Wynchester, the Speech Square.

  Within the historical mists, a mirage-like projection displayed scenes from the Ethereal Realm.

  Arthur VI watched the God of Suffering in the midst of ascension, and a flicker of genuine envy rose on his face. Then he saw the Malevolent Spirit enthroned high above, and—utterly devoid of decorum—he gaped wide. “Who is that? An incarnation of The Breaking Dawn?”

  “No… that really seems to be… just a Malevolent Spirit?” Duke Argai said, as though he did not believe his own words.

  A mere being of the fourth Sephiroth—what right did it have to sit upon a throne that belonged to a Velthyr? And yet what followed only shattered their worldview further.

  “The God of Suffering—blessed by two Velthyr—failed in ascension, simply because a Malevolent Spirit refused to allow it… Who is he, exactly?”

  Duke Argai murmured.

  The face embedded in the metal castle fell silent for a moment, then answered slowly, “If I’m not mistaken… that Malevolent Spirit should be the one that appeared in the Sothos ruins—Oclair Sothos. I’ve seen the footage provided from Xistos’s memory…”

  “Sothos ruins… a World-Sanctioned Immortal… the Earl of Verdant City… Javon Sothos.”

  Arthur VI let out a long breath. “That World-Sanctioned Immortal also placed a piece on the board in this incident?”

  “No!”

  Arthur VI immediately overturned his own thought. “A World-Sanctioned Immortal is only the seventh Sephiroth. A Velthyr has opened at least ten Sephiroth—perhaps even transcended the shackles of the Sephiroth altogether. In the mortal world, with painstaking arrangements, a World-Sanctioned Immortal might barely contend with a descending shadow of a Velthyr. But that was the Ethereal Realm! The Ethereal Realm, where a Velthyr can unleash its full strength! How could the God of Suffering—blessed by two Velthyr—possibly fail?”

  “Unless… the Obscured Existence behind the Earl of Verdant City acted!” the royal alchemist added. “Only another Velthyr can stop a Velthyr!”

  As the former foremost authority in mysticism, many experts believed the Earl of Verdant City had, without question, been backed by a powerful Velthyr in the past.

  No matter what, the God of Suffering’s scheme to ascend as a World-Sanctioned Immortal had been utterly destroyed—by a single sentence from some existence.

  On the square, the cultists saw it and reacted as though the end of the world had collapsed upon them. Yet many others looked relieved, even freed—because the God of Suffering had died, the Blood Pact LAW binding them snapped apart. At once, countless hands shot up, and voices rang out.

  “I surrender!”

  This moment was destined to be remembered by many—leaving a vivid mark within the arcane Chronicles!

  Ethereal Realm.

  The pyramid.

  Black bricks cracked and fell away. That great miracle of the Ethereal Realm was collapsing into ruin.

  The Malevolent Spirit Oclair seized the God of Suffering’s posthumous remnant in one hand, and the broken Spear of the Sun King in the other, and returned to his body in a blink. Then his eyes opened, and a trace of gravity appeared on his face.

  Bringing my body into the Ethereal Realm was meant for one thing—if the situation turned bad, I would flee at once, using the strange property of Ethereal Realm teleportation to send myself away at random!

  It was a contingency in case this entire event was a trap.

  Of course, since he was not The Shadowless, he could not fix a precise coordinate. A random teleport was extremely dangerous—he might land in another abyss of the Ethereal Realm.

  By Javon’s original plan, once he seized The Broken Spear of the Sun King and the God of Suffering’s remnant, he could lie low for a time and seek another opportunity to ascend.

  After all, the Spear of the Sun King still held the blood of the Velthyr The Breaking Dawn. If he could steal even a thread of its power, he could represent The Breaking Dawn!

  “But now, the act of killing the God of Suffering went smoothly, and the entire pyramid has been blessed by The Breaking Dawn.”

  “The crucial point is… they’re still locked in confrontation. They have no hand to spare!”

  Javon lifted his head to the sky.

  Pure white radiance and a black night-curtain still interwove, colliding without end. Then he felt two immense wills sweep over him, cold as dragon-eyes.

  Javon did not hesitate. He returned to the mortal world, and his figure vanished in an instant.

