Defiance of the Fall

An accelerated step to the side avoided Zac's slicing chop. His attack pursued without giving pause, but the much larger reaver was as slippery as an eel. He dodged again, disrupting Zac's tempo with a lightning-quick jab before resuming his oppressive siege. The heaviness of Kator's punches belied their speed, and their rhythmic thuds couldn't be fully absorbed by the reinforced steel walls.

Joanna followed every movement and every transformation of Dao from the sidelines, even if she knew it was impossible for her to follow in their footsteps. Her understanding of Dao and how it influenced reality was too lacking to achieve true integration.

If it had been before, she would have been overwhelmed by a sense of inadequacy by the beautiful yet deadly dance before her. Today, she only felt pride over Zac's rapid progress. It was like a new person stepped into the sparring chamber every morning. It still wasn't quite enough to create a perfect counterbalance against Kator's refined technique, which clearly had borrowed much from a powerful Heritage. At least the jeering taunts had been replaced by focused silence.

Besides, she had no reason to mourn the loss of something she never had now that she'd found a road of her own. Observing the daily spars was a ceaseless font of inspiration to her [Eight Hells Suppression], the comprehensive set of techniques imparted by her master. She'd opened the first gate of Hell through slaughter on the battlefield and was enlightened to the second with the help of Rava.

Joanna could tell the Eternal Servant hoped Indra Eyler's purpose and allegiances would rub off on her. Joanna wasn't against the idea of helping Rava to reciprocate her grace, but it would depend on the path Zac chose. The Limitless Empire and its grand design meant nothing to Joanna, who'd chosen to live and die with the Atwood Empire.

"Time!" Joanna said.

The battle continued, though a sharper song replaced the meaty thuds. It would take a casual observer a few moments to realize the two had taken out practice weapons. Their auras and movements had made it feel as though they'd been fighting with weapons all along. Zac continued his relentless, suffocating advance, refusing to be trapped in Kator's restricting quagmire.

Every swing was a sermon on the Dao of Conflict, every feint and counter fundamental truth that could be utilized by large armies as well as individual champions. It had a natural flow that the brutal and practical killing techniques of [Eight Hells Suppression] couldn't mimic. Even then, it was impossible to say which approach would come out on top if the fighters were equally matched.

Generalized combat systems couldn't keep up with a true Dao Technique. Even elites following peak-quality Heritages would be one or two minor grades behind. Indra Eyler, whose affinity with the Dao was similarly unimpressive as hers, had come as close as humanly possible to breaking that established truth when creating [Eight Hells Suppression].

Killing Intent, Faith, and accumulated will of slaughter replaced the integration of Dao. Even while only grasping the first two gates, Joanna could match an average Integration stage infighter. More importantly, the potential was nigh-infinite. The [Eight Hells Suppression] could suppress the Dao and pierce the Terminus so long as you survived until the end.

Joanna could veritably see the road before her widen inch by inch as she and her emperor advanced. She had to hold back the instinctual urge to join him in battle and take down this unwelcome passenger. She prayed she'd be there when the false truce crumbled and that she'd have advanced enough to push the scales in their favor.

The sparring session stopped after the combatants had cycled through the full extent of their stances. If Joanna had to grade the match, she'd give Zac four to the skeleton's six. At this pace, they'd fight evenly in two weeks, though Joanna suspected Kator was hiding his true strength.

According to Catheya, the reaver had already been at Middle Integration when he arrived in Zecia. Shouldn't he have made some progress during years of warfare? Then again, wasn't it the same with Zac?

"Not bad, but you need more than that to topple this tower," Kator laughed, looking at the swirls of utter darkness around Zac. "You're walking a dangerous path, rejecting your origin."

"All roads that can reach the peak are lined with death and danger," Zac countered, and Joanna nodded in agreement.

"Granted, but you're muddying the waters, taking an unnatural direction. Why fumble in the darkness when the road has been paved and lit up for you?"

Zac glanced at the reaver before turning toward the exit.

"Because that road wasn't meant for me."

The door opened, and Zac walked out, leaving Kator and his audience. The silence lingered a few seconds before Kator scoffed.

"They all strut around arrogantly until they smash right into a wall," Kator scoffed. "So, who is it this time? It's you again, isn't it? My bones have been itching from your murderous stare for a while now."

Joanna glanced at Kruta and Ogras, who both shrugged with helpless smiles. It was Kator who'd demanded sparring partners, but there was no lack of willing participants after the first couple of days. It wasn't easy to find an opponent this skilled. The only one who could truly measure up was Zac, and he had too many things on his plate.

