Lord of the Truth

"Young Master!!"

Primod's voice cracked in sheer horror as he watched his lord flung through the air like a broken doll. His heart sank, his veins turned cold—because even his lofty status as a World Cataclysm would mean nothing if his master fell. His orders had been absolute, unshakable, carved into his very soul: the heir's fate is yours, Primod.

If Kazarin's arm were severed, his own arm—and the arms of the heir's closest kin—would be severed. If Kazarin bled to death, then they too would bleed, their lives extinguished with his. Failure was not just death; it was damnation for an entire lineage.

BAM!

Kazarin's body slammed into the ground like a meteor, striking with such force that several of his followers were dragged down by the impact. Dust and stone exploded around him, while his companions tumbled in a heap of groans and curses.

For a heartbeat, he did not rise. Then, with trembling limbs and a wet, choking cough, Kazarin pushed himself up. His face was a ruin—skin split, blood pouring, several teeth scattered on the ground. But in his eyes burned both hatred and disbelief. With a shaking finger, he pointed at Robin.

"You… you… you're a Soul Master?!" His voice rasped and cracked. "You… you command a soul creature with three thousand units of force?! That's… that's cheating!!"

In his world, for someone under the Combat Emperor's ceiling, one thousand units was already the summit. Two thousand was monstrous, an overwhelming imbalance that could be called bullying. That much, Kazarin might still endure as a scion of a great house and a disciple of the academy—he could call upon influence, draw on family resources, claim injustice. But three thousand? Three thousand was obscene. That wasn't strength—it was fraud, a mockery of fair combat, a nightmare that should not exist.

"….." Robin pressed his lips together and exhaled slowly. Truly, this conversation was dragging his intelligence downward by the second. He didn't even bother replying. Instead, his mind drifted away, back toward the image of the Specters Shepherd and the haunting resonance of her song.

"Primod! Ragnach!" Kazarin shrieked, spit and blood flying with every word. "Crush him! Break every bone! But leave him one breath—just one! I want his last gasp to be under my blade!!"

Hoooom… Hoooom…

Beside Robin, two more gates of soul force blossomed into existence, dazzling white with golden rims, like doorways carved from dawn itself. The air shook as they parted, and from each emerged a soul creature. Both were tall, powerful, their bodies humanoid but with scales glistening like molten metal, serpentine tails coiling behind them—the unmistakable mark of the Dorgrien bloodline.

"Lonta. Cilibos." Robin's voice came calm, almost dismissive, as though this skirmish bored him. "Deal with those two—and try to keep the noise down."

These were not minor summons. They were his First Marshal, Cilibos, and his Sixth Marshal, Lonta. But in Robin's eyes, even calling them forth was almost excessive. Against this opposition, there was no need to even touch his true arsenal.

"...As you command," the two soul creatures rumbled in unison, their voices deep and resonant with terrifying clarity. Each of them stepped in opposite directions, their gazes locking like blades on the two World Cataclysms standing before them.

"What?!" The World Cataclysms stiffened, every hair on their bodies rising. For soul creatures to speak was no trivial detail—it meant only one thing: each possessed more than fifty thousand soul units. Each was more than qualified to be a World Cataclysm-level foe on their own.

BAM! BAM!

The four titans collided, shockwaves tearing through the earth, their combat dragging them further and further from Robin as Cilibos and Lonta pressed their adversaries back, intent on keeping the battlefield clear for their master.

With the space around him emptied, Robin finally turned toward the soul creature who had first stepped forth—the one who had humiliated Kazarin so thoroughly. Robin's tone shifted, almost conversational.

"Hey. Do you have a name?"

"...." The humanoid soul creature lowered its head, shaking it slowly with sorrow in its eyes.

"Then I'll call you… Butt-Kicker." Robin's grin widened, sharp and merciless. He gestured toward Kazarin and the gathered fifty men. "You already know what you're supposed to do."

The soul creature dropped to one knee, bowing in solemn gratitude for the gift of a name, then surged forward like a thunderclap toward the army of retainers.

"Brace yourselves!!"

"Stand together, don't scatter!!"

BOOOOOOM!

Robin's smile deepened as he observed the scene unfolding. Kicker-of-Butts versus fifty. A one-sided storm. The spirit knew its duty perfectly: to engage them, disrupt them, and above all, to keep them far away from its master. It didn't fight to kill outright, not yet—it fought to scatter, to strike fast and sharp.

A short, brutal blow to the gut would send one retainer flying back. A backhand like a hammer would crumple another's shield. Then, before the first could even crash to the ground, Butt-Kicker would already be elsewhere, elbowing a third into the dirt. Like a whirlwind he spun, his movements chaotic yet precise, every strike calculated to force them back, to break their lines, to sow panic and despair.

