Emperor of the Source

Hestia stared at Adrian for a brief moment, her gaze still carrying traces of disbelief from his earlier lapse, before she launched another attack. This time, however, she controlled the trajectory and force of her movements with far greater precision, ensuring that even if Adrian remained motionless for some reason, the strike would not fatally injure him.

The crimson cloths extended once more, their bladed ends glinting in the void's ambient light.

Adrian watched the blades approach him once more. Unlike before, he didn't need to analyze now since he knew what she was doing, and he didn't allow himself to become distracted by being drawn into her elegance. He also did not move physically, nor did he prepare any defensive maneuver through conventional means. Instead, he issued a single command.

"Revert."

Hestia heard the word clearly, and her instincts immediately interpreted it as a direct authority command. At the same time, she could sense that Adrian had committed his entire available authority of thirty-five percent into executing that command. If she wished to negate it, she would need to respond with an equal level of authority. Without hesitation, she began withdrawing her layered authority techniques, releasing her suppression over spatial rules and relinquishing her modifications to the rule of Spatial Vacancy, preparing to issue a direct counter-command.

However, before she could issue a counter-command, something far more terrifying occurred that shattered her expectations entirely.

In an instant, she felt every thread of authority she possessed vanish completely. It was not weakened or suppressed. It was gone completely, as though it had never belonged to her in the first place.

Even Hestia, a Peak Rule Stage cultivator, could not comprehend what she was experiencing. Her perception searched desperately for any trace of her authority, yet there was nothing. Not even a fragment remained. At the same time, she saw her own weapons begin to reverse direction, turning back toward her in obedience to Adrian's command.

The crimson cloths twisted in the void, their trajectories bending impossibly. The blades that had been aimed at Adrian now pointed directly at her throat and heart.

"What... how?" The words escaped her involuntarily, even as her mind struggled to comprehend what she was experiencing.

For a fleeting moment, she questioned reality itself. Is this some form of illusion?

She had heard of authority techniques that manipulated perception, bending reality through illusion so convincingly that even seasoned cultivators could be deceived. Was Adrian employing something similar?

She reacted instinctively, dodging the returning blades while tightening her grip on the cloth connected to the weapon in her hand. Her body twisted in the void, muscles responding with the precision of countless battles. The moment her control reasserted itself, the movement of the weapon halted, allowing her to regain full control over it. As she stabilized herself, she sensed her authority once again, thirty-five percent, fully intact.

The crimson cloths went still in her grasp, responding to her will as they always had. Yet the memory of their absence remained, a phantom sensation that refused to fade.

The entire situation unsettled her. She could not determine whether what she had experienced was an illusion or reality. If it had been an illusion, then why had it felt so real? If it had not been, then what had just happened?

Without hesitation, she attacked again. Only through continued engagement could she uncover the truth.

The cloths whipped forward, accelerating with renewed intensity. This time she kept her authority consolidated rather than layered, maintaining full defensive readiness against whatever Adrian had done.

This time, Adrian issued a different command. "Release."

The moment the word left his lips, Hestia once again felt her authority vanish entirely. The weapons she gripped with all her strength slipped from her hands as if her control had been forcibly severed, drifting harmlessly into the void. This time, there was no doubt remaining in her mind. This was not an illusion. What she was experiencing was real.

The crimson cloths floated away from her, their bladed ends spinning slowly in the vacuum. She watched them recede, her fingers still curled as though they held the fabric, yet grasping nothing.

At that same instant, she realized something even more terrifying. Her thirty-five percent authority had not merely disappeared; it had been taken. It had been transferred to Adrian. In that moment of his command, she clearly sensed Adrian held seventy percent authority within the domain, and with such overwhelming control, his command executed flawlessly without resistance.

A shiver ran through Hestia's body as a realization took hold of her. For the first time since she ascended to the Rule Stage, she again felt like a mortal.

The sensation was suffocating. She'd forgotten what it meant to exist without authority, to be subject to reality's rules rather than shaping them. The weight of the void pressed against her consciousness in ways it hadn't for so long.

She floated there, stripped of authority, facing a being who now possessed absolute control over the space around them. Without authority, everything she possessed, mana, willforce, divine spells, weapons, became meaningless. No matter what she attempted, Adrian could negate it, reverse it, or suppress it entirely. This was the fundamental divide between a mortal and a god, and in this moment, she experienced that gap in its purest form.

"How?" she asked again, unable to restrain herself. What Adrian had demonstrated transcended anything she understood about authority, about divine concepts, about the very structure of cultivation itself.

