The scent of sweat and urgency filled the air as Lyn pushed into the market. The narrow lanes were a sea of chaotic motion, a press of bodies shoving and shouting. Soldiers in sect armor were trying to wedge themselves into the crowd, their faces set in lines of strained control.
Voices clashed in a feverish din.
"No! I'm going to get this!"
"Duel me for it!"
"No way! I'll simply buy it!"
"You don't even know what the seller wants!"
"Quiet! Look! On the building!"
A figure materialized on the flat roof of a nearby storehouse. He wore robes of white and gold, his hair a matching golden mane tied in a severe ponytail. His eyes burned with an unsettling orange light. The crowd instinctively hushed.
"I know many of you want this Fractured World," the man declared, his voice carrying easily. "Indeed, it is true as you have heard! I am selling the Fractured World of one of the Five Great Champions! It was forged by my great-grandfather, who fought and fell in the war nine years ago. It passed to my father, and on his death, it came to me. I am of the Veil Clan. But I am not fit for it. I cultivate the Spear Path, while my great-grandfather cultivated the Path of the Event Horizon."
A wave of excitement rippled through the market.
"Can it truly be?"
"Event Horizon! A rare and extremely hard-to-master Path!"
"I would change to Event Horizon without a second thought!"
"Sigh, the cost is too much, but I want it for my collection!"
Event Horizon? Lyn thought, filing the name away. I don't know this Path.
"As such, I do not wish to change," the seller, Astrea Veil, continued. "I am a Rank 7. All my Truth Carvings are Rank 7. If I were to convert to Event Horizon, I could not fight even a Rank 6 for a year! So I am selling it!"
Disbelief and scorn met his declaration. To the crowd, the Spear Path was far inferior.
"What an idiot."
"Hmph, naive kid."
It was possible to change one's Path through great sacrifice of Truth Carvings, especially between similar elements. But to abandon the legendary Event Horizon for the spear path seemed like madness.
"Control over gravity is far superior to some stupid spear path!"
People scoffed openly. The Spear Path was known for its offensive focus and almost complete lack of protective Mortal Fragment techniques.
"If he sells it, he'll be a laughing stock! He's spitting on his ancestor's sacrifice!"
On the roof, Astrea began to sweat. His desire was a knot of contradictions. He needed to be rid of the Fractured World, a champion's vessel realm left in one's Vessel Sea would slowly drag the cultivator down, degrading Purity by entire grades or forcefully activating Heavenly Blockades if not absorbed. It was a death sentence. Yet, selling his family's greatest, most recent legacy would make him a pariah.
If I don't get rid of this, I will never advance... yet Father entrusted this to me. The last piece of the old man. I will be a laughing stock. His thoughts were a familiar, painful spiral. My great-grandfather, my father... they walked the Event Horizon... except for me.
Lyn watched Astrea's expression. the conflict, the shame, the trapped desperation.
Time to move.
He scanned the edges of the crowd and found the soldiers struggling to hold the line. He moved subtly toward them, his voice a low, urgent whisper meant for their ears alone.
"Sirs, if this continues, a Rank 7 will be publicly humiliated. In a place this crowded... Spear Path techniques are truly deadly."
The soldiers' pupils contracted. The truth of it hit them instantly. Otherwise there might be casualties
"You're right! We need to get this over with!" one hissed, breaking away to find his sergeant.
A moment later, a man in gleaming white armor stepped forward. He raised a hand, and a gust of intense, controlled wind blasted out, shoving the front ranks back a good ten meters, creating a buffer of space.
"ENOUGH TALK!" his voice boomed, a sound of pure authority. "You will bid and then disperse! Do your duty and be done!"
He was the picture of stern professionalism. He then looked up at the roof.
"ASTREA VEIL! You will now sell your Fractured World and return to Needlelight Fortress! By order of your teacher!"
Astrea sighed, the weight of command settling on him.
I wish I was born in a different family. It was hard enough to talk my teacher into allowing me to sell it..
Lyn's smile was internal, cold. He carefully parsed Astrea's tone, his posture, the subtle defeat in his shoulders. The sergeant had forced a sale, but the true battle for how it would be sold was just beginning.
"50,000 Merit Points!" a voice shouted from the crowd.
"You dare? 60,000!"
"You may be the son of Darvale, but I am richer! 100,000 Merit Points!"
"Hmph, juniors! 150,000!"
"Who do you call a Junior old man!?, 180,000!"
Inwardly, the high bidders smirked. He couldn't refuse such sums. This wasn't just any Fractured World; it was the freshly forged legacy of a war hero from the last generation. For them, it was about the significance, the political power and connection to recent history it would convey.
Astrea's sigh was one of profound weariness. He didn't care about Merit Points; his noble birth provided a steady stream. This was about his family's recent sacrifice being turned into a political token.
Suddenly, Lyn's voice cut through the bidding, clear and sharp.