Around Robin, the battlefield thundered with cries and crashes, dust and blood filling the air. And he simply watched, calm and amused, the corners of his lips curled into the faintest smile—as if lecturing students in a classroom, watching them flail under the weight of a final lesson they could never hope to pass.

If Robin were foolish enough to pause—even for the briefest flicker of a second—to clash seriously with a single one of them, to pour his strength into injuring and removing every lone opponent from the field, then in that same instant he would be engulfed by the combined wrath of the other forty-nine. Blades, claws, arrows, and spells would rain down from every angle. Forty-nine simultaneous strikes, each vicious in its own right, converging like the jaws of a trap. Even a mountain would be reduced to rubble beneath such a storm. For a soul creature, even one as durable as Butt-Kicker, it would mean annihilation—an instant of recklessness would cause him to evaporate from existence.

Yes, logically the best course of action would be to bring forth reinforcements, to open a few more soul gates and let other creatures join the fray, spreading the enemy's focus, ensuring that each spirit could fight without being overwhelmed. But Robin did not choose that path. He would not.

To him, every unit of soul force was more precious than gold, and to squander them in a needless display would be no different than pouring water into the desert sand. He would not sacrifice even a single unit unless it brought him something of true value.

This was always the burden of the Soul System. Difficult, intricate, endlessly complicated. Even the proudest Soul Masters, the ones who carried titles that shook worlds, often preferred to avoid direct conflict whenever they could. For every battle fought with their souls, a hidden toll was exacted on their reserves.

In the past, Robin hadn't bothered with such caution. Why should he? His path was paved with endless destruction, his enemies countless. The rivers of souls he reaped each day nourished him ceaselessly, filling every loss, making him almost careless of the cost. He could expend, destroy, and summon without pause, knowing the tide would always return to him. But now… now the circumstances had changed. There were no rivers to feed him here, no infinite supply to drown his worries. Now, he had to think. To calculate. To plan every step and weigh every expenditure like a miser counting coins at the end of the world.

The structure of a Soul Domain was, in essence, like a great vessel. Robin compared it often to a cup made of ice. The larger the cup, the greater its hollow inside, the more water it could contain. Simple. Obvious. Yet beneath that simplicity lay truths few truly understood.

The walls of the domain, the ceiling, the sky that stretched over it, the dome that wrapped around it—all of this was forged from solidified soul units. Once a unit had been used to expand and harden the domain, it was locked forever, no longer free. It became the cup, its sole purpose to contain. Inside that container flowed the water: the free, fluid units of soul force, ready to be spent, bent, and shaped.

But just as an ice cup may vary, so too did the Soul Domain. If the cup was fragile, brittle, hastily frozen, then it might shatter the moment it struck the ground, or melt away when exposed to even slightly heated water. After all, ice was still water at its core, only bound in a temporary form. And though it was still ice, the stronger and denser the freeze, the thicker and harder the cup, the better it could endure pressure, heat, and time.

Thus, a Soul Domain crafted from the ordinary units drifting in the air—light, unstable, easily gathered—would always remain weak. It could not bear the weight of many Royal Stars, nor withstand the strain of great battles. But a domain built from core units—rarer, heavier, sharper, more resilient—was like ice frozen from the deepest depths of winter, unyielding and enduring. Such a structure could carry far greater burdens, withstand greater storms, and channel far more power without breaking.

And there was another truth, one darker. The creator of the cup could, in desperate times, carve away a piece of the ice itself and consume it. A desperate act, an act of sacrifice, but sometimes survival demanded it. That was the equivalent of breaking off a portion of the Soul Domain's framework to forge a technique or to craft a shard.

Robin himself had done this more than once: cutting away vast swathes of his own structure to resist Helen's shadow, or burning away thirty thousand of his foundational units to create a Soul Shard for his loyal servant, Pitsu.

So then, once you had this vessel—this vast cup of ice built from hundreds or thousands of frozen units—what was its purpose? The answer was simple. You filled it with water. You poured into it the free-flowing soul force, absorbing endlessly into the space you had labored so long to carve out.

One man could spend a thousand years building a fragile cup, crafting a domain that could hold only a thousand units of energy. But once completed, he could sit for a week, a mere week, and fill it to the brim with the soul force of the world around him. That was the nature of the system—construction was agony, but filling was easy.

Robin had walked a far harsher road. For hundreds upon hundreds of years he toiled, freezing, layering, refining, building the framework of his Soul Domain. Piece by piece, unit by unit, until at last he had forged a structure vast enough to contain eight hundred and ten thousand soul essence units. That was the cup—the vessel, the frozen walls.

But that was not all. Inside that vessel, he had already poured the water. Eight hundred and ten thousand essence units, painstakingly absorbed, refined, and liquefied into a form ready for battle.

This was his true wealth, his true arsenal. This reservoir was what allowed him to weave techniques of impossible scope, to summon soul creatures of overwhelming might, to bend the battlefield itself beneath his hand.