Prime System Champion [A Multi-System Apocalypse LitRPG]

"The System functions much like a universal library," Syntheia explained softly, trailing her hand over the jagged edge of a shattered training pillar. We were two days into my final subjective week in the time-ward. "When a cultivator undergoes an Epiphany and gains a skill, they are essentially borrowing a standardized textbook. The framework exists. The magic has already been mapped. You just provide the mana."

She turned, her beautiful features caught in the shifting light of her daughter's practice area. "An Origin skill, Lord... that is not a borrowed book. You did not follow the System's curriculum. You wrote a completely new language from absolute scratch and demanded the universe translate it."

I looked at my hands, flexing my fingers. I could feel the space between my knuckles. Not just the air, but the foundational weave itself. It felt softer. Malleable.

"Is it always stronger than a regular Mythic?" I asked, looking for the logistical catch, I added, "any negative side effects?"

"Not inherently, for both," Syntheia replied, floating to the nearest spectator bench. "Some cultivators have spent their lives developing an Origin skill solely dedicated to making soil more fertile. It is unique, yes, but not necessarily a stronger weapon. An Origin skill simply means there is only one in existence, unable to be quantified yet by the System. However," she tilted her head, observing the black space where my heart beat, "to force the System to recognize a fusion of five localized spatial and entropic Authorities, and to have it successfully ring the bells for the Mythic Five? The sheer weight of your new coding definitely clears the Mythic threshold by a significant margin. I suspect it is extremely powerful, since usually a skill is only defined as Mythic after accomplishing a feat determined worthy by the Prime. Be careful using it and always use a Veil, my Lord, otherwise other Scions or their priceless artifacts might detect the hint of terrifying Authority."

It certainly didn't feel terrifying to me. For the first time since the Confluence, the [Void] didn't feel like a rabid animal I was desperately keeping chained in my basement.

It felt like home.

To test the parameters, I stopped moving physically. With my upgraded [Void-Lattice Perception] — now perfectly stitched into the new framework — I simply expanded my senses outward.

I didn't have to push my perception through the air, which normally caused a drain on my Spirit. Instead, the void around me became an extension of my internal domain. The conceptual friction was entirely gone. Moving mana through this space required almost zero effort, the difference between the planes negligible. I was treating the external world like it was already inside my pocket.

"Crys, toss me a target," I called out.

Across the field, Crysanthe grinned. She manifested a heavy chunk of raw null-crystal the size of an anvil, layered it in temporal stasis to make it nearly indestructible, and launched it at my head like a railgun slug.

Normally, without using my Domain, I would trace its trajectory, open a portal via [Vault of the Void], pull a weapon out, and intercept it. That process took perhaps a hundredths of a second.

With [Void Emperor's Omnipresence], the multi-step process vanished.

I wanted the anvil to stop, and I wanted my specialized gravity-hammer. I didn't reach into my inventory. Because I owned the localized space entirely, I simply instructed reality to update itself.

There was no portal. No crackle of magic. The heavy hammer just manifested perfectly in my right grip, spinning with deadly momentum, precisely at the moment the anvil reached my striking distance. I crushed the rock into sparkling dust, the temporal stasis completely ignored by the sudden application of mass.

The sheer, seamless transition was intoxicating. Anything I stored inside my new inner world — the vast, cold continent sitting conceptually behind my ribs — could be projected into the real world instantaneously.

Then, a quiet, terrifying idea bloomed in my mind.

"Jeeves," I broadcasted across the conceptual tether connecting me back to Bastion. The week leading up to the trials on Ferra was proceeding at a crawl compared to our subjective time, but they were still on standby. "Are my Echoes docked safely in the Sanctum?"

"Yes, Master. Echo One is resting in its alcove. Do you require me to send him?"

"No," I replied, suppressing a grin. "Just don't panic."

I focused inwardly. Usually, constructing a fully armored, magically viable Echo required me to sit in a meditation room for hours, weaving dense arrays and carefully partitioning my consciousness. It was a chore, limiting my tactical deployment.

But I had built a sterile, physically stable sanctuary inside myself.

I isolated Echo One in the Sanctum vault on Ferra, and then I simply requested that the spatial coordinate it occupied was instead located within my internal kingdom.

A brief tug pulled at my gut.

"Master," Jeeves' voice chimed with uncharacteristic alarm. "The primary proxy, Echo One, has abruptly vanished from every sensor. No portal or gravitational signatures detected."

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"Don't worry, I have him," I replied.

I looked at the empty air beside me on the crystalline training ground. With a single thought, utilizing the seamless printing speed of [Omnipresence], the fully armed, eight-foot-tall Null-Steel frame of Echo One materialized into existence, completely combat-ready.

Crys landed lightly a few feet away, her eyes widening. "You didn't cast that. It has a continuous temporal signature. That construct has been active for over a year."

"I stored it inside," I said, a massive weight lifting off my shoulders. "I can store living beings. Or, at least, animate constructs possessing heavy magical signatures. If things go wrong inside the Trials, I don't have to waste hours finding a quiet corner to rebuild a proxy. I can keep dozens loaded in the chamber and drop an instant, only two clones at a time but still endless army onto the board."

