Chapter 152: Nascent Realm: Stellar Battle
A grand battle was already in full swing when he arrived. Even from his suspended vantage point far above, he could feel terrifying energy signatures. They were so dense and overwhelming that the void itself felt heavy with pressure.
For a moment, Uhtred almost forgot what he was here to see.
Figures were clashing across the plane below, and the shockwaves of their exchanges produced visible ripples through space that reached all the way up to where he floated.
Those shockwaves alone told him that the weakest participant down there sat at a level so high it defied his current understanding.
He shook his head, clearing his mind, and searched the chaotic battlefield for the specific figure he had come to witness.
It took Uhtred a few seconds to locate him among the massive clashes occurring in every direction. But then, his eyes locked onto him, and he knew immediately who he was looking at...
Sovereign of Chaos, Drakgon.
Uhtred didn’t know what he had expected, but looking at him, he was mildly surprised. For a fact, he knew without being told that this version of the Sovereign wasn’t yet at a stage that could be termed as Sovereign.
Perhaps this was him at a time long before he reached the peak of his power, but still, that wasn’t to say he wasn’t extremely powerful. He was leagues beyond anything Uhtred could even imagine comparing himself to. But within this battlefield, his figure didn’t look as imposing as many others.
He was what one would term an underdog compared to these terrifying beings. The size difference and the difference in essence emanations roiling from others compared to him could be felt, even by Uhtred.
Yet, despite this severe difference, he had a surprisingly relaxed gait as he moved through the battlefield.
His physical build was fairly humanoid, but if Uhtred had to describe him, he would describe him as more like a demon or some sort of bipedal dragon. He had two dark horns jutting out from his forehead in a regal, gallant arc, and his eyes were blood-red with black vertical pupils.
Around him, in a sweeping arc that stretched for miles, a wave of spectral figures were charging. They were not human either, but unlike the Sovereign of Chaos Drakgon, who still looked vaguely humanoid, they possessed no solid form, resembling clouds of dark fog that moved with lethal intent.
There were hundreds of them in this single wave alone, converging on him from every angle.
The Sovereign of Chaos, Drakgon, raised his right hand. He lifted his arm to about shoulder height, and casually released a strike.
Uhtred, whose eyes were peeled, wanting to burn every bit of the Sovereign’s magic to memory, frowned slightly. He had expected something massive... an explosive, flashy display to match the scale of the cosmic battlefield.
Instead, the attack was surprisingly compact.
A single, thin line of energy shot from the Sovereign’s palm. As it traveled, Uhtred finally saw its might. It steadily expanded, growing wider and denser, almost like it was breathing.
It passed cleanly through the charging wave of those spectral fog beings. Every single one of them it touched instantly came undone. Their bodies simply dissolved, as if whatever force held their existence together had been erased on contact.
But the strike didn’t stop there. It continued forward into the distance.
As it traveled, it grew progressively stronger, drawing raw ambient essence directly from the void and weaving it into its path. After crossing over a thousand miles in a split second, it carried a level of force several times greater than when it had left Drakgon’s hand.
By the time it vanished past Uhtred’s field of vision, he couldn’t even guess how terrifyingly powerful it had become.
But then a second strike followed.
Then a third.
Then a fourth...
Each strike built upon the foundation of the last. They reinforced one another as they swept across the battlefield, becoming more complete with every release.
This wasn’t just Drakgon pumping loads of essence into his attacks. The strikes themselves were being constructed differently, none of them coming out the same.
Uhtred watched without blinking, and then slowly he began to glean some understanding of what he was witnessing.
This wasn’t like an elemental mage swapping between elements. It wasn’t fire followed by wind, then earth, then space.
Every single affinity was being cast simultaneously!
The fire aspect wasn’t separate from the wind aspect. And neither were separate from the spatial distortions running along the edge of every strike.
They weren’t just combined or fused together either.
Every single element was responding to the exact same intent at the exact same microsecond, expressing a different part of the same technique while actively amplifying the others.
Only then did Uhtred truly understand what versatility meant at the highest level of the multiverse.
