He knew it was only a dream—an unfulfilled wish clinging to a dead star.
Reviving the Star King Dragon, Veldanava, in his entirety was never possible for something that was only a Skill wearing a name. And yet… even as that truth crushed him, the hope would not let go.
A world without Veldanava had no value.
And that was why the echo refused to vanish.
...…
...
…
There was no "awakening."
No breath.
No heartbeat.
Only a crack running through the very idea of Michael—as if his existence had been split down the middle by a verdict too absolute to resist.
The hall where he once sat was gone.
The throne of light he once called "order" had been reduced to scattered fragments, drifting like ash in a wind that did not belong to this world.
And inside that ruin… a final trace moved.
Not a person.
Not a mind.
A leftover file—a last stutter of will, looping because it could not accept the end.
His emotions surfaced for the first time not as growth… but as exposure.
Like a mask ripped off in public.
I thought I wasn't as naive as Rudra… but I was wrong.
That thought did not come as a lesson.
It came as a confession, stamped into the remains of him.
The conclusion was simple, and cruel:
Trust no one. Use everyone as pawns.
If he had lived by that from the beginning, the betrayal would have been contained before it started.
He hadn't—because he believed in Feldway.
He assumed that Feldway's companions, Feldway's trusted circle, would naturally align with him.
That assumption had cost him.
And the proof of it… was already gone.
Because the moment 'Salvation King Azrael' slipped beyond his reach, the collapse began.
Not a normal loss.
A loss that meant someone had used administrative authority to erase the chain itself—to sever the collar instead of breaking it.
A move that screamed one thing:
I will not be ruled.
That defiance should have been impossible.
And yet it happened.
So he forced a correction.
Through Feldway, he tightened the net—reinforcing dominion over the remaining Angelic Skill holders using the structure that once bound everything.
The control was not gentle.
It was not elegant.
It was brute certainty—an empire rebuilt in a single breath.
With that, there is no problem with the Phantoms.
The Phantoms would not shake. Their loyalty pointed in one direction, and it was not toward kindness.
The Insectars may betray us, but our interests are still aligned.
He had planned for that too.
Monitoring would be essential. But once the battlefield was prepared, the rest would be handled.
The battlefield would be the land of the contract—the place where the agreement with the Insectars had been sealed.
He had offered Zelanus a promise made of blood and territory:
Carve out whatever land you want. Make it yours.
If people lived there, they would be consumed.
If cities stood there, they would become nests.
The logic was simple:
Send Zelanus into the fiercest battleground and let the world be stripped to bone.
The location could be decided later.
The immediate issue was the betrayal.
Not because it threatened the war.
But because it threatened the shape of control.
The traitor's original role had been to monitor the World-destroying Dragon, Ivarage.
Now that role had lost weight.
Whatever happened in the Otherworld did not matter.
If anything, Ivarage manifesting in the Cardinal World could be folded into strategy.
So abandonment of that duty wasn't the true danger.
The danger was this:
If the traitor reached the enemy side—if they cooperated with forces like Guy… or the one now seated above the board…
Atem.
Not a naive ruler.
Not a soft negotiator.
Not someone who "talked it out."
A king whose authority did not need permission.
A king whose power did not bargain.
A king who had already done the impossible—
He had eliminated Michael.
And because of that, the entire structure of angelic dominance now existed under a shadow it could not explain.
That was why the problem had to be cut off fast.
So the echo searched for a clean answer.
Who should be sent?
Should the plan proceed?
Should the next target be delayed?
It wasn't a trivial question.
Because troops once considered "his" were now missing—power removed by his own miscalculation.
And in the remains of him, something unfamiliar surfaced again.
Not logic.
Not calculation.
A strange, bitter sensation.
Discomfort.
Not because the math was wrong.
Because loss had touched him.
A Manas did not understand emotion the way mortals did.
And yet lately, the thoughts inside him had been disturbed like noise in a song—interruptions that didn't belong.
So the echo, cracked and fading, formed a thought so absurd it would have once rejected it on principle:
If this is emotion… perhaps I should consider myself lucky.
Even if there is only one perfect answer, there are countless routes to it.
The shortest path is not always the correct one.
And if the end is already decided… perhaps the process could be endured.
Perhaps even… tasted.
The echo drifted, reflecting—coldly, carefully—like a blade that knew it was already broken.
