An entity from far beyond observed.
Its gaze pierced through layers of reality with casual precision, dissecting existence as though it were nothing more than fragile parchment. Worlds, laws, and timelines peeled back beneath its scrutiny, dismantled not through force, but through attention.
It still hadn't identified who had received the items.
But it was close.
Far too close.
Axiros felt a chill crawl through him, sharp and visceral. He hadn't felt it since eons. Reality itself was being dismantled in front of the entity, reduced to fragments of possibility and discarded outcomes.
Timelines fractured and recombined, causality rewritten again and again in its silent search.
Death's grip tightened.
His soul trembled beneath the pressure. His existence strained, compressed into something infinitesimal as the entity's gaze swept past him. Every layer of him, body, soul, seed, will, was weighed under that impossible intensity.
It was overwhelming.
Utterly, incomprehensibly horrifying.
The entity had not yet locked onto him. Its focus hovered just shy of his true position, missing him by the slightest margin, a single conceptual discrepancy.
A tiny notch.
One step closer, and Axiros would be found.
'Fuck! Why the hell is this happening now? Shit! If it finds out my information, I am minced meat!' He cursed.
'I need to do something. Think Axiros, think! What do you have?' He reached into his memories.
'Ahh, yes! I have one, I don't know if it will make the cut. But that is the best I have for my current situation. ' He thought.
He didn't have the power, not yet.
Many of his techniques were incomplete without an external source of energy, systems that demanded vast reserves he simply did not possess at this stage. His body was still developing, his foundations unfinished.
He did have existential energy.
But it was difficult to wield. Resistant. Limited by circumstance rather than quantity. Every use demanded precision bordering on perfection. Still, among all his options, it was the only viable choice he had.
So he reached inward.
Deep.
Following a pathway etched into him across countless lives, he pierced through layers of consciousness and drew from the same origin as before. A massive ball of existential energy was pulled forth, dense and volatile, its mere presence threatening instability.
There was no time to hesitate.
He began etching runes directly onto the surface of the energy itself.
Not slowly. Not carefully.
But with astonishing speed.
His hands blurred as symbols formed and locked into place, each rune stabilizing, compressing, and repurposing the raw energy into something usable. They layered over one another in complex sequences, interlocking flawlessly as his mind calculated outcomes faster than thought.
Every stroke was precise.
Every moment mattered.
'Shit, I have extremely small amount of time left. I need to hurry.' He said as he waved his hand.
Just as he completed the final rune, the ball of energy vanished, or rather, appeared to.
The existential energy surged outward in an instant, flowing through his body and soul, rapidly. It wrapped around him like a veil, masking his presence from anything attempting to perceive him directly.
The veil flickered violently.
It resisted with everything it had, straining to block out the entity's prying awareness. Layers formed and collapsed in rapid succession, rewritten again and again under crushing pressure.
But it wasn't enough.
The amount of energy was far too little, yet it was all Axiros could access at once. Against an entity beyond comprehension, such a minute fragment could only delay the inevitable.
Within moments, if time could even be measured in such a state, the veil was torn apart.
The existential energy was erased entirely.
And then,
The entity locked its gaze onto Axiros, or to be exact-it was millimeters away.
Its attention tried to pierce through his being, probe deeper and deeper, seeking to unravel every detail of his existence, his origin, his nature, his potential.
'I didn't even get to live till five. Well then, goodbye world.' He said.
He hadn't given up.
But he knew the truth.
If that gaze landed on him fully, if it aligned even for a fraction of a moment, he would be erased instantly. No struggle. No resistance. No death in any meaningful sense. Just nonexistence.
His final defense had failed.
The technique he had placed all his hopes on was gone, wiped away as though it had never existed. Every calculation, every contingency, every layer of preparation had reached its limit.
It was over.
The entity's focus tightened.
Its awareness sharpened, collapsing inward, piercing through the last remnants of distortion and concealment. The pressure mounted unbearably as its gaze began to align with Axiros's true position.
Just as it was about to pierce his defenses-
[Detected: Extradimensional entity attempting to pry information from the Host]
[Threat Level: Code red]
[System defenses activating...]
[Initializing Primary Defense Layer...]
[Initializing Secondary Obfuscation Layer...]
[Initializing Causal Suppression Layer...]
[System defenses: Online]
[Blocking causal access to Host...]
[Blocking temporal observation vectors...]
[Blocking existential signature tracing...]
[Injecting false data streams...]
[Rewriting observable constants...]
[Severing higher-dimensional line-of-sight...]
[Veiling Host identity...]
[Veiling Host origin...]
[Veiling Host potential...]
[Operation Status: successful]
[Host details concealed]
[Extradimensional scrutiny neutralized]
Axiros felt the crushing pressure vanish completely, as if it had never existed in the first place. The suffocating weight lifted in an instant, leaving behind a strange, hollow calm.
What replaced it were successive images flashing before his eyes, cold, structured, utterly unlike anything born of instinct or magic.
