The moment the Feran vanished, the pressure around me disappeared as well. To confirm it, I floated upward and this time, I did so effortlessly.

I raised my hand, and a glowing orb of light formed above my palm.

"So, the restrictions are gone," I muttered.

Looking down, I noticed the chain was no longer cracked. It looked completely normal, as if nothing had happened at all. For a second, I wondered if everything I had seen was an illusion, but it had felt too real, too heavy, to be fake.

I summoned my staff, deciding to test one more thing. Essence surged from my core into the weapon, the weight increasing as I channeled the Law of Polarity. Then, gripping it tightly, I swung down.

BOOM!

The impact shook my arms, the force rebounding through the staff and up my body but the chain didn't even scratch. Not a single mark.

I stepped back and exhaled, realizing that brute force wasn't going to do anything here. Whatever this place was, it wasn't bound by normal rules.

I looked left, then right. As far as I could see, countless chains stretched across the darkness like bridges suspended in the void. Each glowed faintly red, vanishing into endless black.

"I don't even know which way to go…" I muttered.

Out of instinct, I tried to summon Lyrate, Silver, and Knight but nothing happened. Confused, I tried again, reaching for the generator core within me.

Their smaller essence cores appeared in my perception, all spinning normally. Only Ragnar's was missing. Yet, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't bring any of them out.

"Damn it," I hissed. "I shouldn't have sent them back before entering the portal."

Taking a deep breath, I pushed the thought aside. Standing still here would change nothing. I gripped my staff, let violet Essence flare around me, and shot to my right again, crossing chain after chain.

Another three minutes passed before I sensed someone else within my perception range, another Feran grandmaster.

This time, I didn't make the same mistake. I stayed in the air, about a hundred feet away from his chain, watching quietly.

The Feran noticed me almost instantly, panic flashing in his eyes. Before he could react, I raised my finger. A thin violet beam shot out, cutting through the void and slamming into his shoulder. His right arm burst apart, scattering blood and Essence into the air.

He screamed, clutching the wound but before I could even analyze what had happened, an invisible force slammed into me.

My body jerked downward like gravity had tripled in an instant. I tried resisting, flaring my Essence, but it was useless. The pull was absolute.

I crashed onto the same chain the Feran was standing on, the impact echoing through the dark. The entire chain trembled beneath us, red cracks flickering across its links.

My eyes widened.

"Not again."

I pushed myself up and tried to fly, but the same invisible pull locked me down. My Essence churned, but it was like a weight pressing me into the chain itself.

"What is happening?" the Feran grandmaster shouted as the entire chain began to tremble, the cracks spreading faster this time.

I raised my hand again, channeling my Essence to fire another beam but just like before, my law refused to answer. The energy fizzled out before it even formed.

The Feran turned on his heel and bolted down the chain, panic taking over.

My jaw tightened. Running? Again?

I bent my legs, Essence flaring through my limbs, and shot forward. In an instant, I appeared right in front of him, blocking his path.

"Hey, no running. Fight me," I said flatly.

"What?" he muttered, startled by the command.

"Give me your strongest attack," I said, pointing at him, "or I'll throw you down myself."

The Feran didn't hesitate. He roared and lunged forward, his body blurring as he jumped and spun midair, bringing his leg down in a vicious spinning kick. I could feel the subtle ripple of laws wrapping around his frame—Law of Momentum, Law of Compression, and Law of Airflow, a combination meant to multiply his strike's speed and impact.

I raised my hand and caught his leg with a dull smack, stopping all that power in an instant. His eyes widened as his body froze in the air, caught completely off guard.

"Is it because I attacked first?" I muttered under my breath, thinking why he was able to use his law and not me.

Before he could react, I twisted my body, swung him overhead, and launched him toward the edge of the chain. His roar echoed through the void as his body was flung off.

I stood there watching as he fell, his figure growing smaller and smaller until it vanished into the abyss below.

But the chain didn't settle right away. It kept trembling beneath my feet, cracks flickering with a faint red light before finally fading away after several long seconds.

I exhaled slowly. "So even killing or throwing them off counts the same… only one can remain."

To confirm, I ran the test again and just like before, the trembling stopped, and I could feel my Essence flowing freely. My laws returned, and I lifted off the chain with ease.

Without wasting any more time, I shot forward, crossing chain after chain.

Time passed, minutes, maybe hours and I encountered four more Feran grandmasters. By the end of it, I'd confirmed every rule.

Whoever attacks first loses access to their laws. Simple, cruel, and absolute.

To prove it, I had to change my form—morphing my features into Steve's. When one of them scanned me, he couldn't read my levels, grew suspicious, and held back. But another took the bait, roaring as he charged. The moment he attacked, his control over the laws vanished.

He didn't last long.

But there was something else, something far more interesting. I noticed it after killing all six grandmasters. Every time I killed one, I absorbed their Essence. Yet I couldn't level up, I'd already reached the limit of Grandmaster rank. Still, something was changing inside me.

I was receiving fragments of their law comprehension.

I only realized it when I killed one Feran grandmaster whose Essence carried a strange, unsettling resonance, the Laws of Devotion, Charm, and Lust.

That startled the hell out of me. What kind of lunatic cultivated something like that and still reached Grandmaster?

But the effect was undeniable. When his comprehension merged with mine, I could feel traces of his laws flicker in my Psynapse, faint but distinct. That's when it clicked.

The reward for killing here wasn't just Essence, it was comprehension.

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