"This is our fifth duel," Joanna said as Killing Intent leaked from her body, ushered by her desire to keep pace with her lord. This time, I'll leave a mark on those bones of yours."

"How? Have you been possessed by one of the spirits wandering outside?" Kator laughed as he conjured four sigils made from Killing Intent to block Joanna's momentum. "Very well, show me what you got."

------------

A loud eruption added another tremor to the constant shakes of traversing the Imperial Graveyard. Zac could even feel the billowing Killing Intent seeping through the door. As expected, it was Joanna who had stepped up again. She'd taken any chance she could get to throw herself against Kator.

So far, Joanna hadn't managed to land a single hit against the reaver despite displaying more of her strength than the others who pit themselves against Kator's technique. This did nothing to temper her determination. Each loss was a lesson and further fuel to the blazing fire of her desire for power. Zac would normally have stayed to watch while going over his session, but he was already running late.

"Oh, sorry," Zac said, narrowly avoiding walking into Janos, who was sitting outside. "Keep up the good work."

The illusionist gave no indication he'd heard him. Janos appeared lost in a daydream, blankly staring at the door leading to the sparring hall. In fact, the demon almost felt like a figment of Zac's imagination, and Zac had to strain to remember the encounter as he turned away.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Janos's path was making him increasingly distant. The complex illusory world he'd crafted in his mind was extraordinarily powerful, but it was a double-edged sword. It could act as a basis for almost any of his skills, giving an effect similar to adding the weight of a Monarch's Inner World. The effect wasn't as strong as the real thing, but it was still powerful enough that it could take Zac a second or two to realize he'd been dragged into an illusion.

The downside was that the power came from Janos believing the illusion to be real. He'd willingly relinquished his grip on reality by trapping part of his consciousness in his own illusion. If Janos made a single mistake, he risked becoming a prisoner of his own making. It was a danger more than a few illusionists had fallen victim to. Reality became increasingly drab and disappointing compared to the scenarios they crafted with their Dao.—

Zac sent out a message through the communicator as he walked away. The sounds of intense battle faded, but Kator's words still rang in his ears. It wasn't the first time Kator had broached the subject of him following in Be'Zi's footsteps to pursue Oblivion. Even if he wasn't walking a path of purity as she did, he was still aiming for a Dao that diverged from the Dao of Death of the Abyss.

It was a rejection of the conventional path that both the clans of the Abyssal Shores and the Undead Empire pursued. Whether Tavza or Catheya, their understanding of Death was heavily influenced by the Abyssal Lake, as were the profound impartments he got in the Abyssal Pond. This was the lit-up path Kator mentioned. Relying more on the Abyss would lessen his burden, where cultivating his Bloodline meant cultivating his Dao.

In contrast, fusing Oblivion and Death into one Dao would create a mismatch between his Eoz constitution and his path. Giving up on his Draugr's racial affinity to Abyssal Death didn't matter since he couldn't use it anyhow. Still, it could potentially cause disharmony to his energy flow, like skills with low compatibility with one's pathways.

Zac wasn't overly worried. He doubted he'd face any noticeable issues until advancing beyond Earthly Daos, which meant there was a lot of time to prepare. Bloodlines represented a path that had been perfected enough to be passed on to future generations. That didn't mean you had to follow it blindly. If anything, Eoz hoped for change, where his descendants would lessen their dependence on the Abyssal Lake.

If your Bloodline didn't suit your path, then you'd change it to one that did. In fact, one didn't need to do anything. The more powerful your Daos grew, the greater effect they would have on your body. The changes he'd gone through after forming his Earthly Dao of Defiant War were just the beginning. Of course, an Earthly Dao was probably not enough in his case.

The stronger the Bloodline you carried, the harder it would be to reform. Be'Zi had proven it was possible to change the nature of a Draugr bloodline, though she only possessed the Branch of Zi.

The wheels were already in motion. Zac glanced at the Splinter of Oblivion, continuing its slow circuit around his heart without a hint of the malice of old. Similarly, a shard was set on a matching orbit in his human body. This set of remnants was the only one that wasn't placed inside his quantum spaces, with the last four providing fuel for his Cosmic Core.

The engravings covering the remnants were starkly different from those in his soul. They weren't just designed to filter and release. They also drew Vigor from his blood and Ichor, mixing it all up. The fusion wasn't stable because Zac hadn't refined the arrays yet. It didn't really matter, as the energy would go through a second round of refinement before it could destabilize.

Passive energy infusion was the direction Zac had chosen for all ten remnants. Four strengthened his soul, two his bloodlines, and the last four worked on his core. The latter doubled as batteries for his skills, though any of the remnants could fill that role in a pinch.

