"Don't feel bad. You never had any chance of defeating me," Zarach said, his tone dripping with pride. "There is no one beneath a Ruler who stands as my equal." Wielders of the Fate and Soul elements were extremely tricky to deal with individually, and people like Zarach, who were in a league of their own, were the hardest challenge one could hope to find. Facing Zarach alone was already going to be a challenge, since Alex knew almost nothing about his battle style, but adding another high-caliber danger as his aid only pushed the difficulty to an unseen level. There was no doubt in Alex's mind, he had never faced a stronger opponent than Zarach. If he were to search the realm for someone capable of matching the monster before him, he doubted he would find any. "Enough talk. Let's end this." Zarach's voice carried a sharp thrill, the look of delight never wavering. The moth empress suspended behind him phased out of existence, and in the same breath, it appeared above Alex, descending in utter silence, as though even the world itself dared not disturb its arrival. Its wings stretched wide, translucent sheets of moonlit silk that glowed faintly as they rained down a barely visible haze onto Alex. The motion took no more than two seconds. Alex's eyes, two abyssal pools, turned dim, returning to their original form, having turned dull and glasslike, as if life had suddenly left him. Zarach walked forward leisurely, his empress spirit hovering above, continuously raining that silent haze that kept Alex frozen in place. When only a hundred meters separated them, Zarach raised his hand, lips curling as he spoke. "I didn't think you would grow so overconfident," he said, shaking his head, his voice dripping with disappointment. "You should have used that soul possession skill." "At least it would have given you a few seconds to taste the difference between our skill and power, or a few minutes, if that old corpse decided to possess you." "Then again, you would have forgotten the entire experience, so nothing changes for you," Zarach said, his voice low with mocking calm. "Though I would have liked to see what improvements you had made over the past few years, since it's people like you who stand at the pinnacle of normal otherworlders." He raised his pale, bony hand. Fingers went taut, veins bulging on the back of his hand as if under great strain. "Now, be a good..." Zarach's words cut off as his head snapped sharply to the right, faster than eyes could follow. The silence of the dead world shattered with a faint drip... drip... the sound of blood falling onto blackened earth. A thin gash had opened across Zarach's cheek, and crimson drops slid slowly down his face. He looked up and met Alex's crystal, lifeless eyes, eyes that slowly darkened, shade by shade, until they turned pitch black. "I was aiming for your head," Alex said flatly. "But it would've been disappointing if you just died like that, after all that talk." Zarach was no doubt the strongest individual Alex had ever faced, but the same could be said in reverse. Alex would be his hardest challenge, and certainly the one to finally serve him defeat. "Interesting..." Zarach muttered, anger flickering in his colorless gray eyes as a bloodied smile curved his lips. "You showed the full symptoms of Soul Stasis, yet your mind was completely unaffected. I wonder how you did it." He spoke with genuine curiosity, as though his failed attack didn't bother him at all. His fingers twitched, playing with invisible threads, and the gash on his cheek stitched itself together in an instant, like it had never been there. ʀᴇᴀᴅ ʟᴀᴛᴇsᴛ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀᴛ 𝕟𝕠𝕧𝕖𝕝⁂𝕗𝕚𝕣𝕖⁂𝕟𝕖𝕥 The moth empress phased out of existence once more, vanishing from sight, while its master continued forward in unhurried steps. Alex watched him, calm, his hand closing around the twin blades at his waist. His Eyes of the Ancient flared black, revealing a world unlike anything mortal sight could perceive. In that monochrome world, Alex saw silver threads, thinner than hair, stretching from Zarach's slender fingers. They numbered nearly two dozen and stretched into the great web of fate that surrounded them both. The threads making he great weave numbered in tens of thousands, forming an intricate lattice, some bright and pulsing with presence, others fading as quickly as they appeared. The web of fate represented every action and intent, and what Alex saw was only the small fraction that Zarach was actively interacting with. The silence broke again as the silver moth phased back into reality behind Alex. Her small mouth opened into a humming scream, and at the same time, countless silver threads snapped toward their right like a storm of living wire. A moment before Alex stepped out from the void's embrace, several of the silver threads were already anchored