Chapter 1,343 – Weakness, Shift

This close, Zac could tell his opponent had greatly overdrawn his source. His turbid mind was struggling to grasp what was going on, seeing as there was confused jubilation on his face. Did he think Zac had given up on the challenge, not even entering the maze? After all, the two struck completely different images, with Zac looking as clean and whole as when he flew to the altar.

Zac gave the challenger an ambivalent look before turning away. His anger had mostly dissipated over the past minutes. Now, the challenger was just another soul who’d lost everything, his providence becoming nourishment for Zac’s path. Esmeralda didn’t share his hangups. Croaks of laughter spread through the square, breaking the spell of silence.

The challenge wasn’t a contest between equals. It was a beatdown. Zac had already waited three minutes for the challenger to emerge, giving him more than enough time to look into the challenger’s background. As he’d thought, Tevrin Seaswift had no relation to Everit Draom. He was the sole inheritor of a small but powerful coalition called the Realmtreader Society, something between a sect and a research group.

At a ten-to-one dilation, the discrepancy meant it had taken Tevrin nearly an hour to Esmeralda’s eighteen minutes. The stark difference wasn’t limited to time. The Mercurial Court was kind enough to provide means to watch the race. Focusing on the spatial maze let anyone zoom in on either contestant, and the spatial energies were highlighted in a way that allowed even laymen to understand what was going on.

Tevrin’s desperate sprint was nothing like what Zac had experienced from the comfort of Esmeralda’s pouch. Her journey through the labyrinth may as well have been a stroll through her backyard, except for a hectic dash through the maze’s center. The gap was so extreme that the crowd occasionally would glance at the central stage with doubt.

Zac had heard a hushed question whether Everit Draom was related to some elder of the Mercurial Court. Others tried to renege on their bets, citing unusual circumstances. Zac had to agree it looked suspicious. Only the high-grade cultivators and trialtakers cultivating the Dao of Space could tell the difference was the result of a terrifying gap in experience and methods.

The discussions had died down as Tevrin neared the finish line. The crowd was waiting for an announcement to confirm that what they’d seen was real. Not wanting to draw out the situation, Zac once more bowed toward the Dao Guardian.

“May I ask for your ruling?”

The hunchbacked granny by Astora Theomore’s side deeply looked at Esmeralda a moment before confirming the result. “Destiny has successfully been defended.”

Her words dragged Tevrin from his stupor, and his face grew pallid upon seeing the Imperial Merit pouring out of his Tethered Token. It only took a second for the seal to be completely drained, at which point it turned into ash and drifted away. One river had absorbed the other, and the Tethered Court had lost one of its sealbearers.

“You had your contracted beast compete in your stead?”

Someone must have taken pity on the challenger and relayed what happened. Zac didn’t care.

“So what if I did? Got get your own toad if you think it’s so easy.”

Tevrin didn’t look angry. More than anything, there was desolation in his gaze as he turned around and flew away. Zac didn’t linger by the altar, either. Astora Theomore had already opened her eyes when Esmeralda emerged from the maze. Zac couldn’t tell if she’d noticed something or if she was simply curious about his unusual method of defending his Destiny. There was no point in sticking around and finding out.

A parting message entered his mind on his way back to his seat. ‘Three weeks ago, I was approached with a request. I was offered a fortune to seize your Destiny.’

‘Why are you telling me this?’ Zac asked.

‘Because whoever hired me just cut off my future.’

The confirmation didn’t dampen Zac’s mood. If anything, the timeline was a good sign. Three weeks was long before he reached the Transformation Docks, decreasing the odds of it being arranged by Astora or the Vigil. More likely, it was one of Everit’s old enemies, and Zac couldn’t be bothered delving deeper.

Things undeniably looked up. Zac had already confirmed a sealbearer could only be challenged once. His position was now more secure than anyone else’s, and he’d reaped a few trials’ worth of Imperial Merit. Zac believed he’d be at the front of the pack even after earmarking half the merit for his human side.

As a bonus, Zac had confirmed the stance of the ancient Imperial Supremacies and resolved the stubborn issue of overly relying on Temporal Chambers. Zac currently had no way to fix his temporal debt, but he didn’t need to. The time he’d spent outside the River of Time was too high given his age, but he was extremely young by Multiverse standards. What would a couple of years matter after he’d lived for millennia? Zac could add a few decades to the tally at that point without a problem. He just needed to be patient.

