In Star Sea Beta-13, the universe held its breath.

The silence that followed the sprung trap was more terrifying than any roar of battle. Achilles held the shriveling, decaying form of Xylos, the Weaver of Endings. The Tier 9 Nar'Thyss wailed, a sound that was not a sound but a story of agony being broadcast into the void, a desperate plea for a salvation that would never come.

Its magnificent wings, once inscribed with tales of conclusion, were now pages of rotting, sickly green text, the poison rewriting its final chapter into one of ignominious dissolution. "Sir…Ma'am… please… save me!" it shrieked into a reality that had already abandoned it.

Achilles raised his head. His figure remained a shadowy silhouette, a humanoid mass covered by the swirling, aggressive mist of The Void. He looked up, and he saw them.

The descent of three terrifying signatures of power that completely, absolutely exceeded his own. Their presence was not just stronger than a Tier 9; it was a different category of existence, a higher order of reality.

These were entities that were not of the Null Scale of Existence.

His eyes, hidden within the void-mist, flashed with cold, analytical fire.

'I had affirmed with my Void Servants that there were only the three Tier 9 Nar'Thyss in this Star Sea,' he thought, his mind racing with the speed of collapsing probabilities.

No signatures of others were discovered to have even been sneaking in. The veiling was perfect.

And yet, it seemed that even with all the memories he had assimilated, all the power he had accumulated, he had still underestimated the sheer breadth of capability that the next scale of existence represented.

They hadn't snuck in. They hadn't needed to. Somehow, these entities were already here. Waiting. This entire Star Sea was the bait, and he was the fish who had confidently swum into the net.

The three of them descended with the languid grace of titans who had forgotten what it meant to hurry.

They were massive butterflies, each one the size of a world, their wingspans eclipsing the local stars. One blazed with a furious, blood-red light, its wings painted with Fables of unending war.

Another was a cold, piercing cerulean blue, its form radiating the chill of absolute order and unfeeling logic.

But it was the central one that commanded all attention. She shone with a deep, royal purple hue, her wings vast canvases that displayed nascent realities and dying universes simultaneously.

The very barrier that had trapped him, that curtain of purple brilliance stretching for thousands of light-years, seemed to be an extension of her being, a casual flex of her authority.

Her grandeur and majesty were oppressive, the kind of beauty that demanded submission. She looked down at the tiny, void-shrouded figure of Achilles and the dying Xylos, and her voice was a narrative decree that made the stars themselves tremble.

"Is this really the one who caused all the issues? The one who even killed Mor'dantius?" she mused, her voice echoing with the laughter of the other two. "We expected it to be another creature stumbling into Level Zero. And it turns out to be a weak insect that has not even escaped the bounds of the Null Scale?"

…!

The blood-red Nar'Thyss cackled, a sound like a billion souls screaming in chorus. "He feels… unique, though, Elara. There's a delicious contradiction to his Fable. So much power in such a primitive container."

"Primitive is generous, Va'thos," the cerulean one corrected, its voice a monotone of pure data. "Statistically, his chances of survival are now zero. His narrative has reached its terminal point."

The words were heavy, crude, a clinical dissection of his impending doom. The purple Nar'Thyss, Elara, drifted closer, her immense, world-sized form eclipsing what little light remained.

At this moment, she looked directly at Achilles and spoke, her voice dripping with the condescending patience of a predator lecturing its food.

"Hey. Eyes up here, you stupid shit. I love for the insects of Fables who are so arrogant to do things they shouldn't do to understand exactly how they got into the predicament they got into before they die. It makes the Fable of their death so much more appetizing. And your death… was all the design of the glorious Grand Constellation Eisenhower! So listen up and know his doctrines before you die!"

…!

She settled, her wings creating slow, majestic waves of purple light, and began her grand pronouncement.

"Insect, The first principle of warfare is that all warfare is based on deception. When we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away. You believed yourself the hunter, didn't you? Traversing The Void with such confidence, such certainty in your growing power. Yet every step you took followed paths we had already written. Every choice you made existed within parameters we had defined."

"You thought this Star Sea was empty, quiet, an easy target. It was quiet because we made it so. It was a cage, and you flew into it thinking it was open sky."

Her voice took on a professorial, mocking tone, as if explaining a simple concept to a child who couldn't grasp it.

"The second lesson for an insect like you is that supreme excellence consists of breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting. Why should we exhaust ourselves in direct confrontation across the Void when we could simply guide you to come to us? You have power, yes. Enough to kill a bored fool like Mor'dantius. But your power made you arrogant. It made you predictable. We dangled the bait of three isolated Tier 9s, and you took it without question. A stupid, fucking insect, scurrying right where we wanted. Hey, keep listening!"

Her purple radiance intensified, the pressure on Achilles's Dream Body increasing, a narrative weight that sought to crush his very will.

"The third and most crucial lesson that the great Eisenhower taught: if you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. We have studied insects like you for far too long. We have seen your lineage rise and fall eight times. We know your pride. We know your anger. We know how you operate. But you? You know only the surface of what we are, child. You see our physical forms, our narrative manipulations, but you don't comprehend the true depth of our existence."

"We are not merely beings who control stories—we are living narratives, self-authored and self-editing, existing across dimensions of meaning you haven't even discovered yet. We are the authors, the page, the ink, and the reader all at once. You are just a single, misbehaving word."

She floated directly above him now, a titan of story preparing to deliver the final edit.

"You stupid fucking shit. Any last words before you die?"

….!

At such a lengthy monologue, Achilles looked ahead. He Assimilated the shriveled husk of Xylos silently!

His shadowy form, which had been hunched slightly under the immense pressure, straightened.

He looked up at the three world-sized entities, and a sense of valor and power began to burn within him.

His entire existence was on fire with raw, unadulterated anger.

The odds seemed impossible.

He might lose this Dream Body here, a significant portion of his consciousness and power.

Even if!

He would still fight.

Because through fighting, he would see. He would measure. He would understand just how far the gap in power truly was.

He would gather the data needed to close that gap and, eventually, to surpass it. This was not a battle for survival. It was an experiment. A glorious, potentially suicidal experiment.

His only reply to the Nar'Thyss who had just explained his doom was not a plea, not a roar, not a counter-argument.

It was a simple, brutal, human insult, delivered with all the cold defiance he could muster.

"…You talk too much, you purple balding bitch."

…!

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