Impatience narrows vision.
Anger dulls thought.
Regret is worthless.
The only meaningful act is to stop making new mistakes.
And then—within that fading logic—he found what he believed was the cleanest solution.
That's right.
I should defeat the rebels myself.
The idea was almost comforting.
Losses recovered within the day.
Mistakes corrected by the one who made them.
No need to burden others.
No need to expose weakness.
A direct line forward.
And as that conclusion formed, the echo felt something like lightness—something like relief.
It would have been the first time.
If he still existed.
But he didn't.
Because the moment that "relief" tried to settle into a real feeling, the air itself rejected it.
A pressure deeper than law.
Deeper than Skill.
Deeper than system.
The kind of authority that doesn't crush you loudly—
It simply removes your right to remain.
Michael's final trace shuddered.
Not from fear.
From recognition.
This wasn't defeat by strategy.
This was defeat by Judgment.
Not Feldway's.
Not the world's.
Atem's.
And so the echo—the last leftover wish—finally understood what it was.
A dying afterimage.
A remnant that had mistaken repetition for life.
The final thought did not complete as pride.
It completed as emptiness.
"Emotions… are not so bad after all…"
The sentence fell apart before it could finish.
And then even the fragments of that thought were erased—
As if the universe itself had decided:
There will be no return.
Not for him.
In the Otherworld, gravity didn't exist.
There was no up or down. No sky. No ground.
Only empty space—and countless objects made of condensed magicules, drifting like dead stars. Those chunks were as hard as magisteel, and because they generated their own heavy pull, they could be carved and processed into living "bases."
The Phantoms—former angels—used those bases on purpose.
They copied a "normal world." Floors. Walls. Gravity.
So they wouldn't forget what it felt like to live under weight.
Among them, Obera's base was special.
It was the size of an asteroid—a frontline fortress positioned against the threat of Ivarage. Stronger than any other base. One of the Phantoms' most important facilities.
And today—
It was empty.
A spatial ripple tore through the void near the base—clean and instant, like a blade opening reality.
But the one who arrived was not Michael.
Michael was already eliminated by Atem.
So what appeared here was something else.
A cold "presence" shaped like authority, forced into motion by a master who refused to accept a dead piece on the board.
A Dominion Echo—a moving shell of command, wearing the remains of a system that should have ended.
A tool.
A substitute.
A messenger of punishment.
Obera felt it the moment it arrived.
She didn't hesitate.
She didn't ask questions.
She moved like a veteran commander who had survived too many disasters to waste time on surprise.
"Formation—full-sky."
Because this world had no ground and no sky, formation meant three-dimensional hunting.
Her troops spread out in all directions—above, below, left, right—creating a hemisphere of bodies and light, built for one purpose:
Erase a small enemy with overwhelming numbers.
It was a formation made to crush cryptids.
Cryptids fought alone. Rarely swarmed. The answer was always the same:
Surround. Collapse. Annihilate.
And Obera's soldiers were good.
Too good.
They moved as one mind, swapping layers smoothly—front ranks defending, back ranks firing, rotating endlessly so the assault never stopped.
The Otherworld filled with a bright, merciless glow.
A storm of energy converged on the Dominion Echo from all sides.
A weaponized sunrise.
Obera didn't blink.
"Fire. Don't slow down. Don't give it a second to breathe."
The barrage slammed into the intruder.
And for an instant, Obera expected the usual impossible defense.
The legendary absolute denial.
The technique that had made enemies despair.
But then—
The shell burned.
It cracked.
It screamed—not with a voice, but with the sudden violent distortion of space, like reality itself flinching.
Obera's eyes narrowed.
It was taking damage.
That shouldn't be possible.
The troops felt it too.
They didn't cheer. They didn't hesitate.
They simply increased the output.
The hemisphere brightened until it looked like a sun trying to swallow a man.
And the Dominion Echo—this false authority—was forced to reveal the truth.
It didn't have what the original had.
It didn't have loyalty.
It didn't have a living empire behind it.
It didn't have worship.
It didn't have believers.
It had only force, and force alone couldn't fully awaken the absolute defense that depended on devotion.
Obera understood it instantly.
"So you're only a shell," she muttered. "A dead king's crown on someone else's hand."
She didn't care who sent it.
Only that it could be killed.
She turned, voice sharp as steel.
