As Nero’s words fell, Aphelia felt the vast Arcane Power beneath her surge like a herd of wild horses, pouring into her body.
She hadn’t become a Titleholder because her Arcane Power fell just short; in wartime, any extra supply would blaze like a beacon to demon eyes.
When she reached the quasi‑Titleholder brink, several elite demons pounced; she barely drove them off with the gale-force power of her advancement.
Now her body held almost nothing but pure Arcane Power, and the array beneath kept feeding more, swelling her vessel to the edge of rupture.
Do the mighty ever burst from Power? No.
They bleed it off or turn it, like a river split by dikes; but for Aphelia, whose control had been supplanted, that trick failed, and the flood kept hammering her.
With luck, she’d ascend as a Titleholder; without it... her self-detonation could erase everyone here like dust in a blast of dawn wind.
“Nero, your new knight is about to break through!”
The old man spotted Aphelia’s shift first and bellowed at Nero, whose investiture sword was funneling power into her.
“What?!”
Nero couldn’t stop now; a pause meant starting over, and weaving this investiture into a master‑servant pact had cost an astronomical price in coin and favors.
Even he couldn’t ready a second attempt anytime soon.
The investiture’s clamor already forced the old man to seal them off with his pocket watch’s ability; if Aphelia broke through now, the shock would wake half the Demon World.
A human Titleholder in the Demon World? Even fools would rush in; every powerhouse would come to cut her down.
“Aphelia... I know we can’t stop your breakthrough now, but please bear with it. Wait for my order; when I pull the sword, a greater surge will help you cross.”
She wanted to slap him for that, heat spiking like sparks on oil; but his earnest eyes cooled her, and she sighed and wrestled for control, slowing the rise.
Meanwhile the old man stared at his pocket watch with pained eyes, bit down, and twisted the hand a full circle, then shouted like thunder.
“Done! It can mask a Titleholder’s aura now!”
Nero nodded to Aphelia, then drew the blade from her shoulder.
Her mindscape blew open like a storm-torn sky; before the ocean of Arcane Power, she was a leaf‑boat pitching on black waves.
She fought to steady in the squall, yet the torrent kept smashing her under; the Power was too vast—how could she harness it within?
Doubt rose like fog; she was knocked down, even driven back, yet she stood again and again to face the surging flood.
To the other three, her aura bucked wildly; her level jumped and dipped; thin threads of blood seeped from her skin; her life flickered like a candle in wind.
A minute, an hour, a day, a year?
Time blurred under endless impacts; even her iron will frayed, and she nearly dissolved into the never‑ending flood of Power.
Her wounds were beyond counting; were this not the mind, she’d have bled dry; yet it still wasn’t over, and time and space thinned like mist.
She didn’t know how long she could last; the pain had gone numb, and numbness chilled her more than knives; the flood spread into a prison of space.
Void. Chaos. Darkness. Cold. Like the world before dawn; even Aphelia, steadfast as stone, was still mortal, no match for the primordial night.
It was too lonely; perhaps for that loneliness, the gods birthed the world.
On the brink of oblivion, that thought stirred; her slender body, once facing the flood, began to topple like a felled reed.
“You can’t fall yet...” A whisper, familiar yet strange, brushed her ear; she shivered, and her closed eyes flew open.
Somehow her hands now gripped a silver‑white spear; its chill gleam poured over the dark, and her mind gathered like water around a moonbeam.
In this empty, boundless world, it was a single shaft of light.
“That is...”
Past the elemental flood rushing by, she watched all things be born; tiny origins crawled from dust, and across eons they fought and evolved toward time’s far shore.
Through that endless river, only Aphelia seemed unchanged; no matter the era, she stood as she was, as if outside the ages, a silent watcher.
“How curious. Is this a Titleholder’s first sight—seeing the world’s time?”
The roaring flood no longer threatened; the spear’s glow wrapped her like dawn, and the torrent became a pool she could draw from at will.
Yet in one stretch of that river, a blank appeared.
As if a hand had cut and stolen it, clean as a knife on silk; one end met a savage, pre‑civilized age, the other our racing modern day.
“What power can lay hands on a segment of time?”
The question rose with nameless dread; whoever the hidden hand was, human or not, why seize that slice of years?
“And why does the demons’ history never appear in this river?”
She thought she had misseen, or missed it; she returned to the first ripples of time and searched for every trace of the demons.
“Nothing. Nowhere. Why?”
The more she learned, the heavier her helplessness; the demons’ history simply wasn’t in the river, as if it had sprung from a void.
“Is the missing section their history?”
Such a neat overlap begged suspicion; if true, why cut everything of the demons and the Demon World out of time?
And if a Titleholder can see this far, did someone deliberately veil that stretch?
Unaware, fear coiled in Aphelia’s chest; even at the demons’ brink of life and death, she’d never felt terror like this.
Sensing it, the spear’s light softened, seeped into her body and heart, and cooled her like rain on fevered skin.
“Heh... how shameful.”
The fear drained from her gaze; she clenched the spear, its radiance swept her shadows clean, and her reason returned like tide.
“I can’t solve this now. Better to move forward.”
The missing history won’t surface yet, but by Nero’s side I’ll reach demon records; no race grows without writing its past.
History must be carried on; that’s the root of a people. So stop stewing—go seek the answer.
“Then... if I follow this light, I should get out, right?”
The spear’s glow guided her like a star; it split the river of time and pointed toward the flickering far shore.
“Jasmine... are you okay?!”
Aphelia opened her eyes to find Jasmine kneeling before her, spear planted through the array beneath, the weapon beating like a heart at the circle’s core.
“I’m fine, just spent...”
Jasmine’s voice was thin; before she finished, she collapsed into Aphelia’s arms like a falling petal.
“Cough... we should celebrate. I’ve gained a Titleholder‑class aide.”
Nero’s face was haggard, but he finally let out a breath and cut Arcane Power to the shielding barrier.
As the barrier’s core, the old man bled from seven orifices, a sight as ghastly as a battlefield.
“Dammit... I’ve never been this embarrassed...”
He sagged to the floor; as he fell, cracks spiderwebbed through the barrier, and the world looked ready to shatter like glass.
