Chapter 163: The Submission of Steel and the Awakening of the Abyss
The immense Pagoda of the Infinite Mirror was plunged into an oppressive, dense gloom. The beautiful, deceptive starry skies and the reflecting lakes of Sienna's trial were gone forever. Now, following the system's snap, the environment had been violently transformed into a harsh, desolate plain of raw obsidian and shattered mirrors—a macabre coliseum designed purely for the most absolute brutality.
Samael Morningstar walked slowly toward the forty-five warriors.
At his side floated the immense Odachi, [Kurohime]. The colossal curved sword rested within the [Sheath of the Devouring Twilight]. It was no simple metal scabbard; it was a physical void that reflected no light, a black cleft in space itself that seemed to suck in the vision of anyone who stared at it. Its texture, similar to charred dragon scales, pulsed slowly, as if the weapon were breathing in the darkness.
With every step the Patriarch took, waves of gravitational distortion emanated from the sheath, making the air around him heavy and frigid. Small spatial rifts, like threads of broken glass, formed and dissolved around the hilt. Ten meters away, the lower-grade weapons of the Imperial and Void warriors began to tremble pathetically, curving toward the ground as if they felt the psychological terror of being before the Black Princess. From within the sheath escaped an ultrasonic hum—an inaudible feminine laugh that made the foundations of the dimension shake, overflowing with a bloodlust that chilled the bones of mortals.
Kael Morningstar stood up, his breathing still heavy and erratic. They had just survived the miraculous Blood Bell trial. Their physical and spiritual bodies were pushed beyond the breaking point, but the burning adrenaline of victory still coursed through their dragon veins.
Behind him, Dante, Violeta, Eris, Cedric, and the rest of the army organized themselves by pure survival instinct. Orion's forty-five spiritual and necrotic threads remained firmly connected to the nape of each warrior and anchored to Kael's chest. The Soul Nexus was fully active, pulsing rhythmically in the gloom like a second, collective, and invincible heart.
"Absolute defensive position," Kael ordered mentally through the immaculate network of the Nexus. "The Patriarch is no mere crystal clone. He is not a Concept of the environment. He is absolute, destructive force. Draven, Tormund, Goran, Korg: forming the anvil at the front. Dante, prepare to use Kurohime's blind spot the moment he moves."
The tactical order traveled at the overwhelming speed of thought. The forty-five warriors moved with impeccable geometric precision, without exchanging a single word, forming a perfect, staggered phalanx around their leaders. The auras of the Void's Transcendent Realm and the Empire's Half-Saints and Saints merged without friction, creating an immense, dazzling barrier of multi-colored Qi that illuminated the hostile darkness of the obsidian.
Samael stopped exactly fifty meters from the vanguard. His unfathomable violet eyes shone in the gloom, scrutinizing the living wall.
"An exquisite formation," Samael murmured, his voice deep, grave, and magnetic, caressing the tense air of the coliseum. "Immaculate synchronization. You attack, breathe, and defend as a single, perfect organism. You have turned the Soul Nexus into a true tactical work of art."
Samael slowly raised his right hand. He did not grip Kurohime's hilt. He simply extended his gloved fingers toward the center of the army.
"But there is one tiny, lethal detail that, in your euphoria, you have completely forgotten, my dear Kings and Shadows."
The temperature of the entire room plummeted to unnatural levels. It was not the physical, molecular cold of Violeta or Elara; it was the paralyzing cold of primordial terror and the abyss.
Samael's aura exploded.
It was not a gradual or contained release of power. It was an apocalyptic quantum tsunami. The overwhelming power of a Peak Stage 7 Saint swept mercilessly across the obsidian plain. For the Void Sequences, who barely touched the peak of the Transcendent Realm, the simple passive atmospheric pressure of Samael's aura felt exactly as if the mass of an entire continent had dropped like lead onto their fragile shoulders. Ren's bones creaked agonizingly. Vania fell to her knees immediately, coughing blood without having received a single physical impact. Even the Imperial veterans, who were Half-Saints, and Kael himself (Stage 1 Saint), felt the oxygen in their lungs turn into molten lead. An abyssal difference of six stages within the high spheres of the Saint Realm was an impossible ocean to cross.
