Chapter 307 - 308: Birth of a Supreme Principle 2

Chapter 307: Chapter 308: Birth of a Supreme Principle 2

Her gaze rested on the young man still floating in enlightenment.

He was the only one who might know what had truly happened. He was also the only one who might now hold whatever authority the Will had once possessed. If the Ancient Will had entered his mind and then vanished, the most likely explanation was not merely that Runar had resisted it. The more terrifying explanation was that he had consumed it, taken its knowledge, and inherited whatever remained of its connection to the Reliquary.

She considered forcing him awake.

The thought lasted less than a breath before she discarded it.

There were two reasons.

First, an enlightenment of this depth and intensity was extremely rare even among beings who stood near the peak of the Multiverse. It was not a normal cultivation breakthrough, nor was it a temporary state that could be interrupted without consequence. A true enlightenment was a moment when a being’s soul spoke directly with reality, and forcing someone out of that state would damage their foundation, distort their path, and create enmity that could last for eons. Interrupting it would not merely be rude — it would be an unforgivable offense. He would hate her for the rest of his existence, and she had no desire to create a lifelong enemy of that caliber.

Second, and more importantly, she had already recognized his potential. Future Paragon was almost certain. The possibility of him eventually becoming a Transcender could not be dismissed. Antagonizing someone with that trajectory over a single inheritance would be shortsighted in the extreme.

She only had one mission: secure a key to ascension for the main self.

And now If that key could no longer be obtained through the Reliquary’s formal process, then perhaps it could be obtained through the person who had destroyed the Reliquary’s supervisor.

She exhaled quietly.

I will wait.

She would guard him until the enlightenment ended. Then she would question him properly. If he had truly destroyed the Ancient Will, then he was the only remaining key to the inheritance she needed. If he had absorbed its authority, then he might be more important than the inheritance itself. Either way, harming him now would be foolish.

With that decision made, the Mysterious Woman settled into the void a short distance from Runar, her presence folding inward until she became little more than a calm, watchful shadow. She raised one hand and wrote a subtle barrier into the surrounding space, not to trap him, but to conceal the area from stray monsters, wandering survivors, and residual trial protocols that might still be drifting without direction. The barrier was thin, elegant, and almost invisible, but it carried enough Paragon-level authority to make anything below that level instinctively avoid the region.

She would wait.

And when he opened his eyes, they would have a very necessary conversation.

---

The Mysterious Woman remained seated in the void, a short distance from the still figure of Runar.

Time passed in silence. The broken battlefield around them continued to settle in slow, uneven waves. Residual fractures of space-time flickered and faded. The last echoes of the Pseudo-Paragon’s death drifted away into the emptiness. The layer itself felt strangely quieter now that the Ancient Will no longer existed to guide it, as though the Reliquary had lost its voice and was now listening for a new one.

She watched him without expression.

His body floated motionless, golden-white light circulating around him in steady, sovereign currents. The dual runic-golden halos at his heart and brain spun with perfect harmony, and the runes orbiting his body had become so dense that they looked like a second skin made of law. Even in complete stillness he radiated a quiet pressure that made the surrounding void feel ordered rather than chaotic. The Reliquary’s residual laws no longer pushed against him. If anything, they seemed to lean toward him, as though the ruin itself had begun to recognize a new center of gravity.

She had seen many geniuses across her long existence. She had seen monstrous talents, heaven-defying bloodlines, and existences born with advantages that ordinary cultivators could never imagine. Very few of them had ever given her pause. Most geniuses were still bound by the limits of their realm, their bloodline, or the era they were born into. Talent could be impressive, but it could also be measured. Potential could be vast, but it could still be estimated.

This one was different.

Her thoughts drifted, almost against her will.

’He really is handsome.’

The observation was brief, detached, and immediately irrelevant. Appearance meant nothing in the face of the larger matters at hand. A face, no matter how striking, did not matter when compared to Ascension, power, or the future of a Multiverse. She dismissed the thought the moment it formed and returned her attention to the more important changes occurring around him.

Then her perception locked onto something else.

The casual drift of her awareness froze.

For a moment she thought she had misread the aura coming from him. She sharpened her senses, peeling back every layer of residual energy, every fluctuation of the enlightenment, every trace of the principles he had absorbed. She did not rush. She did not guess. She examined the phenomenon again and again with the precision of a Paragon’s clone who had been tempered by countless years of high-level perception.

