Chapter 151: The Paradox of Death and the Throne of the War God
The runic sun of the Realm of the Eternal Dawn continued its immutable cycle, but in the immense Plaza of Origin, the air itself seemed to have become dense, charged with a static and suffocating pressure. The holographic list projected in the firmament had devoured the names of the "Upper Class," leaving behind a sky tinged with a dark, pulsating blood red.
Before the Obsidian Throne, the silence was absolute. Three names were missing. Three empty spaces that would dictate the pinnacle of the Morningstar Clan's infantry.
Samael, leaning back on his throne with the majesty of an ancient god, intertwined his gloved fingers in the Void Dragon Armor. His eyes, turned into two Violet and Crimson vortexes by the [Eye of Destiny], swept over the sea of a thousand disciples. He did not look for an outstanding individual; he looked for an anomaly in the laws of reality.
And he found it.
In the midst of the ranks, Samael did not see individual columns of destiny rising toward the sky. He saw two pillars of energy entwining around each other, forming a gigantic, perfect double helix of cosmic DNA. One strand was of an immaculate White; the other, an absolute Black. They spun in a mathematical equilibrium that defied creation itself.
Twin Souls, Samael thought, a cold smile curving his lips. Yin and Yang born from the same womb. The perfect duality.
"Solitary and absolute power is formidable," Samael spoke, his voice not traveling through the air, but projecting telepathically into the minds of the thousand present. "But perfectly shared power... is exponentially destructive. Vexia. Bring me the Twins. Rank 3 and Rank 2."
Vexia, impeccable and stoic, nodded and her voice cut the breeze:
"Step forward! Rank 3: Aion Morningstar, 'The Immovable Hammer'! Rank 2: Aia Morningstar, 'The Fluid Mirror'!"
From the gray crowd, two figures emerged. A boy and a girl, no older than seventeen. The world seemed to fall into a sepulchral silence when they began to walk. They did not march at the same time; their synchrony was unnatural. When Aion's left heel grazed the marble, the tip of Aia's right foot lifted at the exact corresponding microsecond. They seemed like two halves of a single organism breathing the same oxygen.
They were astonishingly beautiful and identical in face, with long, straight, pale silver hair and deep storm-gray eyes. But their bodily postures were opposing universes.
Aion was rigid, massive, and dark. His skin seemed to absorb the light around him, and his face lacked any emotion, acting like an immovable block of ice. He was the shield, the anchor, the sanity of the duo.
Aia, by his side, was the complete opposite. She walked with a liquid, relaxed fluidity, her tunic clinging to her exquisitely feminine figure. She possessed a voluptuous, round chest (C-Cup) in perfect harmony with her wide hips and heavy legs (pear figure). She was dazzling, but her gray eyes danced with a sadistic and teasing vivacity. She enjoyed using men's strength to destroy them while laughing at their weakness.
They ascended the dais and knelt before Samael as a single entity.
"Aion, Aia," Samael observed them with genuine fascination. "Your war record in the assault on Purple Light is... statistically impossible for cultivators of your level."
Samael looked at the boy.
"Aion. You took point-blank the frontal impact of a Stage 8 Transcendent Grade siege ram, destined to break the main gate of a wall. The ram stopped dead against your chest. Your bones did not break. The ram, forged in stellar iron, shattered into pieces."
Samael shifted his gaze to the girl.
"Aia. A suicide squad of fifty elite swordsmen ambushed you in an alley. None of them even managed to graze your clothes. The autopsies revealed that they all ended up slitting their own throats or stabbing their own comrades with their own swords."
Samael leaned forward, the Crown of the Primordial Sovereign shining behind him.
"You both possess a legendary constitution that the heavens despise: The Body of the Twin Paradox (Divine Level)."
A collective gasp swept through the ten elite disciples who had already been rewarded. Goran, the shield man, looked at Aion in disbelief. It wasn't magic; it was the absolute manipulation of Kinetic Force.
"You, Aion, are the Anchor of Infinite Inertia. The Yin," Samael explained, and the air around the boy grew heavy. "You increase your inertial mass until you become a fixed point in the universe. Nothing can move you. You absorb the energy of the impact and nullify it."
"And you, Aia, are the Vector of Absolute Direction. The Yang," the King continued, and the girl smiled sweetly. "Your skin has zero friction. You do not stop force; you deflect it. You redirect the vector of any attack to wherever you desire."
Aion spoke for the first time. His voice was deep, slow, and resonated on the marble.
"I am the Anvil, Patriarch. Reality crashes, shatters, and dies on my chest."
