After a while, the collective shock began to subside. The students, thoroughly shaken, slowly resumed their hushed conversations, though their eyes flickered back to Raziel with a newfound trepidation. The brief, terrifying silence was broken only by the uneasy shuffling of feet and the resumption of the mundane.
Raziel, oblivious to the continued internal turmoil he caused, was more focused on the internal chime of the system.
[You have been granted 500 achievement points]
[Next threshold: 1000]
[Rewards: 5 stat points for each attribute and a Celestial Rank Skill]
"Oh," Raziel murmured, a hint of surprise in his voice. "Didn't know I could receive skills for getting achievements." He indirectly addressed the System with his thought.
[Yes you can, Great One, though it depends on what you achieve]
Raziel nodded, a flicker of understanding crossing his face.
"Great System, what does the threshold mean?" Raziel asked the system internally.
[The more achievement points you earn, the more your reputation grows, the more titles, auras, and Originalities you earn. And the more everybody knows you]
"Wow," Raziel replied internally. A wave of satisfaction washed over him. He was happy, now possessing a new, reliable method of acquiring skills—and not just any skills, but potentially overpowered, celestial-rank skills.
Raziel now possessed Titles, Skills, and Great Embodiments that marked him as something truly unique. But he still hadn't truly tested his powerful [Arts] or the extent of his terrifying [Aura.]
And this time, he was going to test his Aura. With a subtle, almost imperceptible flick of his hand, Raziel released the coiled, infinite potential of his innate power.
[Aura: THE ONE ABOVE ALL]
Instantly, the entire crowd shuddered. The atmosphere was violently ripped apart. A pressure, so impossibly immense it defied all known laws of physics and reality, rained down from the heavens. It felt as if the entire cosmos—the stars, the void, the very fabric of existence—had suddenly collapsed and piled its inconceivable mass upon their very heads.
A turbulent, swirling aura of primordial white and absolute black erupted from Raziel's body. It didn't just radiate; it exploded like a cup, forged of mere mortal material, that could not possibly contain the infinite ocean of divine power poured into it.
The terrifying wave that followed was a corrosive torrent of raw, unfiltered emotion. Despair followed, then terror, and then the dizzying, paralyzing grip of Existential Fear. Every negative, soul-crushing emotion was supercharged and piled up in the students' minds, igniting their memories and consciousness like an internal, inextinguishable fire that would only devour and devour.
In that instant, Raziel's two Originalities activated in perfect, terrifying synchronization, amplifying the effect far beyond mere mortal comprehension.
[PRIMORDIAL ALPHA-OMEGA OF ETERNAL WARFARE] roared to life, its nature as the ultimate progenitor of conflict instantly magnifying his aura's reach. The surge of power expanded instantaneously from just the crowd to every single living being, and perhaps even non-living entities, within the entire academy grounds. In a flash of overwhelming insight, Raziel knew the weaknesses of everybody in the academy—the flaws in their techniques, the cracks in their cultivation, the Achilles' heels of their very souls. All this devastating information flooded his mind, and with it, the perfect, instantaneous method to kill every single person.
Even the Supreme Prodigies and the Headmaster, beings who stood at the pinnacle of power, were not spared. They, too, felt the sheer, overwhelming, absolute nature of Raziel's presence. They were paralyzed, capable of nothing but instantly activating their deepest, most ancient resistances, desperately attempting to avoid showcasing the full extent of their hidden strength for fear of attracting a predator of this magnitude. Yet, even those ancient, self-imposed resistance seals began to show terrifying, crystalline cracks.
The second Originality, [CREATOR OF DUST], completed the psychological and physical devastation. In an instant, every being within the academy found themselves with no choice but to bow in involuntary reverence and absolute, primal fear. The Originality, which dictated that all things return to their fundamental state, shaped the perception of his overwhelming bloodlust. His terrifying, omnicidal intent was now perceived as divine intent, a decree from the Supreme Source. His very existence was perceived as the Divine Awakening—the arrival of the ultimate, final authority-GOD himself.
In the physical world, all the air and the entire stone floor beneath the students' feet did not just disappear, but were instantaneously converted into their fundamental state: primordial, invisible dust. It wasn't brown, earthly detritus; it was the formless, ultimate substance from which all matter sprang and to which it would return.
The students were inhaling this ultimate dust with every panicked, shallow breath. The mighty, ancient academy buildings, constructed to withstand catastrophic magical warfare, began to tremble not from physical force, but from a profound, existential fear of being unmade.
Even the Headmaster, seated in his most fortified inner sanctum, felt the sickening, reality-altering ripple. It was as if the primordial forces of Chaos and the ultimate Void not only favored Raziel but were his obedient servants, as if their very essence, their very origin was now controlled by him. It was an aura they were never meant to feel—a force that belonged only to the highest echelons of creation, an ancient, ultimate power that organized and expanded in intricate, soul-crushing detail to ensure that every being understood their utter insignificance before
[THE ONE ABOVE ALL.]
And just as suddenly—
The aura withdrew.
The dust settled.
Breath returned.
Reality exhaled.
Raziel stood there, calm and composed, unaware—or perhaps uncaring—of the irreversible scar he had just carved into every soul present.
This was not power they were ever meant to feel.
And deep down, every single being there understood one terrifying truth:
He was an anomaly that could not be contained.
-End of Chapter