Boom boom boom boom!!!

  Whether it was the bedrock foundations, the layered strata, or the colossal, labyrinthine core structures buried deep beneath the earth—massive as entire cities—from which hundreds of thousands of whip-like tendrils lashed outward...

  Whether it was those same tendrils splintering further into thousands, even tens of thousands of branching filaments, stabbing ever deeper into the tectonic plates...

  All of them, under the overwhelming might of Seraphine, who stood at the center of this vast subterranean expanse, groaned as if in agony. One after another, they were yanked downward, torn free, and dragged through the stone. Hundreds of thousands—millions—were ripped loose, grinding to ash under relentless friction.

  In that instant, Seraphine’s sheer violence triggered the total collapse of both the Beaconreach Capital ruins and the massive mechanical frameworks embedded throughout the surrounding crust.

  On the surface above, within a thousand-kilometer radius centered on the Capital’s ruins, the ground convulsed in wave after wave of seismic chaos.

  Rumble rumble rumble rumble!!!

  The earth heaved, mountains splintered, plains buckled, deserts churned like boiling seas, and rivers burst their banks.

  The entire region—its stability once secured by the underlying plates—gave way under the fury Seraphine unleashed far below.

  The surface collapsed from its center in a thousand-meter plunge, birthing a roaring ocean of shattered stone and mud hundreds of meters high, surging outward in an unstoppable tide. Cities vanished, more than a dozen towns were swallowed whole, buried deep beneath the devouring landslide.

  In moments, the broad plains were replaced by jagged fissures, blackened chasms, and yawning, bottomless abysses.

  Beaconreach had been remade into a new, monstrous landscape.

  And far below the crust, the two figures—already deep into the second subterranean layer—continued their brutal descent.

  Several minutes later—

  Clatter clatter clatter clatter!!!

  Within the oppressive, endless underground ocean of molten rock, a blazing blue Pillar of Light plunged downward at a speed tenfold greater than before—driving straight toward Earth’s core.

  At its lower end was Cuan. After the long, crushing passage through the crust and the abyssal depths, his body had been ground and scorched into a blackened lump of coal barely two meters tall.

  Were it not for the faint pulse of life still clinging to him, Seraphine might have assumed he was already dead.

  Rumble rumble rumble!!!

  Without warning, Cuan was once again stomped, impaled, and driven downward by Seraphine—another hundred kilometers in a single strike—his mass shrinking yet again, now less than 1.5 meters in height.

  At that moment, Seraphine finally halted.

  “Good.”

  They stood atop an endless plain of strange, flowing matter—solid grey-white blocks shifting like liquid.

  Seraphine glanced down at the collapsed coal-like remnant at her feet, smiling faintly.

  “You’re finally not so tall. Much better.”

  The blackened lump suddenly shuddered. A massive eye tore open across its surface, locking on Seraphine with a murderous glare.

  “This king knows that aura... you’re that lowborn human who killed Vuron!”

  “Lowborn? Human?”

  Seraphine tilted her head slightly, gazing down at Cuan with open mockery.

  “Such grand words for someone in this pitiful state. Very unconvincing, indeed.”

  “You—!!”

  Rage flared in Cuan’s eye, but at the cold, merciless look on Seraphine’s face, her heart seized—and the words died in her throat.

  “I greet you politely, and in return you spit venom.”

  Seraphine’s tone chilled to ice. “Despicable.”

  Her palm opened, and from across the distance, her telekinetic grip seized the broken remains of the King of Aurora.

  “What are you doing, damn you?!” Cuan bellowed.

  “What?” Seraphine’s eyes narrowed. “Why, killing you, of course.”

  Slowly, Seraphine clenched her hand.

  “Ah—ah—ah—ah—ahhh!”

  “This king has done nothing to you!”

  “You lunatic!”

  “This king refuses to yield—I haven’t even begun yet!”

  Cuan’s screams echoed through the subterranean void.

  Crack crack crack!!!

  The mass of living matter—cells, neurons, bones, and fat—was crushed under the boundless pressure of Seraphine’s telekinesis, compacting down to the size of a fingernail.

