That suffocating dread was undeniable. Patrick had seen that face countless times before. Even the girl froze stiff at the sight.

  Under that crushing aura, Gaunt dared not move. This was the first time the three of them had ever confronted Mei at such close range.

  “...”

  In the suffocating silence, Mei drew her sword from Rosinante’s chest. Void energy burst forth, warping the air, swallowing Rosinante’s corpse into nothingness.

  “I’ll take the body.”

  With that, Mei turned.

  To their astonishment, she did not attack. She merely departed—leaving Gaunt utterly bewildered by the meaning behind her choice.

  Disregard? Contempt?

  Patrick, who had long witnessed Mei’s horrors, dared not make a move. The girl had feared Mei’s strength for a thousand years.

  But Gaunt?

  He had no real understanding of Mei’s power. Rash and unthinking, he called out to her, voice heavy with defiance:

  “What is your purpose? Why do you bear such venom toward us? And what exactly is this power we carry?”

  Mei had no interest in humoring him.

  “If you wish to know… find out yourselves.”

  Click.

  The door shut.

  Gaunt seethed. In a thousand years, none had ever dared treat him so—but from her, the insult did not kindle rage so much as cold unease.

  The girl had warned him again and again not to provoke Mei. He might not understand Mei’s strength, but he knew well the girl’s power, and that was enough to temper him.

  Truthfully, had she not spoken of Mei’s existence, Gaunt would have remained oblivious, drifting in obscurity for millennia more.

  They had imagined countless scenarios for this encounter. None expected Mei to appear so casually—so utterly indifferent.

  Did she truly not even deem them worthy of striking down?

  “Is it because our strength is not yet enough?” Patrick muttered, his voice low and heavy.

  The girl inclined her head.

  A bitter truth. They had scoured the ages, hunting for the faintest traces of this being—yet in her eyes, they were beneath notice.

  Not even worthy to die by her hand.

  That was Gaunt’s greatest humiliation.

  “Still,” the girl’s eyes glinted, “one thing is certain.”

  Her suspicion was confirmed: “This being is none other than the monarch of Firenze, from a thousand years past.”

  Why else would she claim Rosinante’s corpse—no, Hegram’s body, the Second Knight, whose betrayal had led to the destruction of the Firenze Empire?

  —Whoosh.

  A soft breeze swept through.

  The storm had passed. The sky shone brilliant and blue, sunlight pouring through like molten gold. The air carried the clean scent of grass and blossoms.

  On a lonely hillside outside Goliath, Mei buried Hegram’s remains.

  No marker. No grave stone.

  She had never cared for the Firenze Empire’s glory, nor for its downfall. To her, such things were nothing but drifting smoke.

  And yet—

  She honored the Twelve Knights.

  At this point—

  The Firenze Empire had already fallen into the dust of the future. Yet with the Lucerne Text as their guide, the end became the cause, and the glory of the Twelve Knights would endure in an even more ancient past.

  —Hum—

  Causal force bent the river of time backward, inverting the Lucerne Text’s outcomes into causes. What had once been effect became origin, manifesting as reality three thousand years ago.

  The oldest kingdom.

  The oldest sovereign.

  And—

  The oldest Twelve Knights.

  Colossal stars blazed in the heavens, galaxies coiling like serpents and dragons. In that vast, primeval age, divine miracles erupted across the world, weaving order from chaos and bringing dominion to the land.

  A supreme monarch ruled over all.

  This was the dawn of civilization.

  Upon endless, emerald grasslands, a silver-clad knight with a battle-axe knelt as if in slumber, his posture one of reverence to his sovereign. A voice stirred him from his dream:

  “How long do you plan to sleep?”

  The battle-axe knight opened his eyes. Before him stood a golden-haired knight.

  “I dreamt a long dream,” he answered.

  “Of the future?”

  “No—of returning to the past.”

  For these knights, the future was the past. They were beings who flowed against the river of time. To them, the farther past was the true future.

  —Boom!—

  Streams of light split the sky. War-chariots roared across the boundless plains, wind lashing at the armor of the two knights.

  1860, Goliath City — Royal Academy of Sciences.

  Patrick had spent months constructing a new device: one designed to store and regulate temporal energy. It would ensure that, even in their absence, the laboratory and the time machine remained shielded—protected from interference, disaster, or erasure.

  No longer would they risk returning from a journey to find the machine gone, or the laboratory reduced to rubble. Patrick had calculated every possibility.

  So long as the time-shield endured, no intruder could breach the lab or sabotage the device. Of course, there was always one exception.

