“Sin?”

Yumigawa Senki agreed with a sliver, then burned the rest. Her voice was a blade in cold rain. “You think that old age of ashes, when the world bled in wars, was better than now—when most common folk sleep under warm roofs and wake to bread? Don’t joke.”

Molor snorted, a chill wind across graves. “Naive. Every grand rise of this world was built on piles of corpses, like stones stacking a mountain. I admit, your Mizumi Clan smothered rival growth and strangled war, letting ordinary lives run steady like river channels. But look at the whole world—stagnant pond, no ripples, growth creeping like moss.”

Rangetsu’s body and soul had stained Molor’s mood like ink in clear water. The tyrant from a thousand years ago, famed for a heart of iron, was actually arguing over smoke and clouds. Different shorelines see different seas.

To common folk, the Mizumi Clan was the keeper of a golden peace, a lantern in long night. To top factions, that same rule was a lid on the pot. Pressed down by Mizumi’s hand, they couldn’t climb higher. The world sank into a quiet swamp called “peace,” feet dragging through mud.

From the Clan’s founding to today, centuries passed like drifting snow, and the world’s face barely changed. A few regions chased better lives like farmers tending new terraces. Most places kept their old bones—same roofs, same routines.

What kept growing, steady as bamboo rings, was culture and cultivation. With no great wars to shatter or ignite, both fields advanced calmly, sometimes surging like spring shoots after rain.

Especially cultivation. Mages and Elf Users bloomed in schools like constellations. New methods sprouted yearly. Flaws in the old systems thinned out, eroded by time’s river.

But the world stayed level like a windless plain. The Central Continent’s rich resources were monopolized by the Mizumi Clan. Most geniuses hit the ceiling at the peak of the Divine Realm. A few broke through to the Overdeity Level. As for the Law Realm—stars beyond reach. To touch it, you needed talent like lightning, fate like hidden springs, and effort that bled the bone. You also needed mountains of resources.

On resources alone, countless Overdeity peak powerhouses were stopped at the cliff’s edge. A strange sight took root.

For centuries, the apparent number of Law Realm beings didn’t grow at all. Divine Realm powerhouses kept adding like beads on a string. Overdeity Level came less often, but still came. In the war-torn age, only those above the Law Realm stood on the mountain’s summit. Now, reaching Overdeity put you among the peak.

In a peace that hates competition, some peaks crumble by inches.

For common folk, this age is good weather. For ambitious talents and hungry factions, this age is a chain around the ankle.

Rangetsu was the latter. He couldn’t stand the Mizumi Clan monopolizing the Central Continent yet ignoring the rest of the world, like a dragon coiled around a hoard. He founded the Dark Magic Guild to grow into a storm big enough to break that chain.

After a long breath, Molor finished digesting all of Rangetsu’s memories and paths. Even he felt a sigh rise like dusk wind.

“As payment, I’ll topple the Mizumi Clan for you,” he murmured in his heart. The last thread of Rangetsu’s will thinned and vanished, like mist under sun. From this moment, Rangetsu no longer existed.

Centuries of effort had become Molor’s wedding robe, bright and bitter. It made the heart ache.

Molor knew Senki would never kneel. The miasma barrier shrouding the island was thinning like fog at dawn, and a bad taste crept in his mouth. He stopped speaking and struck.

Senki had guarded for this moment. Her nerves were taut bowstrings. She blinked through space to close the gap, like a swallow cutting wind, and poured light and thunder laws into her twin blades.

“Light-Thunder Sword: Sacred Dance.”

Within a storm of radiance and crackling lightning, Senki’s blades blurred like falling rain. She flickered with space law, dodging Molor’s blows by hairs. She wielded three laws at once. The cost was a furnace raging inside her bones.

But Molor’s strength dwarfed hers like mountain over stream. Each of his counters dispersed her strikes with lazy ease. He even had breath to patch the weakening miasma barrier, stitching night back together.

“Not good. Keep this up, and Elyar’s work gets washed away,” she thought, her pulse a drum.

She hurled one last slash, then slid back fast, swallowing an elixir that burned sweet. She triggered the Sacred Life Sword’s healing light, green as new leaves. She refused his chase head-on, stepping aside like water around stone.

She opened a little distance, then unfolded her domain without a twitch of doubt. This was her first time casting a domain outside.

“Spacetime Spirit Domain!”

As a master of all magic, she could mix two or three laws inside the domain, like blending inks. But against Molor’s power—more like a tidal wave than a man—common laws were kindling in rain. So she chose the rare pair: time and space.

Cost and backlash could wait. The only thing that mattered was Elyar linking with the Elven Queen.

Why didn’t Senki seek the Mizumi Clan’s help? Pride, yes. And Yugami Yuu’s calm faith in his daughter, like a clear sky. He believed Senki’s strength and status made her untouchable in this world. So he hadn’t given them tokens to contact home. It was a natural mistake, quiet as dust.

The domain unfurled, and the surroundings dissolved into a pale void, sky like blank silk. Above and behind Senki, a huge clock appeared, gears whispering. Its turning hand measured how long the domain could hold.

“A domain woven from time and space laws?” Molor’s eyes glinted, a fox startled by lightning. “Impressive. No wonder you carry such power in your twenties.”

He had weathered storms for tens of thousands of years, yet this was new thunder. Senki wasn’t just born for all magic. She grasped all laws. A talent like this broke the map.

“The Mizumi Clan’s genius truly isn’t ordinary,” he said, shoulders rolling as if waking from old sleep. “Let this king see what your domain can do.”

Battle intent flared in his crimson eyes like torches feeding on wind. Miasma surged from him, darker and thicker, a night tide smashing the constraints of space law to shards.

The island held its breath.