Chapter 61: Everything you experienced in the past few minutes was an illusion… I created it!

Planet Akkad.

A beautiful woman dressed in black, with strange dark symbols drawn across her exposed skin, stood on a vast balcony that overlooked the city below.

The air was brimming with flying objects that resembled vehicles, while some people could be seen riding what looked like hoverboard swords as they soared through the air.

A voice suddenly reached the woman’s ears from outside the room connected to the balcony.

"The young miss is here."

The woman remained silent for a moment before she spoke.

"Let her in."

But if one looked closely enough, they’d realize her lips barely moved. It was like she’d spoken telepathically.

The door slowly swung open, and soft footsteps echoed across the room towards the balcony, before a white-haired woman stopped at the balcony’s doorway and lowered her head curtly in a bow.

"You called for me, Mother."

The woman didn’t reply immediately.

"I heard you got your team wiped out, endangered the life of your friend, and died—twice." The woman spoke calmly without turning around.

Aria clenched her jaws. "I miscalculated."

"You disobeyed my orders." The woman replied almost immediately. "What happened?"

Aria remained silent for a moment. "I crossed paths with the one called humanity’s strongest warrior. Kaelen Cross."

The woman stiffened ever so slightly, but she quickly relaxed and finally turned to face her daughter. "Is that why you chose to go against my words? To prove to yourself that you’re stronger?"

"I didn’t know it was him. If I had known... it would’ve played out differently."

"You still think you’re stronger than everyone. I’ll have him to thank for humbling you. You’re grounded."

"But, Mother—"

"For as long as it takes you to get back to the two evolution realms you lost today. You’re dismissed." The woman said and walked past her as she entered her bedroom.

Aria stood there for a moment longer, her fist balled firmly.

"He disabled one of the constellations you created." Aria forced herself to say, and she turned around to face her mother, who paused in her steps.

"He stole the items and wasn’t attacked. Your prophecy says only the messiah can do that. He’s human."

"The prophecy doesn’t discriminate. Only the messiah can find us through the constellations. He passed the first test; doesn’t mean he can pass the several others on the way. But whoever does shall be the one that’ll lead our people to greatness." The woman said and turned around once more. "Now, go."

Aria immediately stormed out of the room angrily, and the woman sat on her bed. But before she could go through the information she’d just learned, the voice called out from outside once more.

"Your loyal servant is here, Your Greatness."

The doors swung open to reveal a woman dressed in a white ceremonial garment, carrying a bowl of water into the room as the doors were closed behind her.

"I’m here to wash your feet, Your Greatness." The woman said, before placing the bowl down beside the woman’s feet.

"You can drop the honorifics when we’re alone, Sucy." The woman said.

The maidservant smiled. "I heard what happened. Young Master has found the first constellation. I guess it’s not too early to start preparing for the coming of the messiah." The maidservant said this with a subtle bow.

The woman didn’t reply, and her expression remained stoic for a moment before a faint smile spread across her lips.

***

Kaelen stood in a vast crater, the temple gone, leaving only him and a dark shadow standing opposite him.

He was a bit surprised that the attack that almost carried him away with the wind hadn’t killed the nightmare shadow. But it chipped away a vast majority of its size, leaving only a ghoul-shaped shadow hovering before him.

It was obvious the nightmare shadow was on its last legs, and Kaelen didn’t plan on letting it recuperate.

The nightmare shadow would have to compensate him for the 60 billion evolution points he’d just dumped into speedrunning his evolution, and the damage he did to himself to pull off an attack of such scale.

He immediately activated his latest evolution attribute. The same one he’d purchased earlier and used to evade the white-haired woman.

[Shadow Slime: Modify your liquid composition to perfectly absorb and refract light, becoming entirely translucent or mimicking the texture of stone and shadows to ambush prey.]

The Akkadian shooter didn’t realize it, but Kaelen hadn’t been teleporting or moving at the speed of light. He’d simply turned invisible and repositioned himself. And if she had trusted her gut and just shot at one of the locations where Kaelen had just disappeared, she might’ve hit him one of those times.

Kaelen turned invisible as he circled the nightmare shadow. The beast, realizing the pending danger, suddenly let out a loud shriek that sent out powerful, distorted shockwaves rippling across the wasteland and hitting Kaelen in his invisible form.

The attribute skill was immediately deactivated, and Kaelen became visible once more, clutching his ears as the distorted sound tore at his eardrums.

The shriek was so powerful that it disoriented him, and Kaelen dropped the staff at some point as he fell to his knees.

The nightmare shadow immediately saw that as a window of opportunity and immediately charged forward. Before Kaelen could grab the staff once more, it shot out phantom claws that knocked the staff away and raised a cloud of dust around Kaelen. Then it went in for the kill, its phantom claws spread out wide. Their length was longer than its own body, as they appeared before Kaelen in an instant and swiped their death claws at him.

"..."

Kaelen was still crouched on the floor, and the nightmare shadow was on him, but strangely, the claws never got to Kaelen. The nightmare shadow forced its claws forward, and when it realized there was an invisible barrier before it, it tried to retract its claws and strike again. That was when it realized it couldn’t move.

The same invisible barrier protecting Kaelen was now also behind it and to its side, trapping it in place. It was confused at what was happening, when a low chuckle suddenly came from the man crouched before it, whose expression had been hidden up until that moment when he finally looked up with an amused smile.

Kaelen dusted his clothes as he calmly stood up. Every trace of pain or disorientation from the nightmare shadow was gone.

The nightmare shadow, on realizing this, quickly let out a powerful shriek once more, but Kaelen didn’t flinch as he calmly stared at it with a faint smile.

That was when he raised an item in his hand. It looked like a strange-shaped token, and at the same time, the surrounding wasteland faded and was replaced by an infinite void.

Kaelen stood in this void like there was solid ground beneath his feet, and the rectangular barrier surrounding the nightmare creature became visible.

"This is called a World Authority Fragment, and everything you experienced in the past few minutes was an illusion..."

"...I created it."