The sub-basement of the Citadel was no longer a structure defined by walls or ceilings; it was a jagged geography of destruction. The first serious exchange of blows between myself and the new arrival from the sky had vaporized the containment barriers, leaving us standing on a floating platform of scorched bedrock, isolated amidst the cratered, smoking ruin of the lower city. The simulation was holding, but the frame rate of reality seemed to stutter around the sheer output of violence we were generating, the Lattice strings trembling under the weight of foreign authority.

  The Kyorian didn’t fight like a warrior or a soldier. He fought like an editor correcting a typo.

  He didn’t throw punches; he gestured, and kinetic force followed the line of his hand with the weight of a crashing moon. He didn’t cast spells; he enforced rules that the local physics were forced to obey.

  I engaged [Void Walk], slipping into the grey space between atoms to flank him. I emerged behind his right shoulder, an Ashen Blade forming instantly in my hand, coated in the parasitic Void-acid I had refined from the Leviathan specifically to strip mana defenses.

  I struck with intent to sever the spine.

  The figure didn’t turn. He simply occupied the space a nanosecond after my blade passed through it. He moved not with speed, but with placement, sliding through the causality of the moment.

  “Sloppy,” his voice chimed, perfectly calm amidst the sonic devastation of my missed strike.

  He backhanded me. It looked casual, a lazy swat to dismiss an insect.

  The impact hit my chest like a railgun round. My Abyssal Sovereign’s Carapace, forged from Null-Steel and the scales of a Tier 8 Titan, groaned under the stress. I was launched backward, smashing through the ruins of three consecutive habitation blocks, shattering plasteel and concrete before I could dig my boots into the ground and arrest the momentum with a gravity anchor.

  I stood up, spitting a mouthful of blood onto the debris. My regeneration flared hot in my chest, the heat knitting cracked ribs instantly.

  “Fast,” I noted, checking my internal analysis with my Void Perception. His abilities’ density was off the charts. He wasn’t using magic to enhance his strength; his muscles were simply woven from something harder than physics allowed. “And heavy. You hit harder than the ships do.”

  “Weight is relative,” the man said, stepping through the dust cloud. His grey suit was pristine. Not a speck of dirt clung to the fabric, as if the dust was afraid to touch him. “You anchor yourself to gravity. I anchor gravity to me.”

  “Do you have a name?” I shouted, reforming my sword, testing the edge. “Or do I just call you ‘The Expensive Suit’?”

  He stopped. He dusted off a lapel with agonizing slowness.

  “Millimos,” he said. The name carried a resonant weight that made the air shiver. “Well, at least an Avatar of his. As you know, I am still restricted from truly coming by the Prime. But worry not, this Avatar is way more than I need to handle you.”

  I paused, circling him. “Hadrian’s brother,” I mused, filing the information away. “Makes sense. You share the same arrogance. Just condensed. He shouted about his status. You just wear it.”

  “And you share his tendency to talk when you should be dying,” Millimos retorted, his tone bored.

  He raised a hand. The air around him shimmered, turning a pale, blinding gold. My perception screamed as it analyzed the energy signature. It wasn’t a type of mana I have ever felt before.

  It was that same Divine feeling Essence.

  He pointed a finger. A beam of gold light shot towards me, stripping the air of atoms as it traveled.

  I opened the Maw.

  I expanded the distortion field of the [Void-Star’s Hunger], ready to drink the attack as I had with Kharonus’ plasma.

  The gold beam hit the black vortex.

  The result wasn’t absorption. It was a collision of incompatibilities. The Hunger screamed in protest. It was like trying to swallow molten lead while having a throat infection. The gold mana resisted consumption violently. It burned the lining of my conceptual stomach, rejecting the void nature of my soul. It wasn’t just energy; it was Authority.

  I barely managed to disperse the energy, diverting it into the ground. The bedrock turned to glass instantly.

  “What is that?” I wheezed, wiping ash from my face. My mana pools felt scorched, the connection to the Void momentarily static-filled. “That’s not normal mana.”

  Millimos laughed. It was a pleasant, musical sound that felt entirely out of place on a battlefield of erasing beams.

