Chapter 101: Halt the Jump!!!
"You are dismissed," Zen commanded.
Slowly, reluctantly, the Goddesses filed out of the war room.
Valeria cast him a lingering, hungry look before stepping out, while Selene kept her eyes firmly on the floor.
Lyra gave him a stiff, calculating bow, and Aurelia practically vibrated with the need to start issuing logistical commands to her generals.
When the heavy obsidian doors finally clicked shut, leaving Zen completely alone in the warded room, he let out a long, ragged exhale.
He leaned heavily against the table, his knuckles turning white as he gripped the polished stone. The Emperor persona flickered and dropped.
Maintaining that level of dominance over five Divine-Rank entities while his core was only Low B-Rank was excruciating. His mana pathways were burning, his muscles ached, and his vision swam slightly from the sheer physical toll of the bluff.
But he had done it. He had completely flipped the board. He was no longer a political pawn trapped in a gilded cage. He was the commander of a unified global army.
"System. Bring the map back online. Remove the political borders and isolate the Void anomalies."
The massive holographic projection flared to life again, but this time, it was a terrifying web of violently expanding red tears.
"Run the predictive equations," Zen ordered, his dark eyes tracking the largest tear... the Abyssal Trench. "Calculate the maximum safe speed for my fragment absorption against the expansion rate of the Fracture Zones."
[Processing global ambient variables...]
[Analyzing Host’s Low B-Rank core threshold...]
[Current maximum safe absorption rate: 1.2% per week.]
[Projecting Void Singularity expansion...]
[Probability of the Abyssal Trench breaching the continental shelf within 14 days: 99.7%.]
[Estimated time until Total Planetary Collapse at current baseline degradation: 9 months, 18 days.]
[CRITICAL VARIABLE DETECTED: The "Anchor Paradox" is in effect. Every subsequent fragment siphoned by the Host removes a foundational pillar of reality. Projected global timeline will decrease by an estimated 15-20% per major absorption.]
[Probability of Host reaching Divine-Rank safely before global ego death: 0.000%.]
Zen stared at the grim, glowing blue text. The math was clear.
The world was literally tearing itself apart at the seams. If he played it safe and simply let the world degrade at its current pace, the planet had less than ten months before the Void swallowed it whole.
But that timeline was a merciful illusion.
The paradox was brutal: to save the world, he needed his power back to permanently seal the Void.
But the faster he reclaimed his fragments to reach Divine-Rank, the faster he ripped away the cosmic band-aids holding reality together.
The countdown wouldn’t stay at ten months. Every time he leveled up and siphoned a piece of his soul from the Goddesses, the world’s lifespan would shrink.
And right now, he didn’t even have ten months to worry about the big picture.
The Abyssal Trench, just one of seventy-two active tears was going to wipe out an entire continental border in exactly two weeks if left unchecked.
To beat an exponential collapse, he had to take exponential risks.
He was about to march into the most dangerous warzone on the planet with five obsessive, highly volatile yandere Goddesses watching his every move, and he was going to have to force a violent, highly unstable breakthrough in the middle of a battlefield.
With a swipe of his hand, Zen closed the system interface. The glowing blue text and the terrifying holographic map vanished, and the room was plunged back into darkness.
He turned his back on the obsidian table and strode out into the expansive corridors of the Crown Palace.
The aftermath of the Gala’s chaos was still hanging in the air. The elite guards stationed along the gilded hallways snapped to rigid, terrified salutes as he passed, their eyes wide with a mix of awe and lingering dread.
Zen ignored them completely, his mind meticulously dissecting the logistics of the dawn mobilization as he navigated the labyrinthine palace toward his personal wing.
By the time he reached his suite, his muscles were actively burning, screaming in protest from the physical toll of sustaining the Emperor’s oppressive aura for so long.
All he wanted was to collapse behind his warded doors.
But his path was blocked.
Valeria was standing directly in front of his heavy mahogany doors. She had dismissed the two elite Crown guards stationed there, and her broadsword was planted firmly into the polished marble floor.
She looked like an immovable wall of crimson silk and kinetic mana.
"Valeria," Zen sighed, stopping a few feet away. "You are supposed to be resting before the dawn march."
"I am not leaving you unprotected in this palace," Valeria growled, her crimson eyes scanning the empty hallway as if expecting an attack from the shadows. "Aurelia’s weaklings let a Sanctum fanatic slip right into the eastern wing. I don’t trust them to watch your back while you sleep."