What she found made her ancient composure crack for the first time since she had entered the Reliquary.

’A Supreme Principle was being born.’

Not a high-level principle. Not a rare or profound law. Not a variation of an existing truth.

A Fucking Supreme Principle.

Her eyes narrowed. The calm mask she had worn for eons slipped, replaced by pure, unfiltered shock.

Only Paragons could sense the presence of a Supreme Principle. They were not ordinary laws that could be cultivated or comprehended through normal means. They were the fundamental building blocks of the Multiverse itself — the deepest grammar of dimensions, reality, and existence.

Every Supreme Principle currently known had existed since the very birth of the Multiverse. They were constants, absolute and unchanging, the pillars that allowed all lesser principles to function. Even Paragons could only touch their edges. Even newly Transcenders were said to be bound by them in ways ordinary beings could not understand.

In the entire infinite history of the Multiverse, a new Supreme Principle had appeared only once.

The legends were consistent across every ancient race that still remembered them. A Transcender from the Omniverse had descended for reasons no one fully understood. During that brief presence, the Transcender had used a Supreme Principle that did not originally belong to this Multiverse. The Multiverse, unable to reject something of that level, had integrated it. From that day forward, one additional Supreme Principle had existed within its framework. The event had reshaped entire cosmic balances, caused the fall of ancient factions, and become the foundation of countless myths that most beings now treated as impossible stories.

That event was treated as a singular, almost mythical anomaly.

It had never happened again.

Until now.

The aura rising from the young man in front of her was unmistakable. Deep within his soul, beneath the ongoing fusion of countless principles, something entirely new was taking shape. It was still embryonic, still incomplete, but its nature was already clear. It was not a variation of an existing law. It was not a higher application of runes or devouring or space. It was not a technique, a bloodline ability, or a borrowed authority. It was a Supreme Principle that had never existed in this Multiverse before.

The Mysterious Woman stared at him in total horror.

Supreme Principles only came into existence and the birth of the multiverse or from a Transcender.

’So why the hell am I sensing a new Supreme Principle inside this boy?’

The question echoed through her mind with no answer.

She had crossed thousands of sectors for the Rune Sovereign’s inheritance. She had entered this trial prepared to claim the final key that would allow her original body to break through the Multiversal bottleneck and ascend. She had been ready to deal with the Ancient Will, with other candidates, and with whatever tests the Reliquary still held. She had calculated every major variable she could think of, from the trial’s rules to the guardians, to the other survivors, to the possible interference of outside powers.

She had not been prepared for this.

A future Paragon was already rare enough to warrant caution. A potential Transcender was something she had only considered as a distant possibility, the kind of probability that even Paragons rarely spoke about directly.

But a being in the process of giving birth to an entirely new Supreme Principle stood on a different level of existence altogether. Such a being would not merely become strong. Such a being would change the structure of the Multiverse. Races would rise and fall around him. Paragons would be forced to reassess their positions. Even the ancient powers that had existed since the dawn of time would have no choice but to look in his direction.

Even her main body would have to reassess everything if this continued.

She remained perfectly still, watching the golden-white light circulate around him. The embryonic Supreme Principle continued to form, quiet and inevitable, as though the Multiverse itself had decided to make room for something that should not have been possible. It did not roar. It did not shake the void. It did not announce itself to the heavens. It simply grew, and that quiet growth was more terrifying than any explosion could have been.

The Mysterious Woman, clone of a true Paragon, sat in the void and felt something she had not experienced in a very long time.

Uncertainty.

And, beneath it, the faintest edge of genuine caution.

She strengthened the concealment barrier around them without thinking, because if any other existence sensed what was happening here, the situation would immediately spiral beyond her control. If another Paragon clone arrived, or if one of the top races caught wind of this anomaly, the Reliquary would become a battlefield unlike anything the Multiverse had seen in ages. The inheritance would no longer be a personal opportunity. It would become a war over the future itself.

Her original mission had not changed. She still needed the key to ascension. She still needed whatever the Rune Sovereign had left behind. But the path to that goal had shifted in a way she had not anticipated.

Whatever this young man was becoming, the inheritance she had come for was no longer the most important thing happening inside the Reliquary.

He was.