The S-Class dormitory was a sanctuary of cold steel and suppressed power. Arthur entered his suite, the heavy reinforced door locking behind him with a definitive, mechanical click. He didn't turn on the lights. His crimson eyes, glowing faintly in the dark, were all the illumination he needed.
He moved to the center of the training hall, a room lined with Qi-absorbent obsidian plates. With a calculated, steady hand, he began to draw. He didn't use chalk; he used his own Qi, dyed a dark, bruised purple, to etch a complex geometric array onto the floor. It was a masterpiece of forbidden mathematics, a sequence of symbols that defied the three-dimensional laws of Earth.
At the heart of the array, he placed the small, jagged shard he had "borrowed" from the evaluation pillar. It was a catalyst—a piece of this world to act as an anchor for the next.
Arthur sat in the center of the circle, his white hair falling over his face. He closed his eyes and began the process. He didn't circulate his Qi through his meridians to strengthen his body. Instead, he forced his internal energy to vibrate at a frequency so high it began to tear at his own cellular structure.
"Break," he whispered.
The air in the room didn't just vibrate; it groaned. The space above the obsidian shard began to warp, stretching like heated plastic. Arthur felt the resistance of the universe—the "Gaia Protocol" that tried to keep dimensions separated. It felt like a mountain was pressing down on his skull.
Blood began to leak from his ears and nose, staining his white shirt, but his expression remained one of cold, focused hunger. He pushed harder.
Suddenly, a sound like glass shattering echoed in his soul. A tiny, hairline fracture appeared in the air. From that crack, a substance began to bleed out. It wasn't smoke, and it wasn't liquid. It was Void Essence—a grey, entropic energy from the Third Plane.
The moment the Void Essence touched the air of Earth, it reacted violently. Grey sparks of Void Lightning hissed and lashed out, striking the walls and leaving scorched, bottomless pits in the obsidian plates.
Arthur didn't pull back. He reached out his hand, his fingers trembling, and gripped the very edge of the rift. The skin on his palm began to disintegrate, turning into grey ash, but he didn't scream. He watched with a terrifying, wide-eyed fascination as the Void Essence began to crawl up his arm, weaving itself into his veins.
His fake "Lightning Root" was being consumed, overwritten by something ancient and predatory. His internal world was being rebuilt in the image of the Void.
The rift snapped shut with a violent implosion, sending a shockwave that shattered every translucent surface in the room. Arthur was thrown backward, his body hitting the wall with a sickening thud.
He lay there for a long time, gasping for breath, his suit ruined and his body broken. But as he lifted his hand, a single, jagged bolt of grey lightning danced between his fingertips. It didn't crackle like normal electricity; it hummed with the sound of a dying star.
"The lie has become the truth," Arthur choked out, a bloody, triumphant smile twisting his handsome face. "And the truth... is far more beautiful."