Adrian watched her reaction quietly, a faint smile forming on his face. What he had used was not something new to him. It was a power he had possessed long before he even understood what authority truly was. It was his Absolute Source Order.

He had obtained this long ago, back when he was still on Earth, at a time when he did not even understand the concept of authority. Back then, he had used it instinctively throughout his life, erasing entire armies, including the demon forces, Arcton, and even the Demon Emperor. At the time, he had believed it to be a form of authority-type Source spell, something that allowed him to impose absolute dominance over reality itself and force existence to obey his will.

But now, as his knowledge had expanded, as he came to understand the deeper mechanics of authority, its techniques, manual modifications, layered applications, and direct commands, he began to see Absolute Source Order differently. What he had once thought of as an ultimate power now appeared to be a more fundamental mechanism, a method of triggering direct command even when he had been nothing more than a mortal.

This Absolute Source Order allowed him to issue direct commands when he had no authority whatsoever. A mortal wielding authority could command anything and could erase other mortals, and that was precisely what he had been doing at that time.

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Yet, upon deeper reflection, Adrian realized that Absolute Source Order was something far more than this. It did not merely allow him to issue a command and carry out his will; it first stripped the target of their authority before enforcing the command itself.

He still remembered it clearly. He had experienced this before during his battle with the Demon Emperor, where he had forcibly seized all of his authority before erasing him. Even if a single percent of authority were retained by the Demon Emperor, he could have used it and resisted his 'Erase' command, but with no authority remaining, the Demon Emperor had been rendered completely helpless.

Now, testing this against Hestia had made the mechanism entirely clear.

His Absolute Source Order could even be considered as an offensive authority technique, one that invoked a superior manifestation of his Source's authority to impose absolute order upon existing concepts.

While this might appear omnipotent to an outside observer, Adrian slowly realized its limitations. The cost alone was significant. Using it twice had already consumed nearly 1.5 million mana units. Although this expenditure was only 1.5% compared to his current reserves, the true cost was not purely mana-based; it also consumed willforce. Adrian could feel a high level of dizziness in his consciousness. Using this twice had surely consumed a lot of his willforce.

When his Absolute Source Order tried to take away the enemy's authority forcibly, the target would naturally resist. Their personal willforce and mana reserves would fight against his own willforce and mana reserves, and Adrian had to win that fight for this to work.

The effect of Absolute Source Order seemed to be varied depending upon different targets and their personal mana and willforce reserves.

From this experiment against Hestia, Adrian could see it's more of an equivalent exchange against his target. He was not sure of his willforce consumption, but in terms of mana, Hestia had seven hundred thousand mana reserves, and each of the time he used the Absolute Source Order, it consumed roughly the same amount of mana.

The mana part made clear sense now, but the most confusing part still was willforce. Is it exactly an equilant exchange on willforce also? If it was equivalent, then how did Adrian have this much willforce to sustain against someone like Hestia? Willforce is something that expands naturally as one lives and experiences many things. In that sense, Hestia had lived far longer, and she should naturally have more willforce than Adrian himself, right?

By this calculation, Adrian should have been in a state where he couldn't even do this once right now, or even if he did it once, then it should have drained all his willforce and made him unconscious, exactly like what happened with the Demon Emperor. But Adrian didn't feel like that. He felt dizzy, but he was sure he could at least use this one time again.

The only possible conclusion Adrian could think of is, maybe his willforce had grown to a much higher level now? From having an equal amount of willforce against the Demon Emperor, to now having much higher willforce than someone like Hestia? Adrian was not sure of it. While he had recently expanded his mana capacity dramatically, his willforce remained an unknown variable. It could not be measured directly, and its limits were still unclear to him.

So now, what would happen if he attempted to use this against someone like Ignis, the sect leader of the Ashen Vortex Sect? In terms of mana, Adrian was sure he would be higher than Ignis, but what kind of willforce would a being who lived far longer than even Hestia have?

Perhaps he could erase such an opponent, but at the cost of exhausting his mana and willforce entirely, leaving himself vulnerable, possibly even unconscious. Or perhaps his current state would not even allow him to perform such an act without severe consequences.

It could be anything, and there was no way for Adrian to know about it for now. The only way to determine the truth was through testing...

Setting aside his thoughts, Adrian returned his attention to Hestia and spoke calmly. "This is my trump card. An authority technique that drains the enemy's authority and transfers it to me."

