He advanced another step, movements slow and exact, as though the slightest miscalculation could ripple into catastrophe. His focus never wavered, even as the energy around him pulsed with restrained intensity.
His gaze shifted to a single rune hovering nearby.
The failsafe.
It was subtle, almost forgettable at a glance, deliberately designed that way. Axiros had learned long ago that obvious safeguards were often the first to fail. This one existed solely to interrupt, to sever the process cleanly if anything deviated from his intent.
He had drawn it out of habit.
Out of memory.
There had been lives where he hadn't. Lives where arrogance or urgency had pushed him forward without restraint. The consequences of those mistakes still echoed faintly in his soul, scars etched too deep to ever truly fade.
He reached out and wrapped his fingers around the rune.
For a brief moment, it resisted, not in defiance, but as a function of its design. Then he tightened his grip.
The rune collapsed.
Its structure shattered inward, breaking apart into countless specks of pale light that scattered and vanished before they could interfere with anything else. The reaction was instantaneous. The surrounding runes halted mid-motion, frozen in place as their glow dimmed and stabilized.
The flow was cut.
The system of runes obeyed.
The rune he had destroyed sat perfectly between the ball of existential energy and the rotating array, an intermediary point that controlled the exchange without touching either directly. Destroying it neither destabilized the core nor damaged the formations.
It simply ended the process. It cut off the connection between the ball of energy and the runes.
Cleanly. Safely.
The space fell silent, suspended in controlled stillness.
Another reminder that survival was not about power alone, but restraint.
"Hahh. Well that was quite exhausting. Didn't think that the runes would go haywire." He sighed and shook his head.
"Now.... who the actual fuck messed up my soul space?" His eyes sharpened in contempt.
His mind churned rapidly, thoughts interlocking and unraveling as he pinpointed the source of the irregularity. Something was wrong. He could feel it, not as pain or instability, but as absence.
He expanded his senses within his soul space.
Here, he was absolute. The supreme authority of this domain. There were no natural limits imposed on him, no resistance, no delay between intent and action.
His awareness surged outward, multiplying hundreds of thousands of times in an instant, spreading through every layer and fold of his soul space.
Nothing was spared.
Every current of energy, every structural imprint, every dormant construct was scanned in meticulous detail. Patterns were compared, deviations highlighted, inconsistencies isolated.
The sheer scale of his soul space became apparent.
It was vast beyond reason, an expanse that would have dwarfed entire realms. And this was only its unawakened state, compressed and restrained to a mere fraction of what it was meant to be. Even so, traversing it through conventional means would have taken ages.
Then he found it.
In a distant, neglected corner of his soul space lay a single black spot.
It wasn't large. It didn't radiate malice or instability. It simply wasn't there. His senses vanished the moment they brushed against it, erased as though they had never existed.
That alone was unacceptable.
Without hesitation, Axiros vanished from where he stood.
In the next instant, he reappeared directly before the anomaly.
"Now, what the fuck is this? Who planted this in my soul space without me knowing?" He scratched his head.
"Whatever it is, it needs to be removed, immediately." He sighed.
He raised his hand.
At once, the massive currents of energy that filled his soul space responded. They shifted, converging toward him like invisible tides drawn by a greater force. The pressure thickened, saturating the space with restrained authority.
The black dot reacted.
As if sensing the sudden change, it wiggled, subtly at first, then more violently, its edges warping and distorting. The nothingness began to rupture, stretching outward as something forced itself through.
A figure started to take shape.
It struggled against the overwhelming pressure of his soul space, its form stuttering and folding in on itself as though reality itself rejected it. For a moment, it seemed as though it would be crushed back into nonexistence.
But it endured.
The thing finally emerged in full, and the sight of it was revolting.
Its body was wrong, utterly and fundamentally so.
Eyes covered it entirely, layered upon one another without order or symmetry, staring in every direction at once. Beneath its dark, uneven surface, thick black tendrils writhed constantly, pressing against its skin as though trying to escape.
Something moved underneath.
Energy flowed beneath its flesh in sickening currents, squirming and twisting as if alive. It pulsed irregularly, not in harmony with the figure, but through it, using the form rather than belonging to it.
The sensation it gave off was deeply unsettling.
The energy was sentient.
And worse still, it was clear that the energy was the one in control.
"Looks like it's going to be a battle. I hope it needs quickly." Axiros sighed and got ready to fight head on.
He manipulated the surrounding energy around the figure as it was materialising, making them into ropes. He waved his hands as the ropes of soul energy tied down the massive figure.
The figure seemed to groan in pain as it let out a loud incomprehensible roar.
