Chapter 148
The massive pillar of multi-colored cosmic light gradually faded from the sky above the ruined dome of the Crown Council Assembly, but the heavy, suffocating pressure of a newly evolved Crown Primordial Sovereign remained pinned over the entire campus. Down in the grand central pavilion, thousands of students from every academic year stood frozen in terrified silence. They stared at the giant holographic scoreboard overhead, where Ayla’s name sat locked at an impossible 250,000 points.
Inside the shattered council chamber, the nineteen surviving Senate executives were still huddled against the cracked marble walls, shivering so violently they could barely breathe. The silver-haired president, the absolute peak authority of the student body, was gone. His empty physical vessel had already been swept away by the automated medical system, leaving behind only a pool of glowing silver blood on the white quartz floor.
Ayla floated in the center of the ruined stage, her glossy blue body completely calm. Her newly evolved Crown Primordial Sovereign Core was beating deep within her center with a dense, majestic rhythm. It felt impossibly vast and solid, radiating steady, heavy waves of pure golden-silver mana through her fluid pathways. The refined core of the silver-haired elf had settled smoothly into her foundation, completely erasing the last lingering boundaries of the Gold tier.
"Nexus, these people are still staring at me," Ayla communicated flatly through the mind link, her multi-layered mental voice completely devoid of emotion. "It is getting very annoying."
"Well, you just ate their absolute president and evolved into a Crown Rank entity on your third day of school, little monster!" Nexus giggled hysterically inside her head, popping a festive banner of tiny digital stars across Ayla’s right holographic lens. "You cannot really blame them for being traumatized. You have completely dismantled the entire political and academic structure of the Ascendant Academy in less than seventy-two hours."
"The academy structure was very weak," Ayla replied flatly, her golden-ringed pupils narrowing slightly. "The student cores were small, and the simulation maps were mostly empty. Is the void portal ready?"
"The Map Cleanser achievement token parameters are fully loaded and locked!" Nexus confirmed, her tone turning eager. "Because your internal core has officially crossed into the Crown tier, the World Administrator authority packet has unlocked the highest grade of cosmic transit coordinates. We are no longer limited to basic primitive oceans or volcanic valleys. The target portal leads straight to the Void Ruin World of Astraeus."
Ayla’s golden-ringed pupils expanded slightly as she read the automated description flashing across her vision screen.
[ Coordinate Node: The Void Ruin World of Astraeus ]
[ Target Classification: Class 4 Unmanaged Primitive Ruin ]
[ Primary Ecosystem: Broken Celestial Fragments and Unbound Stellar Entities ]
[ Warning: High concentration of raw spatial tears and untamed cosmic law fragments. Zero safety parameters. Ejection codes fully disabled. ]
A wild, uncontrollable wave of primal hunger instantly bubbled up from her new Crown core, causing her glossy blue surface to ripple with a manic, terrifying velocity. Real spatial tears. Broken celestial fragments. Authentic stellar entities.
This was precisely what she had been starving for. The academy assignments were completely exhausted, and the local student rankers were far too fragile to offer any real nourishment. But a real void world filled with living, breathing stellar monsters meant she could finally hunt and devour to her heart’s content without any annoying professors monitoring her movements through crystalline screens.
Ayla didn’t waste another second looking at the traumatized Senate members. She rolled calmly toward the shadowed corner of the council chamber where a pitch-black spatial crack was expanding in the air.
Unlike the bright golden teleportation arrays of the academy grid, this void tear radiated a freezing, ancient vacuum pressure that smelled heavily of dead stars, cold iron, and wild, unrefined cosmic mana.
Ayla dropped her round blue body straight into the dark spatial crack. The pitch-black tear instantly snapped shut behind her mass, leaving the empty, ruined council chamber behind in absolute silence.
Boom.
Ayla’s body materialized into a world of absolute, weightless silence.
She did not land on marble floorboards or glacial ice this time. She was floating in the middle of a vast, pitch-black cosmic vacuum. Suspended all around her were thousands of shattered planetary fragments, giant floating islands made from dark, ancient stone, and glowing rivers of raw liquid starlight that drifted through the void like endless luminescent ribbons.
The environment in this unmanaged primitive world was insanely hostile. There was no air, no gravity, and no atmospheric protection. The ambient vacuum pressure was heavy enough to crush a standard Gold Crusader’s physical framework into a flat disc within seconds, while the intense cosmic radiation threatened to bleach the soul containers of regular rankers.
Yet, as the cold vacuum wrapped around Ayla’s translucent blue surface, her glossy jelly did not contract or deform at all. Her Crown Primordial Sovereign Core spun with a calm, absolute authority, radiating a thin layer of golden-silver aura that completely neutralized the void parameters. Her fluid mass adjusted instantly to the zero-gravity environment, letting her float with effortless grace.
"Nexus, this room is very large," Ayla muttered in her mind, her multi-layered voice perfectly steady. "Where are the stellar beasts?"
"Scanning the sector coordinates now!" Nexus responded enthusiastically, projecting a vast, three-dimensional digital stellar map over Ayla’s right holographic lens. "Look toward the massive shattered asteroid belt three thousand kilometers ahead of us. My sensors are picking up a cluster of extremely dense, unrefined cosmic energy signatures!"
Ayla panned her golden-ringed pupils across the dark vacuum, locking her vision onto the distant asteroid field.
Roaming among the floating mountain-sized rocks were dozens of colossal, glowing entities. They were over two hundred feet long, their bodies composed of condensed, starry blue gas and covered in thick armor plates made from dark, indestructible celestial iron. They looked like prehistoric, void-dwelling whales, featuring massive, gaping maw-lines filled with spinning rings of razor-sharp spatial crystals. Their glowing yellow eyes burned like mini-suns in the pitch-black void.