Hestia remained motionless, suspended in silence as she tried to process what she had just witnessed. Her crimson weapons still floated in the void where they had drifted after slipping from her grasp. She stared at them without moving to retrieve them, as though the simple act of reclaiming her own weapons had become foreign to her.

Even when she had learned about Adrian's ability to utilize authority without a domain through his energy form, she had not been this shocked. There had always been rumors and speculations surrounding the capabilities of great sects, and she herself had speculated about the extraordinary powers they might wield. However, not even in her most imaginative assumptions had she conceived of something like this.

"Authority… taken," she murmured, her voice barely audible.

Until this moment, she had believed that Adrian's confidence came from external backing, from powerful forces tied to his mysterious origin. She had assumed that his "absolute strength" referred to allies beyond their reach. Yet now, seeing it with her own eyes, she understood the truth.

The absolute strength he spoke of…

Was himself.

He did not need to rely on anyone.

Adrian moved closer, retrieving her weapons and handing them back to her. The crimson cloths folded themselves into his palm as he gathered them, their bladed ends gleaming faintly in the ambient light of the void. "Here," he said.

Hestia accepted them slowly, her fingers closing around the familiar fabric with deliberate care.

As Adrian remained near her, he smiled faintly and asked, "Are you alright? Is my trump card not enough for what you expected?"

She immediately shook her head. "No… this is more than enough." Her grip tightened on the weapons. "With this, I am certain no one within the Andromeda Galaxy can defeat you."

She truly believed it. Perhaps only beings like the envoy or that mysterious Senior Vaelon from the UNI-Auction possessed the means to resist such a technique. Beyond them, she could not imagine anyone capable of standing against Adrian. Not Nightshade, not Ignis, not even those who had ruled for millions of years. Against an ability that stripped away authority itself, all of them would be reduced to nothing more than mortals.

If such a power were unleashed in war, if Adrian chose to use it against the sect leaders of the Andromeda Galaxy, then the outcome of that conflict would no longer be uncertain. If he chose to fully involve himself, the balance of power across the entire galaxy would shift irreversibly. The established order, the alliances, and the hierarchies and power structures that had endured for millions of years could collapse in an instant.

A faint smile formed on Hestia's lips as the realization settled within her. She had spent hundreds of thousands of years clawing her way up from refugee to sect leader, carrying the weight of her fallen clan's promise through every battle, every loss, every moment of fear. She had built the Crimson Vital Sect from nothing, guided it through wars and starvation and the endless grind of survival in a galaxy that cared nothing for the weak.

And now, after all that struggle, she stood beside someone who could reshape the galaxy itself.

For the Crimson Vital Sect, this was not merely an advantage. It was both an opportunity and a responsibility. To stand beside such a being meant that their rise was no longer a question of possibility, but inevitability. The path ahead had become clear, and the only uncertainty that remained was how they would shape the future that now lay within their grasp.

"When Yselia comes," Hestia said quietly, "I want to see her face when she realizes what she is against."

Adrian's smile widened slightly, "You'll have your chance. And this authority technique of mine has limitations; I couldn't just spam it."

Hestia nodded. From her perspective, such a powerful authority technique would surely cost significantly. It made sense. But still, even if Adrian was able to use this only once, if used at the perfect timing, the entire war could be won with this.

Adrian didn't want to create an image of having an omnipotent ability here. This had true limitations, and Adrian knew that better than anyone. Maybe against Yselia, who could be said to be an equal to Hestia, Adrian could possibly use this multiple times if he wanted...

But even that also had variables. In an actual war with Rule Stage beings, it was never a simple one-on-one engagement. It would involve countless domains clashing simultaneously, layers of authority techniques intersecting, layers of multiple wills, and large-scale coordinated battles across multiple fronts.

So could Adrian use this freely even in a war? Adrian himself had no idea of it, and that was precisely why he had to inform Hestia, so she would not be entirely dependent upon what he had just revealed.

He opened a portal back to the Andromeda Galaxy, the familiar shimmer of spatial manipulation cutting through the void. Hestia stepped toward it, then paused, glancing back at him.

"Thank you," she said. "For showing me this. For trusting me with it."

"You've earned it," Adrian replied.

Hestia nodded once, then stepped through the portal. Adrian lingered a moment longer in the void, staring out at the distant stars of the Virelith Galaxy. The relic world hung in the darkness below, its surface now cleared of chaotic energy, transformed into a stable cultivation ground through his efforts.

Soon, the war would begin in earnest. And when it did, the entire Andromeda Galaxy would learn what it meant to stand against the Origin.

Adrian stepped through the portal and let it close behind him, leaving the void empty once more.