  With a sudden whoosh, it shot into her palm.

  She squeezed harder.

  The tiny, ultra-dense biological core was compressed further, until it glittered as a small, translucent diamond in her hand.

  And yet, the King of Aurora’s life force still pulsed strong.

  “What now? Why stop? Keep squeezing!”

  The diamond’s voice rang out with smug defiance.

  “Hmph hmph hmph... I possess a truly immortal body! As long as even one atom of me remains intact, I cannot die. No matter your speed or the might of your power—it means nothing. You cannot kill me!”

  “So that’s how it is...”

  Seraphine’s mental power surged, piercing deep into the diamond’s microstructure. Just as Cuan claimed, the atoms of his body were unlike any naturally found on Earth.

  These atoms carried intelligence.

  They harnessed the energy orbits of their electrons to simulate a neural network, binding soul, consciousness, and memory into the atoms themselves—creating intelligent, self-regulating matter.

  And in that instant, all of Cuan’s memories fell into Seraphine’s grasp.

  “My conjecture was correct. You are no native creature of Earth. Houiste civilization... fascinating.”

  Cuan’s voice trembled. “You... you can actually see my memories?!”

  Shock flooded him.

  What scale of mental power could reach the atomic level—could unravel his atomic thought-process and defensive layers—without him even feeling it happen?!

  “A summer insect cannot speak of ice,” Seraphine said coolly. “In your eyes, atoms are minuscule—beyond sight. But to me... they are as vast as planets.”

  She studied and plundered his memories without pause, then smiled faintly.

  “I’ve just thought of a way to kill you.”

  She leaned close to the diamond, her voice a whisper. “Let’s try it.”

  Cuan: “......”

  Seraphine glanced down at the Earth’s core beneath her feet.

  “Not here. Damage this badly, and the whole planet will feel it.”

  She looked upward. Even the warped, unevenly rejoined tunnel above could not block her mental perception.

  More than 10,000 kilometers away, she saw the scarred and ruined surface.

  With a thought, she opened the Real Number Channel.

  Whoosh!

  In less than a second, still clutching the trembling diamond, Seraphine reappeared above the desolated lands of Beaconreach.

  She cast a brief glance at the wreckage, then shifted her grip and pressed harder.

  Crack crack crack!!

  In an instant, the diamond was crushed to a scale imperceptible to the naked eye.

  Cuan had been reduced to a pure carbon atom condensate.

  “Heh heh... and what good is that? You still can’t kill me!”

  The mocking voice resonated from deep within the compressed atoms.

  Seraphine said nothing. She merely pinched Cuan between two slender fingers and kept compressing.

  No matter how many times he roared, he could not change his fate—being relentlessly crushed tighter and tighter.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  Curses, threats, desperate pleas—it didn’t matter. Seraphine didn’t so much as blink.

  Like a meticulous artisan at her craft, she went on refining the carbon atom condensate.

  Billions of tons of force—channeled through just two delicate fingers—were now bearing down entirely on that tiny, ultra-dense knot of carbon.

  At the same time, a divine radiance like the blazing Great Sun flared, searing at thousands of millions of degrees Celsius, enveloping her fingertips.

  Cuan’s panic cracked through his bravado:

  “Damn it—what are you doing?! Why is it so hot—so hot! Stop, stop—!”

  But under that crushing force and infernal heat, his voice grew thin, fading to a mosquito’s buzz—yet still thick with despair.

  Not that Seraphine cared.

  She’d seen countless people in despair. Cuan didn’t even make the list.

  The pressure and heat built higher.

  For perspective: the sun’s core endures roughly 300 billion atmospheres of pressure. Its temperature soars to a staggering 15 million degrees Celsius.

  And now—what Seraphine was exerting on this carbon cluster made the sun’s core seem tame.

  Even Carbon—ordinarily so resistant to fusion—yielded under such relentless extremes. In mere seconds...

  Cuan, drifting toward death, his mind fogged and feeble, muttered into the chaos of atoms:

  “This king… am I really dying here today…? Father… Houiste… I… wanted… to see you… once more…”

  BOOM!!!