'A system? Like those in webnovels? How? Why?'
He was genuinely startled.
'What the fuck is wrong with this reincarnation?' he cursed internally. 'First that entity… and now this? What the actual fuckis even happening?'
This was new. Completely alien.
Across all his previous lives, not once had something like this appeared. No guiding interface. No external framework mediating power or information. He had relied on himself alone, his mind, his will, his accumulated experience.
And that had always been enough.
He hadn't expected a system. Hadn't hoped for one. Hadn't needed one.
He would have survived this life with or without it.
Still… his eyes narrowed slightly.
Something capable of denying a higher being information itself was no ordinary anomaly. Whatever this "System" was, it wasn't some benevolent convenience handed out casually.
It had intervened at the precise moment annihilation became inevitable.
That alone made it dangerous.
And worth understanding.
'Let's keep it aside for now. Let's focus on my current situation.' Axiros spoke, calming down.
Till now only his mind and being remained unfrozen and that too was with the grace of his new found heart.
The space around him remained frozen, time locked, reality held in a rigid pause.
Yet within that stillness, Axiros could move freely. The System's protection wrapped around him, isolating him from the halted world and granting him a narrow pocket of autonomy.
For the first time, he looked up.
He reinforced his Absolute Apertured Eyes, pushing them to their very limits. Layers of perception unfolded one after another, each more taxing than the last. His vision sharpened, deepened, and then stretched, reaching outward beyond conventional space.
He gazed back into the void itself.
Mimicking the entity's method, he aligned his sight along impossible vectors, forcing his perception to travel an insane distance. Reality peeled away as his vision pierced through strata of nothingness, brushing against realms that were never meant to be observed.
Pain lanced through his eyes.
Cracks formed, fine, glowing fractures spreading across his vision as blood trickled down his face. Then he saw it.
A silhouette.
Indistinct. Vast. Wrong.
The entity.
The moment his awareness brushed against it, an overwhelming pressure surged back, threatening to crush him instantly. Axiros cut his vision short without hesitation.
To go any farther would be suicide.
Even this glimpse had pushed him to the edge of annihilation. His being simply could not endure more.
"I see you, fucker. I will find you one day and make you face hell." He laughed with arrogance as he said.
His eyes were at their utmost limit.
In that single moment, nearly sixty percent of the existential energy he had poured into them was burned away, consumed just to sustain the act of seeing. The strain was catastrophic, far beyond what his current existence was meant to endure.
He forcefully retracted his gaze.
The void snapped shut before him, the impossible distance collapsing as his perception withdrew back into something survivable. Pain roared through his senses, his vision blurring as the backlash rippled through his soul.
And yet,
He was pleased.
A faint, almost satisfied calm settled over him. He had pushed himself to the brink, effectively wrecked his own eyes, and come dangerously close to destroying himself entirely.
But he had seen it.
Even that fleeting silhouette was worth the cost.
---
On the other hand-
The entity was shaken.
She had only intended to trace the bearer of one of the rarest existences in all of reality, nothing more than a cursory sweep, a casual act. Yet the moment her senses reached out, they were met with something absolute.
Blocked.
Not obscured. Not distorted.
Severed.
A complete restriction had been imposed upon the individual's information, as though reality itself had been instructed to refuse her inquiry.
That alone was anomalous.
But then came the second impossibility.
The person had gazed back.
Not blindly. Not by accident. He had perceived her, an entity immeasurably superior to him in scale, authority, and existence. Though he had failed to pierce her defenses, the fact that his perception had even reached her silhouette was beyond absurd.
No one had ever done that.
Her presence rippled, a rare disturbance passing through her vast consciousness.
"Who is this person?
How did he block my senses?
How did he dare to look back at me?"
The questions echoed within Thyra, the weight of genuine curiosity forming for the first time in eons.
This was no coincidence. No random anomaly.
She observed the frozen strata of reality one last time, then withdrew her focus, deliberately this time.
'Interesting,' she thought.
'I have not encountered such a specimen in ages beyond counting.'
Her attention shifted, abandoning her original objective without hesitation.
'The Heart of the Unwritten God can wait', Thyra decided.
'I have found something far more interesting.'
The entity leaned back upon a magnificent throne, forged from undefined matter,substance that did not belong to any known state of existence. It was neither physical nor conceptual, yet it occupied both, shifting subtly as though reality itself was uncertain of how to acknowledge it.
Her figure was draped in stillness.
A veil concealed her face, woven from layers of obscurity so profound that even causality failed to trace what lay beneath. To behold her features was not merely impossible, it was forbidden, as if the act itself would invite erasure.
She sat without motion, yet the entirety of existence seemed to orbit her presence.
The aura she emitted was vast beyond measure, regal to the point of incomprehensibility. It pressed down not as force, but as authority. Laws bent in deference. Concepts lowered themselves instinctively. Even the void acknowledged her sovereignty.
---
Back to Axiros-