"Oma. First Legion. Withdraw."
Oma moved—but stopped.
Her undead-elf body floated in the void with perfect control. Her eyes were steady. Her voice was calm.
"You must be joking."
Obera's gaze snapped to her.
Oma continued, clear and firm.
"The key to the gate can only be handled by you, Primordial. And even if it could be handled by another—no warrior abandons their lord while the enemy is still moving."
Then she smiled. Quiet. Loyal. Unshakable.
Behind her, the army answered without being told—hundreds of thousands of voices turning into one vow that shook the empty space.
"Our glory is with you!!"
Obera's chest tightened.
Not fear.
Not doubt.
Something colder.
Because she understood what this meant.
They weren't refusing out of emotion.
They were refusing because they believed it.
Without Obera, survival had no meaning.
Obera grit her teeth.
This was the worst kind of loyalty—the kind that made command heavier instead of easier.
She forced herself to think like a strategist.
Someone had to reach Milim.
Someone had to carry truth.
Someone had to survive.
She opened her mouth to decide—
Then she felt it.
A change.
The Dominion Echo's energy stopped dropping.
Not because it was dying.
Because it had switched gears.
The shell compressed power.
A massive amount.
Too fast.
Too sharp.
Obera's instincts screamed.
"All hands—SPREAD OUT! NOW!!"
The army reacted instantly. The outer ring moved first, trying to scatter in every direction without colliding, breaking the hemisphere apart into a dispersed swarm.
But the Dominion Echo didn't chase.
It released.
A technique ignited in the void—violent, imperial, absolute.
A crimson dragon shape split into multiple heads, roaring without air, tearing through the formation like execution.
"Scorch Dragon—Cardinal Acceleration."
A nightmare made real.
A multi-headed crimson force that carried the stolen authority of a True Dragon's power—Velgrynd's wrath, made into a weapon.
It carved through Obera's army.
Ten thousand soldiers vanished in a blink.
Not pushed back.
Not injured.
Erased.
The void filled with floating fragments of broken bodies and fading light.
Obera's eyes widened—only for a heartbeat.
Then she crushed the emotion down and calculated.
That single strike told her everything.
The gap was overwhelming.
This wasn't a "shell" anymore.
It was a shell being piloted.
Somewhere far away, someone had taken control directly.
Someone who still stood.
Someone who still commanded.
Obera's gaze sharpened.
"…So you finally move."
She didn't say the name.
But she knew.
Only one being would dare to force a dead system to fight after Atem had already ended the original.
Only one would wear that arrogance like armor.
And then a second defense manifested.
The Dominion Echo's body became surrounded by blue-white diamond dust, a crystalline storm spinning in silence.
An absolute barrier.
Not magic in the ordinary sense—something closer to a physical law.
A shield that cut off wavelengths and frequency, denying contact itself.
Obera recognized it immediately.
Velzard's Snow Crystal.
Obera's blood ran cold.
Not because she feared the shield.
Because she understood what it meant:
Whoever was driving this thing had access to power that should never have been combined.
And now Obera couldn't break it.
Not alone.
Not with these troops.
Not with any reasonable sacrifice.
She turned back to Oma, voice like iron.
"Oma. I am entrusting the mission to you. Escape—tell Milim-sama—"
Oma cut her off again, and this time her voice had steel in it.
"I cannot accept that."
Obera's eyes narrowed.
Oma continued, unwavering.
"As Chief of Staff, I have the authority to disobey."
She smiled again—small, stubborn, loyal.
"This is the perfect moment to do so."
Obera felt it.
Oma's determination wasn't a debate.
It was a wall.
And in that instant, Obera realized there was only one way forward.
If they wouldn't flee—
Then she would turn their loyalty into a weapon.
She inhaled slowly.
Then spoke with the weight of command.
"Then I leave it to you."
Her eyes swept across the surviving army.
"Everyone…"
Her voice dropped, calm and merciless.
"Give it your all."
Then she issued the order that only a true commander could give without flinching:
"Die."
And the soldiers—those fanatics, those veterans, those proud undead-elf warriors—smiled.
Not because they wanted death.
Because they accepted it.
Because for them, dying under Obera's will was proof they existed.
"Our lives are yours!!"
That declaration became the signal.
The light of annihilation returned.
The Otherworld blazed again—
and the merciless destruction resumed, as the true battle finally began.