I spent the remaining days heavily exploiting this specific feature, filling my internal real estate with a horrifying amount of ordnance. Leoric forwarded over fifty compressed Void-Beast gravity cores, an arsenal of Null-steel javelins, and several hundred alchemical explosives Eliza had enthusiastically provided.

When day five rolled around, a portal directly from the Ferra spire network snapped open onto Syntheia's landing pad.

Anna stepped out, carrying [Final Word] slung over her shoulder, dressed in her casual, yet heavily armored hunting leathers. Her time-domain immediately recognized the heavy dilation of the Crystal City, and I could see the localized physics visibly rolling off her shoulders like water.

"It smells like sterile glass and ozone in here," she noted, adjusting her quiver.

"And you smell like blood and roasted meat," Crys shot back happily, bounding over. The two of them had struck up an immediate, slightly chaotic rapport during the brief time we shared stories. While Crys was technically centuries older, her isolation made them remarkably similar in social footing, though Anna carried the grounded, heavy burden of active leadership on a besieged planet.

"Good to see you, Crys," Anna smiled, before her eyes shifted to me. They immediately narrowed. She walked up and poked my chest, right where my inner world sat. "Your presence is weird. It feels like you aren't standing entirely in this room."

"Evolution has its perks," I said gently. I knew she was anxious. The Mythic Five trial had to be dangerous, with a likely high mortality rate, and she eventually had to do it herself too.

Anna crossed her arms, ignoring my joke, and turned to Crys. "I need a favor."

"Anything for the chronological archer," Crys beamed.

"Keep him from doing something incredibly stupid," Anna instructed, deadpan, though a genuine thread of fear existed beneath the dry delivery. "When faced with a locked door, Eren's first instinct isn't to look for a key. It's to figure out how to quietly break the hinges. That gets you killed when you're playing games hosted by the elites of the entire architecture."

"I promise to aggressively monitor his chaotic tendencies," Crys saluted solemnly, her shifting crystal body glinting.

"I'm standing right here," I sighed.

Anna looked back at me, dropping her guard. She reached out and hugged me tightly. I felt the vibration of her temporal mana wrapping protectively around me for a moment before she pulled away.

"We are heavily entrenched," Anna reported softly. "Joyce folded her command smoothly into the unified planetary matrix. We've got billions of tons of the Iron Covenant's iron plating strapped to our towers. Bastion is a fortress. Focus fully on surviving whatever tribunal they put you in front of. Don't worry about us, just make sure you come back."

"That is the singular priority," I promised.

When Anna returned to Ferra to oversee the final countdown preparations alongside Lucas and the rest of our friends, I sat down and reviewed my final contingency list.

By unifying five legendary abilities into one Origin framework, my System interface currently displayed five blank skill slots. To an average cultivator, empty slots were wasted potential. To me, they represented tactical fluidity.

If the trial demanded a survival metric, I had room to immediately memorize a targeted, absolute regenerative aura from a stored crystal in my armory. If it required mass movement, I could upload an environmental anchor. It all depended on what flavor of misery the System threw at us. I resolved to keep them blank. Let the enemy play their hand first.

On the morning of the seventh day, there was no warning rumble. No darkening skies or ominous rumblings.

I was mid-sentence, discussing the resonance of starlight with Syntheia, when a blue notification snapped directly over my eyes, dominating my entire field of vision.

[TRIAL INITIALIZED.]

[Synchronizing User - Eren Kai.]

The air simply evaporated. My feet lost connection with the crystal floor, and an overwhelming pressure wrapped tightly around my skull.

We weren't traveling. The concept of space was momentarily put on hold.

When sound and sight violently returned, my lungs desperately gasped for air that tasted overwhelmingly pure, carrying an underlying note of static electricity.

I immediately reacted on sheer instinct, abandoning curiosity.

"[Nullifying Veil]," I commanded, pulling the Void entirely around both myself and Crys, masking our existence before we even had a chance to assess our footing. We sank conceptually out of reality.

Only when I felt securely hidden did I let myself actually look.

It was breathtaking. It wasn't an arena, a grim dungeon, or some grand cosmic throne room. We stood upon an impossibly wide platform of milky, veinless white marble that absorbed the ambient light instead of reflecting it.

Towering around the platform were dozens of archways. Each one was the size of a mountain, built from polished obsidian and pale gold. But what they held inside their arches stole the breath from my chest.

They weren't doorways. They were holding cells. Each archway cleanly framed an entire trapped, violently swirling nebula, frozen mid-expansion by some terrifying external pressure. Slow-moving, impossible cosmic leviathans drifted within the trapped stars, imprisoned as mere decoration.

The atmosphere wasn't merely heavy; it was absolute. You could physically feel the weight of uncountable aeons staring down from the silent, endless grey ceiling above.

I kept my hands firmly wrapped around the invisible handles of my void-blades, checking the structural stability of the inner kingdom resting in my chest.

"Be careful, just like we practiced," I projected directly into Crysanthe's mind, making sure the temporal sovereign beside me helped hide her signature.

The Mythic Five didn't look like a test. It looked like a mix of an executioner's block and a Courtroom designed for gods.