Solanky raised his right hand and began chanting in a tongue that only entity-level beings and above could recognize. The instant the fifty calamitous entities caught the cadence of that chant, they scattered in frantic unison toward the locked void, clawing for an exit that did not exist. They could drift freely within its boundaries, but the region itself had been sealed, and there was no slipping past its edges.
All at once, countless stars bloomed into being across the empty void surrounding Solanky—not the ordinary stars one might glimpse drifting through infinite source space or the void's stranger corners, but stars forged entirely from his own defying four flames.
Solanky smiled at the fleeing calamitous entities and began weaving rapid seals with his hands and fingers, his lips still moving through words that even entity-level beings could not have deciphered without knowing their origin. Then he fell still—chant silenced, hands stilled—and at that single motionless instant, every star ignited, blazing brighter, multiplying from a mere hundred thousand into one trillion. Solanky exhaled a quiet laugh. "After I became an infinite source god, I never found a technique that felt truly mine. But today—as an entity—I'll test my first spiritual and physical killing technique. Star Palms Judgement. An upgraded strike, born from the Star God's Constellation Annihilating Palm."
The words had barely left him when the burning stars folded into palms. Solanky lowered his lifted hand, and in that same breath every palm vanished from where it hovered—only to reappear before each scattered calamitous entity, though they stood millions of light-years apart. Small as an average human hand from Earth, each palm carried a weight of power utterly disproportionate to its size. The first entity it touched shrieked, its spiritual life essence shattered into fragments and sealed within the very palms that had destroyed it, turned into a prison for what remained.
Five more entities met the same fate before the last and strongest of them, its fury igniting into desperation, invoked a forbidden technique—burning away half its own life essence to send out a cry loud enough to reach its grand ancestors. The moment it began consuming itself, its power surged from 49,000 times to 50,500 times, catapulting it from early-stage to mid-stage strength, and with that sudden might it tore through the lockdown and shattered the void's seal. Solanky felt a flicker of genuine surprise—he had not thought an early-stage entity capable of such a gambit, and it caught him flat-footed. He knew that had his Supremo body been overseeing the full battlefield, the miscalculation would never have occurred. But even one being split across two forms could hide things from itself, when the gulf in power between those forms ran deep enough.
...
Lost in that thought, indifferent to the chaos still unfolding around him, Solanky was pulled back by a voice that rolled through the void like distant thunder. "Who dares invade my home and slaughter the elites and lesser beings of my race with such arrogance?"
Something vast took shape within the void—a massive spherical form ringed by seven halos of pitch-black light, their circles intersecting like the gears of some impossible machine. This was one of the grand ancestors of the calamitous race. Solanky lifted his gaze toward it and understood, in that instant, that he was looking at something larger than anything he had ever witnessed with his own eyes, larger even than what he had glimpsed only in fragments of the Supremo's memories—a true behemoth spanning fifty trillion light-years, vast enough to swallow countless multiverses whole, dwarfing the very super infinite source world Solanky called home.
The colossal entity studied the tiny figure before it and pondered aloud. "What could this child have done to draw the wrath of something this powerful? He hasn't even called on a weapon or armor—power like that, unaided—and he already stands 1.5 times stronger than I am." Then, louder: "Come, all of you, quickly. We have a middle-stage entity on our hands, sixty-five thousand times the strength of an Infinite Source God." The other grand ancestors did not hesitate; they abandoned their secluded caves without a moment's pause to converge on Solanky.
Within the span of a breath, four more grand ancestors materialized beside the sphere. Though none matched its sheer size, none of them were lesser beings either—each cut an imposing silhouette in its own right. Solanky's attention shifted from the sphere to a form that resembled nothing more than roiling grey mist, shapeless and vast, swallowing sixty percent of the void around it—fifteen times larger than the sphere itself. Deep within that mist, twin points of green light flared open like eyes, fixed on Solanky. A voice rose from the fog. "Hmph. Only five thousand short of my true combat strength, and still you dare stand here so brazenly, so foolishly, within my domain? Let's see if that arrogance can hold up your strength."
The moment the words left it, the locked void unraveled entirely. Every palm that had trapped the fleeing early-stage entities dissolved, swallowed and dispersed by the grey mist, clearing a path for the survivors to flee. Within that mist, the green eyes began drawing together, coalescing into something almost humanoid—almost, but wrong in ways that set it apart from anything Solanky had seen. The figure stepped free of the fog, and the instant it did, a crushing pressure rolled outward, pressing down on every entity present. Solanky included.