The engraved remnants couldn't provide as many benefits as practicing his tempering manuals or a real cultivator's meditation. It lessened the gap, at least, providing constant progress even when he was too busy to seclude himself. The Remnants would naturally assist with his body tempering and the [Nine Reincarnations Manual] even better than before.

Zac chose this path over the many other ideas posted in the Chaos Library for two reasons. His bodies and soul would automatically adapt to the change in his Daos over time, but the transformation would be slow and unable to match his cultivation pace. Creation and Oblivion Treasures were incredibly rare, which meant the Remnants were his best method of accelerating the process.

The setup also helped him rush toward his next set of Earthly Daos. Thanks to the Atavism, Zac had all the raw materials for the upgrade. He'd already been on the precipice of upgrading his Daos, so most of the insights he'd stolen from the Grand Tapestries and gleaned from the Impartments were left for his Earthly Daos.

However, he hadn't figured out the 'blueprint' for his next two Earthly Daos, how to fuse Creation with Life into Evolution and Death and Oblivion into Inexorability. Having Creation and Oblivion blend with every aspect of his cultivation system, from soul to cells, gave him a lot of insight into the matter.

The Heart Remnants were currently turned off, though they were still drawing energy from the other dimensions. The energy they released was meant to be taken by [Void Heart] and refined into an energy tailormade for his constitutions. The Hidden Node was still occupied with the Tribulation Lightning from five days ago, so he hadn't been able to test it out.

Zac didn't actually need to use the Hidden Node. He could take the energy as is, but he'd have to refine it himself with the [Void Vajra Sublimation] and one of the Draugr Bloodline Methods. He didn't have time for that, and he needed to stockpile some Creation and Oblivion Energy for his ultimate attacks anyway.

He expected the refined lightning to appear any moment now, and he'd already prepared for the release by snacking on Leveling Pills and Soul Strengthening Pills until he was filled with Pill Toxins. He was already level 199, approaching the limits of Middle Hegemony.

Zac had prepared everything necessary for a breakthrough on the go, though he was still leery about facing that terrifying tribulation in such an unstable environment. As things were going, he might not have much of a choice. At least he had the Yphelion's upgraded Cultivation Chamber to help.

Only the blueprint for his Late D-grade core still eluded him. He needed all three Earthly Daos and some of Ultom's clarity to fit everything together. The former was well on the way, and the beacon's signal was growing stronger by the day.

The only headache was Kator. He'd played nice since their initial exchange. Nevertheless, Zac felt the odds of a smooth mission worsening by the day, and not just because of the bomb still planted aboard the ship. He didn't need the [Lucky Beads] to feel fate's rising tide and conspiracies coming to fruition. The graveyard was a pot about to boil over.

Zac hoped Galau had some good news. He navigated a series of rarely used corridors, moving further and further from the quarters and common areas. Eventually, he reached a secluded room in one of the catamaran's hulls.

"It's finished?" Zac asked as he stepped inside.

"As much as is possible while hiding our actions from the skeleton's gaze," Galau said. "I'm certain he has some method to observe the outside, so it's impossible to perform certain stress tests. Some of our findings are strictly theoretical, though they shouldn't be far from reality."

Zac nodded in understanding. He'd asked Galau to give the Yphelion a full rundown while scanning for trackers or any other hidden threats since the ownership connection only provided so much information. The better they understood the ship, the safer they would be. And if they could keep some features from Kator, all the better.

Of course, their first days of travel indicated they might not be able to hide any lifelines for long. Since the eye, they'd been forced to deal with or escape four more anomalies, far surpassing what they expected from their intelligence.

They weren't particularly targeted or unlucky, either. If anything, the Yphelion employed certain cloaking arrays that lessened the ambient resentment's ire. The problem was that the whole region acted like they'd kicked up a hornet's nest, causing the number of anomalies to skyrocket. It was like eons of stockpiled madness were rising to the surface.

"What's the verdict?"

"In a word—amazing," Galau said. "As we assumed, the Yphelion is a true Peak D-grade Cosmic Vessel now, and one with specs surpassing anything you'd see on the frontier. It even exceeds my projections of a standard Iliex version by at least 30% in all measurements."

"Then shouldn't we be moving even faster?" Zac said with confusion.

"I think it's because we're too weak. We're deemed incapable of using the ship to its full potential, so we're throttled at around half of our maximum speed. We're locked out of some new systems entirely," Galau said with a grimace.

"New systems?" Zac said, leaning forward with interest.

"You were right," Galau said with excitement. "We've confirmed it. The System actually turned the Yphelion into a Life-Death-Space Vessel. You might have the frontier's only Cosmic Vessel not solely reliant on the Dao of Space."

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