  “Normal?” He tilted his head, amused. “You feast on the chaotic sludge of the Void and call purity abnormal? This is the Light of the Decree, boy. A God’s Blessing. A true Affinity derived from Origin.”

  He flourished his hand, and the golden aura expanded. It solidified. It wrapped around his limbs, forming gauntlets and greaves of pure, translucent gold light. He wasn’t wearing armor because he was the armor. He was creating an exoskeleton of crystallized light.

  “The Court grants me the Authority of the Heavens. Your Hunger is a bottomless pit, yes. But you cannot eat a mountain if it doesn’t fit in your mouth.”

  “Your Father sounds like a micromanager,” I taunted, hoping for more info on the leadership structure. “Does he pick out your ties too?”

  “He is Absolute,” Millimos snapped, his eyes flashing with a terrifying zeal. “Enough questions. Fight me.”

  He launched himself.

  The speed was blinding. The gold armor left trails of light in the air, distorting the visual spectrum.

  We clashed.

  It was a brawl. My Void-strengthened fists against his Divine-enhanced blows. The shockwaves ripped through the ruins, pulverizing what was left of the citadel foundation. Every time we connected, the gold mana tried to invade my system, burning my circuits. Every time I hit him, the Void tried to eat his light, only to be rebuffed by the sheer density of his belief.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “You’re struggling,” Millimos observed, landing a kick that cracked my shoulder plate deep enough to bruise the bone.

  “Just indigestion,” I grunted, using the momentum to spin and slash his chest.

  I decided to do some testing. If my powers weren’t enough, I would use the armory we prepared.

  I retrieved a sphere from my inventory — a Graviton Grenade Leoric had synthesized from the Void-Chelonian’s gravity pearls.

  I threw it at his feet.

  The grenade detonated against his gold armor. It didn’t explode with fire; it exploded with crushing mass. Space warped around him, trying to fold him into a singularity.

  Millimos didn’t flinch. He just walked through it. The gravity waves washed over his golden aura and smoothed out, ordered to behave by his divine mana.

  “Toys,” he scoffed. “You play with gravity.”

  He hammered me. Left, right, uppercut. I was a ragdoll. I blocked with gravity shields, with walls of summoned stone, with layers of Void-hardened mana. He punched through them all as if they were wet tissue paper. He used a Divine Art that summoned shards of hard light, piercing my armor like needles and pinning my cloak to the ground.

  My [Phoenix Rebirth] was running hot, fueled by the fragments of mana I managed to steal from the ambient air, but the drain was slowly becoming unsustainable.

  “You rely on tricks,” he scolded, grabbing my arm and twisting until the radius and ulna snapped with a sickening wet crunch. “You borrow power from dead beings. My power is Inherited. It is Perfection.”

  I gritted my teeth against the pain, my healing factor already knitting the bone back together even as he held it.

  “It’s not borrowing if you steal it,” I growled.

  I activated another consumable — a vial of Time-Salt Crysanthe had gifted me from the Spire’s pantry. I bit the glass vial in my mouth.

  For three seconds, time dilated around me.

  I moved in the stillness. I pulled my arm free from his grip. I summoned my Echo.

  “Pin him,” I ordered mentally to the clone.

  My clone charged. I charged from the opposite angle. We used [Apex Mana Authority] to cast a dual-layer binding spell — a mixture of ice and Void.

  Millimos didn’t even look. He spun, creating a tornado of gold force.

  My clone disintegrated instantly. The spells shattered into harmless sparks.

  I dropped into the Deep Dark layer of the Void, swimming beneath the surface of reality to avoid the blast radius.

  I popped up directly under him.

  After vigorous testing, we found that keeping the Flame within the Hunger stripped it from its Primordial property while still maintaining a lot of its firepower when I used it as a fuel source. I grabbed his ankle. I poured the Void Maw altered Flame directly into his leg.

  “Burn.”

  Millimos’ expression flickered. A twitch of genuine surprise disturbed his mask.

  The Flame bit into his perfection. It ate the golden greave. It seared the pale skin beneath.

  He kicked down. An orbital stomp.

  He drove me into the ground, burying me ten feet deep in the pulverized rock.

  When I looked up, coughing dust, he was hovering above the hole, looking at the scorch mark on his pant leg. The skin was already healing, glowing gold.

