Scene: Far Beyond the Known Maps – Alter's Solo Journey
The world blurred past in streaks of silver and starlight as Alter blinked across regions like a comet cloaked in human form. His armor, resonant and sleek, shimmered with the essence of a hundred battles won. Behind him, the scent of collapsed dungeons and purified cores lingered like the aftershock of a divine pulse.
His pace was unrelenting. There was no time to rest—not now.
Each destination was more remote than the last: volcanic wastelands wrapped in storm-winds, floating archipelagos tethered to the sky by ancient ley threads, drowned catacombs breathing with forgotten gods, glacial valleys so still even time hesitated to pass.
Where others saw tombs of impossible danger, Alter saw fuel.
[SYSTEM NOTICE – Creator Authority increased to 9.6%]
Threshold Approaching: 10.0%
Progression Tier: Nearing Veilcrafting Capabilities
Estimated Time Remaining: Unknown
Warning: Traces of Observer-Class Entity detected in lower quadrants. Cloaking advised.
The winds howled around him as he stood atop a ruined shrine in the Valley of Tenfold Echoes—its runes long faded, its gods long devoured. A fresh Extreme Mode dungeon collapsed behind him, still steaming with purified core energy.
He exhaled slowly, feeling the hum in his chest deepen. It wasn't just power—it was the tempo of creation's heartbeat syncing with his own.
"Alter."
Seraphina's voice was quieter now, more reverent, like a companion walking beside him in thought rather than hovering above.
"You have hidden well. The entity's gaze is trailing—confused. Your strategy to spread false signatures across distant domains has disrupted its pathing."
He nodded, wind tugging at his cloak. "But not forever."
"No. But long enough. You're close. One more shard of divinity… and the Veil of Origin can be forged."
"Then I'll forge it the moment I hit 10%. I need that concealment before it recalibrates."
"I will assist. Once your Creator Authority breaches the threshold, I will channel a direct design schematic. Together, we will sever visibility through the divine spectrum."
His grip tightened around Astral Requiem, still his chosen blade until Vastbane would be unveiled to the world. The blade hummed in response, feeding on dimensional tears and slashes that had reshaped reality itself.
He turned toward the horizon.
A crimson moon loomed low, marking the next zone.
"I won't let it find them. Not Kaela. Not Lira. Not the Twelve."
His steps echoed against broken stone as he leapt into the air—then vanished in a blink of golden distortion.
[Dungeon Core Chamber – Unnamed Extreme Zone]
The air hung still—too still.
Alter stood alone in the obsidian chamber, before a monstrous being writhing with glacial tendrils and crystalline wings: the final boss, a corrupted remnant of an ancient wyrm lord. Its core pulsed like a dying star—just one final strike, and the battle would end.
[FINAL GUARDIAN DETECTED]
Designation: Malgrith, Echo of Entropy
Level: ??? | Classification: Calamity-Class Aberrant
Traits: Multi-Core, Rebirth Shell, Soul-Tether Loop
Alter exhaled.
"Astral Requiem," he whispered, raising the sword that had been with him since the birth of his path as the Primordial Architect. Its celestial blade shimmered with the refracted light of folded stars.
Golden-blue lines glowed beneath his skin. Mana surged. Creator Authority: 9.99%.
He dashed forward, a flash of lightning and void—
—when suddenly the air cracked behind him.
The shadows twisted, recoiled, and then split.
A claw, wreathed in pitch-black void, tore through space and plunged through Alter's side.
"Gah—!" He choked out, blood spraying from his lips. The blade in his hand faltered.
Astral Requiem… shattered.
The broken fragments of his divine blade scattered like falling constellations, vanishing into the abyss.
A figure loomed from the rift—tall, inhuman. Its two great horns spiraled from the sides of its elongated helm. Its body was draped in voidlight like silken ash.
The entity didn't speak.
It observed.
Alter's mind burned with the pressure—his Creator Authority exposed. The entity reached for him again, talons glowing with black un-creation.
"Alter!"
Seraphina's voice screamed through his mind like a siren.
"Retreat! You'll die here—he is beyond what can be fought directly at your current threshold!"
"Not… yet," Alter gasped.
