The factions hardened.
Where once there had been philosophies and practices, now there were paths—distinct, disciplined, and increasingly exclusive. People no longer asked only what they believed, but how they would grow.
And growth, in this new age, took two dominant forms.
***
The first were the Cultivators of the Inner Sea.
They rejected machinery, frameworks, and external scaffolding. To them, the world's instability was proof that power should never be outsourced—not to systems, not to tools, not even to communities.
They turned inward.
Mana circulation became art and obsession. Ancient techniques were rediscovered, then broken apart, refined, recombined. Progress was measured not in output, but in depth—how much of the self could be reinforced without fracturing identity.
Their sects rose in mountains, forests, and isolated cities where silence was abundant. Masters taught patience bordering on cruelty. Advancement took years. Failure sometimes took lives.
But those who emerged were terrifyingly complete.
They called Anton a necessary heretic.
The man who had reopened the path of self-overcoming.
***
The second path surged in the opposite direction.
The Tech Ascendants believed flesh and spirit were bottlenecks—romanticized limitations masquerading as virtue. They embraced augmentation, iteration, external cognition, and recursive self-improvement through tools.
They built laboratories instead of temples.
Their cultivation was measured in upgrades, integrations, and compatibility thresholds. Mind-machine interfaces. Mana reactors. Adaptive bodies that could rewrite themselves after every failure.
Where the Inner Sea sects sought harmony, the Ascendants sought velocity.
They called Anton the first proof of concept.
The one who showed that systems could be bent without worship.
***
The tension between the two paths was immediate.
Cultivators accused the Ascendants of hollowing themselves out.
Ascendants mocked cultivators for chasing transcendence with medieval methods.
Duels happened. Not wars—yet—but demonstrations. A monk shattering steel with bare hands. A technologist rewriting local gravity with a portable field engine.
The world watched.
The system did not interfere.
***
Anton observed all of it with growing unease.
This was not balance.
This was divergence.
And divergence, left unchecked, always demanded alignment—or conflict.
***
Then came the third emergence.
The one Anton did not anticipate.
They came quietly.
Creatures from the earliest days—beasts, spirits, aberrations, and beings once bound to Anton by his unique presence. Not shackled. Not controlled.
Aligned.
They gathered at the edges of civilization, communicating in ways scholars struggled to interpret. Some had grown more intelligent over time. Others had learned restraint. All of them shared a single, unifying certainty.
Anton was theirs.
Not as a master.
As a constant.
***
They called themselves The Covenant of the First Will.
Not destiny.
Not the system.
Anton.
To them, Anton was proof that a will could exist without demanding obedience. That power could bind without domination. That loyalty could be chosen without coercion.
They built no cities.
They formed no sects.
They simply… waited.
Guarding trade routes without being asked. Eliminating threats before anyone noticed them. Appearing wherever Anton's influence was challenged in ways that crossed from debate into eradication.
When asked why, one of them answered simply:
"He did not finish us. So we will not let him be finished."
***
Mira was the first to grasp the implication.
"This isn't a faction," she told Anton quietly. "It's a shield."
Anton stared at the reports—incidents resolved with impossible coordination, no casualties, no claims of credit.
"They're loyal," he said slowly.
"Yes," Mira replied. "And they don't argue with each other."
Anton felt a chill.
Unity without debate was not something he trusted.
***
Now the world stood divided along three axes.
Those who cultivated inward.
Those who cultivated outward.
And those who had already chosen someone to stand behind.
The system observed, calculating nothing.
Heroes watched, uncertain who they were meant to oppose.
And Anton stood at the center of a storm he had never intended to summon—realizing too late that meaning, once unleashed, did not remain philosophical for long.
It organized.
It armed itself.
And it began asking a new question the world had not faced before:
When progress splits into incompatible paths—
Who decides which future gets to survive?
****
Anton did not arrive at the decision suddenly.
It had been forming quietly, ever since the world fractured into factions, sects, and paths of self-improvement. Cultivators sought enlightenment within. Technologists sought transcendence without. Others chased balance, restraint, or ideology.
All of them shared one flaw.
They struggled alone.
Anton alone possessed a power that did not merely strengthen—it reforged.
The enslavement ability he had awakened with, the one revealed on his very first day in this world, was not just control. It was evolution accelerated. It was refinement without trial and error. It was loyalty without fracture.
And most importantly—
It was repeatable.
***
He chose the name carefully.
The Covenant of Ascended Will.
Not a kingdom.
Not an empire.
A sect.
A path.
***
The foundation was absolute obedience.
Anton did not disguise this, nor did he soften it. Those who entered the Covenant did so knowing the truth: once bound, Anton's will became their will. There would be no dissent, no betrayal, no divided loyalty.
In return—
They would be more than they had ever been.
***
The first pillars of the Covenant were already waiting.
The Demon Goblins.
Those first creatures from the forest—once weak, disposable monsters hunted for sport—now stood as towering, intelligent, disciplined beings whose very existence defied the natural limits of their species.
Anton stood before them beneath the shadow of the mansion where everything had begun.
"You were the first," he said calmly. "And you will not be the last."
The Demon Goblins knelt as one.
Their posture was not fear.
It was reverence.
***
Anton began formalizing what instinct and experience had already proven.
When his enslavement activated, the changes followed clear principles:
Physical Ascension – Strength, vitality, and agility multiplied exponentially, not linearly.
Mental Expansion – Intelligence rose to match the new body, erasing bestial limitations.
Stability of Loyalty – Obedience was not enforced through pain or compulsion, but through alignment.
Potential Unlocked – The enslaved creature's growth ceiling was rewritten.
These were not temporary buffs.
They were racial evolution.
***
The Covenant trained accordingly.
