Second Genesis

Grey ignored Petri completely and walked forward.

"Grey." Petri’s voice sharpened behind him. "The Relentless does not take kindly to cheaters."

That actually got Grey’s attention, though not enough to make him stop. He slowed instead, keeping his eyes on Brad while his Resonant Sense continued spreading across the courtyard, feeling the hammer, the stone beneath it, and the cancerous strands that had worked their way into Brad’s Linear Frame.

"The weapon is Dominion Class," Petri continued. "More importantly, it has acknowledged The Relentless. This trial carries his rules, and if someone attempts to interfere outside of them, the weapon will respond on its own. It will kill anyone it considers an intruder."

Grey’s eyes narrowed. Well, that explained a few things.

He had been wondering why the hell no one had dragged Brad out of here after the first day, let alone after several. The weaker people couldn’t do anything even if they wanted to, and the people dumb enough to rush in without understanding the problem probably wouldn’t survive long enough to regret it. Mauve and Elowen clearly either didn’t know Brad was here or were occupied with their own bullshit, because Grey couldn’t imagine either of them looking at this skeletal version of Brad and deciding everything seemed perfectly fine.

That left the people strong enough to actually matter.

And those people either knew Brad was connected to Grey and disliked both of them because of it, or they simply didn’t care enough to risk getting their heads smashed into paste by a Dominion Class weapon.

’Lovely place you built here.’

Grey kept walking.

Petri sighed behind him. "Did you hear anything I just said?"

"Yeah."

"And?"

"And I’m thinking."

That was about as much reassurance as Petri was going to get.

Grey didn’t give a shit if The Relentless got offended by cheating. The bastard wasn’t even here, unless getting launched halfway across the world somehow counted as maintaining close supervision. Still, Petri’s warning was useful because it told Grey exactly what not to do. He couldn’t just walk in, grab Brad by the waist, and yank him free while telling the hammer to go fuck itself.

Well, he could, but Brad would almost certainly die because of it.

Grey stopped just outside the range he could feel around the pedestal, a boundary so faint he might have missed it before everything he’d learned over the last few days. It wasn’t a physical barrier, nor did it feel like the Instance walls he had run into before. It was closer to a territory, an invisible sphere of law, of Dominion.

Grey stepped across.

BOOM.

Pressure slammed down onto his shoulders.

His knees bent before he could stop them, the stones beneath his feet groaning beneath the sudden weight. The chains around his wrists and ankles crashed against the ground, and behind him Petri sucked in a breath, but Grey’s attention snapped toward Brad.

Brad grunted.

The pressure on him had increased too.

"Fuck."

Grey immediately stopped pushing forward.

That was important.

The weapon wasn’t just punishing Grey for interfering. It was tying that punishment to Brad, which meant if Grey tried to brute-force his way through this territory, Brad would take part of the backlash. Considering the bastard already looked like a strong breeze could reduce him to dust, that route was out.

Grey exhaled slowly and straightened as much as the pressure allowed.

’Fine. You don’t want strength? We can do finesse.’

Holy Energy surged through his body.

The white gloves covering his hands came alive, tendrils of white-gold peeling away from his fingers and wrists like living threads. Behind him, Petri went silent.

Grey didn’t need to look back to know why.

The last time Petri had seen those threads, Grey had crawled into his control of Holy Energy and made it his own. He had twisted something Petri had probably spent his entire life mastering until the man couldn’t even use it properly anymore.

Grey smiled faintly. ’Good memories.’

Then he pulled on Last Paladin Spirit. Hard.

The world changed.

There wasn’t some grand explosion of light or violent wave tearing through the courtyard. Instead, everything around Grey seemed to shift by a fraction, the stones beneath his feet becoming sharper in his perception, the air gaining weight, the Holy Energy flowing through the area turning into something he could almost reach out and rearrange with his fingers.

His Quasi Dominion expanded.

And instantly collided with something greater.

Grey’s smile disappeared.

’Oh.’

The Relentless’ Dominion came down on him like a hand closing around his heart.

There was no body here, no conscious will pushing back against Grey, and yet the difference was obscene. The lingering Dominion embedded into the weapon and trial was enough to catch Grey’s Quasi Dominion from every direction and begin squeezing.

Grey’s eyes widened.

Caldrin hadn’t felt like this. Not even fucking close.

Grey had already known Dominion Class wasn’t some clean, flat level where everyone became roughly equal after crossing the threshold, but this made the difference impossible to ignore. Caldrin had been strong enough to dominate a mid-tier city and turn the surrounding region into his playground, yet compared to what Grey could feel from The Relentless’ leftovers alone, the octopus bastard might as well have been cosplaying.

This wasn’t good. The Dominion Classes here, at the center of the final Chapter of the first Arc, were on an entirely different level.

Grey pushed back.

His Quasi Dominion expanded another inch before The Relentless’ crushed it inward again, compressing the space around Grey until his Holy Energy began trembling. The white-gold threads snapped taut around him, some bending backward beneath pressure that had no physical shape at all.

A hot line of ruby red ran down the corner of Grey’s mouth and he tasted blood.

"Grey!" Petri called.

Grey coughed, red splattering across the stone, and one knee finally slammed into the ground again. He had entirely failed to stand.

His Quasi Dominion folded tighter around him, the pressure continuously increasing.

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