THE VILLAIN'S POV

At the peak of his battle against Blattier—the man wielding the strength of thirty-five million souls—Frey Starlight found himself outmatched, unable to triumph over the monster his foe had become.

He had no choice but to gamble on a new technique he hadn't even finished.

Under Blattier's puzzled stare, the colossal violet sun of aura that had even made the archbishop flinch swallowed its maker whole in a scene as shocking as it was inexplicable.

"Did he lose control and erase himself with his own attack?" Blattier muttered, baffled by what he'd seen.

That violet aura-sun was vast, its contained power in no way inferior to his own. Blattier fully expected Frey's next strike to be a genuine threat. Instead, the opposite happened—there was no way Frey could survive a disaster like that. The sun should have obliterated him.

With no other explanation at hand, Blattier assumed Frey had lost control and died by the very technique he'd created.

But then the aura-sun shuddered—hard—and he realized that wasn't it at all.

Slowly, steadily, the sun began to shrink: from a world-eclipsing sphere that blanketed half the island, down and down again. The SSS-class aura-sun kept contracting as if squeezed by an invisible vice, until it was smaller than Blattier himself—and when it reached that size, the archbishop froze at the sight of Frey Starlight still intact, hands braced around the violet sphere, compressing it tighter and tighter.

"He's still intact… even after burying himself beneath the weight of that thing," Blattier muttered, unable to comprehend what was happening.

Frey had slammed the aura-sun into himself, then compressed it until what hovered above his palm was no longer a star, but a tiny, dense body.

No—he didn't stop there. He pressed it further, forcing it into an even smaller size as veins roped across his skin and his body screamed to withstand the pressure.

It might have been small now, but it was still that same violet sun ..still carrying the same explosive might. Size was the only difference. Somehow, Frey had squeezed it down to a minuscule sphere.

A violet "sun" no bigger than a baseball floated above his trembling palm.

He dropped to one knee, grinning despite himself as he fought to catch his breath, clearly pleased with the little violet "baseball" he'd forged.

"What are you trying to achieve with this, Frey Starlight? What kind of technique are you even attempting?" Blattier's curiosity was genuine; he wanted to see how far Frey would push this.

Frey exhaled long and slow, then forced himself upright again.

"I really need to work on the timing. My enemies won't hand me this much prep time," he said.

Just readying it had taken an eternity—time Blattier could've used to take his head in less than a second. But the archbishop hadn't.

"Blattier, you're absolutely certain you can take whatever I throw at you, aren't you? That's why you let me finish—because you want to use me to master the power you gained by burning millions of souls," Frey said, lifting the aura-sphere to his face. "Don't regret that decision later."

And with that, he took the tiny, volatile sun and swallowed it whole ..deepening Blattier's confusion ..only for the archbishop to be denied even a second to think.

The instant the sphere vanished down his throat, Frey howled—a raw, tearing sound—as a cataclysmic force erupted inside him, threatening to rip him apart.

Frey's veins, his aura channels, even his blood blazed with a savage violet light. The pressure alone should have shredded him into dust.

"That power is destroying his body," Blattier observed—yet at that same murderous pace, another force was knitting the damage back together just as quickly.

Driving Shadow Adaptation to its limit, Frey's monstrous regeneration fought to keep him in one piece.

"You felt it before, didn't you, Blattier?!" Frey shouted, eyes blazing, hair igniting with that ominous violet sheen. "That aura was SSS-class ..the same tier you reached after all your sacrifices!"

They weren't equals in every respect, but Frey's aura itself at least matched Blattier's. It was the one SSS-class thing Frey possessed.

"Phase Three of Shadow Adaptation gave me total control over my aura—but this body can't output all of it at once. My foundation is still too weak."

Even techniques like Ignition or Nameless Judgement, which burned terrifying amounts of aura, had never expelled everything. No matter what he used, he couldn't empty the well.

So Frey abandoned the idea of venting it through attacks. There was no technique that could burn all of it in one go—and even if there were, his body couldn't fire it.

That was why he conceived this insane method.

A technique that fused multiple abilities and concepts at once:

Using Phase Three of Shadow Adaptation to exert perfect control, he extracted every drop of SSS-class aura in his body and shaped it into a colossal sun. The pressure was monstrous—the same pressure Snow Lionheart had sensed while searching for him before..

Then, through immaculate control, he compressed that star into something infinitesimal—like a nuclear core ready to detonate at the slightest touch.

Keeping it stable demanded obscene precision—never mind the next, even madder step.

He swallowed that "black hole," forcing it back into his body.

Frey's flesh had always refused to output all that SSS-class aura, because he lacked the foundation to release it. So he changed the equation: if his body couldn't emit it, then he would contain it—weaponize it from the inside.

For that reason, Frey forced his body to accept the aura by brute force—detonating it inside himself.

A suicidal move like that should have erased him from existence the instant he attempted it, but Phase Two of Shadow Adaptation prevented that outcome. Driving his monstrous regeneration to the limit, Frey Starlight rebuilt his body as fast as it was being destroyed, somehow keeping himself in one piece.

His current state was perilous, and he had no idea how long he could maintain it; regeneration wasn't infinite. A few minutes at best.

But within that brief window, Frey entered a wholly extraordinary state—one that let his body annihilate everything except the aura within, leaving that power to circulate unimpeded.

"I didn't live to see your whole journey, but I'd wager this is what you did in your time… Father." He smiled through the strain.

Frey drew all that explosive aura into himself and brought it entirely under his command. His body burned with a dark radiance; this was how he emulated the power he had once heard of and glimpsed in the distant past—the Absolute Manipulator's ability, said to shatter the world's limits and embody pure chaos.

"This is only a cheap imitation… a temporary mimic that grants a similar effect for a few minutes. But for those few minutes, I feel like I can do anything."

He drew a deep breath and tightened his grip on both swords.

He whispered the name of his new technique:

"Ten Thousands Steps of Shadow: Dark Ascension."

A dark ascension ..Frey Starlight set foot into another world of power, the kind he needed to subdue his enemies. The pressure pouring off him now was terrifying; Blattier couldn't believe what he was seeing. His opponent had somehow closed the gap, reaching a level comparable to his own.

"Impossible…" Blattier murmured, trying to deny even his heightened senses.

To reach his current realm, Blattier had needed to sacrifice millions of souls just to plant one foot in the first stage of SSS. Yet his foe had approached similar might through a single, unfathomable technique.

"Let's begin!" Frey shouted, fighting to hold together and finish it quickly—this form wouldn't last long.