  Between Seraphine’s two fingers, a blinding flare of pure white light exploded outward.

  BOOM!!!

  Hundreds of thousands of torrents of heat blasted in all directions, centered on her upraised fingers.

  The white glare lit the land for miles. Temperatures, radiation, and raging thermal streams tore through the surroundings, consuming and annihilating everything in their path.

  CRACK—CRACK—CRACK—CRACK!!!

  Massive shockwaves erupted, ripping apart the ground beneath her feet, collapsing it into a vast crimson sea of molten rock.

  The outward surge was so immense it drove the earth itself into violent compression, sending colossal waves of soil rolling outward—carrying blistering air currents and detonating shock fronts that swallowed the landscape.

  Tens of millions of tons of air were crushed and superheated in an instant, expanding with devastating speed. Radiation from the blast core heated even more air, feeding the ever-growing explosive surge.

  The result was an impossibly vast, incandescent air mass—swelling, boiling, and invading every horizon—until, from a distance, it resembled a colossal, rising fireball of orange and red.

  That monstrous sphere of heat climbed into the sky, swelling further until it unfurled into a towering, black, mushroom-shaped cloud that blotted out the sun.

  It was the mark of utter annihilation.

  A nuclear detonation.

  A hydrogen bomb’s birth.

  Seraphine had literally crushed that Cuan into a nuclear fusion reaction.

  The blast was so massive that even the floating clouds high above were torn apart by the shockwave, spreading outward into a vast ring of vapor.

  From orbit, artificial satellites could clearly see it—the ruins of Beaconreach’s former capital had become the eye of an enormous swirling cloud vortex, perfectly centered on where Seraphine stood. The sight was nothing short of breathtaking.

  Had Beaconreach’s capital still stood, this medium-sized city would have been erased in an instant—wiped from existence by the sheer force of this nuclear-scale detonation.

  The unimaginable heat, concussive shockwaves, blinding radiation, and torrents of unleashed energy would have consumed everything without mercy.

  Even now, a thousand miles away, Beaconreach’s covert operatives could feel the surging air currents carried by the shockwave rushing toward them.

  Instinctively, everyone shielded their faces, squinting into the distance, their eyes filled with naked fear.

  Across the globe, those monitoring the scene via satellite were struck dumb, their minds unable to process what they were seeing.

  “Could a single pinch of the fingers really create a strategic-level nuclear blast out of thin air?”

  The top brass of every major Earth nation had long since been humbled by Seraphine’s power—yet this display stunned them into speechless awe all over again.

  Ten thousand kilometers in ten seconds.

  One kick that sent an unknown creature plummeting to unfathomable depths underground, triggering an upheaval that spanned thousands of miles.

  A single strike that reshaped the land so drastically that even the phrase “remaking rivers and mountains” felt inadequate.

  And now… two fingers, generating a nuclear-scale detonation from a mere fragment of matter.

  This was beyond extraordinary.

  Even so, none of them believed for a second that a nuclear explosion could harm her.

  And they were right.

  At the very epicenter of the blast, the raging fury of heat and energy could not so much as graze Seraphine.

  She floated motionless in the heart of her own self-made inferno.

  Not even a strand of her hair shifted in the chaos.

  Streams of high-energy particles and searing thermal currents lashed past her flawless face, yet even the instant spike to hundreds of millions of degrees Celsius failed to cause the slightest discomfort.

  For Seraphine, even humanity’s ultimate weapon—the hydrogen bomb—was nothing more than a passing breeze.

  She had transcended Earth’s civilization by an impossible margin.

  At that moment, a thought flickered in her mind.

  Instant Time Compression.

  The roaring torrents of energy froze in place.

  The world itself blurred, edges coarsening as if reality had been paused mid-breath.

  Yes—Seraphine had invoked her time-stopping ability.

  Instant Time Compression—that was the name she’d given it.

  “From my tests so far, activating Instant Time Compression carves out a virtual timeline from the real one.

  Any action I take inside this virtual frame will overwrite reality once the five-second time stop ends.

  And it barely costs me any energy at all—nothing worth mentioning for someone with an infinite power supply. I could, if I wanted, keep freezing time over and over.