It struggled fiercely, lashing and pulling the chains. But it was futile. Axiros was in complete control of his soul space, supreme in his own territory. Those chains of binding were absolute, unbreakable.
"Now, now. Don't struggle too much, will ya. It will okay after all. I am sending you back into nothingness, free from this horrible existence of yours, little guy." He chuckled as he moved in closer to the figure.
"Now, to check what secrets you are hiding inside that mind of yours." He said as he touched the figure's head.
He acted without hesitation.
Focusing his intent, Axiros channeled a thin, precise stream of soul energy directly into the entity's mind. There was no brute force in the action, only control.
The energy slipped past its outer layers, bypassing the writhing mass of flesh and tendrils, and struck at the core of its consciousness.
The reaction was immediate.
The living energy within the creature recoiled violently. It squirmed, convulsed, its surface rippling as though something inside had been provoked. The eyes across its body widened in unison, rolling and twitching as the entity began to thrash.
Then it started to grow.
Its form stretched unnaturally, expanding outward as more of that sentient energy surged to the surface. The black tendrils thickened and multiplied, tearing through its own structure to accommodate the sudden increase in mass.
It kept expanding.
Layer upon layer unfolded, its body ballooning until the once-contained figure became humongous, towering within the soul space.
The pressure it exerted rose sharply, pushing back against the currents of Axiros's domain as if attempting to claim space that was never meant for it.
The entity had been provoked.
Just as it was about to burst-
"What the fuck is this? Why is it empty?" Axiros groaned in frustration.
"I needed more time, but looks like whoever planted this isn't going to give me. Well then, it was nice meeting ya. Seen ya. I hope you make it to heaven." He said jokingly as he stepped back.
He snapped his fingers.
The sound was small, almost unremarkable, but the response it triggered was absolute. The chains that had been holding the creature in place shifted, no longer acting as restraints.
They moved with quiet purpose, as though this outcome had been decided the moment the intruder appeared.
They pierced it.
These were not tools born of rage or spectacle. They existed for one reason alone, to remove what did not belong. To erase an invader so completely that nothing remained to linger, not even a trace of intent.
The creature barely had time to register what was happening.
Just as its form strained, just as it seemed on the verge of bursting outward, the chains cut through it entirely.
The grotesque body, the countless eyes, the writhing energy that animated its figure, all of it vanished in less than a heartbeat. There was no explosion, no scream, only a sudden absence where something had been.
The soul space trembled softly, then settled.
Energy flowed smoothly again, as if a knot had been undone. The pressure faded, replaced by a familiar sense of balance. Everything felt aligned, complete, the way it was meant to be.
It was whole once more.
And where the black dot had been, there was nothing at all, as though it had never existed in the first place.
"Oh, well now that this was taken care of, lets continue." He said, shrugging his shoulders.
Just as he was about to teleport once again-
"I hope you liked my gift, arrogant-little mortal. More will be coming soon." A loud voice boomed in his soul space. It was ancient, far older than time itself.
It was heard in the direction of the now, erased dot.
"What the fuck man? Can't I ever catch a break from this shit? Now who is this chump? Damn it all." He shook his head frustration. He wasn't afraid nor was he fearful at all. He had faced to many of these to even bat an eye towards them.
He proceeded to teleport to the ritual's site once again.
"It time to continue now." He said as he dived in once more to retrieve a ball of of existential energy once more.
He merged the ball of energy with the remnants of the previous batch, the two blending seamlessly. The combined mass proved more than sufficient—stable, balanced, and capable of sustaining the procedure without strain.
Once again, he drew the intermediary rune.
It was unnecessary by most standards. The odds of failure were nearly nonexistent. Still, Axiros had learned never to rely on certainty alone. Safeguards were not a sign of doubt, but discipline.
Only after everything was in place did he move.
He waved his hand, and the runes responded as before, igniting and spinning wildly around the condensed energy. The sphere began to break apart, disintegrating into controlled streams of light.
This time, however, the runes did not accelerate endlessly.
They slowed.
Their rotation softened, shifting from force to guidance. The energy was no longer being refined or compressed, it was being directed.
Thin currents flowed outward from the center, drawn toward Axiros's body, converging primarily around his eyes in his real body.
Time passed quietly within his soul space.
Minutes slipped by as the energy settled, integrated, and anchored itself where it was needed. There was no pain, no resistance, only a stedy warmth as the process completed itself.
When it was done, nothing remained of the ball.
The energy had been fully consumed, perfectly utilized. At Axiros's will, the runes dissolved into faint motes of light, dispersing harmlessly into the vastness of his soul space.
Silence returned.
The procedure was complete.
"Looks like it went well. It's time to go back and check out the results." Axiros spoke.
He then exited the vast expanse of the Realm.
Back in the real world-