  “Entropy,” he mused, looking more annoyed than hurt. “Rudimentary. But… effective. How can you push so much mana into a simple spell that quickly?”

  I realized something then. This Gold Mana… it wasn’t just strong. It operated on a higher priority level than standard mana. It felt… conceptual. It was similar to a Mythic Ability but… heavier. More anchored.

  But it wasn’t infinite. The brightness of his gauntlet had dimmed slightly after the grenade. The greave was flickering where the Flame touched it.

  If I wanted to beat him, I had to whittle it down.

  “Round two,” I said, rolling my newly healed shoulder.

  I changed tactics. I stopped trying to damage him with blunt force. I started trying to erode his mana.

  Every block became an analysis. Every hit became a sample.

  I let him hit me. I opened the Hunger just enough to let a sliver of the Gold Mana in, risking internal damage for data.

  It burned. It seared my soul like drinking acid.

  But I held it. I forced the Hunger to process it. To break down the divine geometry.

  Slowly, agonizingly, I began to understand the structure. It was rigid. Unyielding. But it had a frequency. It vibrated at a specific cosmic pitch.

  And if it had a frequency… I could match it.

  I shifted my Void aura. I tuned it. I made the hungry dark vibrate at the same pitch as his Blessing.

  Millimos launched a Spear of Light.

  I caught it.

  This time, it didn’t burn as much. I swallowed the tip of the spear.

  My vision flashed white as the energy integrated.

  My eyes widened behind my visor. It worked. I just needed to adjust the frequency using the Deep.

  Millimos frowned. He noticed the spear fade slightly faster than usual in my grip before exploding.

  “You adapt,” he said, his voice dropping in temperature. “Like a Krie developing resistance to poison.”

  “Like a predator learning to crack a shell,” I corrected.

  I charged him again.

  This time, when our fists met, I didn’t bounce off. I latched.

  My hand gripped his golden gauntlet. The Hunger roared, tuned to his frequency.

  I pulled.

  A stream of golden light flowed from his armor into my arm. It wasn't much, but it was there.

  Millimos gasped. He felt the drain. He tried to pull back, but I held on, using gravity to lock our arms together.

  “Get off!” he shouted, blasting me with point-blank telekinetic force.

  I flew back, tumbling through the air, but I was laughing.

  I landed in a crouch, holding up my hand. It was glowing faintly, sickly gold.

  “Gotcha,” I whispered. “Tastes like metal and ego.”

  I looked at him. I was battered. My armor was in tatters. My mana was critically low.

  But I was winning the long game. I was learning. I was becoming the thing that could eat him.

  “Good fight,” I rasped, wiping blood from my eyes. “You’re way stronger than the Fire Demon. I learned a lot.”

  Millimos floated down. He looked at me, genuinely perplexed.

  “You are losing,” he noted, his grey eyes searching me for madness. “You are broken. You are outclassed. Yet you are… ecstatic?”

  “Why shouldn’t I be?” I checked my internal clock. The Glimpse duration was nearing its natural end, but I wanted more data. “This is great practice.”

  Millimos froze.

  His head tilted. That mechanical twitch again.

  Suddenly, a light flared on his chest.

  Beneath the grey suit, hidden until this moment, a pendant hanging on a silver chain began to burn.

  It pulsed with a frantic, white light that was completely different from his Golden aura. It whined — a high-pitched sonic keen that my Void Perception, currently overclocked to analyze his divine mana, picked up instantly. It was a frequency of Truth.

  Millimos looked down. He stared at the pendant as if it had just betrayed him.

  His eyes widened. The cool, aristocratic mask cracked. Genuine shock poured through the fissures.

  He grabbed the pendant. It burned his hand, sizzling against his pale skin.

  He looked up at me. His gaze was no longer assessing or arrogant. It was horrified.

  He looked at the air around us. He looked at the texture of reality.

  “What is this?” he whispered, his voice trembling.

  He realized.

  He realized the Resonance was wrong. He realized the Echo was wrong.

  He realized I wasn’t bleeding real blood, but simulated data.

  “Answer me!” he demanded, stepping back, his divine aura flaring in defense against the simulation. “What have you done?”