Chapter 761: INFINITY CONTROL
Eira’s crystalline expression registered the heartbeat like she had just watched the impossible unfold — a single, frozen instant where her ancient mind whispered, ’what the fuck.’
For one suspended breath her ancient mind could only whisper the same stunned, profane thought that echoed through every facet of her being.
The projectile she had hurled back at him — a return shot packed with nearly twice his outgoing power and loaded with the full crushing density of her power — should have torn through his upper torso the way the first snowball had unmade the primordial spire.
He should have maybe dodged or tried to be concerned.... like at least flinched... anything that proved the lesson still belonged to her.
Instead, the snowball slammed into his chest at full murderous force — and simply dissolved.
A half-inch from his skin the compressed mass of Void-Ice unmade itself into obedient black-white flakes that drifted across his ruined chest like loyal courtiers returning home to their sovereign.
The flakes rose briefly in the cathedral hollow’s frozen air, realigned themselves with reverent precision, and wove together into something far greater than mere defence.
"INFINITY CONTROL!" Eira realized.
At the exact same moment the tattered remains of his training tunic dissolved into nothingness.
But then again, the same flakes rose higher, swirling and weaving with deliberate grace, and what took shape around his body was no longer cloth born of mortal thread.
It was a robe.
A long, imperial black-silk hanfu of such tyrannical weight and presence that it drank the cathedral hollow’s ambient light and offered nothing in return, the fabric so deep it swallowed every stray photon and left only perfect, predatory darkness.
The cut followed the long, sloping geometry of his seventeen-year-old frame with flawless, almost obscene obedience.
Wide sleeves cascaded from his wrists in patient layered folds, their hems trimmed in pale gold embroidery rendered in the looping cursive script of the Original Tongue crude embroideries, not exactly words — characters Eira recognized at a glance as the ancient names of his own bloodline, woven into the silk as though the robe itself had waited across forgotten Tiamat archives for eons and had, at last, been permitted to clothe its true master.
’He sure loves the Original Tongue, uh?’
While the white silk underlining flashed at the inner placket and along the slit hems like hidden moonlight; a wide gold-edged sash of pale grey silk wrapped his waist in layered folds, knotted at the front in the precise gesture of an emperor’s morning attendant.
Black-and-gold dragon embroidery coiled up the front panels and across the long flaring sleeves, the dragons alive, breathing, shifting with every subtle movement of the air as though the robe itself were a living extension of the power now wearing it.
Lastly on his flash ensemble were black boots had compiled around his feet — polished, pristine, imperial.
The robe moved when he moved while its sleeves answered the smallest lift of his arm with the obedient cascade of fabric that had been waiting across ages to drape the body it now clothed.
Phei chuckled, low and dry, the sound rolling through the frozen cathedral hollow like distant thunder wearing the mask of amusement.
"Are you that surprised, bitch?"
Eira’s wings stuttered mid-hover the way the casual confidence in his voice landed across her bonded awareness with the weight of something ancient and unstoppable — his new presence had not yet finished expanding, and she felt the small, undeniable truth that her master had crossed not one but several thresholds in a single afternoon and was now operating in a realm neither of them had ever mapped.
The thing that made her stutter though was the lack of malice, or emotionlessness in his voice, unlike what his eyes showed.
’No need for Maya, I guess then.’ Because she was just about to step into the void to get her... if she knew where even Maya was, that is.
"Get ready for the punishment," he added, the dry tone of a master already cataloguing every hour of her patient teeth and planning to address them at his own leisure. "Later. After I’ve finished collecting."
’Fuck, he’s so hot too... that fucking voice, no, no need for Maya, I want to be here more.’ Who knows maybe she could finally convince him to pin her down and wreck her.
Then, before she could find a reply that did not involve admitting how deeply and shamefully aroused his current sovereign presence was making her, he turned his attention inward.
"System."
His voice remained conversational, almost bored.
"All my rewards. Now."
[REWARD DISTRIBUTION.]
[Ding! +10 points to ALL stats.]
He felt the surge of the added stats rather immediately in a slow, committed warmth that bloomed through his shoulders, his thighs, his calves, the long sloping arc of his back, the architecture of his chest.
Strength settled at three hundred and fifty, while his agility rose up at three hundred and fifty too.
His endurance also skyrocketed to three hundred and fifty an those were just his physical stats: All of them getting a +10 instant surge.
Phei’s other stats had been rising his awakening and everything he accomplished even enslaving other made them rise slightly, right now though after the 10 stats, his Intelligence went to five hundred and ninety and in that same breath, his Perception settled at five hundred.
The stats poured into him with the same effortless speed the Void-Ice had used to compile the robe; his body accepted the additional power without protest, and the cathedral hollow’s air itself, now sensitive to his presence, deepened infinitesimally in response.
Then lastly:
[Ding! +10 Charisma.]
This one Eira felt before he did.
His skin — already pale, already rendered godly by the regeneration — brightened with an inner gold-white glow, as though every cell had been freshly dipped in molten divinity.
His beauty was already at a level that rivalled divine beings even before now, while his charm stats made him as irresistible beyond measure but now with more +10...
His features sharpened with the refined precision of an immortal-tier body if not beyond... completing its final calibration, the dangerously attractive and immersive amethyst eyes deepened by a shade that made the color itself feel dangerous.
The line of his jaw became, by the quiet adjustment of the system, a jawline that could end marriages and start wars.
He stroked his own forearm absent-mindedly and felt the new firmness beneath his fingertips.
He turned toward the polished surface of one of the standing ice-spires, he turned it into a mirror with a snap and studied his own reflection.
"God," he murmured, voice laced with dark, delighted humor, "I’m gorgeous. Ain’t little Eira."
Eira, hovering at a safe distance, made a small strangled sound that was fifty percent affront and fifty percent the wet, patient acknowledgement that her master had just become unbearably, dangerously hotter.
"Master."
"Yes, Eira."
"You are unbearable."
He laughed — a low, rich sound that rolled through the frozen cathedral like distant thunder wearing silk.
"I am also," he said, still smiling at his own reflection, "currently the most beautiful thing in this hemisphere."
"That is — that is not — master, Ah, you’re annoying and —"
[Ding! Soul Realm unsealed...]
[Error! Error! Host cannot enter the Soul Realm until Transcendent Rank! Soul Energy cannot be manipulated by Host until Transcendent Rank!]
Phei’s eyebrow rose, slow and regal.
"Eira."
"Yes master."
"What do you know about Soul Energy?"
