Chapter 257: Is That You?

The tear split through the air at the far end of the battlefield, and every living thing felt it. The zombies froze mid-step. The Titans stopped closing in on Remedy. Even the flying creatures overhead went still, hovering in place as if reality itself had paused to acknowledge what had just arrived.

Then Adam stepped through.

Ivy felt it before she saw it. The aura rolled across the battlefield like a wave breaking against a shore, thick with death affinity and something else entirely, something that pressed down on the chest and made the air feel heavy. Beside her, Scott stiffened, his eyes snapping upward toward the tear. Felecia's breath caught in her throat.

"Adam?" Felecia said.

It wasn't a question. Not really. They all knew that aura. They had felt traces of it before, back when he recently joined them. But this - this was something else. This was that same presence, but amplified, refined, stripped of everything uncertain and left as pure, concentrated force.

Scott exhaled slowly, shaking his head. "And it seems he's gotten stronger as well."

Ivy said nothing. The Battle Maiden's mask slid open across her face, her analytical systems engaging automatically as her eyes locked onto Adam's silhouette above. She was already running through it, cataloguing the shift in his affinity output, measuring the pressure against everything she knew about his previous ceiling. The numbers weren't adding up to anything she had on record.

He had changed. Significantly.

Behind Adam, the supreme spirit manifested. The giant skeleton rose from nothing, towering above the battlefield with hollow eyes that seemed to consume the light around them. Wind and death affinity poured from it in a wide, crushing wave that swept outward in every direction, washing over the martial artists still locked in their fights across the field.

The reactions came fast.

A martial artist with a deep scar running the length of his face stumbled back half a step, his opponent momentarily forgotten. "What is that?" His voice was rough, but there was no hiding the edge of unease underneath it. "This pressure, it's like nothing I've felt before. And who is that? Who just walked out of that thing?"

Nearby, a woman with a large folded fan clutched it tighter, her gaze fixed upward. "Even the wind affinity," she said quietly, almost to herself. "It's unlike anything I've encountered. The purity of it."

Every martial artist on the field had stopped. Not from fear but from instinct. The kind of instinct that recognises something above its weight class and pays attention.

But the one most pleased stood on the elevated ground above them all.

Remedy's rapier was still raised, her breathing still ragged from holding the Titans back alone. Four of the massive creatures lay collapsed behind her in broken heaps. Nine more formed a loose circle around her, each one massive enough to shake the ground with a single step. They had paused with everything else, their dead eyes now drifting toward the tear.

She looked at Adam and let out a slow breath.

"You finally decided to show up."

Adam's gaze moved across the battlefield in a single sweep. He took in Remedy's position, the four Titans down, the nine still circling, the strain visible even from this distance in the way she held herself. He registered Ivy and Scott and Felecia pinned below. He saw the flying zombies overhead, the brute waves still pressing against every martial artist on the field, the sheer density of the horde with no clean end in sight.

He didn't respond to Remedy. He didn't need to.

His eyes swept the field one final time, locking onto the weight of what needed to happen. The Titans. The horde. The flying creatures. All of it, at once, from every angle, with no support coming from Francis or the managers.

He exhaled once. Low and calm.

"Asura's Domain."

The word left his lips, and the battlefield answered.

The death affinity that had been spreading loosely across the field snapped rigid in an instant, like a wire pulled taut. It was no longer drifting, it had structure now, shape, a will behind it pressing down on everything inside its reach. The supreme spirit threw its head back and roared.

The sound shook the ground.

Every zombie on the field reacted at once. They clutched their heads, stumbling, their forms visibly breaking apart as the death affinity tore through them from the inside. The brute zombies buckled. The flying creatures dropped altitude. Even the Titans, the nine still circling Remedy, staggered, their massive frames trembling under the pressure as cracks spread across their bodies with each passing second.

Then the heads started exploding.

One after another, in rapid succession across the entire field. Brutes, flyers, Titans, it didn't matter. Asura's Domain didn't distinguish. Anything within its reach with a lower star power than Adam had no answer for it. The technique had one effect and one effect only: absolute death.

