The crystal guardian's arm descended like a mountain — a titanic blade formed from living crystal, jagged and shimmering with blinding light. Zhen leaped backward, narrowly avoiding being crushed. The impact shattered the ground, sending crystalline shards flying in every direction like blades of light.
[Danger: Class-A Entity — Crystalline Guardian of the First Core]
[Initiating Dimensional Combat Mode…]
The system's voice was calm, but Zhen's heart pounded like a war drum. He had faced powerful foes before, but this one wasn't just strong — it was ancient, infused with laws of protection forged at the dawn of multiverse creation.
And it didn't just attack.
It tested.
Each strike was precise, as if trying to determine Zhen's strength, his flaws, his limits.
Zhen's aura flared, the Celestial Riftblade singing with power. Runes ignited along the blade's edge, burning with golden-blue fire. His soul pulsed in rhythm with the multiverse — ever evolving.
He dashed forward, blade dancing like a storm. The guardian met him head-on, crystal arms shifting forms — sword, hammer, lance, shield — adapting with every move.
Clang!
Steel met crystal.
Boom!
Power clashed in a shockwave that cracked trees and shook the nexus.
Zhen's mind remained razor-sharp. He didn't need brute force — he needed strategy.
He shifted to the Dragon-Shadow Step, a movement technique he'd absorbed from a fallen Ranker in the World of Falling Suns. His form blurred, vanishing and reappearing around the guardian like flickering afterimages.
He struck — a dozen slashes in the blink of an eye — aiming for the guardian's joints, its glowing core embedded in the chest.
But the guardian adapted. It released a burst of sonic resonance, disrupting dimensional anchors and staggering Zhen mid-strike.
[HP -17%. Dimensional Instability Detected. Rebalancing…]
Zhen gritted his teeth. "This thing isn't just strong… it's learning me."
But so was he.
He closed his eyes briefly, activating the Multiversal Insight Rune—one of the runes awakened during his trial in the Mirror Labyrinth. Time seemed to slow. The world's structure unfolded — crystalline ley lines, energy flows, the guardian's motion vectors.
He saw it all.
A flicker of opportunity.
Zhen surged forward, dodging a downward smash, planted a foot on the guardian's knee, and propelled himself upward, blade raised.
"Heaven-Sunder Art: Second Form — Spiral Severance!"
A spiraling arc of power erupted from the Riftblade as he cleaved downward, striking the guardian's core directly.
For a moment, the world froze.
Then — a pulse.
Cracks webbed across the guardian's chest. Its crystal form glowed brilliantly… then shattered into a rain of radiant shards.
Zhen landed on one knee, gasping, his blade embedded into the ground.
Silence returned.
Then, a soft hum.
The shard of the Multiversal Core floated upward from the ruins, now freed. It hovered before him — a radiant fragment that pulsed in harmony with his own life force.
[You have obtained: Multiversal Core Fragment #1]
[Core Power unlocked: Temporal Resonance — grants partial immunity to time-based abilities and enhanced future sight.]
[Reward: +3,000 Rank Points | New Skill Unlocked: Chrono-Sense (Lv1)]
Zhen reached out, and the core fragment melted into his chest, merging with his soul. A surge of energy rushed through him — not violent, but infinite in depth. He could feel the multiverse whispering to him. Time slowed. Paths unfolded.
And then… he saw her.
A vision.
A girl, standing amidst the ruins of a burning world — her eyes sad, yet defiant, holding a shard of a core. She turned… and looked directly at him.
"Zhen," she whispered.
He gasped. "Lianhua?"
But the vision faded before he could speak again.
A voice echoed in his mind — cold and distant.
"The cores remember each other… and so do the souls they've touched."
Zhen stood, tightening his grip. "So she's alive… and she's involved."
Another tremor shook the world.
The portal behind him reopened, swirling with ancient glyphs and starfire patterns.
But before he stepped through, the system chimed again.
[Warning: Entity Approaching — Origin Unstable. Prepare for contact.]
A black tear split open the sky.
From it emerged a man — tall, cloaked in dark light, face half-covered by a mask of obsidian. In his hand was a strange weapon — a spear of void crystal and blood rune.
Zhen's eyes narrowed. The pressure radiating from this man was suffocating.