  But such an exception scarcely mattered. If that being had ever truly wanted to strike, she would have annihilated them long ago. Why allow them to scramble and scheme like insects?

  It was not restraint. It was indifference.

  Rather than believing she would stop them, Patrick understood the truth: she allowed them to travel. Perhaps she deemed them incapable of stirring even the faintest ripple.

  Gaunt’s first impression of her was arrogance—absolute, insufferable arrogance. But Patrick knew better.

  She was giving them time. A chance to grow stronger.

  Only then would they be worthy of dying by her hand.

  How absurd.

  How cruel.

  Yet, this was the only chance they had. Even blind, they had to pursue it—if only to seize the faintest hope.

  “Are you ready?”

  “Yes.”

  “No problem.”

  In the sealed laboratory, only three remained: the girl, Patrick, and Gaunt. With everything in place, Patrick activated the time machine.

  ——

  Objective: Trace the origin of that being. Uncover the source of the power within them. Discover why that being would one day end them.

  Time: The Dark Ages, Year 511

  Location: Jade Territory

  ——

  For the girl, this marked the beginning of all things.

  It was in that year, by a riverbank, that she discovered the gem which changed her entire life—launching her upon an entirely new path.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  And yet—

  Even now, she did not know: was it truly the gem that altered her fate, or had her destiny always been bound, waiting inescapably for her at the appointed time?

  —Tzzz—

  Currents knotted into a luminous grid around the platform. A flash of searing white light engulfed them, and the three vanished—flowing upstream through the river of time, cast back more than thirteen centuries into the Dark Ages.

  Apokolips, Year 511.

  This was the Dark Ages. The Church still stood unbroken, its divine authority overshadowing mortal thrones. Immortals roamed unchecked, their endless wars with the Church tearing the land asunder.

  This was the beginning.

  “Such a nostalgic era.”

  But nostalgia had no beauty here. The age was mired in ignorance and misery: peasants starving, calamities devouring the land, the displaced wandering like shadows of the dead. A vision of hell made flesh.

  And yet Gaunt felt a dark familiarity. The Church had already fallen by the time he was born, but the early years of the Firenze Empire were even worse than this.

  Julius, conquering alone, had crushed thirty-seven kingdoms in his march. Entire realms collapsed, plunging the continent into chaos.

  Gaunt had been raised in such carnage. Only when the Twelve Knights had sworn themselves to Firenze’s monarch and, alongside Julius, subdued the turmoil, did the world begin to stabilize.

  For Patrick, this was his first time standing in such an ancient age. The gulf between this nightmare and the flourishing Firenze Empire was staggering.

  The Dark Ages, as written in history, were nothing but blood. A man-eating era—where a human life was worth less than grass.

  Less than livestock.

  Farmers’ grain, painfully harvested, was seized by both king and Church, leaving barely enough to keep breathing. To survive a year was itself a miracle.

  Now, with those same bloody words of history writ large before their eyes, the suffocating despair was unmistakable.

  Patrick shook his head. “This is not an age worth remembering.”

  Then—

  A girl appeared in the distance. Her face mirrored Fate’s, though at this point she was nothing but an ordinary peasant, clothes in hand, preparing to wash them by the river.

  Patrick turned to Fate. “Will you try to change your destiny? If you choose differently here, perhaps you could alter your future…”

  Fate fell into heavy silence.

  The condition for advancing the concept of Fate was to weave into and alter the destiny of others. The more lives touched, the deeper the interference, the closer she came to solidifying the concept itself.

  To alter her own fate seemed possible—yet unbearably dangerous. If she tampered with the moment she first touched destiny, it might very well trigger her advancement.

  At this time, the monarch of Firenze was still only the Lord of Jade Territory. The great wheel had only just begun to turn. Fate’s hidden nature would not yet be known.

  She remembered her own reckless meddling—the day the crimson spear shattered the Church. It must have been then she revealed herself.

  But if she intervened now, stopping her past self from picking up that teardrop-shaped gem—then where would her present self come from?

  That girl would have died of age long ago.

  A paradox.

  “One cannot directly tamper with one’s own fate,” Fate murmured. “It is too dangerous.”

  So she abandoned the thought. Interference here could erase her entirely.

  This was why she had warned Patrick against altering the past. The smallest ripple could swell into an unstoppable tide across a thousand years.

  Their true goal was the Firenze monarch: her origin, her identity. If they could crush her in the cradle, that would suffice.

  Nothing else mattered.

  The river whispered.

  The girl bent to wash her clothes—and in the current, found the teardrop-shaped gem. Fate watched herself make the same choice once more, stepping onto her destined path.

  So it was.

  Her past self had chosen, and her present self bore witness. The thought made her expression twist strangely.

