"Interesting. The Authority of Change actually pushed the system's doubling mechanism to this extent," Seraphine smiled gently. "I wonder how much higher it will go next time."
Time continued to flow in silence.
Seraphine savored the rapid surge of her powers while meticulously researching, experimenting, and deducing the Greater Divinity and the Authority of Change. She also focused on the essential updates for the "Full-Dimensional Skyroot Codex" and the "Cosmic Dawn Decree".
Another day passed.
Her overall strength skyrocketed. From previously controlling 10^78 static 3D universes in a single thought, she now reached 10^366. (Through [Self-Surge], the diameter of her interference field increased by 10^96 in a day, while her overall scale increased by 10^288.)
Simultaneously, under the Self-Surge effect of being a 6D spatial lifeform, her Physical Strength and Soul attributes ballooned from 10^21 Great Boundaries to 10^117.
After a full day, the [Infinite Attributes] system activated as scheduled. Under the deep influence of the Authority of Change, the two attributes surged by a factor of 10^110.
The attribute interface now read:
[Host: Seraphine]
[Physical Strength: 10^227 Great Boundary]
[Soul: 10^227 Great Boundary]
By just the second day after her metamorphosis, Seraphine's overall strength already dwarfed her first-day self by countless magnitudes.
This is the terrifying effect of multiple compounding surges acting in unison.
As time slowly drifted into the third day, Seraphine's cross-space-time influence magnitude surged again, ascending from 10^366 static Great Boundaries to 10^654.
Her Physical Strength and Soul attribute values, under the effect of Self-Surge, climbed to 10^323 Great Boundaries.
Furthermore, after undergoing another violent system surge, intensified by the deep intervention of the Authority of Change, these two attributes multiplied by a factor of 10^120, reaching the horrific value of 10^443 Great Boundaries.
Time continued forward.
By the end of the fourth day, Seraphine's interference field magnitude had exploded to 10^942 static Great Boundaries.
Her Physical Strength and Soul attributes, through the multiple effects of Self-Surge, system doubling, and the Authority of Change, fiercely grew to 10^689 Great Boundaries.
Under the Authority's deep involvement, the system's multiplication factor reached 10^150 this time.
Then, as the fifth day concluded.
The interference field magnitude skyrocketed to 10^1230 static Great Boundaries.
Seraphine's Physical Strength and Soul attribute values, under the continued joint surges, expanded to 10^985 Great Boundaries.
Under the Authority's relentless squeezing, the system's multiplication factor climbed once more, reaching 10^200.
Next came the sixth day.
Seraphine's interference field magnitude smoothly surged to 10^1518 static Great Boundaries.
As for the two main attributes, the multi-surge mechanism drove them up to 10^1321 Great Boundaries.
Compared to the previous instance, the Authority's intervention was even deeper.
It violently pulled the system's multiplication factor up to a massive 10^240.
Afterward, time reached the seventh day.
By the end of this day, Seraphine's interference field magnitude surged to 10^1806 static Great Boundaries, beginning its march toward the 2000th power.
Her Physical Strength and Soul attribute values followed closely, skyrocketing to 10^1717 Great Boundaries.
Facing the intense influence of the Authority of Change, the system's multiplication factor was abruptly pulled up to 10^300.
What shocked Seraphine even more was that, facing this deep intervention from her Authority, the [Infinite Attributes] system... actually began to show signs of being unable to bear the load.
While processing the attribute surge, several hairline fractures flickered across its interface.
As these cracks appeared, Seraphine's perception, already hundreds of magnitudes below the Planck scale, instantly caught the system's true location.
It was buried deep within her... her very own Root Divinity.
"So, it was hidden in my Divinity all along, and buried so deep. However..."
Seraphine contemplated for a moment and then laughed. "It seems the maximum output for the system's attribute doubling is only 10^300. Judging by those cracks, if I intervened any deeper, it might just... shatter.
Tch, tch. This little companion has been with me through everything, but now it looks so pathetic. It's actually a bit of a letdown."
Once, Seraphine had taken it for granted that the [Infinite Attributes] system was an omnipotent vessel.
Even after she became strong enough to exert powerful influence over it, she still tended to believe it was a limitless, supreme Artifact.