And now nothing was blocking it.

Back in the Rift, the lich's death affinity had been pushing back against the domain, blunting its edge just enough to contain it. The Angel of Death's enhancement had been offset by that opposing force the whole time. But here there was no opposing force. There was only the Angel of Death amplifying Adam's output with nothing to counteract it, and the result was the technique finally running at its true, unhindered capacity.

The notifications came fast.

―[Existence Gained]―

―[Existence Gained]―

―[Existence Gained]―

The prompt repeated over and over, stacking rapidly as zombies fell across every corner of the battlefield, brutes, flyers, and Titans alike crumpling under the domain's reach. The numbers climbed without pause, each notification marking another kill claimed not by a weapon or a strike, but simply by Adam's presence alone.

It didn't take long.

The field that had been swarming minutes ago, packed with bodies pressing against every martial artist, cutting off every exit, overwhelmed by sheer numbers, went silent. The last of the zombies dropped. The flying creatures fell from the air. The Titans collapsed one by one, their massive forms hitting the ground in heavy, final impacts that sent dust rolling outward in slow clouds.

Then there was nothing left standing.

Every zombie on the battlefield was dead.

The silence that followed was absolute.

Adam scanned the battlefield from his position, his eyes moving methodically across the field. Not a single zombie still standing. Satisfied, he deactivated his technique, and the rigid structure of the death affinity dissolved around them like smoke clearing after a fire.

Adam's supreme spirit dematerialized. The giant skeleton faded, taking the crushing pressure of its aura with it. A moment later, Adam dropped to the ground of the battlefield with a quiet impact, straightening up as his boots settled into the dust.

Every martial artist on the field had their eyes on him.

Some were still processing what they had just witnessed the domain, the spirit, the speed at which the entire horde had been wiped out. Others were doing something else entirely. They were studying his face. Trying to place it. The recognition was spreading slowly through the crowd, moving from person to person as people compared what they were seeing against what they already knew.

Francis, standing further back, had already gone still.

Then Remedy hit him.

She crossed the distance at a run and drove into him with a full tackle, arms locking around him in a hug that would have staggered most people. Adam barely moved. He steadied himself and let it happen, saying nothing for a moment while Remedy held on. Then she pulled back, looked up at him, and asked the question he hadn't expected.

"Where have you been?"

Adam blinked. He had assumed she would know. But the look on her face told him she had no idea. That opened up a different question in his mind entirely, one about how this rift had played out across Remedy's previous cycle and what she had or hadn't seen.

"I was inside the Rift," he said. "But it didn't act like a normal one."

Remedy stepped back fully, her expression shifting. "Didn't act like a normal Rift?" she repeated, the words turning over like she was already pulling at the thread of what that meant.

Adam opened his mouth to explain and then he caught it. The stares.

A few of the martial artists had gotten close enough to get a clear look at his face, and the pieces were clicking into place for them one by one. His eyes moved across the crowd and he remembered, with a jolt, that he hadn't activated the fake skin. His actual face was out in the open.

He didn't get the chance to do anything about it.

Felecia appeared at his side and hooked an arm around his neck before he could react, pulling him sideways into a grip that was half hug and half headlock. "There he is," she said, grinning. "Where have you been, kid? Were you just sitting in there waiting to swoop in at the last second?"

"I tried to move as fast as I could," Adam said. "Luckily I made it in time."

He pulled free from Felecia's grip and turned to Scott. No words needed. He raised his fist, and Scott met it without hesitation, the kind that needed no explanation between them.

Then Francis stepped forward.

He had been hanging back, standing apart from the others with the managers still nearby, his expression unreadable as he closed the distance. The members of Eden turned at his approach. Adam watched him come, already knowing what was coming before the man even opened his mouth.

"Mr. Adam," he said slowly. "Is that you?"

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A/N: With my finals approaching, I haven't had enough time to write or edit chapters this week. Consequently, uploads may be inconsistent. I apologize in advance for any inconvenience.