"Astrea Veil! Hear me!"
Every head turned. A mere student, likely without two coins to rub together, shouting in such company? They waited for the joke, for the story they'd laugh about later.
"The truth is, you don't want to sell this Fractured World to them!"
Lyn declared, putting on a tone of courageous conviction.
"This is not a trophy for their collections! It is your great-grandfather's life's culrivation, your father's trust! I know you don't want them to buy his sacrifice and use his name for their politics!"
Astrea looked down, genuine shock and a raw, vulnerable understanding flashing in his orange eyes. It was the truth, spoken more plainly than he ever had, even to himself.
"So sell it to me! A nobody! I am Rank 3, Stage 1, of the Light Path. I have nothing to my name. I am not part of any clan, any political party. I am not a hero. I am a no one! You have nothing to lose! Give it to me, and I will vanish with it. No one will be able to claim a piece of your family's honor! His legacy won't be bartered in a market stall!"
He let the promise hang in the air, then delivered the final, absurd blow.
"I have only 101 Merit Points to my name! Do you accept?"
This guy...
Astrea thought, his gaze locking with Lyn's. Those eyes held a depth that felt ancient, seeing straight through the pageantry to the core of his dilemma. He was offering a burial. A respectful disappearance.
Astrea Veil laughed. A short, sharp burst of sound that held relief, then suddenly his face became deadly serious.
"I accept."
With a mental ping, Lyn transferred his entire worldly wealth of 101 Merit Points. Simultaneously, Astrea opened his Shard Gate. A small, impossibly dark sphere that seemed to rotate and swallow the light around it dropped into his palm. He tossed it down to Lyn.
Lyn caught it, feeling a profound, gravitational cold seep into his bones. Without a moment's hesitation, he willed it into his Vessel Realm. Then, as he had promised, he moved.
He turned and melted into the seething crowd behind him, which was now erupting into fresh chaos and outrage at the unprecedented transaction. In the confusion, shielded by taller bodies and sudden movement, the boy with the champion's legacy vanished without a trace.
Lyn was running back to his residence on the way as was his habit he thought.
A fractured world.. the star is actually reacting to it! It seems i will be able to change my path!.. this explains why i suffered no loss while refining that shard back then..i can use Event Horizon and Light path simltanusly? dont tell me this means that any fractured world that I absorb i get its path?? and can change between them witout sacrifice? to abosrb this world I need to enter it and do sometihng inside of it..I wonder what
He opened the door of his living quarters, went to his bed, sat on it, and meditated. Mentally, he looked at his Vessel Realm and the floating, rotating dark sphere. He put his intent into it, and suddenly, he awoke as someone different.
He smelled blood. Before he could get a good look at his surroundings, he looked at the sky—blood red. Suddenly, ten-meter-long spikes started falling from the skies. They impaled many of the people around him. Once a spike impaled someone, it made them explode into piles of blood, and the spike extended to the nearest person.
Suddenly, he felt a sharp pain! His mind went blank, and he saw once more the ten-meter-long spikes falling from the skies!
"This—this is the war against the Blood Cult!"
As he said that out loud, the spikes once more killed him!
He screamed internally. This was the most pain he had ever felt! Yet he knew none of this was actually happening to his body.
He felt an instinct and used a shard from his Vessel Realm. Just moments before the spikes would have impaled him, he activated it. It pushed the blood away, scattering it, but in doing so, it killed many more in the direction it splattered. It was like a chain reaction. Suddenly, he felt a burst of pain, and he was once more in the previous position.
Blood spikes were about to fall from the sky!
He was back.
The copper-tang of blood and the gut-churn of voided bowels were a familiar assault now. The ground was a sodden, sucking mud made of equal parts earth and gore. Puddles of crimson reflected the hellish red sky.
The dead and dying were a chaotic mosaic of devastation. Bodies lay split open like overripe fruit, spilling their contents into the mud. Others were missing limbs—arms severed by clean cuts or ragged explosions, legs gone from under them.
And amidst the slaughter, the banners torn and blood-smeared, symbols of pride rendered into funeral shrouds. Lyn saw a standard of a silver moon cradling a mountain, another of a black tree with weeping golden leaves, a third of interlocking, unblinking eyes. None were familiar.
The warriors wore the heraldry of their doom: ornate plate armor etched with strange beasts, lacquered wooden pauldrons, robes of silk now stiff with filth, and practical leathers stained beyond recognition. This was a coalition, an alliance of many against a single, horrific foe. It was a battlefield where everyone was losing.
This must be the condition, he realized
The ten-meter spikes began their descent, silent and inevitable as falling stars of death. His mind, honed by repetition and suffering, locked onto a variable.
The woman. Forty meters to the northeast. First impact point.
He had no technique of his own for this. But the memory-body he inhabited did. An instinct, deep and urgent, flared. He didn't think; he surrendered to the ghost-muscle memory of the Veil champion. He activated a shard.