Aia continued without losing a millisecond, her voice fast, light, and melodious.
"And I am the Rebound, my Lord. I decide toward whose throat flies the shrapnel of the idiots who attack us."
"Together," the two said in unison, their voices overlapping in a chilling harmony, "we are the closed circuit of the end of the world."
"But you have a critical weakness," Samael cut in. "If you are separated by more than five kilometers, the magnetic circuit breaks. Your Qi depends on the direct flow between you two. If one falls, the other becomes mortal."
Samael opened his immense dimensional inventory. The Investment System immediately detected the extreme rarity of the duo. From his hands, Samael extracted two spherical objects. They looked like the two halves of a single planet split in two: the [Binary Star Cores (Upper Heaven Grade)]. Aia's core pulsed with a blinding white light; Aion's absorbed light like a miniature black hole.
"These cores come from the heart of two twin stars that died orbiting each other for millennia," Samael ruled. "Aion, take the Black for Density. Aia, take the White for Flow. Fuse them into your Dantians. This will create an unbreakable quantum bridge between your souls. Even if you are separated by entire continents, your Qi will flow uninterruptedly as if you were holding hands."
The twins extended their hands and took the cores. Instantly, a brutal magnetic resonance filled the plaza. The air vibrated with a hum. Their auras merged visibly, creating a dome of gravitational distortion around the dais. The double helix of white light and absolute darkness manifested, spinning around them.
[CLAN INVESTMENT SYSTEM ACTIVATED]
«Investment: 2x Binary Star Cores.
Recipient: Twins with Perfect Soul Bond.»
«Bond Rarity: SSS.»
«Critical Probability: GUARANTEED.»
«Critical Reimbursement x1,000!»
«You have received: [Sacred Scripture "The Yin-Yang Sutra of Primordial Chaos" (Imperial Grade - Complete)].»
Samael closed his eyes for a second as the absolute comprehension of the opposing forces of the universe flooded his Sea of Consciousness. Magnificent.
"And to channel this circuit, you require tools that understand inertia," Samael added, pulling out the next batch of rewards.
To Aion, he gave the Void Anvil, a matte black iron hammer forged from the core of a dead star. To Aia, he gave the Vector Needle, a spear as thin as a rapier made of Dimensional Liquid Silver that seemed to flow like mercury. Upon handing them over, he transmitted the arts to them: Black Hole Shield for Aion to attract and compress all enemy attacks into a sphere, and Refracted Light Spear for Aia to take that energy and fire it multiplied by three through dimensional mirrors.
[CLAN INVESTMENT SYSTEM ACTIVATED]
«Investment: 2x Low Saint Grade Weapons (Paradox Synergy) + 2 Spatial Techniques.»
«Random Multiplier: x195.»
«You have received: [Drop of Quantum Gravity Marrow (Supreme Cultivation Material - High Saint Grade)] and [Formation Blueprint: Absolute Mirror Matrix].»
Samael almost sighed with pleasure upon analyzing the Marrow Drop. It was no common material. Upon being absorbed, it would create a "miniature Black Hole" in the user's Dantian, forcing the Qi to compress to stellar densities. Whoever absorbed it would break any bottleneck through sheer crushing pressure, hardening their meridians like diamond.
Aion and Aia gave a perfect bow. They struck the dark Hammer and the bright Needle together. A dull BOOM! and an explosion of gray energy erupted on the dais, demonstrating the Nexus of the Singularity. They withdrew, their auras spinning in perfect, terrifying harmony.
The plaza was plunged into anticipation. The holographic list flickered and turned ink-black. All the names had disappeared. Only an empty space remained at the top.
Rank 1.
Vexia stepped forward. Her posture, always as rigid as tempered steel, relaxed slightly, adopting a funereal seriousness.
"The Morningstar Clan values destructive power," Vexia said, her voice low and resonant. "It values innate talent. It values divine bloodlines and celestial bodies. But above all things in creation... the Morningstar Clan values Results."
Vexia looked at the thousand disciples.
"The warrior who holds Rank 1 of our infantry is not the physically strongest. He does not have the best bloodline. He does not have a Divine Body that bends physics. But his hands are stained with more enemy lifeblood than the entire Top 23 you have just seen combined. He did not fight under the sunlight on the front lines. He fought in the sewer and in the dark."
The giant screen in the sky crackled, and a name appeared written in letters that looked like bloody scratches on an execution wall:
RANK 1: DANTE MORNINGSTAR - "The Assassin Phantom"
A confused, almost incredulous murmur swept through the thousand disciples. Even Korg and Magnus looked at each other, frowning.