  If everything was already written… could they truly change the end?

  Yet they had no choice but to gamble.

  Jade Territory.

  Compared to the outside world, it was paradise. Merchants filled the streets, trade caravans thundered past, voices clamored through the air.

  “Honey! Finest honey, sweet as gold!”

  “Carriage! Make way!”

  “Mother, I want honey!”

  Patrick, the girl, and Gaunt blended into the bustling crowd, quietly searching for clues to the Jade Territory Lord’s identity.

  Daring. Reckless. They moved in Mei’s shadow, yet the girl knew the Lord of Jade Territory would never bother with them.

  To her, they were nothing more than ants—things to be crushed in passing, if she noticed them at all.

  Unless they completed their advancement.

  In the crowd, a man brushed past Gaunt. At first Gaunt ignored him—then froze, realization striking.

  That face—too familiar.

  He turned sharply, following.

  Father?

  In all his memories, Gaunt had never once seen Vergil in youth. If not for the scars etched across his face, Gaunt might not have recognized him at all.

  Vergil was not his blood, yet he had always been his true father—the man who had taught him the sword.

  Gaunt knew only that Vergil had once hunted Immortals, but nothing of the years before. Never had he imagined crossing paths here, in Jade Territory.

  He did not approach. He followed silently, eyes fixed on Vergil’s back—until the man strode into the gates of the Jade Territory Lord’s manor.

  “Huh?”

  Gaunt’s breath caught.

  Vergil… had once served the Lord of Jade Territory?!

  Meanwhile,

  Inside the Jade Territory Lord’s manor, within the study.

  The power of Eternity coursed through the river of time. Mei’s presence converged with both present and future, collapsing temporal order into irrelevance.

  Truth Manifestation reshaped itself into the Book of the World, displaying tangled threads of cause and effect, flux and consequence. Every phenomenon, every detail of existence unfolded within her grasp.

  Julius bowed slightly, requesting instructions:

  “Your Majesty, there seem to be individuals within the territory probing into your origins and background. Their strength may be unusual…”

  “Ignore them.”

  “Yes.”

  Mei had no intention of wasting energy on such trivialities. She had allowed their intrusion from the beginning. Without her consent, how could they possibly advance through time?

  They had no other route.

  No choice at all.

  Out on the streets, a Church knight spurred his horse to full gallop, intent on delivering divine punishment to some so-called heretic. Pedestrians scattered in fear.

  In an instant, the crowd dispersed.

  At this time, the Church carried unmatched prestige and terror across most lands. But here—within the Jade Territory—its authority meant nothing.

  Half a day later, that very knight, who had dared to act violently, was hanging from the Jade Territory’s execution platform. Onlookers trembled, stunned that this land dared to challenge the Church’s supremacy.

  Patrick and his companions could not fathom the depth of Mei’s power. It lay far beyond imagination.

  They assumed that even a monarch as mighty as Firenze must have once possessed an origin, a period of growth. They believed that was their opportunity.

  But reality was cruel.

  Mei had no origin in this universe. She had descended into it as a Primordial Daemon, already at Tier 7.

  And beyond that, she wielded the very concept of Eternity. Time itself could not touch her. Even if she had been born in this cosmos, her first breath would already have been at Tier 7.

  From the very beginning,

  their destiny was sealed.

  That desperate gleam of hope was nothing more than a hollow mirage—an illusion born of powerlessness, crumbling before their inevitable end.

  Yet they persisted, combing through this age in search of some record, some thread of Mei’s origin—believing they might locate an earlier point in her existence.

  Then one day, a certain causal loop closed.

  On a battlefield,

  A white-haired, red-eyed man strode among severed limbs, over rivers of blood and mounds of corpses. Warhorses shrieked in endless terror.

  Adelaide moved with casual cruelty, venting his frustration. Recently defeated by Mei, his thoughts were clouded. Then, by chance, the Church’s Judgment Knights encountered him.

  He erased them effortlessly.

  Only then did his mood lift slightly.

  “Overconfident, but at least they let me release some steam.”

  Drawing up his hood, Adelaide walked across the blood-soaked ground. Moments later, the Progenitor of Immortals power within him stirred once again.

  It pointed him toward three distant silhouettes.

  His eyes fixed on one. The Progenitor’s power surged in resonance.

  Adelaide froze, astonished.

  “An… Immortal?”

  Never before had he encountered such a phenomenon. The Progenitor’s power within him was resonating—recognizing another bearer of the very same inheritance.

  In the blink of an eye, the three figures vanished without trace.

  Yet Adelaide etched the image of that young man into memory—the one who also carried the Progenitor of Immortals.