But now she saw the truth, even this incredible system had a ceiling and a clear range of capability.
This realization left Seraphine with a strange sense of disappointment.
"If it can be observed, it can be influenced; if it can be manipulated, it can be discarded."
Seraphine let out a faint sigh. "When my Self-Surge capability evolves further, reaching the point where it completely surpasses the doubling limit of the [Infinite Attributes] system... that will likely be the moment it is discarded."
From the moment she transmigrated until today, the system had been a diligent provider of massive aid.
Even if Seraphine suspected the system had its own hidden agenda, without its help during the early, middle, and even late stages of her growth, it would have been nearly impossible to rise so rapidly.
It had allowed her to cut through all obstacles, evolving from a 3D carbon-based mortal across multiple dimensions to reach the 6D level, escaping the fate of being nothing more than lower-dimensional weeds.
However, everything that has a beginning must inevitably have an end.
No matter how miraculous the system is, as long as it is not an entity of Actual Infinite, it must possess its limits. And now, Seraphine had finally touched those limits.
"The next step is to research how the system influences the entire operational mechanism of the Phenomenal Realm from the Essential Realm perspective," Seraphine mused.
On the eighth day, her interference field magnitude ascended to 10^2094 static Great Boundaries.
She had officially breached the 2000th-power level.
Her Physical Strength and Soul attributes followed closely. Under the joint effect of Self-Surge and the system boost, they rose to 10^2113 Great Boundaries, likewise reaching the 2000th-power mark.
At this point, they officially surpassed the breadth and intensity of her interference field.
But just like the seventh day, even with the deep intervention of the Authority of Change, the system's attribute doubling factor remained stuck at 10^300, unable to rise even a fraction higher.
It wasn't that the power of the Authority was insufficient.
It was simply that Seraphine could clearly feel that if she continued to penetrate the system's core mechanism and forcibly pushed its multiplication factor higher, the system would likely malfunction or collapse on the spot.
She wasn't ready to see that result yet.
One reason was that Seraphine still felt a trace of nostalgia toward the system. Like a pair of old sneakers worn for years, a long-used smartphone, or a beloved offline game, one doesn't simply throw them away on a whim.
The second reason was that Seraphine had yet to fully decipher the system's true origin, its purpose, and its entire functional mechanism.
Thus, she chose to let go, refusing to drain the pond to catch the fish.
Ultimately, Seraphine's attribute growth factor became relatively fixed at 10^396 per day.
Even gaining a single extra magnitude was impossible. Since the system's limit had been reached, pushing it further would only lead to its destruction.
To raise the growth factor again, she would likely have to rely on her own Self-Surge characteristic and slowly evolve to the next level.
That characteristic, however, evolved at an agonizingly slow pace, with not a single sign of progress in sight.
Ending these thoughts, Seraphine poured her energy into a long journey of research.
And time, without a moment's pause, continued its relentless surge toward the future.
The ninth day, the tenth, the twentieth, the fiftieth...
Time flew like a weaver's shuttle, as fast as a galloping horse glimpsed through a crack.
Soon, over 300 days had passed.
The lost branch of time, lasting exactly one year, was finally drawing to a close.
The vast cosmic void was empty and desolate.
Standing within this boundless nothingness, Seraphine, having undergone 365 days of multi-layered surges, now emanated a terrifying aura, a roaring, boiling presence capable of instantly collapsing and annihilating immeasurable dimensional space-times.
At that moment, she suddenly raised her hand and lightly flicked her fingers.
BUZZ——
The boundless cosmos suddenly throbbed, rippling with waves of space-time that were profoundly complex and deep.
SWOOSH——
Space-time surged like ocean waves.
Suddenly, throughout the infinite void surrounding Seraphine, 10^3003 pinpoints of light appeared. Each was merely the size of a hydrogen atom, a hazy speck that could barely be glimpsed even under the most powerful scanning tunneling microscope.
If one were to instantly magnify these 10^3003 tiny specks of light, they would discover that they were... clearly individual Static 3D Great Boundaries, each with a diameter of 10^132 light-years.