"Dante? The kid from the waste wing?"
"The one who is always limping and wounded?"
"It's impossible! That brat is barely in Stage 3 of the Qi Sea Realm! He's weak!"
From the deepest shadow of the plaza, behind a thick jade column of the temple, a solitary figure began to limp toward the light.
He didn't wear massive, shining stellar iron armor. He didn't radiate an apocalyptic elemental aura. He didn't possess the superhuman beauty of the Twins.
It was Dante Morningstar. He wore the standard gray outer disciple tunic, worn out, soot-stained, and crudely patched with black thread. His left arm was tightly wrapped in dirty bandages that barely hid the burns from exploded defensive runes. His jet-black hair, its tips dyed in unmistakable blood red, fell straight over his eyes.
Eyes that lacked shine, hate, hope, or fear. They were shark eyes. The eyes of an absolute survivor who saw the world through the prism of a constant predatory calculation, a risk-reward analysis where everyone else was simply a statistic.
Dante walked down the wide central aisle. The elite disciples (the Top 10 who had just received Saint Grade artifacts) watched him pass. Dante didn't look at any of them. His gray gaze was fixed exclusively on Samael.
He climbed the dais stairs, slightly dragging his right foot. He stopped three meters from the Obsidian Throne. He didn't make an elegant flourish. He simply dropped, kneeling on one knee on the marble floor and lowering his head coldly.
"Patriarch."
Samael leaned forward, resting both elbows on his knees, his neon eyes shining with dark fascination.
"Rise, Dante."
Dante stood up. Beside Vexia's imposing armor and Samael's presence, he looked small, almost fragile.
"Tell them," Samael ordered, his voice crossing the plaza. "Tell them why the Throne has placed you above them all."
Dante slowly turned toward the crowd. He cleared his throat. His voice was raspy, dry, as if he had been swallowing smoke and dust for weeks.
"Two days before the main assault, I infiltrated the drainage pipes and the ventilation system of the Purple Light Sect," Dante began, with no trace of boasting in his tone. "I poured three kilos of Black Fever Dust, extracted from rotting corpses, directly into the drinking water tanks of the outer disciples' wing. The dust doesn't kill immediately, but it rots and weakens Qi flow. Three thousand enemy disciples woke up spitting bile and couldn't form their battle formations to defend the walls."
The crowd maintained a chilling silence.
"During the early hours of the assault, I sabotaged the load-bearing runic pillars of the enemy sect's immense grain warehouses," Dante continued. "When their elders tried to activate the area's emergency shields, the overload rebounded. The warehouses collapsed on themselves, crushing their own reserves and the guards."
Dante paused, his gray eyes scanning the pale faces of his comrades.
"And during the climax and chaos of our vanguard's attack... I took advantage of everyone watching Korg and Ignis's explosions. I walked right into their central infirmary. One by one, I slit the throats of the wounded, the healers, and the old elders trying to recover their Qi to return to the front. I cut their throats while they looked out the window."
Dante reached his good hand into the pocket of his patched gray tunic. He pulled out a rustic necklace, made of simple hemp rope.
Dozens of spatial rings looted from corpses hung from it.
Dante opened his fingers and dropped the necklace to the marble floor.
CLINK-CLANK!
The sound of rolling metal echoed in the plaza's silence like the tolling of a funeral bell.
"Sixty-three confirmed kills by my own blade," Dante concluded, his voice dead. "Three thousand enemy troops incapacitated by preemptive poisoning. Total collapse of their internal logistics. Zero casualties for our clan in my operations. Zero high-level resources spent by the Patriarch on my mission."
The silence in the Plaza of Origin was absolute. What Dante had just described wasn't a glorious battle. It was monstrous. It was dishonorable according to the laws of orthodoxy. It was pure, pragmatic survival carnage.
It was... perfect.
Samael broke the silence with a low chuckle, which soon became a broad, terrible smile that chilled the blood of those present.
"Pure and absolute efficiency," Samael decreed, his voice full of twisted pride. "Honor is a very pretty speech delivered by dead men as they rot in mass graves. Victory is the only word the living have the right to say. Dante Morningstar has understood the true essence of war far better than any self-proclaimed genius among you."
Samael activated the [Eye of Destiny] at maximum power once again. He looked at Dante. His destiny column was not a solid pillar. It was a Black Nebula of pure chaos, writhing and devouring light. And there, in the center of Dante's chest, hidden from the gods and the universe, Samael saw the core of the anomaly.
[Slaughter System (Latent Detected)].
