The silence in the arena lasted only a moment longer.
Prism Madonna lifted her visor back into place. Her expression remained calm, but the presence around her had changed. Her voice echoed through the floating arena.
"I am Astaraela, the ninety-seventh strongest immortal of the Immortal Anchor, also known as Prism Madonna. If anyone wants to challenge me, I'll be ready. However, I will not be participating in the Forge Tournament."
That made the crowd even more unsettled.
Her gaze moved over the spectators, the faction representatives, the host and the competitors.
"I used this tournament to reveal myself and make my name known. I spent one hundred years killing one hundred and fifty million in a war that was supposed to be for entertainment. I endured a century of hell, battle and slaughter. The organization of the Factions and Pantheons in this realm has disgusted me long enough."
A few people in the stands went rigid at that. Some looked offended. Some looked nervous. Some looked like they wanted to stop listening but couldn't.
"So I'm going to change it. But since I want to do the favor of honoring this tournament, allow me to present my creation."
Calimostria appeared again in the form of a staff. Sapphire crystals the size of hands floated around her in a vast shimmering surge. Souls poured out of Calimostria and embedded themselves inside the crystal structures, making the whole mass glow. It was beautiful in the most unsettling way possible.
The arena stared in utter shock. Prism Madonna was creating artificial Archivist Stones. Everyone was too stunned to speak or react.
Far away from the floating arena, in the Pleasure Faction VIP section, a man sat watching with growing interest.
He had pink hair, multicolored eyes and a beautiful build that made even the luxurious robes draped around him look more elegant than expensive. Women were gathered around him almost naturally, fawning over his presence, leaning close, smiling too much and clearly trying to win his attention without saying it outright. His attention was on Astaraela for four reasons.
First, she was extremely strong and clearly skilled in battle. That alone made her worth watching.
Second, she was gender fluid and could change gender if she desired, which made her far more interesting to him than a simple beauty ever could. He appreciated flexibility, especially when it came with that much power.
Third, she possessed Creation's Defiance, Rank Three of the Universal Crystals. That was not a trivial detail. Universal Crystals were the highest tier of precious materials in the context he cared about and Creation's Defiance was one of the best possible crystals for forging. It was rare, difficult to stabilize and enormously valuable to anyone who knew what they were looking at.
And fourth, she had both a Stellar Body and Mystic Eyes. That combination mattered even more.
Body Enhancements were extremely rare not just in mortals, but in immortals and Divine Beings too. Most beings never awakened one at all. The few who did usually had one enhancement and one only, and even that was enough to change their path completely. Mystic Eyes were a perfect example. They were known to appear most often in mortals, but even then they were uncommon. For a divine being to possess them was a serious anomaly. Astaraela had them anyway. On top of that, she had the Stellar Body, the highest grade magecraft body in existence.
The man in the VIP section leaned back with one hand resting against the arm of his seat. One of the servants standing nearby glanced at him and asked.
"Should I report this to the Beauty Goddesses?"
He did not look away from the arena.
"No."
"My lord?"
"I came to watch a boring event. I might as well enjoy it properly."
"Should I inform your wife?"
He finally looked over. His expression was mildly amused.
"No. There's no need. I'm not strong enough to defy the Deities of the Pantheons. Let me enjoy this alone before the rest of the situation becomes my problem."
The servant bowed quickly and stepped back.
Below, the woman in the arena was still standing at the center of the floating platform. Astaraela did not stop at the revelation. She lifted her hand and looked up at the field of sapphire crystals she had created. They were already vast enough to fill the sky above the floating platform.
"The Factions use Archivist Stones to force immortals into dependence. If you want to live here, you need Stones. If you need Stones, you need a Faction."
A few people in the stands glanced at each other uneasily. Some of the faction representatives had already gone still, because they understood where this was going before she said it.
She raised her hand towards the crystal sky.
The sapphire masses trembled and the souls within Calimostria answered. The crystals began to change. The hard blue surface changed until the color shifted with a pale white core inside the blue.
Tens of thousands of artificial Archivist Stones were created.
The sky over the floating arena filled with them, each one ready to delay Decay, crafted not from mining or faction control but from her own power. The spectators could see it happening in real time and that was what made it terrifying. She was turning a battlefield's worth of soul-bearing crystal into a resource the entire Immortal Anchor depended on. Astaraela looked over the stands and spoke again.
"From now on, I'm making a new faction called The Mercuria Faction. It will be a two-person faction. We'll sell Archivist Stones in exchange for souls. For those of you suffering from a lack of Archivist Stones and struggling to delay your Decay, do not worry. I'm giving them away for free right now as an opening discount."