into the surrounding space's web of fate. Some clung to his legs, some to his mana, and others burrowed into the ground beneath him. Darkness gushed out from his body, erasing the strings tethered to space and those feeding on his mana, while his twin blades moved in silent precision, slicing through the threads binding his legs and the earth below. In the brief instant it took to sever those anchors, the empress spirit's humming scream descended on him like an invisible hammer, a shrill vibration that tore through the air. Darkness rose to counter it, but part of the invisible breath still seeped into him, threading cold pain through his being. The effect was immediate. Alex's body tensed as his jaw clenched tight as if he were forcing something back. Then, in the same breath, he spun. Both blades swept through the air, carving twin crescents of shadow that surged outward, two tides of darkness swelling to blot out both the sky and the ground. The disturbance that had gripped his soul faded as swiftly as it came, though he didn't press the advantage as a veil of soul energy was rushing at him from the empress moth from up ahead, a threat too sharp to ignore. Alex sidestepped the incoming wave, circling wide instead of wasting strength on a direct clash. By then, the darkness that had drowned Zarach thinned away, revealing him untouched, still standing with that same confident calm. "Domain of Error?" Zarach's smile widened, satisfaction curling at its edges, as if he already knew he was right. "Even the direct descendants of the great clans would struggle to achieve such a feat in a decade... and yet you have done it in a place , and in just a few short years." He tilted his head, studying Alex with keen interest. "Though it appears you can only plant error, not control its effects." His lips trembled with a quiet, involuntary shiver, not of fear, but of raw amazement. "Still... that alone makes you a troublesome opponent." Zarach's words hit close to the truth. Both times, Alex had relied on Error to counter soul-based attacks. The first time, when the moth empress froze his soul, forcing it into a state of stasis. Alex countered by planting Error in the strongest base of the spell itself, preserving its physical structure but twisting its effect, turning total blackout into mere sluggishness. Alex still retained his ability to think and react, and erasing the lingering effects was a simple task. The second time, the spirit tried to manipulate his emotions, to drag him into despair, and Alex countered by erasing part of the attack while planting Error into the rest. The change made it so that instead of falling into hopelessness, he felt an almost uncontrollable urge to laugh. Zarach had also been right about Alex being unable to control the end result of his Error. The ability itself was a glitch in reality, a change that made truth doubt its own form, forcing it to twist into something new. And something new, even when limited, always carried countless faces. Although it would force reality to change one effect into another, that change wouldn't always be desirable. The spirit's second skill had been a perfect example. The Error Alex planted warped the effect from despair to joy, harmless, perhaps, but random. It could just as easily have turned into anything else, not simply the opposite. To reach the level where one could dictate the outcome of such distortion would require immense mastery, control over both Error and an intimate understanding of the element being affected. Achieving that kind of precision would take years, perhaps decades, of relentless study and practice. However, Alex was far from helpless. Thanks to his Eyes of the Ancient, he could see the very structure of reality, along with the structure of any skill: its foundation, its threads, and the pattern it followed. And after six months of facing nothing but creatures of every kind, having seen and experienced all the powers of nature, he had learned to read the effects of a skill well enough to counter them effectively. The result of an Error depended on three criteria: the amount of Error infused, the time taken, and the placement of its seed. Through experience and trial, Alex had reached a level where he could guide the result most of the time, not perfectly, but close enough. And even when he failed, the unintended side effects were still far better than the original harm. "Let's see how many more tricks you've got hidden up your sleeve," Zarach's voice boomed, echoing across the lifeless field. His figure surged forward, silver threads snapping violently from his fingertips as they forced countless threats to coalesce, making a dozen new forms burst into being, each an identical reflection of himself. They moved like ghosts, incorporeal and translucent, each wearing a distinct expression, each in a different situation.