He stumbled, blood dripping from his hands, eyes narrowing at the final boss—still standing. Still alive.
"No… I finish this."
With a flick of his hand, he summoned it—
Vastbane.
A new blade fell into his palm like the weight of a collapsing star—longer, thicker, forged in absolute black veined with crimson-gold pulses of divine logic. The edge itself bent reality where it moved.
The air trembled.
[Artifact Weapon: Vastbane – Equipped]
Passive – World Severance: Every strike disrupts dimensional consistency
Active – Origin Rupture: Cut through reality. Cannot be blocked. One use per battle.
The void entity tilted its head—just slightly intrigued.
Alter's blood still fell. His wounds screamed. But his voice was steady:
"I don't care what you are…"
He vanished from his spot.
"…but you won't take this from me."
A single slash tore the world apart.
VASTBANE howled—a severance of space, time, and matter.
The final boss, Malgrith, never had time to scream. It was reduced to fractured, disintegrated particles—killed not by damage, but by absolute conceptual annihilation.
System prompts erupted across the collapsing chamber:
[FINAL BOSS DEFEATED – MALGRITH, ECHO OF ENTROPY]
Reward Protocol: Activated
Creator Authority Surge: 9.99% → 10.00%
Access Granted: Veilcrafting Tier
Legacy Unlocked: Vastbane Signature Affinity – Reality Break
Alert: External Entity Interference – TRACED
Recommendation: Immediate Dimensional Evasion
The entity lunged—but Alter was already vanishing into a self-forged teleportation rupture.
A silent burst of divine glyphs expanded—
—and he was gone.
[Still World – Dimensional Retreat]
Alter collapsed onto his knees, hand still gripping Vastbane. Blood pooled under him. His body was scorched, divine veins flickering like frayed circuits.
"Alter—!"
Seraphina's voice was fierce, divine, but frightened.
"Do not move. Let the Still World stabilize you."
The void entity was locked out—at least for now. But it had seen him.
Alter's fingers twitched.
"I won," he whispered, coughing violently.
The system rang again.
[You Have Escaped Fatal Encounter]
Creator Authority Reached: 10.0%
New Authority Tier Unlocked: Awakened Architect
Artifact Blueprint – Veil of Origin – Now Available
He laughed, weakly.
"Just made it."
"…You gambled with death."
Seraphina's voice trembled slightly. "Even I feared you would not return."
"But I did."
"Yes," she said, almost warmly. "And now… everything changes."
The remnants of the shattered dungeon flickered and collapsed into oblivion. Time, space, and law had been torn and reshaped—and from that wound in existence, the Void Entity emerged.
It hovered in silence above the scorched crater where Malgrith had once reigned.
A low hum rippled through reality. The world shuddered, not in fear—but in rejection.
The entity raised a clawed hand, blacker than night, and carved symbols into the air. Divine glyphs—etched with Creator Authority. Each sigil bled power that distorted the horizon, shaking the foundations of the local leyline.
Command: Trace Divine Signature – Type: Architect-Class Resonance.
Power Allocated: 22% Authority.
Status: SCANNING.
The glyphs spun, linked together by rivers of radiant void. Time bent. Gravity ceased. A hundred layers of dimensional laws folded like paper—
No trace.
The entity's faceless helm tilted. It repeated the command. Pushed harder.
Command: Override Local Reality Constants – Search Mode: Absolute.
Power Allocated: 39% Authority.
Status: ERROR – NULL SPACE BREACH DETECTED.
It paused.
Even with this level of Creator Authority… there was nothing.
As if the target had vanished from all world threads.
Its claw trembled, not from emotion—but resistance. The world pushed back. The dungeon collapse, the severed dimension, the final burst of Vastbane's power—had altered the laws of this space completely.
More importantly...
There was a presence already lingering here.
The Still World.
It was beyond reach. A pocket of severed time where Creator laws operated on a different frequency—one the entity could not pierce.
The being stilled.
Then it slowly withdrew its hand, the glyphs fizzling out into ash. It spoke no words. It had no breath, no voice. But a feeling leaked from its essence:
Frustration.
Defiance.
And most of all… curiosity.