She opened Fool's Copy.
The golden cube expanded in an instant, growing larger and larger until it became a massive floating construct that overshadowed the entire arena. The surface gleamed with engraved patterns. The front face of it opened. Artificial Archivist Stones poured out in an enormous stream, gently floating downwards rather than falling due to gravity.
The stones drifted over the stadium, into the lower sections and down towards the city below. They descended into the streets of Shenlu Cheng beneath the arena.
People below reached up. Spectators on the outer decks stared. Immortals who had lived too long under the pressure of faction-controlled survival looked up in shock as the stones came down to them, freely available instead of being shared through a hierarchy of obedience. People who had been struggling to survive now had something to hold onto that the factions had used as a leash for generations.
Astaraela threw her arms as if welcoming the entire Immortal Anchor into a new era.
"It's time, for a new age to begin. I will be the main supplier of Archivist Stones for the entire Immortal Anchor."
The man in the Pleasure Faction VIP section had gone very still by then. His multicolored eyes narrowed. He understood instantly what she had done. Archivist Stones were the mechanism by which the factions controlled immortals. It was how they made sure immortals stayed dependent, compliant and reachable. If you controlled the Stones, you controlled the survival clock. If you controlled survival, you controlled their behavior.
Astaraela had just broken that system in public. Worse, she had offered the alternative before anyone else could react.
That meant every faction now had two options. They could work with her and buy Archivist Stones from her, or they could watch their entire model of control start to collapse. Every immortal who had ever been denied Stones, every one who had ever been forced into faction service just to keep from fading would now have a reason to look at Mercuria instead.
The man in the VIP section narrowed his eyes. He understood immediately that this was not a flashy tantrum. Astaraela had identified the single resource that kept the Immortal Anchor obedient and had just announced she would monopolize its replacement. If she became the only reliable supplier of Archivist Stones, then every faction would be forced to negotiate with her or risk losing control over the immortals they depended on.
The man in the VIP section let out a slow breath. He could already see the nightmare she had created for the Factions and Pantheons. They would not be able to ignore this. They could not simply seize the Stones because she had made the supply public and decentralized the immediate crisis with free distribution. She had made the factions' own control system into a liability.
That was the brilliance of it. She had attacked the necessity of their power. Worse still, she had alleviated her wrongdoings of killing millions of people in the one hundred year war.
Astaraela stood in the center of the floating arena with her visor on, her staff at her side and her body glowing with the residual force of the transformation. Around her, Archivist Stones continued to float down in thousands, touching hands and spilling into Shenlu Cheng below. The crowd could barely process what they were seeing. Some were overwhelmed. Some were grateful. Some were frightened. Astaraela, meanwhile, looked almost satisfied.
"I will see you all very soon. When this runs out, I will be back."
-----
What happened next was not a riot, not a celebration or even a political panic the Factions were expecting.
It was relief.
At first, the arena remained stunned. A woman who had just confessed to a century of slaughter was suddenly standing there distributing life-saving resources to anyone who needed them. That contradiction made people hesitate and in that hesitation, the first Archivist Stones reached the poorest immortals in the lower stands and on the streets below Shenlu Cheng.
The ones closest to Decay felt it first. Their skin had been thinning into that sickly, rotting state that every immortal feared. In Decay, the body slowly degrades like a corpse that had not yet been allowed to die. Their eyes grow dull, their joints stiffen and their breathing grows ragged even when they no longer truly needed breath. Some had been living with the early stages so long they had forgotten what a healthy body felt like.
Then they got one of Astaraela's stones. The Decay stopped.
A man whose fingers had started blackening and curling like dead bark looked down at his hands and saw fresh skin return. A woman whose face had been eaten away by the creeping rot of Decay touched her cheek and felt normal flesh under her palm again. A child who had been hunched and trembling under the burden of near-death exhaustion stood upright for the first time in what must have felt like months. People who had been near the end of their lives collapsed in disbelief and then got back up with tears in their eyes because the life they thought they had already lost was still there.
In the Timeless Realm, survival was the one thing people never took lightly.
Her artificial Archivist Stones were immediately recognized as different from the natural ones not just by their shine, though they were cleaner and more beautiful in a way that made the old mined stones look rough by comparison. It was also not just by their durability, though that was obvious too. The real difference was in how they behaved.
Natural Archivist Stones had always been a compromise. They could be consumed, ground to powder, absorbed through touch, or in weaker cases even chewed, though that was more common among desperate lower immortals who no longer had the luxury of taste or dignity. But their use always came with risk like nausea, dizziness or extreme insomnia. The body did not like being forced to stretch survival across time and most users lived with some side effect or another. Worse, even the best natural stones only delayed Decay. They did not stop it. They bought time. That was all.
