The instant Adrian's body fully dissolved into white-grey radiance, the arena changed.
The Source Essence surged outward, an ocean without shore, a sky without ceiling.
The first to break were the weak. Spectators in the stands fell to their knees, clutching at their chests as their essence seeds trembled like frightened children.
Some collapsed unconscious, others wept without understanding why.
Even some Stellar cultivators watching from their fortified seats stiffened.
"Th-that's not space…" one gasped. "What is that?!"
A Stellar lord in the upper tiers unleashed his domain, a vast ocean of lightning crackling into the air. Yet the suppression did not fade.
His voice shook. "Impossible! My domain should repel anything! Why… why am I still being suppressed!?"
The Imperial Overseer, who had presided over a thousand Stellar duels in his lifetime, felt his throat tighten. His essence seed trembled in his chest, not from fear, but from something he had never thought possible.
"This isn't fire. This isn't space. This isn't any Essence I have ever seen."
Even his experienced eyes faltered. "I've seen life, time, destruction, creation… but this… this suppresses them all."
Gasps rippled through the audience.
"Impossible. Affinities are fixed at birth, no one can change it."
"Then what IS this?!"
At the center of it all, Tharion Drakenholt felt the most fear.
His fire domain roared, a crimson inferno stretching like a world across the battlefield. Yet no matter how much it burned, the presence of Adrian's Source seeped into it, choking it.
"This… this is not possible…" he whispered, fury lacing his fear.
He surged forward anyway, throwing a molten fist large enough to crush cities.
Adrian caught it in his glowing palm and crushed it as though it were nothing but smoke. The backlash sent Tharion flying, smashing into the void with enough force to split space itself.
The crowd gasped. The Overseer's eyes widened.
Adrian's Source form moved without waste. His blade emerged, white-grey arcs that curved like the birth of galaxies.
Every strike too clean, too absolute. Rage, hesitation, fear, none existed within this form.
There was only inevitability.
Tharion roared, sending molten dragons through the void, each the size of mountains. Adrian stepped once, his silhouette fracturing into dozens of afterimages.
In a single motion, the dragons were severed, falling apart into glowing embers that never reached him.
The crowd could not cheer, their throats locked.
It wasn't an upstart fighting anymore. It felt like they were witnessing an ancient warrior awakening inside him.
Even Draven, ever brash, could only bellow in raw exhilaration. He pounded the railing with his fists.
"That's it! Break him! Show the galaxy what Earth's blood means!"
Septimus trembled, whispering to no one in particular. "This… is this the true Echo?"
The Overseer's hands shook as goosebumps crawled across his skin. "Never have I felt my own seed quiver before another."
"Did he act weak before? Was all that struggle… only pretense?"
Each clash lasted less than a breath, but left trails of broken void in their wake. Adrian's Source blade carved through reality itself, leaving scars that slowly stitched themselves closed.
The white-grey silhouette moved like liquid starlight, flowing around Tharion's attacks with impossible grace.
At one point, Adrian seemed to vanish entirely. Then his blade emerged from impossible angles, nearly severing Tharion's arm before the patriarch twisted away with a roar of pain.
Blood, molten and bright, sprayed across the void.
Tharion still held firm, even though he seemed suppressed. His millennia of experience showed as he adapted to Adrian's rhythm, parrying strikes that should have been unavoidable.
It was not easy for Adrian to simply kill him like the others.
Adrian felt it mid-fight, a realization that cut deeper than any blade. He still could not defeat Tharion easily, not like how he had erased Valerius or the Emerald Serpent warriors whenever he used his Source form.
For the first time, he felt the Source form was not that overwhelming against someone of true power.
To truly dominate, he must deepen his comprehension of multiple advanced galactic concepts. Space alone was not enough against a patriarch who had weathered thousands of battles.
Tharion steadied himself, veins blazing with molten fire that leaked through his scales.
"You think me prey?! I am Tharion Drakenholt!"
He bellowed, voice echoing across the infinite arena. "I'll turn this void into a sun and burn your very soul!"
He summoned every ounce of his essence, and a crimson sun burst into existence above his head. The artificial star radiated annihilation, its heat warping space itself as spectators in the distant stands shielded their eyes.
Adrian did not hesitate. He knew Tharion was going all out, pouring centuries of accumulated power into this final gambit.
His silhouette strode forward, calm, silent, inevitable.
He raised his hand, and Source essence gathered above his head. The white-grey energy condensed, forming a blade that slowly kept expanding, growing larger and more terrible with each passing second.
The crowd held its breath. Even the Stellar cultivators in the upper tiers leaned forward, sensing the approaching climax.
Their attacks met in the center of the void.
One swing from each warrior. Fire against Source. Experience against potential. The collision sent shockwaves rippling through dimensions, cracking the arena's reinforced barriers.
The Source cut down through everything, fire, heat, will, life itself.
The fire collapsed like dying stars, its crimson radiance snuffed out in an instant. The artificial sun extinguished, leaving only cold void and drifting embers.
And Tharion Drakenholt hung motionless in the darkness, eyes wide with disbelief. His body was split clean, a perfect line that divided him in two.
His final expression was pure shock, as if he couldn't comprehend how his millennia of power had simply... ended.
His scales, his fire, his very essence crumbled into drifting ash. The particles scattered across the silent arena like snow, each mote carrying the remnants of a once-mighty patriarch.
For a heartbeat, no one moved. The crowd was frozen in absolute silence, minds struggling to process what they had witnessed.
Then the eruption came.
"Monster!" some screamed, voices cracking with terror. "Glory!" others howled, fists raised toward the void. "Impossible!"
A tidal wave of fear, awe, and worship drowned the arena in chaos. Some spectators fled, others knelt, and many simply stared with hollow eyes.
The Overseer remained frozen in his elevated booth, his mind racing through implications and consequences. His lips moved without sound before a single thought escaped his mental barriers.
"The boy wields a power I do not recognize... a presence even Stellars cannot resist."
His hands trembled. "This is an anomaly. If he rises, he will overturn the balance that has lasted for millennia."
"The clans will fear him. The empires will covet him. None will tolerate such a power roaming free."
His eyes narrowed with sudden calculation. "Then Aethelia must chain him first. If this being must belong anywhere, it will belong to us."
But even as the Overseer schemed, his body shook with involuntary tremors. The duel was over, yet the oppressive presence lingered like a storm that refused to pass.
Tharion Drakenholt, Stellar Patriarch of the 106th-ranked clan, was erased from existence.