Chapter 559: An attack that can't be blocked

Chapter 559: An attack that can’t be blocked

The elven woman tilted her head and smiled, her voice carrying unnaturally across the space between them.

“Haha, you can,” she nodded graciously. “Since you’ve already passed the test, the result of what’s going on doesn’t matter anymore. You’ve met the requirement. So even if you use other concepts or inheritances—outside of the True Inheritance Hall—it doesn’t matter now.”

She smiled deeper, her golden eyes gleaming with expectation. “You passed fair and square. Whatever you do next… is your decision.”

Max’s lips curved slowly into a smirk, his eyes narrowing as he turned back toward the collapsing world around him. Flames crackled. Space trembled. The sky, or what remained of it, bled golden-black light.

“Then it’s time,” Max muttered, his voice laced with battle intent. “Let me show you what I can really do.”

He drew his black sword slowly, reverently, as if waking an old, dying friend for one final journey. Both hands gripped the hilt tightly, knuckles whitening under the strain. Raising the blade above his head, he inhaled deeply, and then—released.

The Concept of Severing Sword burst forth like a tide unshackled. The pressure was immense, oppressive. The blackened ground beneath his feet, once scorched and cracked from the earlier battle, disintegrated entirely, erased from existence as if wiped clean by some celestial decree. The very concept of earth had ceased to be where he stood.

His sword trembled violently, as if screaming under the strain of channeling something far beyond its limits. He held on. Max held on.

‘Don’t break now. Just be with me one last time,’ he prayed inwardly to the blade that had been with him through hell and blood and triumph. The blade cried under the concept’s weight, but he gritted his teeth and clung to it anyway.

Above him, around him, the blackened forest—now fully engulfed in flames—was on the verge of becoming a perfect obsidian sphere, a domain of judgment conjured by the elven master. Only one jagged crack remained, an opening barely wide enough to see him through, and through that narrow rift stood Max—small, steady, defiant.

His eyes closed.

“The true essence of the sword,” he whispered, as the chaos stormed in around him, “…is not to kill.”

He stood still. Even the trembling of his sword faded as he breathed out.

“It is not bloodlust. It is not conquest. It is not dominance.” His voice was quiet, yet it resounded with strange clarity through the howling domain.

And then, silence.

Max had erased the world outside. Not physically, but in his mind. The black flames, the collapsing forest-sphere, the elven woman, even his own fear—they were all gone. Nothing remained but the sword and the concept.

“The sword exists to cut apart all things that bind,” he muttered, the power rising again, “all things that chain, all things that corrupt the soul… all things that block one’s path.”

Black light surged violently along the length of the blade. It was no longer trembling. It was singing.

“It is to sever everything.”

With those final words, Max simply swung his sword down. There was no flourish. No dramatic roar. No exaggerated movement. It was just a single, clean stroke—so pure, so refined, so silent that the air itself seemed to pause in reverence.

The Severing Sword concept flowed from him like the edge of divinity itself, invisible yet undeniable.

The moment the sword descended, it was as though reality had been issued a verdict.

SLASH!

A faint ripple flickered through the air like a paper being sliced by an unseen blade.

And then… silence.

The forest—the twisted, blackened realm that once stood tall in divine majesty—remained still. The spherical structure hovered, ominous and unyielding, as if mocking the very act of resistance.

But then, slowly, ever so slowly, a thin glowing seam appeared across the entire surface of the black sphere, as though a divine line had been drawn with surgical precision.

It stretched from the lowest roots of the flaming trees to the highest arcs of the darkened sky, curving perfectly across the sphere’s surface like a celestial scar.

The seam pulsed once.

Then—CRACK!

The entire forest-sphere split in half.

With a soundless shudder, the two massive halves peeled away from each other, revealing a dazzling chasm of raw, blinding emptiness in between.

Trees sliced clean through their cores fell apart in two burning fragments. Scorching golden grass disintegrated into weightless particles. Everything—trees, ground, sky—was severed in absolute symmetry. There were no jagged edges, no chaos, no resistance.

Just purity.

The severed halves collapsed away from each other, burning into cinders before they hit the ground, swallowed by the void left behind.

Max stood at the very heart of the devastation, his sword now lowered, his eyes calm.

‘That felt good.’ He thought.

He hadn’t just cut a forest. He had severed a reality.

And in that moment, the silence was louder than any explosion could ever be.

The elven woman stood frozen, her eyes wide with disbelief as she stared at the remnants of what had once been her divine attack—now reduced to drifting ash and glowing embers, gently dissolving into nothingness.

Her golden forest, her masterpiece of light and flame, had been severed in one clean strike—neither resisted nor endured, but simply ended. It was something she could never have imagined, not in all the trials she had overseen for countless years within the Nine Dragons Painting.

A single slash. From a Seeker Rank genius.

It defied comprehension.

“Good. Good,” she finally muttered, her tone filled not with frustration or envy, but awe and admiration. “Your level of genius knows no bounds… and we definitely need someone like that.”

Max, still suspended in the void where the forest had once engulfed him, turned his gaze toward her. His black sword rested in his hand, silent and calm now, but its weight felt deeper—like it had become a part of him.

His eyes locked onto hers, composed and steady. “Now can you tell me about the Mark of Divinity?” he asked, his voice even.

The elven woman’s expression turned solemn. “I can’t.” Her answer was immediate, unwavering. “I know what it is, I know its origin… but I can’t tell you. Not here.”

Max frowned slightly, his brows drawing together. “Why?”

“Because the truth of the Mark of Divinity… lies on the ninth floor,” she said softly. “Only those who walk into the final truth are permitted to know it.”

“Ninth floor?” Max echoed, his frown deepening. He remembered Lady Virelia and Lucia saying that not a single soul—neither from the mortal world nor Divine Realm—had ever set foot on the ninth floor of the Nine Dragons Painting. Yet here she was, speaking of it as if it were within reach.

“Don’t worry.” She smiled gently, her golden hair flickering like light itself. “You will enter the ninth floor for sure.”

And then, the space around Max began to shimmer. A soft blue glow enveloped his body, rising from his skin like mist dancing in moonlight. The void around him quivered, responding to some ancient command he didn’t understand. It was time.

But just as the light began to claim him, the elven woman spoke again—her voice low, urgent.

“Remember this,” she said, her eyes suddenly sharp and piercing. “Your strength is still too low. There’s not much time left. Hurry up and grow up fast. Reach the Divine Realm. Time is running out.”

Before he could respond, before he could even form a thought, the void shattered around him like a glass mirror breaking—and Max vanished, swept away by the light. Her words echoed in the fading silence, sinking deep into his heart.

Your gift is the motivation for my creation. Give me more motivation!