Demon Goblins were no longer treated as fodder or labor. They became soldiers, builders, scholars, and commanders. Their society reorganized itself around Anton's will, but also around competence.
Those who proved capable rose.
Those who failed trained harder.
Failure was allowed.
Disobedience was not.
***
Other creatures followed.
Ogres who became disciplined juggernauts.
Beasts whose instincts refined into tactical awareness.
Spirits once bound by impulse now capable of strategy and restraint.
Each enslavement strengthened not just the individual—but the Covenant as a whole. Shared drills. Shared doctrine. Shared purpose.
The world began to notice.
***
Other sects reacted with unease.
Cultivators saw abominations—power without inner struggle.
Technologists saw inefficiency—growth without iteration.
Philosophers saw danger—will centralized in a single being.
They were all correct.
And Anton did not deny it.
***
Mira confronted him once, standing at the edge of a training ground where Demon Goblins sparred with terrifying discipline.
"This isn't like the other factions," she said quietly. "They don't choose their path anymore."
Anton watched a goblin commander correct a formation with a single gesture.
"They choose once," he replied. "After that, they are free from doubt."
"That's not freedom," Mira said.
"No," Anton agreed. "It's certainty."
***
The Covenant of Ascended Will did not recruit openly.
It did not persuade.
Those who came were desperate, loyal, or already broken by paths that demanded too much uncertainty.
Once bound, they never left.
And none ever tried.
***
Anton stood alone one night on the balcony of the mansion, looking out over the growing settlement—rows of disciplined structures, training grounds lit by torchlight, Demon Goblins moving with purpose instead of chaos.
He felt no pride.
Only clarity.
In a world splitting into incompatible futures, someone would eventually choose annihilation over coexistence.
When that day came—
The Covenant would be ready.
Not to debate.
Not to hesitate.
But to act with a single, unified will.
Anton closed his eyes.
"If the world insists on fracture," he murmured, "then I will be the line that does not break."
And far below, thousands of ascended beings moved as one—
Living proof that obedience, when paired with purpose, could become something far more terrifying than rebellion.
****
The Covenant of Ascended Will did not grow cautiously.
It surged.
Once its existence became known—not as rumor, but as fact—the world reacted in a way Anton had anticipated and quietly prepared for. People did not ask whether the Covenant was moral. They asked whether it worked.
And the answer, everywhere, was yes.
***
Recruitment began organically.
At first, it was the desperate. Soldiers discarded after wars ended. Laborers crushed by impossible standards. Creatures hunted to extinction by stronger races. Cultivators whose progress had stalled permanently. Technologists who had reached ceilings they could not break alone.
Anton did not advertise.
He did not persuade.
He simply allowed them to see the results.
Those who stood before him were told the same truth, without embellishment:
"Once you enter, your will becomes mine. There is no return."
And still they knelt.
***
The enslavement ability scaled far beyond its original scope.
What had once been an individual act became a process—structured, refined, and terrifyingly efficient. Anton's will flowed through established conduits, binding thousands at a time without weakening the result.
Every new member emerged changed.
Stronger.
Clearer.
Aligned.
Fear vanished. Doubt vanished. Ambition did not disappear—it was redirected, sharpened, unified.
The Covenant did not erase identity.
It redefined it.
***
Demon Goblins formed the backbone.
Once mocked as weak monsters, they now stood as commanders, administrators, and elite enforcers—proof that the Covenant elevated even the lowest origins. Their visible transformation became the single most effective recruitment tool imaginable.
If they could rise—
Anyone could.
***
Growth became exponential.
Entire monster clans pledged themselves. Refugee populations crossed borders en masse. Failing sects dissolved overnight, their members arriving in lines that stretched for kilometers.
Within months, the Covenant counted hundreds of thousands.
Then millions.
Anton stopped counting altogether.
What mattered was not how many joined—
But how seamlessly they integrated.
***
There were no internal disputes.
No power struggles.
No schisms.
Orders propagated instantly. Training doctrines standardized themselves. Infrastructure appeared wherever Covenant members settled, built with inhuman speed and discipline.
Cities adjusted around them.
Economies adapted.
The presence of Covenant enclaves stabilized regions simply by existing.
***
Other factions reacted too late.
Cultivator sects issued condemnations that went ignored. Tech Ascendants warned of extinction-by-uniformity while quietly studying Covenant physiology. Continuist councils debated sanctions they could not enforce.
Heroes were sent.
They returned unsettled.
"There's nothing to save them from," one said. "They already chose."
***
Anton watched the expansion with a mixture of control and restraint.
He did not rush.
He did not accelerate beyond what his will could contain.
That was the true limit.
Not resources.
Not manpower.
Himself.
***
Mira confronted him as reports poured in from every direction.
"You've created the fastest-growing faction in history," she said. "At this rate—"
"At this rate," Anton interrupted calmly, "the world will stop pretending choice is always light."
She looked at him sharply. "And if this overwhelms everything else?"
Anton met her gaze.
"Then it will be because millions decided certainty was worth more than freedom."
***
By the time the Covenant's presence spanned continents, its symbol—simple, unadorned—was recognized everywhere. Not feared at first.
Respected.
Then feared.
Not because it threatened.
But because it never hesitated.
***
Anton stood alone one night, feeling millions of minds aligned beneath his awareness. Not noisy. Not chaotic.
Still.
Waiting.
The world had fractured into paths of belief, cultivation, and ideology.
But the Covenant offered something none of them could.
An end to doubt.
And Anton understood, with unsettling clarity, that once people tasted that—
No argument, no philosophy, no system would ever fully pull them back.
The Covenant of Ascended Will had crossed the point of irreversibility.
And the world would now have to decide how to live beside a future that moved with a single, unwavering purpose.