The world compressed. Not speed, but gravity itself bent around him, a sudden, sickening lurch that propelled him forward. Gravity folded. In a blink that strained his eyes, he was there, interposing himself between the falling spike and the terrified woman.
Another instinct screamed. A different shard, pulled from the champion's arsenal. His hand came up, palm outward. A white spehre like shard shimmered into being just as the blood-metal spike touched it.
The spike deflected, its trajectory wrenched sideways with a shriek of tortured physics. It screamed away, plunging into the mud twenty meters distant with a ground-shaking thud, harmlessly away from the immediate crowd.
A flicker of cold triumph.
Then—a wet, punching impact in his lower back.
He looked down, confused. The tip of a second spike, launched from a different vector, protruded from his stomach. He had been so focused on the first, he hadn't seen the second, hadn't calculated the chain reaction already branching from another point of impact across the field. The agony was instant and absolute, a white-hot core of violation that bloomed into a consuming cold.
As his vision tunneled, he saw the woman he'd saved staring at him, her mouth a perfect 'O' of horror, just before another spray of blood from a different explosion painted her red.
The world went dark, silent, and painless for a heartbeat.
He was back.
Pain, huh, he thought,
he kept dying. over and over.
After some time had passed he finally mastered it.
Lyn immediately went to the woman, deflected the blood spike, and activated thirteen different shards instantly, forming a technique he himself created.
"This time! Gravity Chain!"
The second spike that was about to land was suddenly pulled into a small dark sphere some thirty meters in the sky and was instantly turned into food for the technique. It became bigger just in time and started to suck all the spikes from the sky into itself. He then threw the growing sphere far into the sky to the point where he had only 20% of his Sea remaining. With this body, he would need at least few weeks to regain his essence, this was a con of a D grade Essence Regeneration. He then severed the connection between him and Gravity Chain.
Unknown to him, he had formed a Heavenly Fragment technique—a grade higher than a Mortal Fragment technique. The sphere started to absorb all the spikes until nothing was left, then it disappeared because the connection was severed. Some techniques could last long after the connection disappeared while some vanished instantly.
Lyn smiled.
Finally, I threw the Gravity Chain into the right space… after so many tries.
He looked around him. He had saved the division that was with him, but the attacker was nowhere to be seen.
Could it be an Immortal? Impossible. This body is Rank 9. I couldn't have defeated a technique of an Immortal. But it has to be at least someone at the peak of Rank 9… or even a Rank 10, Stage 1. People around me are mostly rank 7.. was this an ambush?
He thought to himself before the next second, his head spun and he was at a different location.
There were loud sounds of explosions and hundreds of different techniques being thrown. This time, he was on a wall, looking at an invading force that seemed endless. He looked up into the sky and activated a shard on instinct. He saw two people standing way up in the sky as if they were discussing something.
He couldn't make out what they were saying.
"ACTIVATE THE HEAVENLY LIGHT DEFENSE FORMATION! THE THREE ROGUES ARE PREPARING TO UNLEASH A DEVASTATING HALF-STEP TRUE FRAGMENT TECHNIQUE! LEAVE THE WALLS IMMEDIATELY!!"
Lyn looked at the endless horde when suddenly he saw a triangle of dark electricity far off in the distance; he felt the walls shake.
*That must be the technique, but they are so far away… at least 200 meters?*
Suddenly, a light-like, see-through dome appeared around the entire fortress.
"HEAVENLY LIGHT DEFENSE ACTIVATED!" a soldier screamed.
At the very next momment, extremely huge thunder beams fell from the sky; one could hear the deafening discharge. If it were to hit the fortress without the formations, the entire fortress would suffer heavy damage and most rank 7s would die.
While others retreated from the walls deeper into the fortress to prepare counterattacks and other measures, he stood still, hands behind his back, as he observed.
The two figures suddenly laughed and slowly ascended into the sky above, now nowhere to be seen.
He then looked at the see-through, light-like dome, which was starting to crack. Suddenly, he lost control of his body—that is to say, the champion's body—he became an observer.
He immediately ran to the castle and went to the generals' command room. He said something to them; they sighed but nodded. Lyn could not hear; it was as if he had no ears. The generals passed some kind of key to the champion. He turned the key clockwise in the air and a door appeared. He then went downstairs and saw 1000s of different formation veins.
Don't tell me…
The champion used an unknown technique and ripped his own Vessel Realm from himself. He stared at the rotating sphere; he still had access to his might, temporarily. He put intent into the sphere and it vanished.
That must be his fractured world. I'm guessing it was transferred somehow directly to his son?
He then cut his hand and blood fell on one of the 1000 veins of formations.
Suddenly, a black box appeared in the middle of the room. He slowly walked towards it and put his hand on it.
In the next second, Lyn opened his eyes. He was not inside the fractured world anymore!