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Limitless Blood Firmament.
The Reality Marble had always boasted a dull, gray sky, with an ocean of blood beneath it stretching from horizon to horizon in stark contrast.
Here and there, one could spy rocky pillars jutting out from the ankle-deep ocean like the fingers of giants.
Then there was the central pillar, taller than the rest.
On top of that pillar stood Ayin, the Zanpakuto, her long, yellow hair swaying in the windless air.
The quiet, terrifying scene had long become characteristic of Kai's Reality Marble.
However, presently, the Reality Marble differed from its normal appearance in the space between the sky and the bloody expanse below.
There was a fog, pitch-black in color, lingering just below the skyline.
Unlike the calm ocean beneath it, the fog was in violent turmoil, clouds coalescing in one spot before abruptly vanishing to create an immense vacuum.
Ayin looked away from the fog and tilted her head down toward her feet, where Shirou lay unconscious from sheer exhaustion.
Suddenly, a biting chill kissed Shirou's face, freezing his bloody wounds.
With a monstrous howl, pillars of fog came shooting down from the black expanse above, taking the shape of… Dementors.
There were scores of them.
Not all were of equal size, either.
A dozen of the nearly fifty Dementors stood well over nine feet tall, towering over the six-foot ones like giants.
Yet their size did not hinder their speed.
Instead, the larger Dementors seemed even faster than the smaller ones.
And they were all descending like bloodthirsty wraiths for a single purpose — to devour the immense hope Shirou carried within him.
Ayin didn't move.
She merely looked toward the bloody ocean with her featureless, black face.
Slowly, she extended her uncharacteristically long hand and pointed at nothing in particular with the claw at the tip of her finger.
The entire ocean of blood suddenly boiled.
If the cold had been directed only toward Shirou before, with that boiling, it now spread across the entire Reality Marble.
Then, just before the Dementors could reach Shirou and Ayin, the boiling surface of the blood ocean exploded with a deafening roar.
A Dementor — hundreds of feet tall — came slithering out of the ocean and suspended itself three inches above the blood, its gaping mouth turned toward its lesser brethren.
The legion of Dementors halted, circling the colossal Dementor's head as if fascinated beyond measure by its size and strength.
Kai appeared behind Ayin and collapsed to his knees, gasping for breath.
—Even with your enhanced Mana Regeneration, you would need months, if not years, to consume so much Despair, Kai,— Ayin hissed in Parseltongue. —You cannot keep it here. A Reality Marble is not an Inventory. The moment the Mana, Spirituality, and Life sustaining it run out, all this Despair will spill into the little lake above Hogwarts. The snow-like shower of Despair would become a downpour then. If Dumbledore hasn't completely lost his mind already, then… Kekeke…—
Kai took several deep breaths and sat down.
The Crest Worms within him were a double-edged sword, like most of everything he possessed.
They did amplify his Mana Regeneration Rate, but if he pushed himself to the brink of emptying his reserves, especially MP and HP, then… they would eat him alive from the inside.
That was how they functioned in the first place.
The only reason Kai hadn't become another Sakura Matou was his Biokinesis.
Not to mention, Limitless Blood Firmament exacted a heavy toll when cast in its entirety.
The amount of MP and SP it consumed merely to sustain itself — even ignoring the minor drain on his HP — was already dangerously high, forcing Kai to carefully manage what remained.
Introduce something like an ocean of Despair into the mix, and…
Kai slowly craned his neck and looked up, licking his lips.
He didn't see a sea of Despair in that black fog, but opportunity — at least two dozen more Level 1 Dementors.
Kai's Dementors were no ordinary Dementors.
Every time they feasted on someone's hope and soul, a portion went directly to his Soul Point Quota, accelerating the growth of his Dementor's Blood Essence.
Not only that, but by leveling up Dementor's Kiss, he also directly gained Breath Attribute Points outside his Set Quota — a benefit that had stagnated over the last few months.
That was why, along with bringing Shirou to the timeline, Kai had also recalled all his Dementors spread across the world.
With the threat of the Pillars looming, neither the AI nor his Lucky Intuition had wanted to take any chances.
Who knew if the Pillar Madam Villanelle or Voldemort possessed the means to distinguish real Non-Beings from artificial ones?
The same had been true for the Undead.
Kai had made Tina implant fake Magic Circuits in all the Undead he had created using Sounga.
The Pillars had to be on edge regarding his involvement with the Fate Bubble already.
Kai didn't want to give them a bigger reason than Shirou himself to search for and hunt down the other White Serpent Pirates, or to find a way to neutralize those Magic Circuits.
So, he had sent all those Undead to the Mirror Fate timeline instead of using them to fight off the Pillars.
If Shirou and his other conspiracies couldn't stop the first salvo from the Pillars, Kai had doubted his Dementors and Undead would make much of a difference anyway.
But this…
The Despair had come as a welcome and profoundly fortuitous surprise to him.
Ever since Herpo the Foul had unearthed his lab under the remote village and destroyed it, Kai had struggled to establish another personal source of Despair.
Who would have thought the Pillars would gift it to him themselves?!
Kai smiled, but the expression quickly soured into a frown.
Ayin was right.
Crushing a Reality Marble was the World's innate nature.
No matter whose side a Timeline was on, it would not tolerate its reality being overwritten by an outsider.
Which meant the Mirror Timeline outside wouldn't allow him to maintain Limitless Blood Firmament long enough to consume all this Despair and slowly convert it into Dementors.
Not that he could afford the upkeep, anyway.
Kai clicked his tongue, having hit an insurmountable wall.
—There is a better way to use the leftovers instead of simply discarding them.—
Kai's gaze met Ayin's featureless face, and together, they smiled…
… Ad Infinitum activating My House, My Rules in the very next moment!
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