  The only drawback is a one-second cooldown between uses, making it less freeform than Real Number Channel. But still…”

  Seraphine lifted her gaze toward the distant horizon, where the blazing Great Sun displayed a striking ‘posterization’ effect. A hazy notion began to take shape in her mind.

  Just then, five seconds elapsed—and the frozen nuclear explosion once again surged outward in all directions.

  Standing calmly amidst the blistering heat, Seraphine’s eyes suddenly widened as inspiration struck.

  “If I keep casting Instant Time Compression without pause… wouldn’t that make every second stretch into five seconds? And if I didn’t waste even a single one of the 86,400 seconds in a day, wouldn’t that mean one day for me becomes five days?!”

  “And if my daily attribute doubling is applied to that… wouldn’t that turn into a fivefold increase each day—effectively a thirty-twofold boost?!”

  With that thought, Seraphine immediately set aside all distractions and began a time-stop experiment on the spot.

  Her patience was remarkable. She stood perfectly still, activating the time stop once every second, over and over without fail.

  Time slipped by—minute after minute, second after second.

  The once-crimson wasteland had long since faded into a dull, lifeless hue. All that remained was a drifting column of black smoke, the only trace of the calamity that had struck this land.

  The sun eventually dipped below the horizon, replaced by the pale glow of the waning moon rising gracefully from the earth.

  Yet Seraphine held her position, motionless, utterly focused on casting time stop every single second.

  So feared was she by the high officials of every nation that, despite her silent stillness, no one dared to step within a hundred kilometers of her.

  Hours passed. Dawn broke.

  The system reactivated—Seraphine’s attributes doubled once more.

  By now, she had triggered Instant Time Compression countless times.

  “No.”

  She closed her eyes slightly, murmuring to herself.

  “My theory was wrong. The system doesn’t measure according to external time—it follows my own perception of time.”

  Her lips curved faintly.

  “If I could perform perfect self-hypnosis—convincing myself I’ve lived ten thousand years—wouldn’t I instantly gain enough power to blow apart the entire universe?”

  Raising one arm slowly across her chest, her voice grew low.

  “It’s not that simple.”

  The Eye of True Revelation and Chaos Calculation activated in unison, probing for the true mechanism behind the system’s daily attribute doubling.

  Minutes later—just as expected—she found nothing.

  Seraphine wasn’t discouraged. She descended from her half-day hover, alighting in the valley below, its surface now cooled into a murky, glass-like crust.

  “Time to take care of a few matters.”

  She lifted her head slightly—at once, an immense and invisible wave of mental power erupted outward, expanding like a rapidly growing sphere to envelop the entire expanse of Beaconreach.

  Within that instant, her mind’s perception painted the continent in grim detail—columns of smoke and flame rose everywhere, towering pillars of fire lighting the land.

  Over three hundred Mist Demons ran rampant across Beaconreach.

  Cities crumbled, farmland burned, and hundreds of thousands of citizens were reduced to piles of charred bone.

  The Beaconreach military, already on the brink of collapse, fought with desperate tenacity—relying on overwhelming firepower just to hold the line, their casualty rate ten times that of the Mist Demons.

  But given the current situation, unless Beaconreach carpet-bombed its own territory with nuclear weapons—consequences be damned—wiping out the Mist Demons was simply impossible.

  Otherwise, Beaconreach itself would soon be erased.

  “A total of 3,317,594 Mist Demons.”

  “These fire-breathing pests are a blight on the environment.”

  Seraphine shook her head. “Still, destroy them.”

  She lifted her gaze. Slowly, her eyes began to glow red—until, in the next instant, two crimson beams, each thicker than a man’s wrist, burst forth and punched through the sky.

  Whoosh!! Whoosh!!

  The twin pillars of light tore upward, burning away layers of atmosphere, soaring tens of thousands of meters, before suddenly spiraling toward one another and merging into a single, pure-red beam—several times thicker than before. That beam shot forward barely a thousand meters before it fractured, splitting into countless needle-thin crimson filaments. They wriggled like living things, bending and darting outward in all directions toward the ends of the earth.

  Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!

  One second later—

  Across Beaconreach, soldiers locked in savage close-quarters combat suddenly found the Mist Demons before them—ferocious, agile, roaring as they charged—were abruptly speared, shredded, and vaporized by razor-thin streaks of scarlet lightning from above. In an instant, they all fell.

  With just a glance, Seraphine had obliterated over three million Mist Demons scattered across every front of Beaconreach, striking from thousands of miles away.

  Satellites tracking her from multiple angles caught every detail.

  The high commands of every nation… didn’t even look shocked anymore. They had moved beyond shock, into numb disbelief.

  And the crimson filaments did not vanish after exterminating the Mist Demon horde. Like swallows returning to the nest, they converged from every horizon, racing thousands of miles to re-form a single searing beam. That beam plunged toward a desert plain, halted midair—and shifted. Light turned tangible, reshaping into the figure of—

  —Seraphine.

  With her divine aura, Seraphine could shape anything. Turning light into a person was nothing; she could just as easily make it wind, water, blades, spears, swords, hammers, stone, wood, or steel. For her, such transformations were child’s play.

  There, a crystalline pyramid hovered silently in the air, ringed by more than a dozen Beaconreach military helicopters circling in cautious formation.

  On the desert floor below, a cluster of oddly modified IFVs stood nearby, along with dozens of Beaconreach military scientists encased in thick hazmat suits.

  The moment they spotted Seraphine hovering above, every one of them froze, trembling. No one dared speak. They clutched their instruments and bolted for their vehicles, chasing after the helicopters already retreating at full speed, desperate to escape the desert.

  “Considerate of them,” she murmured.

  Watching the others depart, Seraphine’s gaze shifted to the crystalline pyramid—up close, it loomed high enough to blot out a portion of the sky.

  Humph—

  The telekinetic force restraining the Pyramid dissolved soundlessly. In a fluid motion, Seraphine shot toward it. Mid-flight, her form blurred, phasing effortlessly through its transparent walls.

  Inside, she immediately felt something off about the space itself.

  “Its spatial capacity has been expanded nearly ten thousandfold. This has to be Imaginary Space technology.”

  She touched down lightly, her eyes narrowing on dozens of towering Aurora Clan members standing rigid and unmoving in the distance. With a single thought, a strange, demonic gleam flared in her gaze—thirty-six Mind Suppression Seals burst forth, piercing deep into the very cores of their souls.

  The thirty-six ancient beings shuddered violently as their spiritual essence drained at an alarming rate. In a mere second, they were reduced to Seraphine’s eternal soul slaves.

  Withdrawing her telekinetic grip, she watched their once-vacant eyes snap into focus. The giants scrambled upright, then all dropped to their knees, their voices low but fervent:

  “Master!”

  “Mm.”

  Hands clasped behind her back, Seraphine approached. To an ordinary person, these Aurora warriors would have seemed like colossal statues. Her tone was calm, deliberate:

  “Go to the Sapphire Research Institute. Work with the scientists there to fully analyze your genetic makeup. And… it’s fine even if you don’t survive the process.”

  The giants answered without hesitation:

  “As you command!”

  Seraphine gave a slight nod, casually opening a Real Number Channel. In an instant, she swallowed them into it and sent them tens of thousands of miles away to Emberlight.

  Then, she unleashed an immense wave of mental power, sweeping through her surroundings.

  In that instant, every detail of the Pyramid—inside and out—flooded her mind: its true expanded volume, the intricate and unfamiliar devices embedded within its crystal panels, and even the rare materials used in its construction.

  “Not a simple ship, this one…”

  Floating upward, Seraphine let her gaze drift over the aquamarine crystal walls, her voice tinged with appreciation:

  “It crashed on Earth a hundred thousand years ago—geometrically perfect in shape. It guided and accelerated the development of mathematics and physics for the intelligent civilization of that era, nurturing a brilliant optical technology culture that flourished for nearly ten millennia.”

  She shook her head with a faint click of her tongue.

  “But in the end, no matter how formidable laser cannons are, they can’t stand against the Aurora Clan.”