"The detail you forgot," Samael continued, his imposing voice resonating brutally and simultaneously in the forty-five collapsed minds, "is who built and encoded the door through which you are speaking."
Samael did not attack physically. He closed his fist in the void.
In Kael Morningstar's chest, the main, luminous anchor of the Soul Nexus flickered violently. The warm golden and crimson light of the sacred connection was suddenly dyed an abyssal, necrotic black.
Samael, as the absolute creator of the System and the Patriarch of the bloodline, did not need Orion's crude spiritual threads to connect to the network. He was the main server. He was the root. Samael took absolute control of what belonged to him by divine right.
The emotional and psychic impact was instantaneous and catastrophic.
Kael suddenly dropped his colossal magma sword and clutched his head with both hands, letting out a harrowing scream that tore his throat. Through the perfect, barrier-free connection they had worked so hard to forge, Samael did not send a vulgar attack of destructive Qi. He sent them his purest form of Slaughter Intent, his abyssal understanding of the Void, and the unbearable weight of his Law of Blood.
The Patriarch injected the hyper-realistic sensation of drowning in a dark, thick ocean composed of millions of corpses directly into the brains of the forty-five warriors at the same millisecond.
Dante, the Assassin Phantom—a youth whose cold eyes had witnessed and perpetrated unspeakable horrors without blinking—fell flat on his face. The lethal assassin clawed pathetically at the hard obsidian until his nails broke, feeling for the first time in his life the visceral panic of the perfect prey, feeling as if a million butcher knives were flaying his soul alive.
Violeta and Eris, the usually untouchable and stoic twins of ruin and ice, curled into themselves on the floor, trembling uncontrollably as absolute, abstract terror paralyzed every nerve ending in their systems. Cedric, the unmatched calculating genius of matrices, screamed as he watched his pristine logical mind collapse miserably before an equation of infinite darkness and death that had no possible solution.
Samael walked impassively among them. The perfect phalanx, the tactical masterpiece that had defeated a Goddess, had completely crumbled in two seconds without him even drawing his sword.
The forty-five deadliest and most talented warriors in all of Morningstar Citadel were writhing on the crystal floor, weeping tears of black blood, hyperventilating, and unable to process the lethal overload of pure dread their Sovereign was mercilessly injecting into them through their own idolized tactical network.
"To use a hive mind and a Soul Nexus is to voluntarily hand your enemy a paved, undefended highway straight to your brain... if that enemy possesses a will superior to your own," Samael whispered, standing imposingly before Kael, who was pathetically trying to look up from a pool of his own bile. "Your marvelous synchronization is all-powerful against mindless machines and inorganic beasts. But against a true King... if you manage to break the will of the primary host, you break all forty-five in a single heartbeat."
Samael opened his fist. He abruptly cut off his invasion of the Nexus.
The abyssal terror vanished instantly from the minds of the army, leaving a silence interrupted only by the sounds of forty-five warriors hyperventilating desperately, soaked in sweat as cold as ice, their muscles suffering uncontrollable spasms and their pride definitively reduced to stellar ash. They had genuinely believed that, united and synchronized, they could face and kill the gods. Samael had just demonstrated with cruelty that, united, they only served to comfortably share the same dark coffin.
Kael coughed to the side, spitting a thick pool of golden blood onto the obsidian.
"You... you crush us just by existing," the Imperial leader panted, looking up at the unreachable figure of the Patriarch with a dizzying mix of absolute horror and divine reverence. "Our brilliant technique... our perfect Intents... they mean damn nothing if our fragile Dantians and souls lack the absurd capacity to hold them against the weight of your presence."
Samael nodded slowly, his gaze shifting toward the floating, humming Kurohime.
"Exactly, Kael. You hold the weapons of an executioner in your hands, and you possess the lethal claws of a dragon, but your vessels are made of clay. You cannot truly process the immensity of the Law of Space, Blood, or Magma if your delicate meridians shatter into a thousand pieces when you try. The training in synergy and tactics has officially concluded. It is time for the Forge of Cultivation."
Samael looked up toward the tall, dark shadows of the perimeter hall.
"Sienna. My little monsters need to eat."
From the dense, fractured air of the dimension, Sienna emerged, floating softly and silently in her immaculate white dress. Her blind gaze, composed of pure silver mirrors, swept with calculated apathy over the exhausted and humiliated bodies lying on the floor.
