Chapter 802: 802

Nwadike stood tall, the lightning in his eyes now mirrored by the glow of the crown.

Beside him, Osita’s face hardened. The warmth vanished, replaced by the cold, jagged mask of the man who was about to become a pariah. He stepped back, deliberately putting distance between himself and the new King, his eyes already searching the horizon for the path that would lead him to his wife.

Nwadike stepped to the edge of the balcony. He looked out at the faces of the people who had watched him grow, and then at the allies who had stood by his father for centuries. His voice was calm, carrying the steady warmth of the Queen.

"You have known me since I was a child running through your markets," Nwadike began, a small, genuine smile touching his lips. "And I have known you as my family. Today, I do not take this crown to rule over you, but to stand before you. My father has held the storm at bay for a long time, now, it is my turn to be your shield."

He looked at the gathered allies, nodding in a gesture of old friendship. "To our brothers and sisters from beyond our borders, our hearths remain open, and our pacts remain unbroken. I seek only the peace my mother loved."

Then, he let his power breathe as the world adjusted to his presence. The sky shifted into a deep, peaceful violet-black. The clouds froze into beautiful, jagged sculptures of white marble. The wind died down, creating a world of perfect, crystalline stillness.

Millions of glowing white filaments mapped out across the horizon. These are the "potential paths" of his lightning. To an observer, it looks like the world is trapped inside a cracked diamond.

The realm of "The Singularity Bolt" containing the law of Instantaneity. Because his Law deletes the "time" between cause and effect, there is no thunder. Thunder is the sound of air collapsing after a strike. In his Domain, the air never gets a chance to collapse. It is a deafening, pressurized silence.

Rising behind the palace, his astral form which was "Monolith of the First Strike" appeared. It stood thousands of meters tall, a mountain of obsidian armor cracked with leaking violet light.

A colossus standing thousands of meters tall, composed not of flesh, but of obsidian armor cracked with leaking violet light.leaking out of the fissures.

The people of his kingdom could not see this figure, in their sight all they saw was a pillar of light that streched from the ground to the sky. Only Osita and few other existence saw it.

It had no mouth or nose, only a single, horizontal slit across the visor that glows with the blinding light. This represents his "Vision" of the future and his hyper-focus on the present.

Floating behind the Astral Form is a massive, rotating ring of glass. This ring represents his Father’s legacy, a perfect, crystalline circle. However, because of his self-doubt, the ring is constantly shattering and reforming in a loop, casting "glitchy" shadows over the world below.

Nwadike stood in the center of this cosmic stillness, his eyes pooling with lightning.

"Do not be afraid of the change to come," Nwadike said, his voice now a soft hum that resonated in the very air. "This power is not a burden for you to bear. It is my promise to you. As long as I hold this throne, nothing will never move fast enough for harm to reach these walls."

Osita watched the "After image effect", the hundreds of translucent "ghosts" trailing behind every person in the plaza. He realized that in Nwadike’s domain, his son could see every possible future and stop a disaster before the "cause" even became an "effect."

Osita felt the electric static on his skin and saw the Monolith standing as a pillar of absolute responsibility. The laughter from earlier returned to his heart.

"You’ve done it, Nwadike," Osita murmured, his gaze shifting from the boy to the soul of his wife "You’re exactly what she hoped you would be."

The ripples of Nwadike’s ascension did not stop at the borders of his kingdom. At the exact moment his domain expanded, every high-level existence across the world of Nana felt a localized shudder in the fabric of reality.

For those seekers below the sixth tier, it was not a visual sight, but a sudden, overwhelming intuition. Because their growing knowledge and insight into the higher tiers had grown over the past months, they felt the "weight" of a new pillar being driven into the earth.

It was a phantom sensation, a prickling on the skin, a sudden silencing of the natural world, and a pressure in the chest that signaled a shift they are unaware has taken place.

The closer a being was to the Osita Kingdom, the sharper this needle of intuition became. In the neighboring lands, the air felt thick with a static that shouldn’t exist, all pointing toward a single epicenter, the throne of Osita.

In the halls of the rival power, Nwadiebube stood frozen. The sensation had reached him like a cold wave. He looked up to see his sister, Nwadimma, emerging from her long meditative retreat. Her eyes were sharp, reflecting the same realization he was struggling to accept.

"You felt it too," Nwadiebube stated, though it wasn’t a question.

Nwadimma nodded slowly. "The world just grew heavier. Someone has crossed the threshold."

At first, Nwadiebube fought the doubt. Reaching the sixth tier now was impossible even after the method spread by Oracle. But then, the memory of his last conversation with Osita flashed through his mind, the King’s dismissive confidence, his strange "bad mood," and his sudden disappperance.

The pieces fell into a terrifying pattern. Osita might have known then that his son was approching the sixth-tier, hence the strange confidence shown.

"It’s the boy," Nwadiebube whispered, his jaw tightening. "Nwadike has ascended. The Osita Kingdom hasn’t lost a king... it has gained a second monster."

In Nwadiebube’s eyes, the shadow cast by Osita had never been longer or more suffocating. His attention, once divided among the affairs of state, now narrowed sharply onto his Queen. It was more than protection, it was a slow-creeping obsession that had begun to manifest in his very soul, a silent curse that demanded she never leave his line of sight.

He required her presence at all hours. Even during the most tedious sessions in the courtroom, she sat by his side, a silent fixture that his subjects found increasingly unsettling. Yet, as she was their Queen and his word was law, a heavy silence reigned, no one dared to voice their confusion. To Nwadiebube, the logic was simple, the moment she vanished from his view was the moment he lost her to Osita forever.

As his sanity began to fray under the pressure of this perceived inevitability, Nwadiebube realized he could no longer shoulder the burden in isolation. He refused to be the only one looking over his shoulder.

In a move of desperation, he secretly leaked the intelligence to the known world narrowing their sight on who it was that newly ascended. He didn’t want allies, he just wanted the other world leaders to feel the same suffocating plight that kept him awake at night.

By broadcasting the news of Osita’s surging power and unstoppable growth, he ensured that every throne in the world shared his fear, forcing them to face the grim reality that the tide was rising, and they were all equally helpless to stop it.

Beneath his outward paranoia lay a deeper, more hollow terror, the stagnation of his own power. Nwadiebube was paralyzed on the threshold of the Sixth Tier, unable to bridge the gap that separated him from true supremacy. Every time he entered a meditative retreat to transcend his current limits, the same wall rose up to meet him.

The focus required for such a feat was constantly shattered by the intrusive image of Osita. With that image came a wave of visceral disgust and physical repulsiveness so potent it felt like his very marrow was revolting. It was as if his soul and body had formed a pact to reject the Sixth Tier entirely, leaving him stranded and vulnerable.

He hungered for this power, not just for pride, but for survival. Reaching the Sixth Tier was the only way to truly insulate himself from Mei’s master and whatever shadow-game the man was currently orchestrating. To have the solution within reach, only to be rejected by his own subconscious, was a special kind of torture.

Nwadiebube had spent most of his time looking for why this was the case for him until he narrowed it down. He knew the source of the rot. Everything, his stunted progress, his failing focus, his bodily rebellion boiled down to Osita. In his mind, Osita wasn’t just a rival, he had become a psychic anchor, dragging Nwadiebube down and keeping him from the power he so desperately craved.