[Nicole Anstalionah.]
The fight between those two brutes was so violent it tore us awake from our inner worlds.
I can still feel the fractures rippling across space and time, faint but undeniable, stretching over the planet like cracks running through glass.
For a moment, I truly feared they might destroy the world by accident.
I even poured power into the air, trying to encase their bodies in mana when they returned, but it was useless. Their clash existed on a level beyond anything I could restrain.
We fell back to the fortress we had captured earlier and sent for reinforcements.
The war itself was forced into a pause, a pause we desperately needed.
Malachi had been gravely injured. After making a round through the fortress, I returned to the main tent where Jen sat at his bedside.
He was wrapped in thick bandages, buried beneath cloth and fur. Jen slumped in her chair, her entire posture sagging with exhaustion.
"You bored?" I asked as I stepped inside.
She sighed and tilted her head toward me. "Not bored. Drained. It's been two days, and he still hasn't woken."
I dragged a chair beside her and lowered myself into it with a heavy breath.
"Well, he did manage to stalemate Madikai."
Demons, even on their own, can reduce stars and worlds to dust. And Madikai had carved through hordes of them as though they were little more than a shifting breeze.
Naturally he would be a nightmare to face. Malachi had held back at first, trying not to affect us.
His passive sleep ability could have reached us even beyond this world.
The same could be said of Madikai.
Both of them were nearing the eleventh wall. At that point, power itself becomes something unreal.
When you break through a wall, everything shifts. Power doesn't rise gradually; it surges like a tidal wave.
It's because the walls allow you to directly bypass the restrictive layers of the world, and the many dimensions it may follow.
The first six walls are simple, straightforward. They grant greater strength, sharper senses, and finer control. But the seventh wall is different.
Your inner world begins to bleed into reality. The intangible gains form; your will pushes its way into existence.
The eighth wall becomes the calm before the storm. It is refinement, restraint, learning to wield power without letting it consume you.
The ninth wall grants mastery of the soul, mind, and body, the Trinity of Self.
The tenth wall opens control over the three greater forces, mana, infons, and spiritrons, the threads from which existence is woven.
The eleventh wall… that is when your inner world no longer leaks into reality but fully manifests as a sovereign extension of yourself.
You command it without strain. And the twelfth wall is something entirely separate. Something beyond the horizon.
Transcendence.
Mortality is stripped away, replaced by divinity, not borrowed, but your own. That is what everyone in this realm seeks, even those of us who know the climb is nearly impossible.
I like to think I could reach it. Even if the gods themselves once bent beneath that ceiling.
I want to rise beyond it. To graze the feet of those ancient beings. To forge a force even divinity cannot ignore.
And yet… even that dream felt too small.
My envy for the stronger burned hotter than my ambition.
I looked at Malachi, wrapped in silence, and let a faint smile curl at my lips.
"He's so weak right now… even my little brother might be able to kill him."
Jen shot me a sharp glare. "Don't talk like that. Besides, who knows if she's listening?"
I laughed hard enough to nearly topple from my chair, grabbing her shoulder to steady myself.
"Kivana? Spying on us every second? Ridiculously crazy."
A hand brushed my shoulder. Jen hit the ground by reflex.
Slowly, I turned. Kivana stood there, smiling like a crazed beast, she resembled a dragon.
"Are you calling me crazy, Nicole?" she asked softly.
I forced out a nervous chuckle. "How could I? I meant calculative."
She did not answer. She crossed to the bed, running her fingers over Malachi's bandaged arm.
"I considered interfering," she murmured, "but he insisted on fighting alone."
Kivana was terrifying. She moved through space, perhaps even time, as though both belonged to her alone.
Always listening. Always watching. If her magic marked you, your fate was sealed.
She and Malachi shared a tier, but her power felt more definitive. Like a king and a knight.
The knight may surpass the king in combat, but the king still rules the field.
Malachi's swordsmanship outshone hers, but her abilities made her nearly impossible to confront alone.
Her Regalia remained a mystery to me. Perhaps not even Malachi knew what she truly wielded.
But I had seen her fight.
I had watched her spar with Mirabel, and I had watched her slay monsters capable of razing this planet. She was powerful.
Her voice in that moment carried the weight of idols. For a single heartbeat, the demon knelt.
Silence gripped the tent until Jen finally broke it.
"How should we continue the war?" she asked, her gaze turning toward Kivana.
Kivana pressed her finger to her lips, thoughtful.
"Rebuild. Send forces to the ravaged cities. Fortify the borders."
Her eyes settled on me, cold, commanding, predatory.
"For now, you will lead the next coalition. The army needs a spine. You will be it."
A laugh slipped out of me, hollow and frayed. "I'm confident in my strength. But… are you certain?"
She gave a single nod. "If Malachi is like this, Madikai isn't much better. When he recovers, I'll send him back. Until then, you command."
I leaned back in my chair, exhaling slowly. "So that's how it is."
Malachi had a thousand goals. But for now, I would carry his burden.
I would seize more land, secure our cities, and hold the fragile frontlines together. Because our enemies would come soon.
They would see his fall as their chance to strike.
Kivana placed her hand on his chest. "I will be taking my leave. He as well."
They vanished together.
Jen and I exchanged a look, but I did not move. Instead, I dropped into Malachi's empty bed and let out a long sigh.
"Jen," I muttered, folding my hands behind my head, "you're my second-in-command now."
She narrowed her eyes. "Already abusing power? Miss being a princess that badly?"
"Maybe. Or maybe I just want to spoil you."
She rolled her eyes. "So… have you actually come up with a plan yet?"
"Give me ten minutes," I said. "I'm exhausted."
And I was. Every march, every fight, every sleepless night bled into the next. I was drained.
Yet some part of me still wanted to scream. To swing my blade until the sky itself cracked.
Because there is something deeper in all of us.
An inner force, old as creation, buried beneath choice and fear. Mine has always been envy. I was born hungry. I was born to crave.
And in that hunger, a memory flickered. Or perhaps a dream.
A girl walked through a dead field carrying nothing but a heavy blade.
She had no army, no future, and still she fought. She failed, she lived, she died, she rose.
One day, she stood alone before ten thousand monsters. She raised her sword and fought until her final breath scattered into the wind.
But in her last moment, she spoke. Words that surged now through my chest, tearing from my lips before I could hold them back.
"I want it all."
I sat up slowly, glowing, no, radiating, with wild, raw mana.
Jen turned toward me, eyes wide.
I grinned. "Damn," I whispered. "I just reached the seventh wall."