Within these Great Boundaries, miniaturized to the extreme by Seraphine's boundless might, lay the infinite Dark Ocean, the 10^252 vast Matter Seas scattered across every sector, and the countless intelligent races living within these immeasurable Matter Seas with their differing physical laws and parameters. Everything was complete, without a single error.
It could only be said that after a full year of frantic surges, Seraphine's power had ascended to an inconceivable realm.
Thus, with a mere flick of her finger, she could instantly create the massive 3D universes that once seemed so gargantuan and impassable to countless lower-dimensional civilizations.
Furthermore, the quantity she created was infinitely larger than the total number of micro-particles within an entire 3D Great Boundary.
Through Seraphine's incredibly miraculous and profound space-time manipulation, each of these 3D universes, originally so vast their boundaries exceeded the imagination of any lower-dimensional civilization, had been easily compressed to such a minute scale.
Even so, this feat presented no difficulty for her; it was as effortless as breathing.
For Seraphine's interference field magnitude, after a full year of continuous surges, had reached the terrifying level of 10^104,910 static Great Boundaries.
That is the 100,000th-power level.
Her Physical Strength and Soul attributes had reached 10^149,821 Great Boundaries, very close to the 150,000th-power level.
It could be said that a so-called String Emperor was as tiny as a dust particle before such power, practically zero.
Yet, one wondered what kind of power a String Sovereign, who sits above the String Emperor, would possess.
Would they be weaker than Seraphine, stronger, or still many, many times more powerful?
For now, it was impossible to know.
SNAP——
Seraphine raised her hand and gave a light clap. The 10^3003 ultra-miniaturized static 3D Great Boundaries scattered throughout the void, along with the countless Matter Seas and civilizations within them, vanished silently into nothingness.
"Three seconds left."
She counted silently in her mind. "In three seconds, I will return to the real timeline."
Three, two, one...
BUZZ——
Everything blurred; space-time became a haze.
In a flash, Seraphine returned from the lost time branch to the real world.
At the very instant of her return, thousands of terrifying interference fields from all directions, powerful enough to shred and vaporize the universe, ruthlessly descended upon her.
"Too noisy."
Seraphine let out a faint sigh, "Vanish."
BUZZ——
In a heartbeat, this entire vast, boundless 3D universe fell completely still.
Energy, matter, information, space-time... every phenomenon defined as motion ceased under Seraphine's will. Even the quantum vacuum ocean hidden behind the layers of space-time structure was no exception.
Everything collapsed into a state of stasis more absolute than absolute zero.
As for those thousands of interference fields, the 2,500 Ancient Strings, and the 5 Ultimate Strings, along with the high-dimensional weaponry they wielded, they simply evaporated into nothingness at the moment of Seraphine's sigh.
Quintillions of space-times away, Heavenly Hegemon, who had been closely monitoring the battlefield, was instantly paralyzed with confusion.
"What, what happened? What just happened?!"
In the midst of his bewilderment, Seraphine opened her Eye of Transcendence. Piercing through quintillions of space-times and following the invisible threads of karma, she stared coldly at him.
That gaze, indifferent and freezing as an eternal winter, instantly struck Heavenly Hegemon with such terror that he couldn't even twitch.
BUZZ——
The moment that cold gaze reached Heavenly Hegemon across the vast distance, her will materialized within his Non-Static Global-Inflation universe. It coalesced into a colossal hand, 10^108 times larger than the combined mass of 10^108 static 3D Great Boundaries. With a deafening roar, it reached out to seize the Coordinated Foam where Heavenly Hegemon resided.
Heavenly Hegemon, frozen in the center of his massive training ground, watched the sky-shrouding hand loom over the infinite void of the foam. He didn't even have the power to open a space-time gate to flee. He could only strain his flickering pupils and manage a ragged, strained whisper: "Can... we... ne... negotiate...?"
The next instant, the gargantuan hand descended, and space-time wailed in agony.
BOOM!!!
After crushing that Coordinated Foam, 10^130 light-years in diameter, the hand seized a half-dead Heavenly Hegemon and instantly pulled him back across the void into Seraphine's space-time.
...
Seraphine, perhaps because she was now so excessively powerful, felt that at every single moment, the universe beneath her feet... was so narrow and fragile it was simply silencing.
