"Fuck it," I hissed through clenched teeth.
Arthur was out there fighting a Tier 5 Demon Lord entirely on his own, getting violently thrown around the stormy sky. I couldn't just stand here bleeding out on an invisible platform. If standard Pathway tactics weren't going to work, then it was time to break the rules.
Kallisto, I commanded mentally, my voice hard and absolute. Open the floodgates. Give me full access to the Cenotaph's Ether.
[Warning: Channeling raw conceptual Ether directly from the Cenotaph will bypass your mortal filters. The absolute authority of the Sin of Pride will begin to bleed directly into your ego. It may temporarily—or permanently—alter your personality.]
I stared up at the Demon Lord laughing in the storm above.
"Do it," I snarled aloud, my grip tightening on the hilt of Bad News.
I didn't care if the primordial anomaly of Pride took the wheel right now. I didn't care if it twisted my mind. If letting the Sin take over gave me the power to rip this Demon Lord out of the sky and save my friend, it was a price I was more than willing to pay.
I said do it, Kallisto!
[Affirmative. Unlocking the Cenotaph of Pride.]
The instant the system confirmed the command, the world fundamentally changed.
An unfathomable ocean of deep, suffocating blue Ether violently erupted from the very core of my soul. It didn't just refill my exhausted reserves; it flooded my veins, drowning every single cell in my body with absolute, conceptual power.
Then... something clicked deep inside my mind.
The agonizing, blinding pain radiating from my impaled shoulder? It vanished. It wasn't healed—the three dark spears were still violently lodged in my flesh, held back only by my spatial stasis—but the pain simply ceased to register.
Because suddenly, the very concept of pain felt entirely beneath me.
Why should I, the sovereign of this domain, acknowledge a minor scratch inflicted by a lesser being? I looked up at the Demon Lord. He wasn't a terrifying Tier 5 monster anymore. He was an insect. A loud, arrogant insect that had dared to cast its filthy shadow over a king.
A cold, profoundly arrogant smile slowly stretched across my face beneath my mask. I felt incredibly calm.
Fueled by an endless supply of Tier 3 Ether from the Cenotaph, my Unique Skill, Yog-Sothoth, instantly kicked into maximum overdrive.
Thought Acceleration.
Future Calculation.
My mind exploded with millions of simultaneous calculations. The chaotic, stormy battlefield transformed into a glowing blue grid. I saw the trajectory of every raindrop, mapped out every single movement the Demon Lord was about to make, and instantly foresaw thousands of different outcomes for this battle.
They all ended with his death.
I raised my uninjured right hand, reached out into the empty sky, and literally grabbed the fabric of space itself. It crumpled in my grip like a piece of cheap parchment.
"Let's teach this peasant his place," I whispered, my voice dripping with an icy, unnatural authority.
I didn't just teleport. I violently folded the sky. In a flash of blinding blue conceptual light, I bypassed the physical distance entirely, warping straight into the heart of the chaotic aerial battle to show this false god what true dominance looked like.
I grabbed the fabric of space, ready to warp directly into the Demon Lord's face.
But then—everything stopped.
Stopped isn't even the right word. The howling wind, the storm clouds, the embers falling from Arthur's wings, even the moonlight itself completely froze in place. The Demon Lord and Arthur were suspended in mid-air, locked in stasis like statues.
Time had completely halted.
Because I had already triggered Gate Weaver, the spatial fold still carried me forward. I blinked and materialized right in front of the Demon Lord. I raised my gun, but the monster didn't react. His glowing red eyes didn't even shift to track me.
I lowered my weapon and looked around, completely disoriented. What the hell is going on?
A figure casually stepped onto the invisible platform right next to me.
It was Sera.
He wasn't using wings or magic to stay afloat; he was just standing there in the frozen sky. He looked at me and offered a small, exhausted wink.
"I don't want to repeat the exact same mistake I made during the First Dark," Sera said quietly, his voice echoing strangely through the dead silence of the frozen world.
He turned his gaze toward me. For the first time since I had met him, the calm, arrogant Angel looked profoundly sad. The weight of thousands of years of regret was heavy in his amber eyes.
"I have to save you, Luci."
It clicked. He hadn't frozen time to save me from the Demon Lord's attack. He had stepped in to stop me—to prevent the primordial ego of Pride from fully overwriting my personality.
Cut off the Cenotaph access, Kallisto, I ordered internally.
[Understood.]
The overwhelming, cold arrogance of Pride instantly receded from my mind, draining away like water. My humanity rushed back in, leaving me gasping softly in the frozen air. I looked at Sera.
"Why now?" I asked. Just those two words.
Why wait until this exact moment to step in? He was a Tier 8 Angel. He could have ended this fight before it even started.
"It is complicated, Luci," Sera replied, his gaze shifting toward the frozen Demon Lord suspended in the sky. "I couldn't act earlier because my powers were being suppressed by that Sin Stele. But it seems you dealt with it. You are Tier 3 now. Congratulations."
He turned his head to look directly into my eyes.
"That was the Stele for the Sin of Pride, wasn't it?"
My mind completely blanked. I froze, my heart skipping a beat in my chest. I stared at him in the silent sky, my thoughts racing before I finally managed to speak.
"How... how do you know?"
"I control Time and Fate, Luci," Sera said softly, a small, knowing smile on his face. "But to answer your question about why I am only acting now... it was partly because the Stele's suppression is gone. But mostly, it is because I have finally found what I was searching for. And I got it through you."
He raised his hand. Resting in his palm was the ancient artifact I had pulled from my Cenotaph earlier—the Spindle.
"This artifact you gave me," Sera explained, his amber eyes glowing with a profound light. "It is the Authority of Time and Fate. It is the core conceptual law that I must accommodate into my soul to break my limits. It is the key to reaching Tier 9—the God of Time and Fate."
I stood there, completely speechless.
What the hell is going on? I thought, my mind struggling to process the sheer scale of what he was saying. So that's the absolute rule of this world. To reach Tier 9 and become a literal God, you have to find and absorb an Authority.
Kallisto, show me my Domain Authority again.
[Displaying Domain Authority.]
[To put it simply: You have not accommodated a Conceptual Authority yet. However, as the host of Pride, you stand at the apex and hold dominance over all the other Sins. You can use your Cenotaph as a limitless Ether battery. Just as the Virtues must accommodate an Authority, every Sin must fully master their Cenotaph to eventually reach Tier 9.]
Hm, I mused internally, the pieces finally clicking together. That makes perfect sense. That's exactly why my 'Accommodated Authority' stat said 'None' earlier.