Four weeks had passed since I’d made Ingvild my queen, and three weeks since that fateful date in Ireland.
She was still shy around me, still learning to trust the closeness between us—so I took it slow.
Limited things to makeout sessions and quiet moments, letting her set the pace.
She appreciated it, I could tell.
The way she relaxed into my touch a little more each day, the way her smiles came easier.
Aoife had been guarded at first, watching me with those assessing eyes that had seen too much to trust easily.
But as she witnessed how I treated Ingvild—the patience, the respect, the genuine care—she’d softened.
She still gave me looks that said I’m watching you, but they’d lost their edge.
Becoming almost fond.
In the quiet hours between, I’d been learning.
Combining my abilities.
Pushing the boundaries of what I could do.
The rings sang in harmony now, each one complementing the others in ways I was only beginning to understand.
Part of me wanted to keep going.
To acquire more peerage and power, faster.
But I felt like I’d gathered enough for now.
There was a reason I’d speedrun the acquisitions the way I had.
I had stricken when these people were nobodies.
If they were well known, then The Hero Faction would have been on alert.
Every major power in the underworld would have known someone was hunting Longinus.
They’d have been watching.
And now I had time.
Time to grow.
Time to plan.
Time to prepare for what was coming.
Currently, I was learning what Night Reflection to current combo could do.
I sank into the shadows beneath my feet, feeling the transition—solid to intangible, flesh to darkness.
The world shifted.
I could see everything from within, feel every patch of shadow connected to this space.
Physical attacks would pass through me now.
I was untouchable.
I emerged a hundred feet away, reforming from a shadow that shouldn’t have been deep enough to hold me.
“Interesting,” I murmured.
The Mindscape catalogued the experience.
Shadow submersion: successful.
Intangibility: confirmed.
Mobility: enhanced.
But that was just the beginning.
I used this with my current arsenal.
I raised my hand, and the shadows around me rose like obedient servants.
Creations of Annihilation maker combined with shadows.
They formed weapons—blades, spears, tendrils—each one solid enough to cut, flexible enough to entangle.
A barrier of shadow wrapped around me, dense and impenetrable.
I could redirect attacks now, absorb them into the darkness and spit them back at my enemies from any angle.
The power was…
intoxicating.
I spent hours in the pocket dimension, testing its limits.
Pushing.
Exploring.
The shadows responded to my will with an eagerness that felt almost alive.
I smiled.
But Night Reflection wasn’t the only thing I’d been working on.
The Counter-Providence was my next project—an anti-Sacred Gear monster designed specifically to fight irregulars and Longinus wielders.
It wasn’t meant for normal devils, angels, or fallen angels.
It was meant for the threats.
The anomalies.
The people who’d built their entire identity around their Gear.
I’d patterned it after the Sage of Six Paths’ sealing techniques, blended with the anti-Sacred Gear tech in canon.
The design was elegant in its cruelty.
Night Reflection would copy and reverse abilities at the moment of use.
Telos Karma would twist fate so the enemy’s power failed at the worst possible moment.
And Annihilation Maker would create a shell body from materials that specifically destabilized Sacred Gear energy resonance—like kryptonite in physical form.
The Counter-Providence wasn’t a weapon.
It was a solution.
A way to neutralize the very thing that made irregulars dangerous.
I tested it against shadow constructs from Night Reflection, pitting it against simulations of various Sacred Gears.
The results were…
promising.
Devastating.
Exactly what I needed.
“Project status: Counter-Providence,” I said to the Mindscape.
Design: Complete.
Construction: 80%.
Deployment readiness: pending final calibration.
Satisfactory.
I’d been creating monsters regularly—testing Annihilation Maker’s limits, refining my control, building an army of constructs that existed only in this pocket dimension.
They rose from the shadows at my command, twisted forms that fought with savage grace.
I fought them in a dimension created by Dimension Lost, honing my skills.
Blades of shadow met claws of darkness.
Tendrils entangled monstrous limbs.
I moved through the chaos like a ghost, untouchable, relentless.
To optimize my training, I engineered a specialized “Taskmaster” construct via Annihilation Maker.
This monster constantly copies my exact abilities, relentlessly rooting out any flaws or blind spots in my form.
I had already mastered basic swordsmanship and martial arts from similar constructs, but this forced me to evolve further.
My goal was to forge a signature fighting style.
It combines the space-ripping slashes of Yami from Black Clover with the psychological warfare of Aizen.
By utilizing Dreamlike Curse, I can generate illusionary doppelgängers of the opposing team, manipulating their perception until the illusions carry the weight of reality.
In fluid, acrobatic melee combat, my weapons are never static.
I might initiate an exchange with a long spear, only to use Dreamlike Curse mid-swing to trick the enemy’s brain into blocking a ghost weapon.
At the exact millisecond of impact, Annihilation Maker morphs the spear into a massive, heavy Warhammer.
If they attempt to exploit the momentary window of the weapon swap to counterattack, I activate Night Reflection through the shadows beneath my feet.
This completely absorbs their kinetic momentum and reflects the force directly into their blind spot.
This is without my latest breakthrough: unlocking Touki.
While my aura manipulation is still in its basic stages, the brutal, non-stop brawling against my constructs is driving rapid progress.
For defense, I modeled my approach after a god-tier version of Shikamaru.
Every shadow spike, construct, or creature spawned by Annihilation Maker acts as a direct, seamless extension of my martial arts.
If an enemy manages to bypass this defense and punch my face, they quickly realize they have only struck a phantom clone manifested by Dreamlike Curse.
On top of this layer, I am actively experimenting with Dimension Lost and Night Reflection to replicate Gojo Satoru’s Infinity, distorting space and reflecting vectors so nothing can physically touch me.
I am now basically entirely untouchable to anyone below my tier.
In fact, fighting multiple opponents simultaneously only works in my favor once I drag them inside the isolated space of Dimension Lost.
Even in ultimate-class beings, I can completely out-hustle and dominate 99% of them if I play the strategic chess match correctly.
Only Peak Ultimate-Class fighters with exceptional conceptual immunities and brute force or true Satan-Class and above entities pose a genuine threat.
I was actively trying to break that barrier.
By the time I was done, the obsidian ground was littered with dissolving constructs, and I was breathing hard but smiling.
“Again,” I said.
They rose.
I fought.
I grew.
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