  “Truly, live long enough, and you’ll see everything.”

  He had believed himself the sole Progenitor of Immortals.

  Even after all their effort, Patrick and the others remained empty-handed. The Jade Territory Lord’s origins were utterly inscrutable—no trace, no hint, nothing at all.

  It was as though she had materialized out of thin air.

  Patrick felt powerless.

  “We’ll have to go back further. If we can locate others who wield similar powers, perhaps we’ll find a way forward.”

  “Extremely difficult.”

  Through the years, the girl had encountered only Death, Fantasy, Gaunt, and Patrick. She could not be certain anyone else on Apokolips bore such power.

  Gaunt said flatly, “Then let’s try.”

  Tzzz—

  Electric currents twisted and coiled.

  The three returned once more to the laboratory of 1860. Without pause, Patrick set the time-travel target to an even earlier point—the Dark Ages.

  A blinding surge of light.

  Their figures vanished again.

  Yet this voyage was unlike the ones before. All earlier crossings had gone smoothly, but this time an anomaly erupted.

  As they forced their way against the river of time, the three struck an unseen barrier at the threshold of the Dark Ages. Their advance was abruptly severed, their forms hurled back into the present.

  Hum—

  Time.

  Fate.

  Existence.

  The three forces resonated violently with their fundamental concepts, as though ignited. In an instant, each of them was thrust into a higher vantage—perspectives of conceptual deities.

  Gaunt blinked in confusion.

  “What… just happened?”

  Patrick suddenly realized he was seeing through the consciousness of another being, gazing upon creation through its eyes. His thoughts shook violently.

  Galaxies spiraled overhead. Colossal, majestic figures stood enthroned in the darkness, their outlines half-hidden within an abyssal shroud.

  Countless star systems orbited their immense bodies. They were not mortals, not even gods—they were the embodiment of the cosmic heavens themselves, the supreme authorities of existence.

  A suffocating pressure spread across the void, so great it seemed the entire cosmos teetered on collapse.

  Patrick’s eyes widened further. His pupils shrank.

  The vast beings assembled within the void exuded a palpable, dreadful tension, like armies poised at the brink of war. And there—standing among them—was a figure far too small to belong.

  Black hair.

  Black eyes.

  Though her body was diminutive, her aura was monstrous. The oppressive might radiating from her dwarfed the gathered deities themselves.

  “It’s her!!!”

  Patrick’s mind nearly shattered under the revelation. He recognized Mei. No matter how many possibilities he had considered, he could never have imagined this.

  And yet the vision continued, unfolding what had truly transpired a millennium ago.

  Boom!

  The universe convulsed.

  A Primordial Daemon, wreathed in Void energy, revealed its true form. The overwhelming force of Conceptual Counter-Creation tore through reality, sweeping across all existence. In an instant, the supreme deities bled upon the stars.

  The raging Daemon ripped open divine flesh with inexorable might, devouring their essence without mercy. One by one, the gods of the cosmos were annihilated.

  Galaxies winked out.

  The universe verged on ruin.

  Amidst the void, the Daemon stood atop a colossal, mutilated deity’s corpse. Divine ichor smeared the heavens. Shattered limbs and broken stars drifted endlessly, alongside the wreckage of divine relics and fractured artifacts.

  Time, Existence, and Fate—the three high-order conceptual deities—knew despair. Against the Daemon, their power was meaningless. Choosing survival over obliteration, they shattered their own concepts, sealing themselves in a deathlike slumber.

  Waiting for some distant awakening.

  The vision broke.

  The three awoke to their own bodies, their minds staggering under what they had witnessed.

  Gaunt erupted into hysterics, laughter spilling uncontrollably from his throat. “Hahahaha! That… that’s the being we’re supposed to fight? Do we even deserve to breathe in her presence?!”

  Patrick was nearly broken. His complexion had drained to pure ash, his body trembling as he fell to his knees, gasping for air.

  “Impossible…”

  Tears streaked his face, born not of sorrow but utter despair. “There’s no chance… no resistance! So many inconceivable powers—yet all of them fell to her hand…”

  The girl kept her silence.

  So it had always been. From the very beginning, they were trapped. They were pawns of struggling deities, nothing more. Once the sealed concepts revived and the ancient gods awoke, their deaths were assured.

  Even if they somehow escaped Mei, they could never escape the ultimate death fated for them. Their destiny had been written before they ever began.

  “Hahahahaha!”

  Gaunt’s deranged laughter split the silence, the sound raw and ragged, a futile purge of the despair eating away at him. Beyond that laughter, there was nothing left he could do.