Veneri's mind did not return to normal awareness but he could gain control for a while.
The opera house still existed around him but it no longer dictated his interpretation of reality. From pure mental compression rather than physical casting, a single sapphire shard materialized above his palm. It was small enough to seem insignificant in the vast theater yet dense enough to inflict damage. The shard began to accelerate in spirals like a drill. In the next instant it released everything it had accumulated and flew towards its target.
The shard broke the sound barrier inside the opera space and tore through the acoustic reality of the Overwrite itself. It struck the conductor clone at the center of the system. The clone conductor's body collapsed forward mid-performance. The orchestra failed to maintain continuity.
That was the fracture point.
The performance did not stop but it began to degrade instantly. Notes kept overlapping without resolution and the audience clones reacted without synchronization. Some still clapped while others screamed.
The original Melody reacted immediately. She raised the bow of the Orchestral Violex towards him as though assigning him as the primary target of the entire system. The remaining clones scattered across the opera house in chaotic motion. Some leapt from balconies and others dissolved into musical notes. Within seconds, tens of thousands of Melodies formed around him, ready to rest him apart.
Veneri exhaled once amd scoffed quietly, He lifted his glaive. He activated the Fourth Plenituse Technique, Inverse Deviation. The moment it triggered, the opera house split.
Final Cadenza began breaking into thirteen distinct segments that detached from each other. Each fragment attempted to maintain its own version of the performance while contradicting the others.
The Overwrite shattered completely.
Veneri dropped to one knee immediately, coughing blood as the backlash tore through his body. Every part of his energy reserves was forcibly drained into the execution of the technique, leaving him exposed in a way he had not been since the beginning of the fight.
Across from him, Melody staggered as well.
Blood kept spilling from her lips as the destruction of Final Cadenza rebounded through her system, forcing her to discard the reduced Fifth Enlightenment state and stabilize herself by reverting to her Primordial Deity foundation just to prevent herself from dying.
For a moment, neither of them spoke. Only exhaustion remained. She then exhaled sharply, wiping blood from her mouth while staring at him with a strained expression.
"You... you just did something that should not have been possible at that level. Final Cadenza was not meant to be solved through brute force or survival instinct but... through comprehension of its musical law. You..."
Veneri pushed himself as he pointed Calimostria toward her again.
"This fight is over. Your Overwrite has already collapsed. My Protection Divinity reached its third understanding during this fight."
For too long he had only interpreted protection as something directed towards others while neglecting the necessity of preserving his own existence as a valid priority. He always risked himself without hesitation, but that this understanding did not erase that tendency. It only refined it into something sustainable where survival and protection were no longer separate concepts but linked obligations under the same Divinity.
His Second Understanding was about protecting the lives of others and seeing them smile through the creation of the Peony Mystic Circle. His First Understanding was that struggle and the hard work it took to preserve that protection for his loved ones through by creating the Nepenthes Runes.
His Third Understanding was about him protecting himself. All this time, the battle he fought was deeply rooted in his survival. Melody was an extremely fearsome opponent and she had nerfed herself to fight him. Every encounter led to survival hence his Third Understanding was reached.
That was when Melody saw a sight that she could not forget.
The ocean stopped moving. The shattered remains of Modernia became motionless. Even the scattered water droplets suspended in the air from their battle froze where they floated.
She knew this feeling.
The air had become impossibly dense yet strangely gentle. It felt vast, warm and endless. The dark heavens above Regnum Musicae trembled before layers of clouds slowly shifted color, transforming into flowing ribbons of impossible hues. Crimson blended into sapphire, sapphire dissolved into violet, violet stretched into silver and gold until the entire atmosphere resembled an aurora painted across eternity itself.
Then came the nebulas.
They spread across the heavens with their lights swirling in formations that resembled stars being born and dying all at once. Entire streaks of cosmic dust shimmered above them in colors Melody had never seen before. The rainbow clouds twisted around those nebulas until the sky no longer looked like a sky.
Melody slowly dropped the Orchestral Violex. Her fingers trembled. Her lips parted slightly as realization hit her harder than any attack Veneri had thrown during their battle.
"No… no way…"
The realization struck her with such force that she forgot about her injuries entirely. He was not breaking through to another percentage. He was not stabilizing.
He was advancing to the Seventh Enlightenment.
The realization nearly made her laugh from disbelief because this simply did not happen. Even among monsters, even among legends, even among the greatest beings in Spheraphasian history, reaching the Seventh Enlightenment required two centuries of development, mastery, suffering, sacrifice and absolute understanding.
Veneri had bypassed everything. He had not even existed for two hundred years and somehow, he was ascending.
The nebula light descended.
Massive pillars of radiant cosmic color poured down from the heavens like rivers of stars, surrounding his body in spiraling layers of celestial brilliance. The light embraced him. The ocean around him evaporated instantly.
Entire kilometers of water vanished into glowing mist before reforming into floating spheres around him, orbiting his body like moons drawn into gravity. The split ocean beneath their battle slowly healed itself as the water bent unnaturally toward him, responding to his presence without permission.
His body rose into the air and the transformation began again. His already massive frame expanded.
His dark bronze skin deepened in tone, gaining a subtle iridescent shimmer whenever nebula light touched it. His sapphire tattoos spread further across his back.
His white curls lengthened further, floating weightlessly around him despite the absence of wind. His eyes became brighter than before. This was not beauty anymore. Beauty felt too small a word.
The rainbow clouds expanded across the entire sky of Regnum Musicae. Nebulas stretched endlessly beyond the horizon, making the realm resemble a living painting of creation itself. Even the floating musical instruments above the graves of Modernia began resonating softly with the transformation without anyone touching them.
Melody looked around in disbelief. The dead instruments of more than ten thousand years were playing for him. The graves themselves began glowing. Peony flowers bloomed across shattered stone. The gorge that Veneri created earlier through Modernia trembled before sapphire flowers grew from impossible angles along the cliffs, transforming destruction into something hauntingly beautiful.
Melody forgot to breathe. This was the kind of thing that would become myth. It was a moment so absurdly impossible that future generations would call it exaggerated storytelling.
Yet she was watching it happen.
She, Melody—the strongest Musica in history, wielder of the Orchestral Violex, Primordial Goddess of Music, survivor of reincarnations, second strongest mage of Spheraphase—was standing there completely speechless because the Universal Laws— the very same laws that dictated growth, limitation, sacrifice, and possibility—were bending around him.
No.
It was as though reality itself had already accepted that resisting his development was pointless. The entire realm disappeared into radiance. The rainbow heavens became blinding.