The boy had his own dimensional interface. A parasitic System that fed solely and exclusively on death and murder. But it was dormant. It needed a catalyst, a weapon wicked enough to awaken its bloodlust.
"Dante. You are Rank 1. Approach to receive your reward."
Samael didn't pull out a shining sword of light. He didn't pull out a shield forged from stars. He reached his left hand into the deepest, darkest depths of his Dimensional Inventory and pulled out an object that made the temperature of the dais drop by ten degrees Celsius all at once.
A Dagger.
It was ugly. It was old. The blade was darkened, rusted, and terribly chipped. The hilt was wrapped in tanned, grimy human leather. But the aura emanating from that small blade was of pure, concentrated, and unfathomable Evil.
[Fang of the Fallen Asura (Cursed Item / Evolvable / Unknown Grade)].
"This dagger was found buried in a tomb from eons ago," Samael said, holding it carefully. "Each and every one of its previous owners went hopelessly mad and ended up slitting their own throats in their sleep."
Samael took a step toward Dante.
"It thirsts. An infinite thirst. It drinks blood and devours karma. If you do not constantly feed it the blood of your enemies, it will drink yours."
Samael offered it to him, the human skin hilt forward.
"Do you have enough coldness and hatred to hold it without it devouring your soul, assassin?"
Dante looked at the rusted weapon. He felt no fear. He felt, for the first time in his life, that he was finding a phantom limb, a lost vital part of his own body. He reached out his hand.
In the millisecond his fingers touched the leather of the hilt, the dagger vibrated violently. The disgusting rust seemed to melt, shining with the color of fresh, arterial blood. The veins on Dante's left arm turned as black as coal, creeping up his neck.
In Dante's mind, a robotic voice echoed:
«SLAUGHTER SYSTEM: BOUND WEAPON DETECTED. RESTRICTIONS LIFTED. EVOLUTION INITIATED.»
Dante gripped the hilt tightly. His dull gray eyes flashed with a scarlet red light for a single second.
"It's... very light, Patriarch," Dante whispered, a small, disturbing smile appearing on his pale face.
"It will become much heavier with every innocent or guilty life you take with it," Samael promised.
And then, in Samael's Sea of Consciousness, the universe fractured.
[CLAN INVESTMENT SYSTEM ACTIVATED]
«Paradox Alert: Investment in Evolvable Cursed Weapon (Unknown/Dangerous Grade).»
«Recipient: Karmic Anomaly - Slaughter System Host (Absolute and Perfect Synchronization - The Ideal Host).»
«Calculating Critical Probability...»
«COSMIC LOGIC ERROR. Critical Probability: IMPOSSIBLE (Breaking the Meshes of Destiny).»
«ANOMALOUS CRITICAL REIMBURSEMENT: x10,000!»
Time seemed to physically stop for Samael. The Clan System roared in the back of his mind like an unleashed beast, displaying an immense notification with golden, black, and red borders that occupied his entire mental field of vision.
«MAXIMUM ALERT! YOU HAVE BROKEN THE MORTAL LIMIT OF EXCHANGE!»
«You have received the Supreme Artifact: SCRIPTURE OF ORIGIN - "THE THRONE OF THE WAR GODS" (ORIGIN / MYTHOLOGICAL GRADE).»
«Description: This is not a simple cultivation technique. It is an incarnate Universal Authority.
Effect 1 (Avatar of War): All beings who swear loyalty and fight under your banner will share a Tactical Hive Mind network; their fear, pain, and hesitation will be biologically suppressed in combat.
Effect 2 (Emperor's Harvest): The Sovereign passively gains 10% of the pure cultivation experience, Qi, and vitality of EVERY enemy his subordinates execute.
Effect 3 (Aura of Conflict): You can incite continent-scale wars or impose absolute peace simply by unleashing your presence.»
Samael had to grip the obsidian armrests of his throne tightly to keep from staggering backward. The pure, incalculable, and despotic power of the Scripture of Origin was intoxicating, dizzying.
The Emperor's Harvest... Samael thought, his breathing growing heavy beneath the armor. If Dante kills, I grow stronger without lifting a finger. If my army of a thousand men massacres a million... I ascend toward divinity stepping on their corpses. I am not just the leader. I have just become War Itself.
Samael looked at Dante, his voice trembling microscopically from the overwhelming contained emotion.
"Dante. You have chosen your destiny well. I want you to feed that rusted dagger. Evolve it until the blade is capable of slitting the throats of the very Gods on their celestial thrones."
Dante nodded stiffly, the dagger clutched to his chest like a sacred relic.