If a single murderous thought flickered in her mind, and she accidentally channeled even a tiny fraction of her total power, this entire Static 3D Great Boundary might be pulverized and reshaped, over and over, countless times.
And the immeasurable living beings within it wouldn't notice a single thing.
Fragile.
The universe was truly far too fragile.
Fragile... just like the trembling Heavenly Hegemon kneeling before her, unable to even stutter out a coherent plea for mercy. With a single thought, Seraphine could annihilate him quintillions of times over.
"Heavenly Hegemon ~"
A cold voice drifted down leisurely from the infinite heights above.
Heavenly Hegemon, kneeling in the dark void and consumed by terror, frantically raised his head and stammered a panicked response: "He-here! I... I am here!"
While responding in a panic, Heavenly Hegemon couldn't help but wail in his mind: 'String Emperor... This is definitely a String Emperor! Only a String Emperor could be this powerful! Eternal String above, what sin did I commit to provoke a being at the String Emperor level!'
"Truly unsightly, Heavenly Hegemon."
Seraphine quietly gazed at the pathetic King String kneeling on the ground below, sighing leisurely:
"Clearly a powerhouse who can obliterate ten thousand universes with a single thought, yet here you are, groveling like a dog wagging its tail for its master. You... have no dignity at all, looking just like an insect."
After hearing these words, Heavenly Hegemon showed no shame, bowing repeatedly: "Yes, yes, you are right, Your Excellency. Compared to your supreme self, I am indeed just an insect."
"Heh."
Seraphine chuckled softly.
She knew that deep in his soul, he didn't truly think that way.
Such a calculated show of submission was merely a bid to save his life. Even without performing soul-searching, the massive power gap meant Heavenly Hegemon's surface memories and thoughts couldn't hide from Seraphine's perception, which permeated the entire boundless universe.
Seraphine could clearly feel the intense unwillingness and cold hatred buried deep within his mind.
From the fragmented memories floating on the surface of his consciousness, this 6D King String named Heavenly Hegemon appeared domineering on the outside, but was actually a bottomless, greedy void.
Driven by that greed, his Heavenly Hegemon Corp operated like a cosmic East India Company, executing eons of extreme exploitation across more than a Googol (10^100) static 3D universes.
However, his various methods of extraction were quite impressive.
Even a small Matter Sea, under Heavenly Hegemon's management, could be squeezed for over 10 units of Spirit Crystal in just a hundred million years; the largest Matter Seas could be forced to yield over 40 units.
That being the case, those more than a Googol of static universes, in just 10^52 time, could generate over 400 units of Spirit Crystal for Heavenly Hegemon.
And these were still only his most basic and legitimate industries.
If one factored in his presence across tens of millions of Non-Static Global-Inflation universes, buried deep within every Coordinated Foam, the scale became truly immense. He owned or controlled assassin camps, swindling syndicates, counterfeit Spirit Crystal production lines, contraband smuggling fleets, illegal casinos of all sizes, karmic debt-collecting loan sharks, black-money laundering platforms, forged karmic contract offices, private data theft squads, low-quality arms manufacturing syndicates, and credit Spirit Crystal fraud teams... across this exhaustive list of illicit businesses, the profits Heavenly Hegemon raked in every single second were absolutely staggering.
Beyond all those shady ventures, this guy's greed knew no bounds. To turn a profit, he would even kidnap the infants of his own kind, young String race geniuses still in their dormant stage, and sell them off to other Singularity Swarms for a massive payout.
Through the continuous operation of these countless black and gray industries over endless eons, Heavenly Hegemon's personal net worth had stacked up to a horrifying amount, exceeding a thousand units of Spirit Crystal.
Theoretically, counting his total assets would require writing a 1 followed by exactly 1,000 zeros.
Heavenly Hegemon was, in every sense, a multi-dimensional tycoon.
Supporting this wealth were even more String race lackeys, willing to aid the tyrant for Spirit Crystal.
Debt collectors like Lavender, multi-tasking and ruthless, numbered over ten million under Heavenly Hegemon's command.
Agents like Genarkrail, who traversed every universe's space-time to squeeze out Spirit Crystal, acting as world-destroying demon kings to lower-dimensional races, also numbered in the tens of millions.