  At the edge of the Speech Square, inside the safe house, Javon’s figure emerged slowly. Then he released the state of Malevolent Spirit Possession.

  “It’s time…”

  Javon murmured, opened The Flesh-Eater’s Pack, and took out one Beyond Mortality-grade remnant after another—then swallowed them down.

  Corrupted Umbral, craving Sanguis, frigid Mortis, dreamlike Veil, wise Tower, stubborn Chrysalis, and Secret steeped in history.

  Seven Beyond Mortality-grade remnants went into his stomach in succession, like seven iron blocks of different temperature and sensation.

  Pain twisted his face. He produced a talisman and recited in Spirit Language, “Open!”

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  Boom!

  Around the already-chaotic square, walls of nearby buildings exploded, revealing his room.

  He had exposed himself to countless eyes!

  “What’s going on?” The blast instantly drew the attention of the crowd.

  Tens of thousands saw the smoke thin—revealing a lone figure standing amid the wreckage.

  The Omniforge ritual demanded one thing: ascension under the gaze of more than ten thousand witnesses.

  Pure white flames ignited around Javon as he tried to use the Forgebearer’s power to melt the seven Essence remnants within him to the core.

  An ordinary third Sephiroth flame would have been helpless against Beyond Mortality-grade remnants.

  But the Forgebearer’s pure white fire was different. It could—barely—melt them, refine them, squeeze out their pure Essence.

  Javon let out a stifled groan of agony.

  As a Transcendent of the pure Forged Light path, suddenly hosting seven other kinds of Essence—each a powerful fourth Sephiroth—was like swallowing seven bombs.

  They had not detonated before.

  Now he was detonating them by hand.

  “Ah—!”

  Javon screamed. His eyes turned pitch-black. His muscles and veins bulged, as though countless mice were running under his skin.

  His shadow warped—twisting, vanishing, returning.

  His mind flooded with endless inspiration until thinking itself became labor.

  Even the air around him fogged with thin mist, and within that mist, mottled historical cutscenes flickered.

  In the ruined radius around him, rats, cockroaches, and other surviving vermin began to die for no reason.

  …

  The Omniforge’s defining trait was this: it could digest any Essence and convert it into Forged Light.

  The crux of ascension was to condense a Furnace Heart.

  It was the Omniforge’s core of life and soul—the sole vital point of the Transcendent who succeeded.

  Beyond that, even if the heart was torn out—or the head cut off—they would not die.

  Their vitality would be drastically reinforced; this was the shared feature of opening the fourth Sephiroth—Vitality.

  Yet forging the Furnace Heart proved harder than Javon had imagined.

  To fuse seven Beyond Mortality-grade Essences, and reverse them all into Forged Light, was not something a third Sephiroth Transcendent should be able to accomplish.

  If switching essential aspect were truly simple, history would not record only one known case—Arthur the Sun King.

  In normal circumstances, an ordinary Transcendent cannot reverse an Essence’s essential aspect at all.

  In a meditative trance, Javon stared at the tangled mass of multicolored Essence inside him, endured the pain, and raised The Broken Spear of the Sun King high overhead!

  That Deity-grade arcane artifact was already broken, yet it still bore the blood of The Breaking Dawn and The Night-Mother!

  Javon had no time to steal power from The Breaking Dawn’s blood.

  What he needed was only this—release the blessing of The Breaking Dawn he had stolen within the pyramid.

  That blessing had been stored upon The Broken Spear of the Sun King.

  That is why a ritual must obtain the blessing of a Velthyr of Forged Light.

  Their power is the ritual’s key. Only a Velthyr’s authority can reverse an essential aspect.

  And at the same time… it is the ignition for the Omniforge.

  Javon did not hesitate. He turned the broken spearhead toward himself and drove it into his body.

  A radiance identical to the one atop the pyramid burst forth and poured into him.

  Bang—bang—bang…

  Like a pile-driver slamming, like hammers beating steel, like steam sirens shrieking, like a furnace roaring in a steelworks—phantoms of forging and industry swarmed around his body.

  The Furnace Heart—ignited.

  Thud—thud—thud!

  Javon heard a violent heartbeat. Like machinery roaring deep in his chest. Essence was forced outward, a torrent rolling and crashing within him.