"It will be done exactly as you order, Patriarch."
Samael raised his left hand, forcing his mind to calm amidst the flood of notifications of his new divine authority.
"And take the arts of absolute assassination so they never see you coming."
Two gray spheres penetrated Dante's forehead. The Void Slash: Execution of Code Zero, a technique that would allow him to see the fissure lines in reality and separate the enemy's body without physical resistance, causing an incurable systemic collapse. And the Phantom's Mantle: Dissipation of Existence, the supreme ability to fragment his body into particles of black mist and blood for 0.3 seconds, rendering him intangible to attacks, only to materialize in the rival's blind spot with a lethal 300% damage bonus.
[CLAN INVESTMENT SYSTEM ACTIVATED]
«Investment: 2 Extreme Assassination Martial Arts (Slaughter System Affinity).»
«Critical Probability: ANOMALOUS.»
«Multiplier Obtained: x500.»
«You have received: [Pupils of the Slain Deity (Extreme Fusion Ocular Item - Ancient Sacred Grade)] and [Martial Sutra: Celestial Demon Spear Art (Unknown Grade / Evolvable)].»
Samael quickly reviewed the rewards in his mind. It was the pinnacle of cosmic looting.
The Pupils of the Deity were two petrified eyeballs that, upon being crushed and mixed with his own blood to apply to his eyes, would grant him the "Vision of Condemnation," allowing him to see the death lines of all matter, and induce a "Conceptual Death" that would age enemy magic millions of years in the blink of an eye.
And the Celestial Demon Spear Art was a taboo and adaptable technique. It mimicked the user's element, creating plasma Supernovas or void Cyclones, demanding absurd requirements like blocking ten thousand strikes without using Qi or piercing the lightning bolts of the heavenly tribulation itself, punishing cowardice by shattering the arms of whoever hesitated.
It was the ultimate weaponry for the future Legends of his clan.
Dante gave one last bow, rough but efficient, and walked down the dais stairs.
The crowd of a thousand hardened warriors automatically stepped aside as he passed, opening an unusually wide aisle, as if afraid to brush against his clothes. No one mocked his patched tunic anymore. Ignis Morningstar extinguished his Yang fire flames on animal instinct. Korg the colossus stopped chewing. Goran tightened the grip on his unbreakable shield.
They no longer saw a weakling of Stage 3. They saw the Grim Reaper himself limping among them; the invisible executioner who could perfectly well poison the air in their lungs while they slept.
The absolute new idols of the infantry had been born: The Untouchable Twins and the Assassin Phantom.
Samael Morningstar stood up before the Obsidian Throne, his dark and divine figure silhouetted against the gigantic cascade of light from the World Tree.
The award ceremony for the mortals had concluded. The foundation of the Morningstar Clan had been forged. They had the underpinnings of heavy infantry, the tactical elite, the siege mages, and the perfect assassins.
But now... the roof was missing. The Pillars that would hold up the firmament of this new Empire were missing.
Samael slowly raised his gaze to the front row of the formation, right at the edge of the dais. There, twenty-one figures had remained in absolute immobility, like statues of salt and iron, throughout the entire ceremony. They had watched the rank-and-file soldiers receive Saint Grade artifacts, tribulation fruits, and divine techniques, and none of them had blinked, sighed, or shown an ounce of greed.
Their auras weren't noisy like the others'. They were unbearably dense, quiet presences... like tectonic faults waiting to break and devour reality.
They were the Imperial Vanguard. They were Kael, Cedric, Violeta, Eris, and the other commanders. They were The Sequences.
Samael smiled. A genuine, terrifying smile, filled with the pure anticipation of a creator about to unleash his masterpieces upon an unsuspecting universe. His voice crossed the plaza and boomed in the skies.
"The sun sets today for the brave men of the infantry," Samael announced, opening his arms, his dark tunic billowing like wings of void. "Their blood has been paid for. Their power has been cemented. But tomorrow..."
Samael paused, and the Realm of the Eternal Dawn held its breath.
"Tomorrow... dawns for the Monsters. Tomorrow dawns for the Saints who will walk upon the earth. TOMORROW WE WILL WITNESS THE RISE OF THE IMPERIAL SEQUENCES AND THE BIRTH OF THE FIRST SAINT OF OUR LEGION!"
The indigo sky trembled violently as the thousand warriors drew their weapons and shouted in unison, a hysterical, euphoric, and brutal roar of a thousand souls swearing eternal loyalty to the Throne of the War Gods.
The forge was hot. And the true cataclysm had just begun.