Astaraela's did more.
They worked as one-time-use cores, which immediately made them useful in a completely different way.
Immortals could carry them in their pockets, keep them as accessories, sew them into clothing or wear them like pendants and small ornaments. They would negate Decay's spread while they lasted and when the stone was spent, it would not leave the same crushing fallout that natural stones often did. It did turn to smooth particles that vanished into the air once it was done though.
It caused no nausea, no dizziness, no insomnia or any sickly effects after use. It took three days of use per stone, compared to the ten hours the usual Archivist Stones lasted. That number alone changed the entire economy of survival.
One natural stone lasting ten hours in a world with thirty hours per day meant that one immortal needed roughly three stones each day just to keep from falling apart. That meant endless consumption, endless dependency and endless pressure to stay within a Faction's reach. It also meant the poor were always trapped at the edge of collapse because three stones a day was a constant drain and even decent-quality natural stones could still cause side effects if used continuously.
Astaraela's version broke that rhythm completely. One stone could last three full days with side effects. For immortals who had been chewing, grinding or swallowing their way through survival, this was a miracle.
And because the stones were artificial, they were far more potent than the naturally made ones too. The old stones were often inconsistent. Some were weak and others were strong. Some were barely enough to keep a body from failing. Astaraela's were all consistent, all high quality and all producing the same effect. They had no visible degradation problems. Immortals could store them, carry them, use them as protective cores and even present them as ornamentation without losing the effect. That made them both practical and desirable in a way the old stones never fully achieved.
That was why the poor reacted first and hardest.
People who had heard the name Prism Madonna and thought only of slaughter began attaching a second meaning to it. The woman who had once killed millions for a century was now the only reason some immortals were alive enough to hate her properly. That contradiction worked in her favor almost instantly.
The people loved it which meant the Factions had a problem.
She had publicly revealed that she could mass-produce a superior version of the one resource they used to control immortal dependency. The old system depended on scarcity. Factions collected Archivist Stones and tied them to obedience. If you wanted to stay functional, you needed them. If you needed them, you needed a Faction. That was the chain. Astaraela shattered it in front of everyone by giving out millions of her own stones freely that day and proving they were better than the official version.
People in the Immortal Anchor are not sentimental in the usual way. They cannot afford to be. When survival is unstable, morality gets rearranged around who keeps you alive. So the Prism Madonna's past stopped mattering the moment her stones started working. Yes, she had killed millions. Yes, she had spent a century in battle. Yes, she had harvested souls and made herself into something that frightened every serious power in the realm. But that history was suddenly being measured against a more important fact: she could save people from Decay better than the Factions could.
That changed how she was treated almost overnight and not by the strongest factions at first, because they were slower to admit the shift. They tried to ignore her, contain her, mock her or frame her as unstable. But among the common immortals and even many Faction-aligned ones, the story spread fast.
The Prism Madonna, Astaraela. The immortal who could end the daily dread of Decay. The one with the better Archivist Stones. The one who had no side effects. The one whose supply lasted three times longer. In just two weeks, her name had spread through the Immortal Anchor like a necessary rumor.
People whispered it in markets. They said it in halls. They said it in line for Faction rations. They even said it in the Mortal Anchor when they were desperate enough to dream of a better future if they were able to get there. They said it in the Immortal Anchor's lower districts, where the sick and the dying had become used to hoping for very little.
"Prism Madonna has better stones."
That sentence alone did more damage to the old order than her own confession ever could.
Once people knew she could undercut the Factions' control point and do it better, the Factions had to react. They could no longer rely on people being forced into membership simply to get survival resources. Now they had real competition.
The Factions still had armies, influence.and Pantheon backing but they no longer owned the one thing most immortals needed to keep functioning. They now had to negotiate with the woman they had every reason to fear.
That was why the Prism Madonna stopped being just a battlefield horror in the eyes of the Immortal Anchor. Very quickly, she became a supplier.
And because the Timeless Realm is built on survival more than principle, people adapted fast. They began to look at her as the one who had the audacity to break the system they all hated and survive long enough to make it stick. That did not erase her crimes. It just made them a secondary issue.
By the end of two weeks, "Prism Madonna" was not just the name of a monster from a century-long war. It was a name spoken by immortals whose bodies had been saved from Decay.
And just like that, the Prism Madonna was recognized as the supplier of Archivist Stones, the 97th Strongest Immortal and the number one winner of the Forge Tournament.