This wasn’t a one-to-one insight into what it meant to be limitless, as versatility was just one aspect of being limitless and formless like he was. However, looking at someone whose insight into versatility, whose expression of it was at this terrifying level, made him begin to see where he had been going about it wrong.
Versatility wasn’t swapping between thermal, earth, and metal during a fight depending on what his opponent presented.
It was fluidity. It was chaos. And at the same time, unity.
It was a single, unified technique executed through countless elemental channels at once. Every element worked toward the same unified purpose, strengthening the others until the final output far exceeded what any single element could ever achieve on its own.
Something fundamental clicked inside Uhtred’s mind.
He knew he couldn’t replicate what he was seeing. The gap between his current strength and the Sovereign of Chaos was so vast that comparing them was meaningless.
Yet, even though he was only seeing a tiny fraction of the bigger picture, he had grasped a core principle.
He felt that understanding settle deep into his consciousness, reshaping how he viewed his own Formless Core.
The thirty seconds were almost up.
At the edge of his awareness, he felt a familiar, gentle pull begin to drag his consciousness backward. His floating form began to rise, and the vast battlefield below slowly shrank in his field of vision.
Uhtred felt a trace of reluctance. He wanted to see more. He wanted to witness the full might of the Sovereign of Chaos.
But his time was strictly limited. In his final moments, he tried to burn every detail of the battlefield into his memory.
Just as his vision began to fade, he caught a subtle movement from the Sovereign below.
Drakgon’s head tilted slightly upward.
For a fraction of a second, the hair on Uhtred’s arms stood on end. Drakgon appeared to be looking directly at him.
How is that possible?! This is a recorded memory! There’s no way he can look through time and observe me!
Uhtred suddenly felt bare, as if he was being scrutinized. But then a beat later, he realized something else... The Sovereign’s eyes weren’t actually focused on him at all!
As Uhtred stared into those sharp, vertical pupils and deep red eyes, he realized the Sovereign was looking past him. He hadn’t been imagining the gaze, but it wasn’t aimed at him.
Drakgon was staring at something positioned directly behind Uhtred... something that demanded his undivided attention, judging by the slight crease between his brows.
Uhtred instinctively tried to turn his head to see what was there.
But the moment the thought entered his mind, an ice-cold chill, a primal, instinctual terror unlike anything he had ever felt, instantly locked him in place.
His body wanted to turn, but his survival instincts completely shut down the movement. Every fiber of his being screamed at him not to look back.
He felt a soft, lustrous warmth hit his back, followed by a faint, suffocating heat as whatever was descending from the void drew closer.
Uhtred forced his eyes to stay fixed forward. Whatever was approaching from behind was something a Mortal Realm ascender was not meant to see.
He remembered the System’s redaction of the battle’s name, and now he understood why. There were truths in this memory he was simply not allowed to perceive.
The thirty-second limit reached its final tick, and the pull on his consciousness accelerated rapidly.
Uhtred was yanked backward into the void. The vast plane, the nebulae, the black holes, stars, and the cosmic battlefield vanished.
But right before the memory completely cut out, Uhtred could have sworn he saw the Sovereign’s expression change.
A ghost of a smirk touched Drakgon’s lips, not directed at whatever was descending behind Uhtred, but aimed directly at Uhtred himself.
Before he could process whether the smirk was real or a trick of his mind, the memory officially ended.
Uhtred’s consciousness snapped back into the dark void, his mind stabilizing.
He remained motionless in the pitch blackness for several long seconds, replaying every detail of the Sovereign’s unified casting method over and over in his head.
Then, he felt a change. A heavy, unstoppable pressure began to build inside his chest, pushing outward from his core.
His awareness was violently pushed out of the dark void and returned to his physical body sitting in the Grotto Heaven. The breakthrough sequence resumed. The Mortal Realm was officially releasing its hold on his existence.
The microsecond pause was over, seamlessly stitching back together as if time had never stopped.
Uhtred opened his eyes and let out a long, slow breath...
He had officially entered the Nascent Realm.