Chapter 117: The Apex of the World

The corporate elevator was a marvel of Eastern Spire engineering, a frictionless capsule of reinforced glass and magnetic rails that shot upward at terrifying speeds. Yet, to Glen, the ascent felt agonizingly slow.

He stood in the center of the car, the Abyssal blade resting casually over his shoulder. The blood of the Imperial Vanguard was already drying on his boots.

As the elevator passed Level 80, the neon-drenched sprawl of Neo-Kyoto began to vanish beneath a thick layer of artificial, glowing smog. By Level 90, the smog gave way to a pristine, swirling sea of white clouds. The localized weather control systems of the Celestial Tower ensured that the apex was always bathed in eternal, artificial twilight.

But it wasn’t the view that held Glen’s attention. It was the pressure.

It bled downward through the ceiling of the elevator, a spiritual weight so immense it made the air feel like thick, freezing water. It wasn’t the chaotic, aggressive killing intent of a monster, nor was it the disciplined, tactical mana of the Vanguard.

It was absolute, unquestionable authority.

Glen’s S-Rank core, the void fragment nestled in his chest, pulsed in response. It didn’t cower. It didn’t retreat. It flared with a dark, hungry anticipation. The anti-mana pushed outward, frosting the glass walls of the elevator with jagged patterns of black ice, creating a localized pocket of entropy that shielded him from the crushing weight of the Empress’s aura.

*Ding.*

The soft, melodic chime of the elevator arriving at Level 100 felt absurdly out of place.

The heavy glass doors hissed open.

Glen stepped out of the car and onto the apex of the world.

The pavilion was breathtaking. A massive, open-air platform with a floor made of seamless, transparent glass, suspended miles above the earth. Sweeping arches of white composite framed the darkening sky. The air was incredibly thin, biting cold, and carried the faint, ozone scent of highly condensed mana.

There were no guards. There were no automated turrets or magical traps.

There was only a single woman sitting on a white silk cushion in the exact center of the pavilion.

Empress Ryun wore a kimono woven from liquid light. Her long black hair shifted in the stratospheric wind, and her crystalline blue eyes were locked onto Glen the moment he stepped through the doors.

She didn’t look like an eighty-year-old monarch. She looked like a porcelain doll, fragile and immaculate. But Glen’s S-Rank senses screamed at him, a deafening, primal alarm that he hadn’t felt since he first encountered the Female Noble in the ruins of Johannesburg.

The mana radiating from her wasn’t just dense; it was crystallized. It was a century of absolute mastery, refined to a point of terrifying perfection.

"You took your time, Wraith," Ryun said. Her voice was soft, yet it carried effortlessly over the howling wind, vibrating directly against Glen’s eardrums. "Or do you prefer Glen Pendelton?"

Glen stopped thirty feet away from her. He didn’t flinch at the sound of his real name. He had known that a guild as powerful as Astra, backed by an SSS-Rank Champion, would eventually pierce the Ferryman’s encryption and uncover his identity.

"Wraith is fine," Glen said, his dual-layered, resonant voice cutting through the freezing air. "Pendelton is a name that belongs to a man who abandoned his family. I don’t use it."

Ryun smiled. It was a small, cold expression. "Arthur Pendelton. The S-Rank hero of the Western Hemisphere. A man so blinded by his own righteousness that he cannot see the cage he lives in. You are very different from your father, Glen."

"I didn’t come here to talk about my father," Glen said, lowering the Abyssal blade so the tip rested against the transparent glass floor. "I came to dismantle the Astra Guild. You sent your Vanguard to stop me. They failed. Now, I’m here."

"The Astra Guild is a tool," Ryun said dismissively, waving a delicate, pale hand. "A collection of greedy, short-sighted merchants who think they can control the rot of the void with test tubes and spreadsheets. They are dust. I let you slaughter them because they had outlived their usefulness."

Glen narrowed his pitch-black eyes. "And Captain Akira? Was he dust, too?"

"Akira was a loyal hound," Ryun replied, her crystalline eyes devoid of any grief. "But a hound cannot kill a god. I needed to know if you were truly what the sensors claimed you were. I needed to know if you had actually fused with the void, or if you were just another arrogant child playing with fire."

She slowly stood up.

The moment her bare feet touched the glass floor, the pressure in the pavilion multiplied tenfold. The white arches groaned under the sudden, invisible weight. The stratospheric wind abruptly died, suffocated by the sheer density of her SSS-Rank aura.

Glen was forced to take a half-step back, his boots grinding against the glass. He gritted his teeth, pushing his Predator Domain to its absolute limit just to remain standing. The black ice spread rapidly from his boots, fighting a desperate, losing battle against the blinding, pearlescent light radiating from the Empress.