The man spoke, voice like silk dragged over razors.
"You've taken the first shard," he said. "Impressive."
"Who are you?" Zhen demanded.
"A shadow of what you could become," the man replied. "Or a mirror of what you must destroy."
He pointed the spear at Zhen.
"Don't gather the cores. Or you'll awaken them."
Zhen's gaze didn't waver. "Then I'll awaken them. And destroy what needs to be destroyed."
The man smiled… then vanished into the void.
The portal pulsed again, beckoning.
Zhen exhaled. His path was clear.
He stepped through, into the next world — where another core fragment awaited, and where destiny twisted ever tighter around his soul.
Zhen's breath came heavy as the Guardian's shattered form began to reform, each crystal fragment reversing through time and clicking back into place. It wasn't dead — not entirely. The realm itself was rebuilding it.
"This place isn't just sentient... it resists entropy," he thought grimly.
He sheathed his sword for a moment and activated his internal Divine Core Matrix. Threads of data flooded his mind:
Multiversal Temporal Axis: Active
Quantum Restoration Protocol Detected
Access Level Required: Multiversal Administrator Tier
"Administrator tier..." Zhen muttered. That level was beyond even most realm lords — it was closer to the beings who had designed the Ascension System itself.
The Guardian's voice rumbled, now resonating from every shard in the clearing. "You have shown strength. But strength is insufficient. To claim a Core Fragment is to become its anchor — its memory, its path, and its burden."
Zhen didn't flinch. "Then I'll bear all three."
From his chest, the threads of his own rune—etched into his soul since his awakening—blazed with silvery flames. The resonance awakened something deeper within the forest. The sky cracked. Dozens of spectral figures began forming around him — all previous challengers who had failed, their echoes now trapped in this nexus realm.
One stepped forward — a woman in imperial armor, eyes brimming with regret. "You walk a road of sorrow and unraveling, boy," she said softly. "Are you ready to give up everything you were, to become what the multiverse needs?"
"I already have," Zhen answered. "I don't know who I was before the system chose me. I barely know who I am now. But I'll choose who I become."
The moment he spoke those words, a pillar of crystal erupted beneath him, launching him high above the canopy. He shot through layers of dimension-light, breaking through memory fields and fragmented records of forgotten timelines.
As he soared upward, visions bombarded him:
— A world where he died at birth.
— A world where he became a tyrant.
— A world where he never awakened the system at all, living quietly and dying in obscurity.
Each timeline tried to pull him into itself — each possibility a thread of what he could have been. But Zhen's rune blazed through it all.
"I'm not your puppet," he shouted. "I am the Ranker — chosen or not!"
At the peak of the crystalline tower, a sphere of swirling energy awaited him — the Core Fragment of Potential, the first piece of the shattered Multiversal Heart.
As his hand closed around it, the world exploded with light. The nexus forest shattered into floating islands, the Guardian vanishing in a final flash of acknowledgment.
Zhen fell through space.
When he landed, he was back in the Temple of Ascension, kneeling on the white marble floor. The fragment now hovered beside him, orbiting gently like a moon around its star.
A familiar voice echoed from the temple's vaults — the System Spirit's voice, now clearer, almost... proud.
[Core Fragment Integrated: 1/13]
[New Path Unlocked: Anchor of Destiny]
[Hidden Trait Revealed: Temporal Paradox Immunity]
He stood slowly, head pounding from the flood of information. One down. Twelve to go.
As he turned to leave the temple, he found not silence, but the soft rustle of cloth.
A figure stood at the far entrance — cloaked in gold, eyes hidden beneath a porcelain mask carved with a laughing dragon. They radiated pressure equal to a realm emperor.
"You found the first piece," the figure said, voice neither male nor female. "Then you've already become a variable."
Zhen frowned. "And who are you supposed to be?"
The figure bowed slightly, lips curving into a knowing smile.
"I am the one who watches. The one the System does not name. And your journey just intersected with something far older than the Ascension itself."
Before Zhen could ask more, the figure vanished, leaving only a golden lotus in its place — pulsing with energy older than the stars.
Zhen picked it up slowly, his fingers tingling.
A new chapter of the multiverse had just opened.