Chapter 99: His Intention...
"I found the identity of the attacker in the eastern wing from the deep archives. It wasn’t one of Aurelia’s loyalists. It was a sleeper agent activated by Selene."
Zen’s dark eyes subtly shifted, locking onto the Sanctum Goddess standing at the shattered doorway in her pristine white armor.
"I also recovered the agent’s exact mission parameters," Nyx continued, her digital voice dripping with dark amusement. "He wasn’t armed with a lethal weapon. He was carrying a high-tier Severing Seal."
Zen went perfectly still.
Selene. A Severing Seal.
He let the two pieces of data hang in his mind for a fraction of a second, analyzing them.
Why send a fanatic, highly trained sleeper agent into a hostile Domain without a lethal weapon? Why risk an international incident just to carry an artifact meant strictly for breaking magical contracts?
And then, the pieces clicked clearly together in his mind.
Selene had met Maya before in the Omni Domain, and had explicitly promised Zen that she wouldn’t "kill" his little healer, but that she would find a way to disrupt their blood pact.
She was honoring her twisted promise on a technicality.
Her agent wasn’t meant to kill Maya; he was most definitely ordered to use the Severing Seal to rip the blood pact from her core. While it wouldn’t have killed her directly, the violent extraction would have shattered her D-Rank mana pathways.
She would have been left a brain-dead, crippled husk... cleanly cutting the ’parasitic’ connection like she had caled it, all without shedding a drop of blood.
Zen exhaled slowly, the icy power he had just absorbed settling heavy in his bones. He glared at the crying Saintess who had tried to lobotomize his healer.
He didn’t yell; he simply raised his right hand.
Nyx, who was leaning casually against a shattered pillar after retracting her own spatial pressure, watched with a wicked smirk as Zen effortlessly tapped into the exact same digital spatial magic he had siphoned from her hours ago.
With a flick of his wrist, Zen tore open a localized pocket dimension directly above the cracked marble floor between the Goddesses.
A collective gasp echoed from the surviving nobles.
The Emperor, who supposedly was a broken vessel, was casually manipulating advanced spatial magic.
A thud echoed through the silent ballroom as a body dropped out of the void and hit the floor... the desiccated, hollowed-out corpse of the sleeper agent.
"What... what is the meaning of this?" Lyra asked, her gravity-aura twitching in confusion as she stared at the grotesque corpse.
"It means your righteous crusade is a farce, Lyra," Zen said coldly, stepping down from the epicenter and walking directly toward Selene. "While you were preaching about the fabric of reality, your partner here activated a sleeper agent inside the eastern guest wing. An agent armed with a Severing Seal, tasked with ambushing my personal healer."
Gasps echoed from the surviving nobles.
Selene’s tearful expression froze.
Her facade cracked. "Zen, please, you have to understand! I gave you my word! I ordered him specifically not to kill her! I was only going to sever the bond to liberate you from her parasitic influence! I was purifying your circle!"
"You dropped an assassin in my palace?!" Aurelia shrieked.
The Empress’s sorrow over disappointing Zen vanished in a microsecond, replaced by a manic, territorial rage that burned hotter than before. The political humiliation of a Sanctum sleeper agent operating right under her nose was the ultimate insult.
"You dare bring your filthy fanatic rats into my home, Selene?!" Aurelia’s hands ignited with blinding golden fire. "I will mount your head on the palace gates!"
"Aurelia, stand down!" Selene snapped, raising her staff defensively. "You brought this on yourself by hoarding him!"
"Enough!" Zen commanded.
He slammed his foot against the marble floor, releasing a concentrated shockwave of his newly fortified Low B-Rank aura. It wasn’t enough to hurt them, but it was enough to snap their attention back to him.
"There will be no fighting in this ballroom tonight," Zen declared, his tone leaving no room for debate. "Aurelia, order your guards to stand down and prepare guest quarters for Lyra and Selene immediately. Lyra, Selene, stand your contingents down and confine yourselves to those rooms."
Aurelia bristled at the order to house her enemies. Her fire aura flared for a moment, but she bit her tongue and obeyed.
"Escort Maya back to her room," Zen continued, glancing at her direction and noticing the exhaustion in her posture. She nodded gratefully as guards stepped forward to help her.
Zen turned to the fuve powerful women watching him. "I need some time alone. We will meet again when I am ready."
None of them dared to argue as Zen’s commanding presence forced them into submission.
As the Empress and the Goddesses reluctantly began separating their forces, glaring at one another, Zen turned and walked away from the ruined stage.
"Meet me in my chambers in five," Zen whispered through their secure ’Shadow’ link, directing the thought solely to Nyx as he walked out of the shattered ballroom.
—
Zen unbuttoned his collar as the heavy doors of his room clicked shut. The silence inside was a sharp contrast to the chaos he had just left behind.
"System," Zen said quietly to the empty room. "Bring up the mapping drone feeds."
[Connecting... Drones active.]
Several holographic screens appeared directly in his vision. Zen crossed his arms, watching in real-time the palace security escor. He saw Aurelia angrily directing her guards, essentially shoving Selene and Lyra’s groups toward the western guest wing.
