For a long moment, silence ruled the Verdantia Life Galaxy as Jacob’s words still echoed faintly, dissolving into the pulsing emerald haze that hung in the air.
Yet, there was no response, no stirring, no presence; there was simply nothing.
Even his heightened senses, sharpened to perceive the slightest shift of law or space, returned nothing but a suffocating stillness, nor could his Eyes of Judge pick up any abnormality.
Jacob stood motionless, the flaring spectral flames in his hollow eyes dimming as he scanned the fractured horizon.
Because the Infinity Pendant was working just fine, he didn’t retreat immediately and wanted to confront whoever it was who had the power to conceal itself in front of him, not to mention Immortika’s cryptic sentence was still haunting his mind.
’So, it was nothing?’ His thought betrayed unease, ’Tch. Don’t tell me that damn book decided to...’
But he suddenly stopped that trail of thought as his instincts clawed at him. He knew Immortika never spoke without reason. Every time he had ignored its cryptic warnings hidden within its usual shenanigans, calamity and ruin had followed.
Even now, that same weight pressed down on his very soul as a cold, creeping certainty that something might be unseen was watching from beyond perception.
At that moment, Jacob spread his soul senses again, without holding back anything, and the space around him broke under the sheer pressure and depth of his soul sense; yet, there was still nothing.
There was not a single thread of anomaly, not a ripple of law, just choking silence.
Seconds stretched, then minutes...
At last, he thought doubtfully, ’Maybe I really am overthinking. Perhaps that cursed book is really messing with me as a revenge for not summoning it for a while now and my withering reliance on it.’
Just as his grip eased slightly, and he began to lower his guard, just a fraction, and that was when it happened.
A faint thrum passed through his core. A vibration so subtle that even his godlike perception couldn’t pinpoint its origin.
Even his thought process was suddenly disrupted; it was extremely strange...so strange that he couldn’t even preserve what had caused it because it was a feeling that eluded him completely.
Then, all of a sudden, the world tilted.
Jacob’s eyes flared in horror as an unbearable dizziness struck him, his consciousness flickering like a candle in the void.
But he just couldn’t preserve what was happening as if something had cut off his intelligence or consciousness.
"W...I..."
Jacob’s ghostly voice was like broken glass as he couldn’t even utter a complete word.
At that moment, his vision warped, as if the stars were bending, and he felt like everything was shifting beneath him.
An alien force crept through his soul, soundless yet absolute, shutting down every law he controlled one by one, like cutting off the connection to his very source of power. It was precise and decisive as if premeditated.
But right at that moment when that unknown force moved to seal his Cursed Heart completely, his aura flared wildly in response, his Cursed Heart instinctively resisting!
However, it was too late as his soul totem was 99% suppressed, and only the inviable thirteenth law...the Law of Infinity could resist that force, but it was not strong enough!
Jacob’s limbs began to feel heavy and foreign, as if his very body no longer belonged to him.
At that moment, Jacob felt his consciousness slip as a cold murmur echoed within his skull, not from outside, but inside his collapsing awareness:
"I finally found you thieving bastard!"
Just as that melodious yet icy voice filled with resentment sounded, agony followed, and a flash of argent light tainted with darkness erupted behind him, too fast to perceive, too silent to react to.
If Jacob could have had a chance to turn around or anyone watching, they would have seen an argent blade with icy dark edges revolving around its blade, made of twisting Möbius-strips, a weapon of infinite loops and paradoxical geometry, was pierced directly through the back of his skull.
Furthermore, the strangest thing about that blade was that there wasn’t any exit wound, as if it had pierced into Jacob’s soul, not in his physical body.
Moreover, from Jacob’s skull there was no blood, nor any sound was made, and the most terrifying part was this time, Jacob’s mortal danger sense wasn’t triggered, nor did he feel any sense of danger until the blade was pierced into his very soul!
At that moment, the blade hummed faintly, resonating with impossible harmonics, as if unraveling concepts. The laws Jacob embodied, Death, Yin-Yang, Void, Life, Space, Time...and above all the incomplete Law of Infinity...all screamed in final dissonant defiance before collapsing into stillness.
Jacob didn’t make any sound...only a hollow shudder that reverberated through the galaxy itself.
At that moment, behind him, the wielder of that blade finally stepped from the rippling void.
It was a tall, slender figure draped in a mantle that seemed to bleed between colors, sometimes black, sometimes gold, sometimes utterly nonexistent.
Its presence was neither divine nor mortal, for it simply was with no aura, no life, nor any trace of law, like an ordinary speck of dust.
Only an infinite absence that devoured perception itself. The figure’s hood tilted slightly as it observed the limp form of Jacob, with the Möbius-blade remaining embedded in his skull.
At that moment, softly, almost reverently, a voice emerged with a hint of a peculiar intent that vanished as soon as it appeared like a ray of light in endless darkness...
"So, he’s the Cursed One?"
"I’ve told you, Heir of Chaos; your paths were entwined!" A gentle voice with a hint of relief sounded directly from the Möbius-strip blade.
Alexandra’s black hole-like eyes seemed to swirl the moment she heard that familiar, cynical voice, which gave her the creeps every time she thought about the owner of that voice.
But she didn’t show her uneasiness as she emotionlessly sneered, "Destin Saint, I guess you were always here!"
"Hoho..." Destin Saint chuckled as if in an excellent mood, and the argent blade flickered as if projecting his ecstasy, "Does it matter anymore? For the Cursed One has finally been caught!"