Her Guard Dog instincts were entirely dominant. After the chaos in the ballroom and the assassination attempt, her need to physically shield him was overriding her common sense.
Zen didn’t have the energy to argue.
Instead, he stepped forward and placed a firm, grounding hand on her armored shoulder.
"Fine," Zen murmured, his Low B-Rank mana pulsing faintly against her skin to soothe her fraying nerves. "Hold the perimeter, Vanguard. Let no one through these doors."
Valeria leaned subtly into his touch, a fierce, satisfied gleam returning to her eyes now that she had been given a direct order to protect him. "Nothing gets past me, Emperor."
Zen gave her a single nod, opened the mahogany doors, and stepped inside.
He deactivated the physical locks to his private quarters, finally feeling the heavy weight of the Crown Palace drop off his shoulders.
The room was shrouded in darkness and protected by High A-Rank wards meant to ensure total isolation. Valeria was holding the physical corridor, and the magical barriers were active. He was finally alone.
Except he wasn’t.
Perched casually on his windowsill with one knee pulled to her chest as she stared at him with glowing purple eyes was Nyx. Her stealth suit blended seamlessly into the night sky behind her, making her look like a phantom.
She had bypassed the warded locks, and completely bypassed the Vanguard standing guard just inches on the other side of the door.
"My wards are still fully active," Zen noted, walking past her to unbuckle his heavy Imperial tunic.
"I was just running a security sweep," Nyx purred smoothly. Her gaze tracked the movement of his shoulders a little too hungrily to be professional. "Making sure the Emperor’s bed is safe."
It was a thin excuse.
The Spymaster’s stalker tendencies were flaring up; she clearly just wanted to watch him sleep. Zen didn’t have the energy to throw her out, nor was it tactically sound to reject her presence right now.
"Since you’re so focused on security," Zen said, tossing his tunic onto a chair. "Keep a permanent shadow-eye on Maya. Selene swore her forces would run support, but I don’t trust her fanatic paladins. If anyone so much as looks at Maya wrong, paralyze them."
Nyx’s smirk sharpened into something distinctly lethal. "Understood. No one touches the healer."
Zen collapsed onto his bed, closing his eyes to cycle his burning mana pathways. But rest was an illusion.
The communication crystal on his nightstand flashed with a rapid, blinding strobe.
He picked it up, and a stream of holographic messages immediately flooded his vision. It was Aurelia.
She clearly hadn’t slept a single second.
Driven by her manic devotion and an obsessive need to prove her indispensable worth to him, the Empress was aggressively tearing through her domain’s infrastructure.
"Liquidated the Eastern and Southern Treasuries."
"Three merchant fleets chartered to run supplies for the Vanguard."
"Imperial Bounty System is live across all streaming networks. Twelve top-tier mercenary guilds have already accepted the minor zone contracts."
The messages kept coming, rapid-fire updates dripping with a desperate, unspoken need for validation. She was moving mountains overnight, and she clearly wanted his praise and approval.
Zen tapped the crystal and sent a single, concise audio reply: "Flawless work, Aurelia. You are holding the continent together."
He could practically feel her obsession flare through the network. As the crystal finally fell silent, she was satisfied.
—
Dawn broke with a sickly, purple hue bleeding through the clouds.
The Crown’s grand teleportation plaza was made of massive carved stone and buzzed with military activity. The combine Elite forces from the Domains were gathering there, preparing to jump to the Abyssal Trench.
Zen arrived in his combat gear with Maya at his side. She looked pale but determined, her hands gripping her healer’s staff. At the center of the array, the Goddesses waited, radiating lethal authority.
Valeria’s broadsword hummed with kinetic energy. Lyra adjusted the cuffs of her star-woven cloak, while Selene directed her clerics with strained, quiet focus. Aurelia stood proudly by the primary control terminal, ready to initiate the mass jump she had personally funded.
"Coordinates locked onto the staging ground," Aurelia announced, her eyes fixed entirely on Zen. "Awaiting your command, Emperor."
Zen opened his mouth to give the order.
Suddenly, the plaza’s perimeter emergency alarms shrieked.
Red emergency lights bathed the runic stones in a panicked glare as the primary communication terminal sparked to life. A frantic, static-laced hologram of a Vanguard scout appeared, his face smeared with blood and the roar of a distant battle echoing behind him.
"Halt the jump!" the scout screamed, his voice cracking from terror. "Don’t send the Emperor!"
Zen stepped forward, his Emperor’s aura flaring. "Status report!"