Adrian materialized inside the safe zone of the second level.
The place was nearly identical to the one before it. He didn't linger to analyze.
Elder Gary's words echoed in his mind: "It took us over a thousand years to clear it."
He wanted to see why.
Without hesitation, Adrian stepped through the next archway.
...
The world changed the instant he stepped through.
Rather than a plain like the first level, he appeared in what looked like a void.
It was no longer land anymore. He even felt this was the real space he was floating in. There was no mana, air, or anything in the void.
Debris from shattered planets drifted slowly through the darkness, the remnants of a star system long destroyed.
Then a familiar golden hologram appeared before him.
› Kill Quota: 100,000 Essence Beasts
› Condition: Complete within a single continuous run.
The same requirement as the first level.
Adrian frowned. He saw countless fire and ice essence beasts drifting through the void, floating like glowing ghosts.
"So the challenge isn't in what I fight… but where I fight."
In the first level, he had solid ground beneath him. Here, there was none. In the void, movement wasn't physical, it was essence-driven. Every shift, every motion had to be done through precise control of one's energy.
That was why when an SSS-rank first stepped into space, they were just novices. Not even able to fight properly in the void.
Adrian was no exception. Adapting to the void to move properly in space was one thing, but combat was not just that. He needed to have control over even a minute body movement with essence in the void.
That was what distinguished a novice and an experienced SSS-rank being.
But Adrian was different from others, he got the space domain too early, before he got any time to experience a battle as an SSS-rank.
Till now, on all his battles, he either depended on his domains or his source form, which in a way solved this problem for him.
But when his mana was too low, he was at a disadvantage. This was one of the main reasons for him to lose battles.
"So this was the real test… then it's time to learn properly."
He drifted forward.
Through the dark came shapes. He saw fire and ice essence beasts, they floated freely in the void.
The first lunged.
Adrian propelled himself backward using a focused burst beneath his feet, firing a stream of flames from his palms to stabilize himself mid-spin.
His counterstrike lashed forward, a spiraling fire thrust that pierced straight through the beast.
The beast exploded into a thousand fiery fragments.
"One down."
But then came the rest.
Hundreds of glowing silhouettes surrounded him from all directions.
He pivoted, dodging upward, and immediately another strike came from below. He redirected his essence flow, sending a pulse from his back to adjust his angle, but overcompensated and spun upside down.
In this infinite three-dimensional battlefield, there was no "up" or "down." No front or rear.
Every vector was an attack route.
Even just with a domain, this was not a big issue to deal with, but now, without using even his domain, he faced the true struggles that any SSS-rank went through.
He gritted his teeth, stabilizing himself with controlled fire jets from his palms, halting the spin. He gathered mana, and a ring of flame erupted outward, shredding the incoming beasts.
But he didn't stop there.
He took note of every failure, every angle he missed, every adjustment delayed by a fraction of a second.
He adapted.
Next time a beast struck from below, he used his body's counter-rotation to redirect momentum, his fire thrusts now perfectly calibrated to move and strike simultaneously.
The battle turned into something almost beautiful, a ballet in zero gravity, each movement deliberate, efficient, refined.
After the fight, Adrian floated among the debris.
Now he understood.
The Celestials hadn't struggled because they were weak. They'd struggled because they were SSS-rank warriors trapped in an environment that demanded perfection.
No domain to sweep away threats. No overwhelming power to brute-force their way through.
Just themselves, their essence, and endless waves.
They had to learn and adapt themselves for a thousand years.
Adrian's chest tightened with something he rarely felt, pride.
Not in himself, but in them.
"They didn't just endure the time," he murmured. "They kept sharpening themselves. Day after day. Year after year."
That was the only way they could have cleared this level.
That was the kind of will Earth's first generation had carried into the stars.
...
Months passed.
Adrian fought across the shattered void, never once returning to the safe zone.
He didn't need to.
His mana control had become absolute. Every drop conserved. Every motion deliberate.
Even his fire responded differently now, less like an element he wielded, more like an extension of his will.
But still, he felt he wasn't at the level of even a veteran SSS-rank warrior yet.
That would require years of true combat experience, and especially higher threats. This fire and ice essence beast no longer gave him enough threat that was required for him to learn more.
What he'd learned here was merely the foundation, how to move and fight properly in the void.
Since there was little more to gain from this level, he wanted to move forward. To meet the remaining Celestials.
He let the Fire Domain unfold.
His domain stretched across the shattered system, waves of controlled flame sweeping through debris and darkness alike.
Every Essence Beast caught within disintegrated instantly.
Thousands. Tens of thousands.
The void burned clean.
When it was over, Adrian hovered alone in the midst of burning fragments, surrounded by silence.
The golden hologram flickered into existence before him.
› Kill Count: 134,852 / 100,000
› Level Two Cleared.
› Teleporting Candidate to Level Three.
A faint smile crossed his lips.
"Finally…"
He was going to meet the Celestials.
The void shimmered, and Adrian vanished.
...
After Adrian vanished, the golden sphere appeared at the second level.
The more the guardian spirit watched him, the more it felt weird. It had trained countless candidates, and it knew what foundation a stellar being had in combat.
But this one was different…
His domain was so powerful that he could instantly kill the beasts. But then how does a being who wielded such a powerful domain have a weak foundation in combat mastery?
Not just in void combat, it was the same in the ground combat back in the first level. It saw how Adrian struggled 10 years back with his fire essence combat.
It knew the natural sequence of growth, the slow layering of combat foundation, then the gradual awakening of domains. But this one was just weird.
Its glow flickered once more, logging the anomaly.
› Paradox registered.
Was this human an error of the system… or a possibility it had never been designed to measure?