"You are magnificent," Ryun whispered, her eyes wide with a terrifying, obsessive hunger. "The anti-mana doesn’t just flow through you. It *is* you. You are the walking embodiment of entropy."

"What do you want?" Glen demanded, his grip tightening on the hilt of his sword.

"I want to tear the sky open," Ryun said, pointing a slender finger upward, toward the artificial twilight of the Mega-Sanctuary’s shield. "The Administrators built these Towers. They gave us the Awakening System. They told us we were the saviors of humanity. But it is a lie, Glen. The monsters outside the shields... the variants, the dungeon bosses... they are us. They are the humans who were left behind, mutated by the void."

Glen’s expression remained perfectly stoic. "I know."

Ryun paused, a flicker of genuine surprise crossing her porcelain features. "You know? And yet you do not despair? You do not weep for the billions of souls we have slaughtered in the name of survival?"

"I weep for the people I love," Glen said coldly. "The rest of the world can burn. The Administrators made this game. I’m just playing it until I’m strong enough to break the board."

Ryun threw her head back and laughed. It was a beautiful, terrifying sound that echoed across the heavens.

"Yes!" she cried, her aura flaring with blinding intensity. "Yes, that is the soul of a true Sovereign! You do not seek to save the cage; you seek to shatter it!"

She leveled her gaze at him, the laughter fading into a cold, deadly seriousness.

"But you are not strong enough yet, little monster," Ryun said softly. "You have the key, but you do not have the strength to turn it. The barrier separating our world from the Administrators’ domain is absolute. It requires a catalyst of pure, unadulterated entropy to breach. I have the power to reach the heavens, but only you have the power to rot the gates."

"You want to use me," Glen stated, his muscles tensing, the void fragment in his chest spinning wildly.

"I want to forge you," Ryun corrected. "But a weapon must be tested before it is wielded in war. I need to know the absolute limits of your void. I need to know if you can survive the weight of an Empress."

Ryun didn’t draw a weapon. She didn’t need one.

She simply raised her right hand and pointed her index finger at Glen’s chest.

"Imperial Decree," Ryun whispered. "Kneel."

The attack didn’t travel through the air. It simply existed.

A column of pure, crystallized kinetic mana, weighing tens of thousands of tons, materialized directly above Glen and slammed downward.

Glen didn’t have time to dodge. He didn’t have time to use Spatial Fold. The attack was instantaneous, a manipulation of the physical laws of the pavilion itself.

The impact was catastrophic.

Glen was driven to his knees, the transparent glass floor beneath him spider-webbing with massive, jagged cracks. The S-Rank Obsidian Skin covering his body groaned in protest, the dark, metallic sheen flickering as the sheer kinetic force threatened to crush his bones to powder.

Blood erupted from Glen’s nose and mouth, splattering against the glass. The pressure was unimaginable. It felt like the entire Celestial Tower had been dropped on his shoulders.

"Is this the limit of the void?" Ryun asked, her voice echoing from all directions at once. She hadn’t moved from her spot. "Is this the apex of your entropy? If you cannot withstand my gravity, how will you withstand the Monarchs of the Lost?"

Glen’s vision blurred, the edges of his sight turning black. His lungs screamed for air that he couldn’t draw in.

*Caleb,* Glen thought, the memory of his corrupted best friend flashing through his mind. Caleb wielded gravity now. Caleb was the Event Horizon. If Glen couldn’t break this, he could never save him. He could never kill the Female Noble.

Glen closed his pitch-black eyes.

He stopped trying to resist the weight with his physical strength. He stopped relying on Obsidian Skin.

He let go of the leash.

He opened the floodgates of his core, allowing the void fragment to consume everything.

"Predator Domain," Glen snarled, his voice a demonic, vibrating roar that shook the pavilion. "Absolute Unmaking."

The black ice didn’t just spread; it exploded.

A sphere of absolute, terrifying nothingness erupted from Glen’s kneeling form. It didn’t push the kinetic mana away; it ate it. The crushing weight of the Imperial Decree was instantly rotted, the crystallized mana turning to gray ash that drifted away in the wind.

Glen stood up slowly, wiping the blood from his chin with the back of his hand.

The glass floor around him had been completely unmade, leaving him standing on a jagged platform of black ice suspended over the abyss. The air within fifty feet of him was completely devoid of light, a localized black hole that drank the Empress’s pearlescent aura.

Ryun’s eyes widened, a thrill of genuine excitement shivering down her spine.

"Better," the Empress whispered.

Glen raised the Abyssal blade, the iron weeping tears of dark, necrotic energy.

"My turn," Glen said.

He triggered Lightning Movement, and the world vanished in a blur of black electricity.