"The Patriarch is entirely correct, children," the Maiden of the Mirror dictated, her voice echoing off the walls like crystal bells in a cemetery. "Your newborn Law Seeds and your pure Intents have overwhelmingly surpassed your pathetic current cultivation level. You are simple shells of fine crystal trying to swallow and contain the heat of a sun. If I force you to fight the Patriarch in this pitiful state, you will disintegrate before you can even raise your weapons. You will die for real."
Sienna extended her pale arms toward the plain. Her graceful fingers traced invisible, ancient conceptual seals in the void.
The absolute domain of the Infinite Mirror began to transform and reconfigure with a terrifying and colossal majesty. The smooth, immense perimeter obsidian walls creaked and parted, revealing gigantic polyhedral chambers embedded directly into the living rock of the abyss.
"I will create for you what the petty outside world could never afford," Sienna announced.
The gigantic mirrors inside the chambers began to reflect not ambient light, but the pure, raw essence of the Qi of different elements. The geometric and infinite refraction multiplied the density of the elemental energy to such an extent that it became visible, suffocating, and liquid.
The deity pointed to the first immense opened chamber. It was bathed in a violent crimson and black glow, where heavy lava and dark fire flowed from the walls like cascades of boiling energy.
"The Chamber of Ruin and Magma. Kael, Eris, Ignis, Korg, and Bren. The obscene density of Fire Qi here is a thousand times greater than that of the core of the Upper Palace Throne Room. A single day of painful breathing in this room is equivalent to an uninterrupted year of resource absorption in the real world."
Sienna pointed to a second chamber, and the warriors trembled at the sight of it. It was enveloped in an Absolute Zero so violent and dense that light itself froze upon entering, falling to the floor in the form of heavy flakes of blue and silver diamond.
"The Chamber of the Winter Void. Violeta, Elara, Eira, and Draven. Inside here, the very concept of space is permanently fractured, and the invasive cold will stop your hearts in five seconds if you do not manage to assimilate the Law of Ice into your cores to pump your own blood."
A third chamber lit up, glowing with millions of complex golden runes, spinning metallic threads, and an oppressively pure and sharp geometry.
"The Chamber of the Puppeteer and the Seal. Cedric, Orion, Iris, and Goran. Lethal matrices weave themselves in the cutting air. You will have to force your bodies to absorb them directly into your own bones to survive the crushing magnetic pressure."
With a fluid, choreographed movement, Sienna revealed and opened immense chamber after chamber, showing the personal hell designed for each squad. She revealed relentless Halls of Hurricaning Wind that flayed the skin and Teleportation Vortices for Ciro, Joren, and Rowan. She showed beautiful but lethal Gardens of Twisted Life and Absolute Poison, where the pollen was deadly, for Cassius, Elowen, Jareth, and Tamsin. She deployed terrifying Abyssal Gravity Pits and Oceans of pure, heavy black Mercury for Aion, Nylas, and Elian. She opened illusory Halls of Blinding Starlight and Dreamy Darkness for Lyra, Lirael, Aia, and Lys. She unleashed deafening Storms of uninterrupted Plasma for Xylia, Voltar, Maren, and Lia.
And finally, at the geometric center of them all, she opened the heavy doors of a sanctuary that was completely dark, absolutely devoid of sound, a single photon of light, or the slightest heat. A blind, oppressive pit designed purely to assimilate the abstract concept of Slaughter, Shadow Assassination, and the undetectable Zephyr in madness—reserved solely and exclusively for Dante, Varian, and Altair.
"The Cultivation Halls of Dilation and Extreme Density are open and ready, Patriarch," Sienna announced, lowering her arms and crossing her hands over her lap with reverence.
Samael Morningstar walked with heavy steps toward the immense open maws of the Cultivation Chambers. His dark, imposing, and sovereign presence seemed to completely eclipse the immense divine energy emanating from them. He turned slowly toward his broken army.
"Years Two, Three, and Four of your miserable existence will be spent locked in an unbreakable, endless cycle," Samael dictated, and his tone was not that of a teacher reading an itinerary, but that of an Ancient God dictating a sentence of eternal damnation. "You will spend an agonizing month in the Cultivation Halls. You will not meditate peacefully; you will absorb pure, violent, and lethal energy. You will forcefully break your bottlenecks and violently expand your Dantians until you bleed profusely from your eyes and the pores of your skin."
