Chapter 3022: Ultimate Rune: Null Strider

Date: Unspecified

Time: Unspecified

Location: Myriad Realms, Void

[You have achieved ultimate comprehension and mastery of Ice rule meaning ’Null.’]

[Your cursed primordial meaning has used Null Ice rule meaning and Soul trait Dual Existence to forge the ultimate ice rune, Null Strider]

"Huh?"

My eyes snapped open as my consciousness crashed back into the physical plane. I was drifting quietly in the empty, dark expanse of the void, the deafening explosion of the Hundred Frost Domain long gone. The only sound breaking the silence was the steady, rhythmic pinging of system notifications echoing in my mind.

What happened? How am I still alive?

I frantically checked my limbs, my soul pathways, and my core. I was completely intact. I tried to wrap my head around the sheer impossibility of my survival. During the apex of my meditation, I distinctly remembered the sheer, terrifying concept of the Ice Rule meaning I had chosen. I remembered the sensation of it creeping into my being—a chill so profound I was certain it had reduced me to absolute nothingness. It felt like the big freeze, the heat death of the universe, the cessation of all kinetic energy, and the absolute death of all change.

Yet, here I was. Perfectly fine. There wasn’t a single trace of frostbite on my skin, let alone the conceptual erasure of my entire being.

"Null," I blurted out loud, the word escaping my lips as I hurriedly summoned my grimoire.

I scrambled through the system logs, desperately scanning the notifications to find some semblance of an answer. The grimoire had meticulously recorded every single milestone of my breakthrough, charting my rapid comprehension and mastery of the specific Ice Rule meaning that had resonated with my dual-existence trait.

The true name of the meaning stared back at me from the parchment: Null.

As in, entirely outside of time. The true, theoretical absolute zero.

It all started to click. Within the boundaries of the universe, achieving true absolute zero is a fundamental impossibility. If a space or an object actually reaches that point, all molecular motion stops—and when motion stops, time itself ceases to exist within that localized frame. It becomes fundamentally detached, existing entirely outside of time while the rest of the universe remains trapped inside of it.

And that was the ultimate paradox. How can any being existing inside the flow of time interact with something that is completely outside of it? They can’t. If absolute zero exists, it becomes an unreachable, unobservable anomaly—just like how we can never truly know what lies beyond the ever-expanding edge of the Myriad Realms. It exists beyond the temporal framework.

By comprehending the Null meaning, I hadn’t just frozen myself; I had shifted my entire state of being into a state of absolute stasis outside the timeline.

How did I actually make it back?

More importantly, how did my cursed primordial bloodline manage to orchestrate the forging of an ultimate ice rune ’Null Strider’ using the Null meaning and my Dual Existence trait, when my entire being was conceptually marooned outside the flow of time?

To forge anything requires action, change, and cause and effect—all of which demand the passage of time. Outside of time, there should have been no progression, no assembly, and no return. The process should have frozen mid-thought, trapping me in an eternal, unchanging snapshot.

But as I dove deeper into the grimoire’s records, the terrifying mysteries of my own anatomy only made me more confused than ever. The answers were completely beyond me—just like how the ultimate mystery of the Cursed Primordial Bloodline remained far beyond my current comprehension. All I knew for certain was that, for now, the Cursed Primordial Bloodline meant no harm to me and had come through spectacularly when I needed it most.

Yes, it frustrated me to high heaven that there was still so much I didn’t know about my own body. However, stressing over it wouldn’t help or change a single thing. So, I threw it on the back burner alongside all my other unanswered questions, letting them gather dust while they waited for the day I was strong enough to face them. For now, I had to continue moving forward with the answers I actually had.

As I began to fully comprehend my gains, I realized just how incredibly lucky I was to have the Cursed Primordial Bloodline. Without it, today would have been the absolute death of me.

But a lingering thought made me pause: Had the Causality Certainty Curse calculated all of this beforehand?

If yes, how could a mere curse possibly know that my Cursed Primordial Bloodline would pull me out of the timeless Null state? And if the curse’s predictive power was that deep, did that mean I could use it to systematically dissect and understand the mysteries of the bloodline itself?

The brief spark of hope quickly died as the mechanics of my power clicked into place.

The Cursed Primordial Bloodline actively boosted all of my active curses through Curse Incarnation—and that included the Causality Certainty Curse. The curse wasn’t a separate, superior entity observing my bloodline from above; it was fueled and elevated by the very bloodline I wanted to investigate. In a way, the Cursed Primordial Bloodline had actively helped the Causality Certainty Curse reach the right answer in the first place.

Which meant using the curse to figure out the bloodline was a logical loop. I couldn’t use a tool to dissect the very engine that powered it.

However, there was still incredible news. As I continued scrolling through the grimoire’s logs, tracking my comprehension and mastery of the Null meaning all the way to the ultimate tier, I noticed something mind-boggling: the registered time taken for the entire process was nearly negligible.

It was as if I had fully comprehended and mastered an ultimate-tier rule meaning the exact millisecond I first thought of doing it.

On any normal plane of existence, that was simply impossible. But then, remembering that I had been suspended entirely outside of time, the realization hit me. It was obvious, really.

...

AN: This note is only for readers who read this Chapter before 17 Jul 2026, 00:29 (GMT+8).

After giving it a lot of thought, I decided to rename Atemporal to Null and Chrono Strider to Null Strider.

While Atemporal and Chrono Strider accurately described the ability, they made it feel as though Wyatt had gained a Time-based power, which was never the intention.

This Ice Rule meaning’s true nature isn’t time. It’s the gradual elimination of change. Time, causality, and even existence lose their meaning only as a consequence of change approaching zero, much like the universe’s theoretical Big Freeze. Null better represents that ultimate state, making Null Strider a more fitting name for someone who can step between the temporal realms (Inside of Time) and the state where change no longer exists (outside of time).

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