A low pulse of echoing void expanded around it.
"You are clever, little Architect," came its formless thought. "But even nullspace cannot protect you forever."
"I will wait. And when you surface again… I will tear your lawless realm apart."
With that, it turned and vanished into the rift it came from—returning to the void beyond worlds.
[Still World – Day 1,460 | Outside World – Day 48]
The air within the Still World shimmered—silent, eternal, undisturbed by time.
Then… a hand stirred.
Fingers clenched slowly atop silvergrass that shimmered like stars, and a low groan escaped Alter's lips as his eyes twitched beneath closed lids.
He awoke.
Golden-threaded breath pulsed through his veins as he exhaled with effort. His cosmic-blue eyes, veined with fractal starbursts, blinked open—greeting the radiant sky of the Still World that he had not seen with clarity in over four years.
…or forty-eight days, to the rest of the world.
A squint. Then a grimace.
He slowly pushed himself upright. His body was thinner, but not frail. The wound where the void entity had driven its blow—through armor, through spirit—was faint now. A pale scar across his ribs, no longer glowing, no longer leaking essence. But the ache was still there, beneath layers of pain-toughened nerves.
His breath was shallow, but steady.
"...Seraphina," he rasped, voice hoarse, low.
A long pause. Then—
"You've awakened… at last."
Her voice was warm. Soft. Relieved.
"Four years. You fought until your final drop of power burned out. You sealed your wound with Creation-infused spells you were barely conscious to cast. Your will—stubborn and divine—kept your soul tethered to this place."
Alter chuckled weakly. "I'm getting tired of near-death experiences."
"And yet they seem unable to claim you."
He lifted his hand, gazing at it as flickers of blue and gold danced across his fingertips—residual strands of Creator Authority. His muscles remembered the strain. His core remembered the breaking.
"...Vastbane," he murmured. "It worked."
"Yes. Its final cut severed not only the enemy's lifeline, but the very root of the dungeon's bond to the void. A miracle, Alter. But even miracles must rest."
He nodded faintly.
Then lay back once more, breathing in the clean starlight of the Still World.
"You must remain here, until you are whole. Let your body regenerate. Let your soul recover. I have… kept watch."
Her voice faltered slightly at the end. Not mechanically. Emotionally.
"Seraphina," Alter whispered. "Thank you."
"...You are welcome, Alter. And when you are ready… I will guide you again."
Scene: Still World – Month 49
The forge remained dormant, its blue and silver flames slumbering in their rings, casting a tranquil sheen across the silent sanctum. Crystalline walls whispered of past battles and forged legends, and yet the air felt different now—charged not with tension, but calm determination.
Alter stood shirtless in the center of the training platform, golden-blue mana traces coiling faintly beneath his skin like living constellations. His eyes, twin galaxies of shifting azure, were focused—not on an enemy, but on himself.
His breathing was steady. His stance low.
Then—movement.
He vanished and reappeared five meters forward, tracing a movement-type technique that curved around the platform before striking the air with a phantom slash.
"...Too slow," he muttered, rolling his shoulders.
Even after four years in the Still World—equivalent to just 48 days in the outside world—his body needed to relearn fluidity. The divine wound from the void entity had healed, yes, but the cost had been high. Energy depletion. Nerve fatigue. A metaphysical exhaustion that no spell or potion could fully erase.
He exhaled, palm glowing with steady healing light as he corrected the lingering tightness in his side. 80% recovered, by his own assessment.
"Pushing so soon?"
Seraphina's voice shimmered through the quiet. No longer ethereal, it now held a tone of softness—concern, even.
"I can't afford to slow down," Alter said, flicking the sweat from his brow. "I'm still behind."
"You survived a wound that should have erased your existence. You forged your path through death. That is not 'behind,' Alter. That is becoming."
He chuckled faintly, wiping his mouth. "I thought you'd encourage me to push harder."
"Oh, I will. But not to the grave."
A pause. Then softly— "Even architects must rest before building the impossible."
Alter nodded and stretched again. He turned to face the far side of the chamber where Vastbane stood, embedded in a floating obsidian plinth. Its edge shimmered like fractured reality, sealed for now, dormant.
But not forgotten.
