inevitability. Perhaps even amusement, for the cycle of creation had dared to repeat itself in ways that no hand, not even the First Architect's, had foreseen.
The smirk deepened in silence, a gesture infinite in its restraint. For Daniel was not merely a mortal; he was reflection and reminder, spark and shadow, a vessel of what had once been forbidden.
And the Primordial chose nothing more. No judgment. No wrath. Only the quiet acknowledgment of a piece long-awaited falling into place upon the cosmic board.
Mystery veiled that expression, but its weight resonated through creation itself: Daniel had stepped into a realm mortals were never meant to tread, and the oldest of all beings—for now—allowed him to walk it.