A profound silence fell upon the Wonder World as Lumina, in her true form, stood revealed. She was no longer a small, companionable dragon, but a magnificent, towering deity of pure vitality. Her scales, shimmering like moonlight on water, pulsed with a soft, ethereal light that seemed to banish the oppressive atmosphere of the bloody landscape. Her vast wings, unfurled to their full, majestic span, cast a gentle, cleansing shadow over the ground, and her deep sapphire eyes held a wisdom that spanned all of creation. A low, powerful purr vibrated through the very ground, a sound of profound contentment and unimaginable power.
Fang, in his dapper human form, dropped to one knee with a theatrical flourish, one hand pressed to his heart as if overcome with emotion. His usual trollish smirk was replaced by a look of utter, genuine adoration.
"My star! My moon! My radiant sun!" he declared, his voice a rich baritone filled with an intensity that rivaled a bard's. "Behold, the pinnacle of all creation! My heart, already your devoted vessel, has been shattered and reforged in the fires of your magnificent majesty! Oh, Lumina! Your true form is a beauty that defies all known cosmic laws! A vision that would drive even the most stoic celestial being to a state of utter, froveling devotion!" He made a small, choked sound, his amber eyes misty. "My Liege," he whispered to Null, "I am... I'm a mess."
Sooji, however, was beyond speech. She simply stared up at her dragon, feeling an overwhelming surge of life energy coursing through her veins, a sense of rightness and belonging she had never known. The bond between them, already strong, had become a profound, seamless connection.
Null, ever the pragmatist, simply observed. "The Life Prime Stone has reached a new stage of awakening," he stated, his voice calm amidst the chaos of emotion. "It is now able to fully manifest its essence in this dimension. Its power is now far beyond a simple passive presence."
As if to prove his point, Lumina lowered her magnificent head, a soft, healing aura radiating from her. The blood-stained ground beneath her began to change, the rust-red soil turning into fresh, verdant earth. Twisted, skeletal trees began to bud, and the air, once heavy with the scent of death, now filled with the sweet fragrance of life and clean water. The sheer force of her existence was reshaping the very reality of the Wonder World around them.
Ashley, still reeling from the revelation of her own past, watched with a quiet awe. Lumina's presence, so full of life, was a powerful, beautiful contrast to her own frigid, destructive power. It was a mirror reflecting what her own monstrous form might have been, yet so different in its essence. Her Ice Energy Core, which had been in a state of controlled chaos, now felt a strange, soothing resonance with Lumina's power, allowing her to settle her human form more easily.
Kai, his mind completely blown by everything he had witnessed, finally managed to find his voice. "So... we trained so hard that she just... got bigger? And now she can fix the whole world? This is insane!"
"It is progress," Null corrected. "The more you all push your limits, the more the Prime Stones and Energy Cores you wield will unlock their full potential. This is merely the first step. With Lumina in her true form, our training can become far more efficient."
The training regimen immediately shifted. Under the watchful, wise eyes of Lumina in her full dragon form, and with the relentless guidance of Null and Fang, they delved deeper into their abilities. Sooji learned to actively manipulate the life energy, not just as a conduit, but as a source, capable of mending their wounds almost instantly or amplifying their speed and strength. Kai, with Null's continued punishing physical drills, found his instincts sharpening to a razor's edge, his dormant stone still silent, but his body a finely tuned weapon.
Ashley's struggle remained the most intense. Null pushed her to manifest more of her Glacial Behemoth form, to control the terrifying power that lay beneath her human skin. In the presence of Lumina's boundless life, the chaotic energy of her Ice Energy Core became more manageable. She began to purposefully shift, allowing a massive, clawed hand of pure ice to appear, or her eyes to take on their full, terrifying draconic glow, then retracting it at will. She was learning to wield her true self without letting it consume her. Fang's tail, a constant and amusing presence, would lash in a blur of motion as he demonstrated combat techniques, completely unconcerned with its reveal.
Weeks turned into months in the accelerated time of the Wonder World. They were a different group now. Stronger, more knowledgeable, more in control. The terrifying nature of the war had not faded, but their fear had been replaced by a quiet, determined resolve. The crucible had worked.
As a period of intense training drew to a close, and the group gathered for a rare moment of rest under the shadow of Lumina's great wings, a profound stillness descended. It was a silence deeper than the one that had met them upon arrival. It was a silence that defied sound itself.
A sudden, unnatural halt.
The breeze, which had been gently rustling the new leaves on Lumina's revitalized trees, simply stopped. A stray pebble, kicked up by Kai a moment before, froze mid-air. Fang's hand, gesturing in a dramatic flourish as he regaled them with a story, was perfectly still. Even the slow, steady rise and fall of their chests halted, their bodies suspended in a moment of non-time.
