As they soared through the skies, the wind howled around them—but Solace flew undisturbed, as if the very air yielded to his presence. Beside him, Gaia glided with effortless grace, each step in the air causing minor fluctuations in the mana currents below.
Solace glanced at her, his mind sharp as ever.
"So, tell me," He began, tone casual but laced with intent, "do you often come out and wander around?"
"No," Gaia replied, her expression serene. "This is actually the first time I've been out since the first cultivators began showing up."
She paused, letting the silence sit.
"That was more than five million years ago."
Solace's brows twitched slightly. Internally, his interest sharpened. He had always suspected this world bore familiar marks—the skyline, the ground structure, even the faint traces of old construction buried under nature's reclaiming. Much of it resembled a world he once knew.
Earth.
But if Gaia was telling the truth, then his time frame… was off by millennia.
Still, he let that thought linger in the back of his mind. Now wasn't the time to dive into the chaos of lost eras.
"That's quite interesting," he murmured. "So, this world didn't always have mana?"
"Well... you could say that," Gaia answered cryptically. "It would be far too early for you to know everything—too many powerhouses involved in those truths. But yes, this world could once have been considered a mortal one."
She drifted slightly ahead of him, golden strands of mana-light trailing from her hair.
"Even then, the history of this place was unusual. From my inception, I witnessed the rise of beings not quite divine—but far from ordinary. I gave rise to races such as Dragons, Elves, Demihumans, Primordials, Divines, and Humans."
She looked back at Solace with a wistful expression.
"But none of them were truly beyond mortality. They were simply... exceptional mortals."
She continued
"Dragons had no humanoid forms. Elves were scattered. Demihumans lacked the intelligence to survive. Primordials could not communicate with other species, and the Divines—well, they were like Primordials, but full of ego."
Solace listened, his eyes calm, but his mind was racing.
"Only the Humans adapted," Gaia said, voice tinged with irony. "They wrote history. They separated the races, twisted the past into myth. Dragons became dinosaurs, Elves turned into holiday stories, and the others faded entirely."
She turned back toward the horizon.
"Then came the Mana Wave. The world changed. What you see now was born from that impact."
Solace said nothing for a moment. Internally, his thoughts were wild.
'Holy shit. So, history was indeed bullshit. Everything was already here, and mana just... accelerated it? Reignited it?'
He composed himself and simply said, "That's indeed interesting."
Gaia nodded, her gaze now fixed ahead. The skyline shimmered in the distance—the towering spires and runic walls of the Solara Kingdom.
"So," she asked, "what are you planning?"
Solace smirked.
"Nothing much. I just think this place needs a bit of... Solace."
They floated high above the capital, the clouds darkening as his presence began to weigh upon the atmosphere. Mana thickened like fog, pressing down across the kingdom.
Gaia watched him carefully. Her expression was unreadable, yet she did not interfere.
Solace raised his sword—his gaze focused, distant.
"Don't you do a thing," he said to Gaia without turning.
The blade in his hand began to hum, low at first, then resonant—like the vibration of a cosmos straining to collapse.
He didn't chant.
He didn't gesture.
He simply willed it.
A spark of space twisted around the sword's edge—distorting the view of reality itself. Then, a line of fire—not ordinary flame, but a silent inferno—snapped across the blade like a serpent of solar light.
Together, they fused.
|Event Horizon|
(Law-Infused Sword Technique: Space + Fire)
The air folded around him. The blade pointed downward toward the kingdom like a divine verdict.
A great ring expanded across the sky—its edges rippling with gravitational tears. Inside it, space collapsed and rebirthed itself in endless flame. It looked like a black sun, ringed with molten arcs of red, orange, and violet. Mana itself fled the region as if in fear.
Below, the Kingdom of Solara fell silent.
Animals froze. Birds dropped from the sky. Cultivators knelt involuntarily, their cores spasming, crushed by unseen weight.
A single stroke of the sword followed—a motion so subtle it could've been a breath.
And with it, a beam of voidfire—an elemental convergence of spatial distortion and solar flame—fell upon the kingdom.
It didn't explode.
It erased.
A section of the outer walls, two entire towers, and the formations above the castle were consumed—not burned, but folded out of existence, like paper in a fire without smoke.
Where once there had been stone and spell, there was now absence.
Solace's eyes gleamed, his breath calm.
"Now, let's begin"
Gaia, floating behind him, watched with ancient stillness. She had seen many wars; many kings rise and fall. But never had she seen such a young cultivator wield laws so naturally, without discipline, without formation.
It wasn't refinement. It was instinct.