The other sealbearers gave Zac odd looks as he returned to his seat. He returned the looks with rude gestures. Everit’s haughty nature became a guise to hide Zac’s unease. Everything had gone above expectation, yet his premonition of danger was only growing. His nose for trouble was rarely wrong. If the problem didn’t stem from the people on the stage, there was something else lurking beneath the surface.

Zac felt extremely exposed in the sea of people, knowing he could only endure. The failed attempt to seize Destiny wasn’t enough to break the determination of the other contenders hidden within the crowd. A second challenger had already stepped forth, and a different set of challenges appeared above the altar.

The crowd moved on, and Zac was more than happy to be forgotten. It took almost two hours to go through the challenges, even with temporal acceleration. No challenge held the exact same options, though combat appeared in most of them. Still, being allowed to pick gave the defender a significant advantage, and most of the challenges failed.

The sheer number of sealbearers who chose to gamble a guaranteed slot for the chance to enter another court was surprising. Zac suspected it wasn’t only a matter of picking the court more suitable to their path. Apart from trial by combat, all the challenges were related to the Peaks of Continuum or Fantasy, confirming the Mercurial Court’s close connection to these Daos. The other Courts were likely the same, and the challengers had concluded that defending their Destiny would be more difficult than seizing someone else’s.

Janos successfully avoided being targeted despite only being a Middle Hegemon. It was difficult to say whether it was thanks to his unclear identity or that everyone simply overlooked his existence. The demon didn’t care about the challenges either. His full attention was on feeding his sphere with the square’s mysterious mix of energies.

Extracting a brief account of how Janos reached the Transformation Docks so quickly had felt like squeezing water out of a stone. The gist of it was that Janos took advantage of the principle Zac used when he first arrived on the Left Imperial Expanse. Kristvan Wendimar had thrown his “daughter” into a Spatial tear, transporting her countless miles away from the crumbling outpost.

Similarly, Janos used teleportation arrays inside memories to cross most of the distance. His last jump had directly brought him to the Transformation Docks, and he wasn’t even aware the continent had an inner region.

The explanation left Esmeralda speechless. She’d spent half a year running, crossing dozens of hazardous realms and taboo zones. Meanwhile, Janos spent most of his time cultivating inside the memory domains. Whenever he needed to advance, he jumped onto a teleporter and was whisked away.

It wasn’t that Zac hadn’t considered the possibility, but neither of his bodies had encountered any teleporter within the borders of a memory. Teleporters were much rarer before the System, but the arrangement almost felt by design. Zac didn’t push for details despite suspecting there was more to Janos’s story. They all carried secrets. Besides, they were finally about to get to the important part.

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Zac waited with distressed anticipation as Astora finally stood up to face the crowd. The challenges were dealt with, and as the Dao Guardian phrased it, the trajectories were set. However, instead of dishing out the secrets to the Peregrine Ocean, Astora decided to conduct a worship ceremony. The crowd clasped their hands in prayer, including the high-grade cultivators seated on the other platforms. Annoyed, Zac could only follow suit.

The communal prayer generated a force no weaker than a War Array, and the golden sigil of the Limitless Empire lit up above the altar. Its majesty made Zac feel like he’d appeared before the Empyrean Chalice once more. The rune was a pure representation of the Imperial Fate, encompassing the ultimate will and conviction of the Limitless Empire. Zac had to remind himself not to get lost in its grandeur. His Void Road was a joke in comparison, but his journey had only begun.

The rune’s appearance created a virtuous cycle with the crowd. The stronger its light shone, the deeper their devotion grew. Though witnessing it for the first time, Zac knew this was something you’d see during any holiday in the Limitless Empire. However, today’s worship seemed more effective than usual.

Dense halos appeared around the people crowd as they prayed for peace and continuing prosperity. The phenomenon quickly exceeded what was reasonable. Even the mortals were emitting forces far surpassing what they should wield. The scene would have made sense if it were a million ordained Templars and Priests on the square, not a random collection of low-grade cultivators.