His eyes naturally gravitated to the screen tracking Lyra.
The Goddess of the Aether Domain moved down the lavish corridor with a slow, heavy grace, her star-woven cloak trailing behind her. She was the only Goddess he hadn’t interacted with since his awakening.
She looked just as she had five centuries ago... stoic and unreadable, which made her hard to read and also incredibly dangerous. He knew he would need to corner her soon to find out what she was planning.
’System, analyze the current variables,’ Zen ordered, his eyes tracking the purple lightning flashing outside his warded windows. ’I need to know how long this forced compliance will last and what the Void is doing.’
[Analyzing Goddess behavioral patterns...]
[Probability of immediate hostility or infighting between targets: 12%. The targets are currently psychologically subjugated by Host’s display of power and authority.]
[Analyzing Void Singularity expansion rate...]
[CRITICAL WARNING: Spatial anchor degradation has accelerated by 200% following Host’s massive mana absorption.]
Just then, the shadows in the corner of his bedroom warped, folding inward like a digital glitch before spitting out a sleek figure.
Nyx stepped seamlessly into the physical world, her stealth suit absorbing the dim light of the room.
"I have to admit," she purred in dark amusement, leaning casually against the heavy velvet drapes and crossing her arms as a smirk spread across her lips. "I ran exactly two million, four hundred and sixty thousand simulations for how this engagement Gala would end. Five Empress-level auras detonating the ballroom while you actively swallowed our magic like a black hole? That was only a 4.2% probability."
She pushed off the wall, sauntering closer to him with a slow, predatory sway of her hips. "You certainly know how to show a girl a good time, Emperor. The panic on Aurelia’s face when you absorbed her fire was entirely worth the collateral damage."
Zen didn’t smile.
He simply swiped a hand through the air, completely dismissing the system display.
"The reality quakes," Zen murmured, ignoring her teasing as he turned his back to her, staring out the warded window at the glitching, purple sky actively tearing through the atmosphere. "How bad was the backlash?"
Nyx stopped a few feet behind him. Her smirk vanished instantly, and the sultry, playful Spymaster was replaced by the cold, calculating network overseer.
"Critical," Nyx whispered, her digital eyes scanning invisible data streams. "Your little stunt in the center of the room saved the nobles, but absorbing that much raw Divine mana acted like a magnet for the Void. The planetary anchor is actively buckling, Zen. If we don’t act, the world ends in less than a month."
Zen set his jaw. "Then let’s go tell them the truth."
—
The Imperial war room was entirely soundproofed and layered in dozens of High A-Rank privacy wards.
The massive obsidian table in the center was meant for military generals, but tonight, it seated the five most dangerous women in the world.
Aurelia, Valeria, Nyx, Selene, and Lyra sat around the table, the tension between them so thick it was physically suffocating. They were ready to tear each other’s throats out, waiting only for Zen’s permission.
Zen stood at the head of the table. He looked at each of them in turn, and then, he dropped the act entirely.
He didn’t project the fragile, broken vessel they thought he was. He released his aura completely, letting the dense, icy mixture of the ’Shadow’ and ’Body’ fragments he had already siphoned bleed into the room.
Valeria and Nyx both shivered, recognizing their own power humming within his chest. Aurelia, Lyra, and Selene stared at him in shock.
"You’re not a High F-Rank," Aurelia whispered, her amber eyes widening. "Your core... it’s functional."
"It’s repairing," Zen corrected her coldly. "And it is the exact reason why the sky outside is falling."
He leaned forward, bracing his hands on the table. "Five hundred years ago, you didn’t just steal my power. You used my fragmented soul as a cosmic band-aid to seal the Void Singularity. You built this entire world’s foundation on my stolen strength."
Aurelia’s breath hitched and Selene covered her mouth, the full, terrifying weight of his words finally hitting them.
"The world isn’t naturally degrading," Zen stated, delivering the final, crushing blow. "It’s collapsing because I am taking my power back. The more I heal, the weaker your seal on the Void becomes. Tonight, I siphoned your ambient auras in the ballroom, and it nearly tore the capital apart."
"Then you must stop!" Selene pleaded, standing up. "Zen, if you keep growing, the world will end!"
"If I stop, the world remains broken, and I remain a prisoner," Zen countered. "That is no longer an option. The power dynamic on this continent changes tonight. You are done fighting over me. You are done hoarding me in your Domains. And you are done playing politics."
He stood up straight, his Emperor’s aura expanding to fill every inch of the warded room.
"To permanently seal the Void Singularity, I cannot just be a vessel. I must reach Divine-Rank once again," Zen declared, issuing his final, non-negotiable directive. "We are going to systematically mobilize your armies. We are going to close the expanding Fracture Zones. And to do that, I will need my full strength."
He looked around the table, locking eyes with the Goddesses who had stood beside him five centuries ago.
"I am officially declaring my intention," he paused, allowing it to sink in. "I am taking every last one of my soul fragments back from you."