He understood at once that he was looking at the most fearsome being among them—seventy thousand times the strength of an Infinite Source God, and every inch of it built to unsettle. Two legs anchored its massive frame, riddled with countless holes that hissed grey mist into the air. From its waist to its skull sprouted six arms: two reaching from behind, two more jutting forward from its stomach, and a final ordinary pair set where a human's arms would be. A vertical line of serrated teeth ran closed across its stomach and chest. Its single head bore four faces, one on each side, and where eyes should have been there were only hollow sockets glowing green—no mouth, no nose, no ears, just those scattered, staring lights.
When it moved, its solid form unraveled instantly into the grey mist trailing from its legs, and watching that transformation, Solanky understood something crucial: the mist did not belong to the creature. The creature was the mist. He murmured to himself, "This one's going to be trouble if I don't bring out the source-severing blade." But before the thought had even finished forming, the grand calamitous ancestor was already on him, landing blow after blow, and for the first time Solanky felt something close to doubt. He couldn't land a single strike in return—every attempt passed through empty air, though within infinite source space he could grip even nothingness itself as though it were solid. Not here. Not against this. The ancestor slammed a fist into him and dissolved back into mist before Solanky could answer.
Solanky knew there was only one way to close a five-thousand-point gap in a fight like this—the blade. The seven-headed serpent, having escaped once already, watched with a strange mix of relief and unease, murmuring to itself, "Why hasn't he drawn his armor, his sword? Is their power weakened, this high up?"
It never finished the thought. The same death-aura that had haunted the serpent once before began leaking from Solanky's frame, and its voice cracked into a scream. "Ancestor! Watch out!!"
Too late—the ancestor's fist was already in motion, and all it saw before impact was the flash of a burning blade slicing clean through its wrist, severing the fist before it could dissolve into mist and escape the blow.
For the first time in its existence, the ancestor screamed—a raw, startled cry as fire chewed into the stump of its ruined arm. Solanky only smiled, leveling the blade at it and giving a slow, disapproving wag of one finger. Every entity present felt his power surge in that instant—from 65,000 times to 85,000 times an Infinite Source God's strength, vaulting him fully into late-stage entity territory.
Seeing this, the wounded ancestor dissolved into mist and fled the battlefield, retreating to lick its wounds and wait for a better day. Solanky considered giving chase but recognized the futility of it—there was no catching a being that could unravel into fog at will, not without forcing it to reveal a form it clearly had no intention of showing. The ancestor reappeared deep within a hidden cave, sealed off from both the outside world and the void beyond, a place where no identification technique wielded by anything short of a peak entity could have found it. It coalesced once more, staring at the ruin of its own arm.
"What a blade," it muttered. "It severed my fist clean through... and this burn, this corrosion—late-stage entities aren't supposed to carry power like this. That kind of strength shouldn't exist below the beyond realm."
CULTIVATION LEVELS OF THE ENTITY LEVEL
14. Quasi-Entity Level — At least 1,000 times stronger than an Infinite Source God, divided into four stages (Low, Mid, High, Top-Tier), each stage 1,500 times stronger than the one before it.
15. Entity Level — Immune to the laws and rules of the infinite source world. Upon reaching this level, a being may enter a higher plane of existence above the physical realm, known as the Beyond Realm. The threshold for true entity status is 10,000 times the strength of an I.S.G. Once attained, a being's spiritual and genetic makeup begins to merge, breaking the shackles of its old body and granting the first faint stirrings of metaphysical awareness. This level is divided into four sub-stages—Early, Mid, Late, and Peak—with power ranges as follows: 10,000–40,000 times for Early-stage, 45,000–70,000 times for Mid-stage, 75,000–99,000 times for Late-stage, and 100,000 times for Peak-stage entities.
16. Transcendent Entity — Once an entity crosses into this phase, its power is no longer bound by infinite source energies. The entry threshold sits at ten times the strength of a Peak-level entity. Transcendent Entities can exist anywhere and everywhere within infinite source space and the void region, and begin to sense and predict the thoughts of every being beneath them. They can manifest across different timelines and alternate ones simultaneously, hold omni-level presence throughout the worlds below the Beyond Realm, and exert influence—however limited—over the rules of the Beyond itself.