Then there were the Security Department members, like the 2,505 who had previously besieged Seraphine with high-dimensional weaponry; their total numbers exceeded hundreds of millions.
Beyond these three groups, there were product managers, scammers, counterfeiters, appraisers, thieves, crooked dealers, and assassins... added together, the total likely surpassed a billion String race personnel.
"Breathtaking. You even sell the children of your own race."
Seraphine shook her head in amazement. "It's one thing to be evil, but to be this filthy and depraved... it truly opens my eyes."
Having said that, she looked down at the incessantly trembling Heavenly Hegemon and spoke indifferently:
"Originally, I intended to humiliate and toy with you as a response to your previous arrogance.
But seeing your pathetic state today, I... have suddenly lost all interest."
"Ah? Really?!"
Heavenly Hegemon was overjoyed, seizing the chance to plead desperately. "I beg you, I beg you to spare me! Everything was my fault, my utter ignorance and stupidity for daring to offend a True God like you! I... I am willing to offer all my assets to you, just... just give me a chance to live!"
"Hmm, truly a collection of unsightly behaviors."
Seraphine shook her head slightly. "You are really not worth another shred of my effort. So be it."
VROM ——
An invisible force descended upon Heavenly Hegemon, instantly packaging and copying every single one of his memories, plundering them entirely.
Next, the Authority of Change quietly activated.
"Turn this guy into... a 3D carbon-based maggot."
BOOM ——
Space-time surged; the universe shook.
Under the majestic power of the Authority of Change, which had evolved several times into something even more divine, the terrifying power within Heavenly Hegemon's body, capable of instantly obliterating billions of universes, vanished without a trace or sign.
Afterward, his formidable 6D body and 6D soul shattered and plummeted in tandem, forcefully downgraded to the 3D level.
Even his high-tier Materialized Spirituality, painstakingly transformed using countless Spirit Crystals as "fuel", rapidly decayed and grew murky, degenerating into an ordinary Spirituality inferior even to that of a carbon-based mortal.
"W-what happened?!"
Completely demoted to the 3D realm by Seraphine, Heavenly Hegemon was now nothing more than a plump, grayish-white maggot the size of a palm. He looked around in utter bewilderment, only to find his vision clouded in total blurriness.
It was as if he possessed no real eyesight at all.
"Why... why is everything so blurry? Why can't I hear properly? Where is my 6D perception? What on earth just happened?!"
Limbless and powerless, Heavenly Hegemon floated helplessly in the dark expanse of the vacuum, unable to move even an inch.
Right then, a cold, haughty divine voice pierced into his mind:
"From this moment on, you will be trapped in an immortal, eternally regenerating body that can never evolve, equipped only with feeble sight, feeble hearing, feeble smell, feeble touch, and excruciating sensitivity to pain.
No one will ever understand your thoughts or cries, and your memories and emotions will register as a total blank to the senses of others.
You will starve, yet you will be unable to ingest any food or absorb any energy, including Ether, except for excrement.
So... enjoy. Enjoy your new life as a maggot."
The divine voice faded.
Heavenly Hegemon froze on the spot, as if struck by lightning.
"No... No... PLEASE, NO!!"
Snapping back to reality, he wailed and shrieked in absolute despair within his feeble consciousness: "Don't do this to me! I was wrong, I beg you to spare me, I beg you..."
VROM ——
A miniature space-time portal manifested instantly, sucking in the wriggling, cocoon-like Heavenly Hegemon. In a split second, it bridged a distance of hundreds of quintillions of light-years, dropping him into a filthy swamp on the surface of a rocky planet identical to Earth, located in a small galaxy within a minor Matter Sea.
SQUELCH!
The moment the palm-sized Heavenly Hegemon landed in the mire, a starving Nile crocodile snapped him up, tearing into him and swallowing him whole.
"AAAAAARGH, IT HURTS SO DAMN MUCH!!!"
Thanks to his infinite regeneration, after wailing in agony from being shredded to pieces, Heavenly Hegemon snapped back to his intact form inside the crocodile's gut in an instant.
But that was hardly a blessing.
The thick, turbid digestive enzymes and stomach acid immediately went to work, corroding his soft, plump flesh from every angle.