  With every contraction and expansion, the seven great Essences in his body underwent a mysterious change—turning toward pure Forged Light.

  Every second, his body accepted a new baptism.

  A furnace heart—illusory, yet searingly hot—condensed at the center of his chest.

  Its surface carried countless glowing veins like molten magma, swelling and contracting like a real heart.

  The abnormalities on Javon’s body receded bit by bit. The runaway symptoms gradually calmed.

  At the same time, black fissures like cracks in porcelain spread across his skin. Within them, magma seemed to churn, spilling gold-red light and heat.

  Within that flowing gold-red magma, innumerable fragments of mysterious knowledge were embedded, carrying a crushing spiritual impact.

  Heat and mental shock radiated outward. Bricks reddened. A terrifying heatwave pulsed in widening rings…

  This was the Omniforge’s Beyond Mortality form.

  For Transcendents, once the fourth Sephiroth—Vitality—opened, life was sublimated, and they began to look less and less human.

  Javon had successfully ascended to the fourth Sephiroth of the Forged Light path—

  Omniforge.

  At the same moment, his mind rose without limit. He was suddenly in the Ethereal Realm again, staring at a pure white sun wrapped in a curtain of black night.

  Without question, The Breaking Dawn had sensed him.

  It had clearly felt a mere ant in the mortal world ascend into a proper fourth Sephiroth of the Forged Light path—stealing a thread of its radiance.

  The light and heat around that pure white sun raged more violently. The Velthyr entered fury.

  But… it was locked in battle with another Velthyr. It could not descend with divine punishment.

  And there was another reason: Javon was still weak.

  He had only opened the fourth Sephiroth. The Breaking Dawn felt offended—but the impact was trivial.

  If Javon were a seventh Sephiroth World-Sanctioned Immortal, The Breaking Dawn would pay even the price of injury to erase him.

  On the Speech Square.

  Under tens of thousands of eyes, Javon in ascension could not hide anything. When he ascended, the Skinmask on his face burned away completely, exposing his true face.

  That face… those violet pupils…

  Arthur VI was an ordinary man with ordinary eyesight, but with an alchemist assisting him, the far-off scene became crystal clear.

  “Javon Yuggs, a descendant of the Sothos bloodline—first appearing in Verdant City, later arriving in Wynchester—estimated to have opened the third Sephiroth.”

  The alchemist recited without emotion. He had watched the intelligence from Xistos’s Memory Vial and understood the Sothos ruins well. “The key point is… he is suspected to have been possessed by the Malevolent Spirit Oclair!”

  “A man ‘possessed by a Malevolent Spirit’ is opening the fourth Sephiroth under our very eyes, becoming Beyond Mortality?” Duke Argai murmured. “Isn’t his pace… too fast? Everyone knows… Sephiroth advancement has never been about talent.”

  “Pollution and madness are the eternal companions of Transcendents. Although hidden sects possess methods of temporary suppression…”

  The alchemist answered flatly. “And… if one does not care about madness, rapid accumulation of Essence is not impossible.”

  “In other words, this Javon Yuggs is also a piece placed by the Earl of Verdant City? Or perhaps an unimportant one. What a pity…”

  Arthur VI sighed.

  Then, without needing his command, as the heatwave faded, military elites and special agents surged in to surround the area.

  Even if Javon was not of the Cult of Desire, his connection to the Earl of Verdant City—and his earlier behavior—made it entirely reasonable to “invite” him to the Bureau of Occult Affairs for tea.

  “As expected—make a spectacle and you’ll get beaten for it.”

  The fissures and magma on his skin gradually faded. Javon returned to an ordinary human appearance.

  Of course, he knew his life’s essence had changed. The Beyond Mortality form was the truth; the human form was only a mask and a pretense.

  He looked at the encroaching Transcendents—among them even fourth and fifth Sephiroth figures—and at the faint outline of an Ethereal Realm castle beginning to emerge. A mocking smile rose on his face.

  Then he invoked the Omniforge’s core ability.

  In an instant, all his Forged Light Essence shifted into Veil, and he became The Shadowless.

  In the next heartbeat, he vanished through Ethereal Realm teleportation.