The Demon Emperor's mind raced, thoughts spiraling in frantic circles as he weighed every possible direction of escape. But none existed. The galaxy was sealed with the Great Nothing, and he lacked the strength to break it. He could not flee into the void, nor remain and devour others while Adrian stood before him.
Every path led to death, except one. He had to kill Adrian here and now, or he would never know another moment of existence.
"Then I'll end you," the Demon Emperor snarled, his voice fracturing with desperation.
With no other choice left, he summoned the single divine spell he possessed. A tiny, compressed sphere formed above his palm, dense enough to distort the surrounding space. He thrust his hand forward, and the sphere shot through the void with terrifying sharpness, cutting across the distance in an instant.
It pierced into Adrian's Source Domain.
Adrian extended his hand toward it, prepared to exert authority over the spell's internal rules and change its trajectory, just as he had done to Arcton's divine spell.
But when his consciousness brushed the intricate rule-symbols woven within this one, he froze.
He could examine its structure, he could observe its rules, but he could not change it.
A flicker of confusion crossed his eyes. Why? He had overridden Arcton's spell before, so why couldn't he do it now? Is the Demon Emperor's divine spell stronger…
He didn't have time to explore the question. He blinked sideways in the void, but the sphere curved mid-flight, its trajectory locked onto him. He understood avoidance was pointless, he needed to face it directly.
Adrian willed the authority within his Source Domain to respond.
Space, Time, Void, Matter, everything inside his thirty-metre sphere responded at his command, bending to reshape reality itself.
A force unseen by mortal eyes manifested before the spell like an invisible wall formed from reality's own fabric. The Demon Emperor saw it and immediately exerted his own authority, his limited thirty percent, trying to force the spell through the obstruction.
But it failed.
The divine spell met an impossible resistance and detonated prematurely, releasing a shockwave so violent that both Adrian and the Demon Emperor were hurled backward across the void.
Adrian steadied himself as the Domain re-formed around him. This exchange revealed more to him.
The influence granted by his Source Domain was not the same as he had in the Source Form.
In Source Form, not only did the Source influence give him authority over the rules of reality, but it also gave him the ability to override the enemy's essence, their rules, if their will was weaker.
But now, he couldn't do that. All he got was a certain level of authority over the rules of reality inside the Source Domain. That was it.
So he could only use this authority to change the direction or do anything he could to the enemies' spells by controlling the reality, like how he made the reality itself act as a shield now.
What Adrian didn't know was, this was the norm in the universe. When divine beings clashed, their authorities wrestled. If both possessed, for example, thirty-five percent authority within each other's domains, then they could generate such shields, distort trajectories, but no one could just exploit the enemy's spells themselves, overriding them. It was unique to Adrian's Source Form, or to his Absolute Source Order.
Across the clash, the Guardian Spirit observed with silent certainty. Adrian's seventy percent authority overwhelmed the Demon Emperor's thirty percent. It didn't matter what divine spell the Demon Emperor used or what concept he possessed. With superior authority, Adrian could command reality to resist, deflect, or break any attack without needing to conjure a spell of his own.
This was why divine domains were so feared. This was why everyone aimed for ultimate-tier divine concepts and wanted more authority. A stellar domain merely suppressed other concepts, with its own concepts overpowering them; it was just suppression. But a divine domain granted one authority over the rules of reality itself, and one could use it to their advantage in their fight.
The Demon Emperor braced himself after the backlash, trembling. He understood now that no technique, no spell, no concept he wielded mattered. The moment Adrian activated that domain, the ending was sealed.
His certainty shattered, leaving only desperation. And with desperation came madness.
If he could not defeat Adrian, he would destroy everything.
If he was doomed to die, then he would drag the entire galaxy into annihilation with him.
A grin spread across his face as he reached inward. Hundreds of essence seeds ignited within him, including the precious rule core that formed his divine concept. He began collapsing everything simultaneously.
"If I fall," the Demon Emperor whispered, his voice carrying across the void like a final curse, "then existence itself burns with me."
He would become a living supernova, a catastrophic implosion that would wipe out the entire galaxy.
The Guardian Spirit reacted instantly. It surged forward, energy shuddering with urgency. It knew the nature of this self-destruction far too well. With the combined collapse of so many essence seeds, the explosion would devour everything within this star system and ripple outward until not even the galactic barrier could maintain integrity.
Its mission, to protect the galaxy, was about to fail.
It prepared to intervene, prepared to break its master's order and act directly.
But before it could act…
Its entire form froze.
A ripple swept across the void, so absolute that its energy body instinctively recoiled.
In front of the Demon Emperor, Adrian was no longer flesh.
White-grey radiance replaced his body. His form became pure energy, an energy lifeform identical in structure to the Guardian Spirit, yet infinitely more overwhelming, as though the Guardian Spirit were a star and Adrian a collapsing singularity.
The Demon Emperor's grin faltered, his eyes widened, "No—"
A single word left Adrian's mouth. "Erase."
The moment the Absolute Source Order left his lips, Adrian seized every thread of authority the Demon Emperor possessed, his control shifted from seventy percent to totality.
100%!
The rules of reality bent in unanimous obedience.
The Demon Emperor, his body, essence, thoughts, memories, every trace of his existence, collapsed into nullification. No explosion erupted, no ripple scarred the galaxy. He did not fall, burn, or die.
He simply vanished, as though the universe itself corrected a mistake and removed him from the record.
Adrian's form flickered. The Source radiance dimmed, and he fell back into his human body. The recoil hit him instantly; blood welled in his throat and crystallized in the void as he coughed it out. His mana, immense, vast, monstrous, had been emptied completely.
He could barely remain conscious.
For the first time, Adrian felt utterly drained, his body trembling from the sheer cost of triggering absolute authority to erase the Demon Emperor.
The Guardian Spirit floated motionless.
It had witnessed something that should not exist. Someone had wielded one hundred percent authority over reality. A feat no recorded being in the history of the universe had ever accomplished. A level even its master, the Void Emperor, was still trying to reach.
And somewhere, far across the galaxy, the lone thread of fate trembled, reacting to someone that fate itself could not bind.