A far more excruciating torment plunged him straight into personal purgatory.
Heavenly Hegemon wouldn't die, his life force made Wolverine look fragile by comparison, yet unless he found a way out of the beast's stomach, he was destined to endure this agony for a very, very long time.
Naturally, this was only the tutorial phase of his new life as a maggot.
Ahead lay even greater challenges.
In fact, there was plenty Heavenly Hegemon didn't know yet.
Seraphine had no intention of spoiling the surprise, as explaining it would have ruined the fun.
What Heavenly Hegemon didn't realize was that if his mind broke and dragged his physical shell into a near-death state, a dormant power within him would trigger immediately, dragging him back to life in a heartbeat.
On the other hand, if he stayed optimistic enough to endure and actually adapt to this nightmarish maggot existence across endless eons...
Then another burst of power would materialize out of thin air, forcibly collapsing his dimensionality down to 2D and banishing him to some dull planar universe, forcing him to scrape by as a flat, two-dimensional maggot stripped of all depth and height.
If he somehow adapted to 2D life after countless eons, another unseen force would materialize out of nowhere to collapse his dimension again, banishing him into a 1D line-segment universe to survive as a one-dimensional maggot stripped of everything except length.
If Heavenly Hegemon proved so resilient that he could even endure a 1D environment, he would be dimensionally collapsed once more and cast into a 0D point-like universe devoid of volume or size, rotting in absolute isolation like a life sentence until the end of time.
If he could endure even that, clinging to life at any cost...
A voice from the void would echo in his consciousness, telling Heavenly Hegemon that he had only a single day left to live.
Once that single day passed, he would face total annihilation.
Yet, the moment Heavenly Hegemon reconciled with reality during that day and calmly accepted death, the voice would chime in once more, informing him that his solitary confinement was resuming indefinitely.
This was the punishment Seraphine tailored for Heavenly Hegemon.
Every desire denied, every hope weaponized against him.
"How many years will he last?"
Seraphine pondered silently for a moment before shifting her focus entirely to Heavenly Hegemon's packaged memories.
"I wonder what secrets are hidden in these memories."
Driven by curiosity, she unlocked the memory archive within her mind.
Right from the start, she stumbled upon the classification records concerning the so-called String Sovereign tier.
Stripping away layers of useless data, the records revealed that a String Sovereign possessed an interference field scale equivalent to 10^37218383881977644441306597687849648128 Static 3D Great Boundaries.
In other words, within a single Eka-citta, a String Sovereign could manipulate, recreate, or utterly erase 10^37218383881977644441306597687849648128 static 3D universes, each spanning 10^132 light-years in diameter.
"What the hell?"
Seraphine blurted out in genuine shock. "Is this on the level of Shi Tianwu (Martial God Ultimate)?"
She had believed she was already formidable enough, but compared to this 10^37218383881977644441306597687849648128 tier... she was still practically a speck of dust.
"Fair enough."
Recovering from her astonishment, Seraphine regained her composure and triggered the Authority of Change:
"Erase... ten thousand years of my time."
VROM ——
In a fraction of a millisecond, Seraphine's aura skyrocketed countless times over.
Within that single fleeting instant, she had stepped into a "severed" branch of time and spent a full ten thousand years cultivating.
Her interference field surged from 10^104910 static Great Boundaries to a staggering 10^10512104910 static Great Boundaries.
Simultaneously, Seraphine's two primary attribute values exploded from 10^149821 Great Boundaries all the way up to 10^14454149821 Great Boundaries.
Beyond that, her [Self-Surge] trait underwent a miraculous evolution after enduring those ten thousand years.
Her interference field growth rate expanded from its original multiplier of 10^288 per day to a monumental 10^2880 multiplier per day.
The growth rate of her attributes underwent an even more terrifying qualitative leap.
Climbing from an initial 10^96 per day, it abruptly surged to match the former at 10^2880 per day.
Factoring in the system's baseline daily boost of 10^300, Seraphine's daily attribute growth rate instantly reached a multiplier of 10^3180.
"Interesting. It took only ten thousand years for [Self-Surge] to evolve. In that case..."
Seraphine engaged the Authority of Change once more. "Erase... one hundred million years of my time."