A disturbance appeared in the air before them, not a portal, but a ripple. It was a tear in the fabric of the frozen moment, a distortion that seemed to defy all physical laws. From this tear, a figure began to emerge. It was a being not of flesh and blood, but of fractured light and temporal energy, like a glitch in reality. Its form was vague, shifting, and ethereal, a ghostly semblance of a humanoid shape.
This was no monster. This was something else entirely. The Echo. And it had just stopped time.
The world was silent. A single, crystalline moment stretched into an eternity. The breeze was frozen, the rustling leaves on Lumina's new trees were suspended in a state of arrested motion, and even their own breaths were perfectly still. They were statues, trapped in the amber of a single instant, all except for the ethereal, flickering form of the Echo that had appeared before them.
It was a being of shattered light and temporal energy, its form a ghostly, ever-shifting ripple in the air. Its voice, when it spoke, was not a sound but a feeling—a chilling resonance that vibrated through their very souls, bypassing the frozen state of the world to reach their minds.
"The Unwritten King… so much power, yet so easily caught in a moment," the Echo resonated, its voice like the distant chime of a fractured clock. "I was sent to observe. To study this... anomaly. To understand how the Umbros essence could be so deeply infused with the life force of a nascent Prime Stone."
Its flickering gaze, a point of pure light that defied all visual description, settled upon Null. It was then that the impossible happened. A faint, almost imperceptible ripple of shadow emanated from Null. His golden-yellow cross eyes, though technically frozen in time, seemed to move, their focus unyielding. He was not completely free, but he was not entirely bound, either. His immense power, intertwined with the very fabric of reality, allowed him to perceive and resist the temporal lock.
The Echo recoiled slightly, its form flickering with surprise. "A counter? Fascinating. You are more than a simple Umbros user... you have a resistance to the very flow of time itself. You... are a mistake."
Null's voice, a deep, resonant thought that cracked the silence of the moment, cut through the Echo's. I am Null. And I will not be stopped.
A furious battle of cosmic wills erupted. Around Null, the shadows of the Wonder World, which were a manifestation of his Umbros power, began to twist and writhe. They were subtle at first, mere distortions of light, but they grew in intensity, attempting to unspool the temporal fabric the Echo had woven. The Echo responded, its form solidifying slightly, and the pressure of its time-stopping ability intensified, pushing back against Null's growing defiance.
Slowly, agonizingly, Null managed to move. His fingers, his arm, his head—each movement was a struggle against an invisible, suffocating force. As he fought, small pockets of reality around the others began to flicker, a hint of motion returning before being instantly crushed. Kai, Sooji, and Ashley felt a brief, terrifying pulse of awareness, enough to understand the horror of their situation before being re-frozen.
"The more you fight, the more you weaken your anchor," the Echo chimed ominously. "And when the anchor breaks, this entire dimension… this entire moment… will cease to exist. All of you will become unmade."
Then I will rebuild it, Null's thought boomed, and with a grunt of immense effort, he tore a fissure in the air. The Echo reacted, a beam of pure temporal energy shooting from its core toward Null. It was not a fast attack, for speed was meaningless in a world without time. It was an inevitability, a wave of un-being that would erase its target from the moment.
Null, now with a greater freedom of motion, met the attack. With a surge of his power, he reached into the heart of the Umbros stone in his palm, and for a fleeting moment, the colors of the world inverted. He created a small, localized reality tear, a bubble of nothingness that absorbed the temporal beam, annihilating both in a silent, colorless flash.
The Echo shrieked, a high-pitched vibration that made the air thrum with static. "Impossible! He has the power of the void... and something else! Something light! Something I cannot quantify!" Its gaze flickered to the remnants of Horuto's Asura within Null's stone, a part of its essence it could not comprehend.
"It is time to go," the Echo finally resonated, its form becoming more translucent. "This anomaly is too great. The King of stones will be... displeased. But the data has been collected. The flaw in his plan has been identified."
Before Null could deliver a final, decisive attack, the Echo began to unravel. Its form dispersed into a myriad of brilliant, glittering motes of light, each a fragment of a frozen moment. The temporal lock on the Wonder World, and the group, began to unravel.
With a collective, shaky gasp, the others were freed. The breeze began to rustle the leaves again, Kai's rock hit the ground with a soft thud, and Fang's hand completed its dramatic flourish, the words "divine beauty" leaving his mouth. But the moment of terror still hung in the air. They were all panting, their hearts racing, their bodies remembering the trauma of being frozen in time.
"What was that?" Ashley breathed, her hands clutching her head, as if her memories were about to spill out. The cold of her Ice Energy Core felt more comforting now, a known sensation against the unknown dread of what they had just faced.
Null, his chest heaving with exertion, looked at them all, his cross eyes more weary than they had ever seen them. He did not have to say a word. They knew. The training had prepared them for a war of power, but this… this was a new, terrifying level. A war against the very laws of reality itself. And the enemy had just gotten a good look at them.
End of chapter 36
See you again .bye