The transition from the Frozen Wastes to the Residual Will was not physical; it was a sudden, crushing descent into a world made purely of energy. The colorless column of Mythic defense was less a shield and more an atmosphere of compressed, hostile mana. Kaelen Vayne felt the Legendary pressure instantly—a relentless, invisible force designed to break the mind, shatter the mana core, and reduce anything less than a Legend to dust. Even at his peak, the force felt like standing at the bottom of a mile-deep ocean of concrete.
The Resonating Focus Lens strapped to his gauntlet screamed in protest. The hastily wired crystal matrix thrummed, and Kaelen could smell the faint scent of ozone and burning metal as the device poured its unstable, low-frequency pulse into the Will.
The Will did not attack him with fire or lightning. It defended itself with an elegant, terrible simplicity. As Kaelen's presence—a massive, foreign body of Legend-tier mana—intruded, the Will compressed his own energy, attempting to choke off his mana flow and force his body into cellular collapse.
A pressure test, Kaelen thought, his teeth gritted. His unique, modified cultivation technique—the one that had felt like pure torture, forging his body into a weapon suitable only for swordsmanship—was the only thing saving him. It didn't rely on large, external mana pools, but on the ruthless, efficient conversion of internal life-force into devastating physical strength. He was a low-power, high-efficiency engine, and that efficiency was his edge.
He focused his senses, pushing his Legend-tier perception outward, not to fight the pressure, but to read it. His mind, the disciplined, calculating mind of a former Stanford tech student and financial analyst, needed data.
Where is the loop? Where is the energy source?
The Focus Lens was his sensor. It didn't fight the Will; it sang along with the Will, trying to find a harmonic match. For the first terrifying minute, there was nothing but a deafening white noise of power. The Will was perfect. It was continuous. It was flawless.
Then, the Lens pulsed violently, and Kaelen felt a microscopic, almost temporal hiccup in the otherwise endless flow of hostile mana. The pulse registered as a 0.00001 second decay in the Will's density before it instantly reset and regenerated.
There. Kaelen realized. It's not truly perpetual. It's a cycle. An infinitely fast loop that requires a fraction of a moment to restart.
The Residual Will, sensing the subtle resonant attack from the Lens, shifted its focus. It formed not a physical attack, but a field of pure, crushing mana, aiming to overwhelm the external device. This was the system's primary defense: eradicate the anomaly.
"Too slow," Kaelen muttered, a reckless grin touching his lips—the kind of exhilaration he once sought in high-stakes markets and impossible risks. He knew the Will's primary job was to kill the Legend. Its secondary job, handling the subtle, low-frequency pulse, caused the delay.
He surged forward, ignoring the pain of his own mana being violently suppressed. His sword, the simple gray weapon, came to life. It was not adorned with light or complex spells, but with pure, compressed force. He executed the technique that had forged him into a Legend: the Iron Heart Slash, a move of minimalist efficiency, pouring every ounce of his focused life-force into a single vector.
His target was not the center of the Will, but the exact geometric point where the momentary decay occurred. It was an abstract calculation made physical.
Target: Flaw point. Time window: 0.00001 seconds.
The Will roared, a silent explosion of energy that should have vaporized Kaelen. His body felt like it hit a mountain, blood bursting from his nose and ears, but he did not falter. His Legend-tier body held, trained not for softness, but for relentless forward motion.
SHRINK.
Kaelen's sword strike condensed the massive power of his Legend realm—a force that could flatten mountains—into a single, surgical cut at the precise moment the system was regenerating. It wasn't about power; it was about timing and analytical precision.
The Resonating Focus Lens exploded with a flash of light and a sound like shattering glass, having finally burned out its unstable crystal core, moments after performing its job. Kaelen felt the Master-grade Mana Bomb detonation shield flare and barely hold.
But the Will was silent.
The infinite cycle, designed by a Mythic genius, had been given a single, fractional-second instruction to reset, and Kaelen Vayne had occupied that instant. The immense, crushing pressure vanished. The vast column of shimmering, colorless energy did not dissolve, but it ceased to function as a barrier. The Residual Will remained, but it was inert, its perpetual algorithm broken by a calculated, modern assault.
Kaelen staggered, his body battered, his mana almost entirely spent. He was alive, and the way was open.
Before him lay the entrance to the Shattered Vault: a massive, cracked obsidian door, now emitting only the stale, cold air of eons. He drew a deep breath, savoring the brutal adrenaline of success. He had breached the unbreachable.
A single signal flared from his gauntlet—a small, green pulse indicating the Legendary defense was neutralized.
Far behind him, Lira and Belos would now begin their advance, and the Hidden Sun Syndicate would know that Lord Vayne had delivered. The cost was high, but the profit was about to be astronomical. Kaelen pushed the heavy obsidian door open. Inside, the first chamber was vast, lit only by the ghostly sheen of countless ancient, dusty treasures. His prize awaited.