Chapter 2509: Hybrid Rune: Blackhole

Date: Unspecified

Time: Unspecified

Location: Myriad Realms, Card World, Central Region, Central Academic City, Morningstar University District, Morningstar University Campus, Garden of Beginning

"What are you two scheming?" Slay asked, her voice low and amused, having sensed the silent mental exchange between the Hybrid Celestial and the miracle drug. Her black eyes narrowed as she noticed the subtle shift in Lucine’s gaze—her influence weakening. "Oh? So you’ve figured out my racial abilities. How adorable. But tell me—does that change anything?"

"..."

Lucine didn’t answer. Instead, her aura surged—rising sharply, violently—until it reached its absolute limit. Her energy clashed against Slay’s overwhelming Semi-Ruler presence, like a candle flame pushing back against a roaring inferno. She was ready to stake her life here—to hold Slay off long enough for me to escape.

"Hehehe."

Slay’s laugh was soft and cruel, dripping with mockery seeing Lucine ignorantly using her tiny Chivalry-class realm to resist a Semi-Ruler realm. She tilted her head, amused beyond reason. "Even if I just stand here without lifting a finger—you still wouldn’t be able to harm me. In fact—" her grin widened, sharp and predatory, "you’ll end up on your knees, begging me to use your insignificant little existence."

’Space-time rule fusion. Hybrid Rune: Blackhole,’ Lucine mentally activated one of her hybrid runes, focusing her intent sense solely on Slay. Soon, the spatial and temporal forces in Slay’s surroundings began to distort, defying their natural state. Time in that area slowed to an extreme crawl, while space itself began to stretch inward. As a result, in that spot, a tiny black hole was about to form—its pull threatening to collapse everything in the vicinity. The consequences of pushing spatial and temporal forces to their limits were terrifying.

However, Slay, who stood at the center of this collapse, only grinned. There was not a single trace of panic or concern in her expression—her grin actually grew wider. She didn’t try to retreat or defend herself. Instead, she taunted Lucine,

"Is that all? It will take more than that for you to even scratch my body. Come on now, don’t hold back—give it your all. Prove me wrong. Maybe, maybe, when I am destroying this stupid realm of yours, I will spare your friends and family... and take them as my slaves."

I could see that Lucine was giving everything she had, but a semi-ruler class Ovumite’s body was simply too strong. The amount of spatial and temporal force her hybrid rune, Gravity, could influence to generate a blackhole wasn’t anywhere near what was needed to affect Slay.

Lucine’s hybrid rune was powerful—powerful enough to let her challenge opponents above her realm. However, it still couldn’t bridge the vast gap between the Chivalry class and the Semi-Ruler class. And that was without accounting for Slay’s own mastery over the rules of space and time.

Maybe if Lucine had already reached the Peak or even Upper Noble class, things might have turned out differently. But reality was rarely so forgiving.

Even so, this wasn’t the end for her. With her hybrid rune, Lucine could tear open space and time and escape—either into the void or into the temporal river. She would have done so already... if not for the fact that she didn’t plan on leaving me behind.

"Are you done?" Slay asked Lucine with a smirk. Then, without even waiting for her response, she used her mastery of space-time to gather the Lucine’s pebble sized blackhole on her index finger and flicked it out of the ’garden of beginning.’ into the void of this past.

Seeing this, Lucine’s mind snapped. Disturbing a black hole of that scale should have been enough to annihilate the entire Central Academic City. Yet Slay had handled it as casually as tossing aside a pebble. It was proof that Slay’s mastery over space-time, combined with her realm, could create a black hole many times larger.

Which meant that if she were not being suppressed by the World’s Will, Slay could have erased the entire central region off the face of Card World with a single strike. And on top of that, she worshiped—or served—someone known as the Devil Merchant Code. Against beings of that level, they had never stood a chance to begin with.

"Do you want to try again?" Slay asked, though the hopelessness and defeat in Lucine’s eyes made the question unnecessary. Losing interest, Slay turned back toward me—her beloved Hybrid Celestial—with a slow, amused smirk.

With the discovery of a miracle drug and a Hybrid Celestial, Slay’s initial anger and frustration had eased. Her focus was no longer solely on taking revenge for being confined in a time prison—she was now thinking about her return to the Dark Realm. She had been gone for a long time, and she knew things would have changed in her absence. So, there was no need to rush. Her first goal was to completely subdue and secure both the miracle drug and the Hybrid Celestial, then use them as leverage to stage her comeback.

With her racial ability and the Hybrid Celestial’s essence, at present she had no real need for the miracle potion. Instead, she planned to trade Lucine away. And once she had extracted enough essence from the Hybrid Celestial to conceive her new body, she intended to continue harvesting his essence and sell it to her sisters. They would pay any price to obtain the essence of an organic Hybrid Celestial.

However, that plan carried its own risks. Many of her sisters had already reached the Ruler Class long before she had descended the Shrouded Hills. And beyond that, the Card Celestial was still waiting for her in the original present—someone she would inevitably have to face once she retrieved the World Calamity Stake and returned from this past using the time vestige.

Because of that, she needed to mentally and physically subdue the Hybrid Celestial. She needed to make him her love slave—someone who would obey her every command and desire, regardless of the harm it brought to himself. She needed him firmly under her control, so that nothing unexpected could happen during her escape from the Card Realm and throughout her comeback in the Dark Realm.

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