Samael raised his hand and stroked the cold hilt of Kurohime.
"And then, when you believe you can bear no more... you will come out to the plain of this coliseum and spend an entire week trying to survive my sword. I will shatter your bones. I will humiliate you until you forget your names. And when you are a breath away from death, I will kick you back into the Halls so you may heal in the fire and continue absorbing energy. You will repeat this hell until you triumph, or until madness claims you."
Samael fixed his unfathomable violet eyes on Dante and the resilient members of the Void Sequences.
"You, my shadows, belong now to the insignificant Transcendent Realm. Listen well: when Year Four comes to an end, I demand that each and every one of you, without a single exception, has crossed the abyss, surpassing the nine stages of the Origin Realm, and emerges as Half-Saint powerhouses. If your bodies fail and you do not achieve it, I will not save you. I will leave you to rot and die in Sienna's beautiful chambers."
Then, his relentless gaze shifted toward Kael and the proud elite of the Imperial Sequences.
"You are Half-Saints. Supposed geniuses of the continent. When Year Four concludes, I demand that your immature Law Seeds bloom completely. I want twenty-one true and absolute Walking Saints forming my ranks, ready and hungry to raze the continents of the outside world. Have I been clear?"
Kael, still clutching his aching chest from the severe aftereffects of the mental attack, knelt on the broken crystal, bowing his red head with the utmost submission and devotion.
"Your will shall be done strictly, our Patriarch."
Violeta, Eris, and Dante followed him without hesitation, bending the knee. In a matter of seconds, the forty-five lethal warriors were firmly prostrated, accepting with almost religious fervor the torturous sentence and the incalculable gift of power their God had just granted them.
From the safety of the holographic projection in the Throne Room, Seraphina floated gently forward, her phantasmal image placing itself delicately beside Samael's imposing figure. Her infinite constellation eyes rested on Violeta, Elara, and Eira, transmitting a tenderness that was profoundly terrifying.
"You will not be abandoned to your fate in your cold pain, my girls," Seraphina promised, her voice echoing in the hall imbued with the overwhelming mystical power of the Supreme Yin Lotus Body. "I will enter the glacial halls with you. I will guide you in the dark. I will teach you the ancestral Whisper of Absolute Zero and the art of freezing the very souls of your enemies. Samael will teach you to bleed in the arena... but I will teach you to never feel the cut."
Vexia, standing in the rearguard, also took a military step forward, her projection silhouetted sharply on the plain.
"And I, for my part, will meticulously supervise the biological logistics of your mutations," the Grand Marshal added, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose, the lenses shining with the sadistic and dangerous reflection of the cultivation halls. "I will mathematically analyze every fissure in your broken bones and optimize the purity of your draconic bloodlines to the millimeter after each healing. We will ensure that the foundations of the Morningstar Empire possess not a single structural flaw when we march to war."
Samael said no more. His gloved hand closed over the hilt, and with a single violent movement, he fully unsheathed Kurohime.
The thunderous hum of the immense dark blade cutting the air resonated in the coliseum like the trumpet of an imminent death sentence.
"You have rested long enough," Samael ordered, his eyes burning with the fire of a thousand wars to come. "To the chambers. Enter the abyss."
The forty-five warriors rose in unison. There was no longer a trace of doubt in their movements. There was no room left for childish fear of the unknown; they harbored only the cold, hard, and absolute certainty of the immense physical suffering that awaited them, endowed with a bloody and divine purpose.
In a deeply reverential silence, the hive split, dividing into their respective squads, and they marched with heads held high into the gigantic, scorching elemental chambers Sienna had forged exclusively for their martyrdom.
The heavy, cyclopean doors of crystal and rock slammed shut behind them, sealing them alive in cosmic densities of pure Qi that would have crushed and liquefied the lungs of an ordinary mortal in mere seconds.
The inclement cycle of torturous meditation, forced expansion, and uninterrupted massacre had just begun.
In the deceptive calm of the outside world, the sun of the Realm of the Eternal Dawn was barely setting on the horizon. But in here, in the depths of the labyrinth, endless years of darkness, blood, and despair waited patiently to forge absolute demons on the anvil, the ones who would rule the earth.