Chapter 62: To Be Formless!
"Sever."
In another location, a cold, feminine voice cut through the wind.
A breathtaking girl stood there, elegant, deadly, her every movement radiating quiet confidence. Her crimson eyes gleamed faintly under the sunlight, and her expression was as cold as her tone.
"Sever," Sophie muttered softly and slashed forward...
The next instant, the world split.
Her figure blurred and then vanished.
A blink later, she reappeared several meters away, standing with her back turned toward a rampaging horde of Bronze-Horned Goats.
These weren’t like the ones Bruce had fought.
They were much larger, towering over two meters tall, their horns glowing faintly with mana, crackling with energy as they thundered across the dry savannah. There were more than a hundred of them, charging in unison, shaking the earth beneath their hooves.
But now, they had all stopped.
For a brief, frozen moment, time itself seemed to hold its breath.
Sophie exhaled slowly, her sword lowered at her side. Then, with a soft hum, the blade in her hand dissolved into motes of light, vanishing completely.
Behind her, the world fell apart.
Every single Bronze-Horned Goat; the entire stampeding horde, split cleanly in half.
The upper halves of their bodies slid soundlessly from the lower, falling to the ground in perfect synchronization. Blood misted the air in slow motion, catching the sunlight in a crimson shimmer.
It was beautiful. Terrifying. Perfect.
It looked as though an invisible blade a thousand meters long had cleaved through the entire battlefield at once, and yet Sophie’s sword had been no longer than an ordinary blade.
She didn’t turn to look at the carnage. She didn’t need to.
Instead, she stood silently amidst the falling silence, her long hair swaying gently in the wind.
"I understand it now..." she whispered, closing her eyes.
Her voice was calm, almost serene.
"To sever all... one must first be formless."
A faint smile tugged at her lips, serene and knowing.
"A single form cannot sever all,
but multitude forms can.
And to achieve multitude form..."
Her eyes opened, cold and sharp as her blade once was.
"...is to be formless."
A scene then surfaced in her mind at that moment...
Her training in the array formation was painful, relentless, and soul-breaking, but worth it.
As the memory took form, her father’s voice echoed in her mind, each word heavy with the same cold authority that once shaped her childhood.
"You don’t fully understand the scope of your class, Sophie. To sever all, you have to be formless. A single form cannot sever all.
To slice through wood, you become metal.
But even the sharpest sword cannot slice through diamond. To slice through diamond, you must become something stronger. And when you meet something stronger than that, you become something stronger still.
To slice through all, you must be formless.
And to be formless, you must not be bound by heart. A heart bound to anything is bound to a single form. And a being with a single form can never be formless."
His words reverberated through her head, calm, cruel, and absolute.
Bane’s expression that day had been emotionless, carved from stone, as his gaze rested on the girl before him; a girl standing alone within the array, her blade flashing through the storm of illusions.
The array shimmered around her, pulsing with tunic light.
Illusion essence! Gravity pressure! Fire essence! Ice essence! Water essence! Wind essence!
Every element, every form of Origin Essence, bore down on her all at once!
It was a trial far harsher than Bruce’s gravity chamber training, and Sophie did not possess his body’s adaptability or regeneration.
The weight crushed her bones, seared her flesh, froze her veins, yet she did not stop.
Within Bane’s dimensional Labyrinth space, where time flowed differently, the training lasted for days. When it finally ended, it ended on a bitter note. Sophie sprawled on the ground, trembling, her teeth clenched as she struggled to rise.
Bane only shook his head in quiet disappointment. His shadow loomed over her as his voice, sharp and cold, cut through the silence.
"In the end, Sophie, as long as your heart remains bound to him, you’re still too weak.
You cannot be formless."
He turned away, his tone heavy with both pride and sorrow. "By discovering the profundities of your unique class, you can achieve exceptional titles, advance beyond anyone’s imagination. Your potential surpasses even mine. A class like yours is what this world needs to give birth to its first Ex-Ranked Awakened.
But a formless being cannot be chained.
Unbind your heart from that weakness, from that boy, and maybe one day, you’ll surpass me.
At this rate, you never will."
With that, he vanished, leaving behind only the faint distortion of space and the silence of a daughter left broken in his absence.
And yet, remembering that moment now, Sophie smiled.
"...You’re right, Father," she whispered, her lips curving softly. "But you’re also wrong."
"I don’t need to unbind my heart to be formless. All I need is to unbind myself from the system that binds my choices."
Her eyes glowed faintly, her tone calm yet defiant. "By carving my own path, free from the illusion the system gives, I can truly become formless. And still, love Bruce."
A faint warmth spread through her chest as she spoke his name.
"Thank you, Bruce. If not for your words, I would never have seen how wrong Father truly was. I once thought his words were absolute, until I awakened my class and told him what I could do. Only then did I see the side of him that feared losing control, the part of him that wanted you gone from my heart."
Her expression softened with melancholy.
"I don’t hate him. I know he’s only doing what he believes is best for me. But if he dares push further after this, if he dares to come between us again..."
Her voice fell silent, then her eyes gleamed with dangerous light.
A suffocating wave of killing intent erupted from her body, flooding the entire place. The pressure alone could have killed an E-Rank Awakened instantly. Her determination solidified, sharp and unyielding.
If her father ever forced her to choose again, she would rebel: against him, against the Reign Family, against everything she had ever been taught. That was how deep her love for Bruce had become. Deep enough to defy blood, legacy, and fate itself!
A single tear slid down her cheek, followed by another.
"I wouldn’t have been able to do this without you, Bruce," she whispered, her voice trembling with both affection and strength. "You’re... the best."
Outside the VR chamber, Lucen stood in the control room, his eyes on a wall of shimmering holographic feeds. Each pod displayed the consciousness stream of a recruit.
Then his gaze froze.
In Sophie’s pod, tears streamed down her cheeks. And in the next heartbeat, boom! An overwhelming A-Rank aura erupted outward, vaporizing the pod casing in a brilliant flash of light.
The explosion rattled the surrounding pods, shaking the chamber.
Lucen’s eyes widened. "...She advanced?"
As the dust cleared, Sophie stood calmly amidst the wreckage, her black hair fluttering, her aura stable yet immense.
"Extraordinary Title," she murmured softly. "I advanced. I’m now A-Rank."
Her heart swelled with warmth at the thought of Bruce. She remembered the time she had asked him how he managed to earn the title that helped him ascend and reach S-Rank so quickly...
His reply had been simple, yet profound.
"Think outside the box," he had said.
"The system is an illusion. What if you could create your own path instead of following it? Your mana veins, your skills—experiment. Don’t let the system define you."
Those words had stuck with her.
And today, by following them, she had broken through.
Her chest tightened with emotion.
She turned her gaze toward Bruce’s pod, where he lay deep in simulation, eyes closed, utterly unaware.
A tender smile curved her lips.
"Thank you, Bruce," she whispered softly.
"I’ll keep up. I promise. I won’t let you leave me behind."
Her hand lifted slightly, hovering inches from the pod glass, her expression filled with both love and resolve. She has this intense urge to give him a deep kiss at this moment, she’ve always had this urge when she’s with him. But currently the urge was on a whole new level... If not for the fact that Bruce was in the pod she wouldn’t have been able to resist!