His eyes lingered on it before he turned away, focusing back on his physical conditioning. One step at a time.
The weight of Creator Authority at 10% simmered quietly in his core. He could feel it now—not just in his skills, but in his awareness. The Still World felt more alive, more aligned with his will.
He could sense the flow of mana beyond the walls, hear the slumber of the stars that fueled this plane.
And most importantly—he could feel her.
Lira.
Distant, yes. But connected still. Somehow, through the scars of fate and the threads of soulbinding choices… her presence flickered in his chest.
He grinned faintly.
"Just a little longer."
Then, like the pulse of a beating star, he resumed training.
The chamber darkened—not from the absence of light, but from the presence of something higher. The air itself felt reverent, thick with power and possibility.
Floating before Alter, the schematic surged with Creator Authority, spinning like a solar dial engraved in living starlight.
"Alter," Seraphina's voice came low and steady, "you must synchronize your intention. This artifact will conceal your Creator Authority—but to do so, it must first know your truth. Your identity. Your will."
He stepped forward.
"I am Alter," he said aloud. His voice echoed across the Still World.
"Primordial Architect. I create not to rule—but to protect. My path is forged in silence, but I will not hide. Only shield."
The forge flared in agreement.
[INITIATING ARTIFACT CREATION: VEIL OF ORIGIN]
Tier: Unique Artifact – Lawbreaker-Class
Function: Divine Concealment
Base Anchor: Soulbound – Creator Core Signature Required
Progress: 0% → 6%... 19%... 32%...
The air pulsed with overlapping rings of starlight as materials suspended mid-air—Aetherveil Core, Mana-threaded Evercrystal, and Soulcode Fracture—began to fuse.
Sparks of violet and azure lightning danced across the forge. Arcane formulas ignited in three-dimensional glyphs. Threads of law—the actual rules of the world—bent, entwined, and were rewritten as the artifact took form.
Alter's eyes narrowed. His skin shone with the glow of ten percent Creator Authority, casting celestial shadows across his face.
"Now," Seraphina said, "focus. You must thread the final convergence. Shape its form. Decide what this Veil shall be—a cloak, a ring, a tattoo, an emblem... The form reflects intent."
Alter exhaled.
"Make it a ring," he said. "Subtle. Always present, but never seen unless looked for. I don't need a banner—I need a seal."
"…Perfect," she whispered. "Threading final resonance with World Concealment Principle… Syncing inner laws… Anchor: Reality Obfuscation – COMPLETE."
The materials flared once—then collapsed inward.
The forge went silent.
And floating gently before him…
…was a ring of starless black, its surface iridescent with fractured dimensional folds, as if etched by the edge of reality itself. It glimmered with no light, and yet its gravity pulled the gaze. A single blue thread of starlight curved around its band—like a silent orbit. Alter could feel it waiting—not asleep, but watching.
[ARTIFACT CREATED: VEIL OF ORIGIN]
Type: Divine Cloaking Artifact (Ring)
Rank: World-Rule Artifact
Passive Effect – Origin Veil:
→ Conceals the user's divine resonance, including Creator Authority traces, from all detection methods.
→ Nullifies hostile scanning, tracking, or targeting based on divinity-class energy.
→ Cannot be pierced except by Creator Authority exceeding 45%.
Active Ability – Absolute Suppression:
→ Upon activation, the artifact masks the user's presence entirely, rendering them undetectable across magical, divine, spiritual, and sensory channels.
→ Duration: 1 hour. Cooldown: 24 hours.
→ Only usable once per day. Cannot be used while casting high-tier Creator-class spells.
Anchor Trait – World Rule Anchor: Law Eclipse
→ Temporarily hides the user from World Law awareness systems (such as the Divinity Record or Fate Threads) for up to 10 minutes.
Seraphina's voice returned, but this time… it was soft. Almost proud.
"You've done it. The path ahead may yet be treacherous—but now, you have a chance to walk it unseen… until you choose to reveal the light."
Alter slipped the ring onto his right hand.
It shimmered once—then vanished from perception.
But he felt it. Like a calm pressure over his soul. A divine hush.
He smiled faintly, then whispered, "Time to return."