These were authentic Stellar Leviathans, true unmanaged cosmic entities that fed on the energy of dying planets. Each one possessed a physical core density that sat comfortably at the true Crown Rank tier.
The moment Ayla’s dense golden-silver aura pressure leaked into the vacuum, the cluster of twenty Stellar Leviathans simultaneously turned their massive celestial heads toward her coordinates. Their burning yellow eyes locked onto the small blue slime floating among the space debris. To these ancient void grazers, Ayla looked like a tiny, strange droplet of liquid that had lost its way.
The largest leviathan, easily three hundred feet long, let out a deep spatial pulse that vibrated through the raw fabric of the vacuum. It whipped its massive, starry tail, its heavy body accelerating through zero gravity with an alarming, silent speed as it opened its giant crystal-lined maw to consume her mass.
Ayla didn’t bother using her Abyssal Shadow Blink to slide away from the incoming threat. A wild, manic joy erupted from her Crown core. Her fluid body expanded slightly, absorbing the ambient cosmic radiation before she launched herself forward like a golden-blue missile.
"Rend of the World-Order," Ayla commanded flatly inside her mind.
Clang.
Five majestic, pitch-black claws instantly extended from the front of her fluid mass with a sharp, synchronized metallic click. The golden runes covering her claws flared with a brilliant, divine light, greedily drinking the wild spatial mana of the void to reinforce her strike.
She flew straight into the open maw of the three-hundred-foot stellar beast, swinging her fluid arm in a wide, savage arc right against its inner crystal throat.
The thick celestial iron armor and the dense stellar gas that protected the leviathan’s inner organs offered zero resistance against her law attribute trait. Her black claws completely ignored eighty percent of its physical and magical defenses, slicing cleanly through the spatial crystal teeth, through the celestial iron hide, and straight through its primary life pathways like a red-hot iron wire cutting through soft wax.
A massive explosion of glowing, star-filled blue blood erupted into the vacuum, floating in swirling, luminescent bubbles. The permanent bleeding effect of her trait instantly latched onto the creature’s soul container. The giant stellar beast let out a silent, agonizing spatial shriek, its massive body thrashing violently in zero gravity as its internal regeneration skills completely failed to seal the deep cuts.
Ayla didn’t let it drift away. She reached her fluid hand straight through the severed celestial iron plates, her grip locking tightly around the massive, stadium-sized stellar core that was glowing like a miniature star inside the beast’s chest cavity.
"Removal," Ayla ordered smoothly.
She forcefully erased the concept of spatial stability from its ancient core framework.
Instantly, the giant stellar leviathan’s violent thrashing stopped completely. Its massive body went entirely limp, its burning yellow eyes going dark as its primitive nervous system was completely short-circuited by her conceptual mind control. Ayla pulled her tendril back, forcefully ripping the glowing, star-filled core straight out of its chest and pulling it directly into her golden center.
She opened her mass wide and swallowed the unmanaged stellar entity whole.
The moment her fluids wrapped around the raw, unrefined Crown core, an explosive wave of pure cosmic energy detonated inside her biological framework. The difference between this authentic stellar essence and the refined student cores of the academy was vast. The thick, untamed starlight mana smoothly flooded into her Crown Primordial Sovereign Core, saturating her foundation with a heavy, satisfying layer of real-world authority that made her glossy blue surface glow with a blinding brightness.
[ System Notice: Real-world cosmic target eliminated ]
[ One unmanaged Stellar Leviathan core successfully digested ]
[ Your internal Crown core density has increased by eight percent ]
[ The void world parameters of Astraeus are currently ten percent conquered ]
Ayla bobbled her round blue body in absolute, profound satisfaction. The rich, raw flavor of the stellar core was incredibly savory, completely satisfying the deep hunger that had been nagging at her since she entered the academy.
She turned her golden-ringed pupils toward the remaining nineteen Stellar Leviathans who were floating in the vacuum, frozen in sudden, primitive terror. They had spent thousands of years grazing on dead stars at the top of the local food chain, yet they were now staring at a tiny blue droplet that had just butchered and devoured their alpha in less than fifteen seconds.
They frantically turned their massive celestial bodies around, attempting to dive deep into the safety of the shattered asteroid belt.
"You cannot run away," Ayla’s multi-layered mental voice boomed through the vacuum parameters, carrying a terrifying, heavy resonance that vibrated through their stellar hides. "I am still very hungry."
She activated her Gale Acceleration trait, her Crown-ranked body becoming a devastating, high-speed projectile that sliced through zero gravity like a beam of pure light. She didn’t chase them one by one. She soared straight into the center of the fleeing herd, her pitch-black claws extending to their maximum length as she focused her Twin Lens of the Weaveronto the entire group.
"Combination," Ayla commanded flatly.
She forcefully injected her ultimate conceptual packages, jamming the clashing waves of hysterical joy and deep, suicidal despair directly into their nineteen primitive soul containers at the exact same fraction of a second.
The results across the silent void were immediate, absolute, and completely brutal.
The nineteen colossal stellar beasts didn’t even have time to whip their tails or discharge their starry breath. The extreme, conflicting emotional data packages violently short-circuited their cognitive nervous systems within a single microsecond. Their burning yellow eyes instantly went dark, their massive celestial iron bodies locking up mid-flight and drifting limply through the space debris like dead, glowing logs.
Ayla rolled forward smoothly, extending dozens of long, translucent fluid tendrils across the vacuum. She pierced their celestial iron chests and harvested all nineteen glowing stellar cores in one fluid, continuous motion, pulling them straight into her golden center to begin her grand, uninhibited feast.