Sovereign Beyond Creation

Chapter 4

At first, Adam thought it had all been a dream. The wine was still on his suit. The smell of the alley was the same.

"It was just a hallucination," he whispered, wiping water from his face. "I hit my head. I’m going crazy."

But then, he looked at his hand. In his vision, floating just above his skin, were numbers.

[Health: 15/100 (Critical)]

[Stamina: 5/100 (Exhausted)]

[Mana: ERROR / NULL]

Adam blinked. The numbers stayed there. He turned his head, and his vision adjusted like a camera lens. He looked at a wooden crate nearby.

[Object: Rotten Wood Crate]

[Quality: Trash]

He looked at the puddle of water at his feet.

[Object: Rainwater Mixed with Mud]

[Status: Contaminated]

"It's real," Adam breathed. "It's actually real."

He stood up, his legs feeling like jelly. Every muscle in his body ached, but beneath the pain, there was a new sensation. It was a cold, humming energy sitting right behind his navel. It felt like a tiny, frozen sun.

He walked out of the alleyway and back toward the main road. The Academy was a city within a city. It sat on a hill, its white stone towers reaching toward the dark clouds. Usually, Adam looked at those towers with a feeling of being small. Now, he looked at them with a feeling of fear—and a strange, new hunger.

He had 72 hours.

As he walked, he noticed something else. The world wasn't just physical anymore. He could see colors floating in the air. Around a street lamp, there was a faint yellow mist.

"Is that mana?" he wondered.

He looked at a passing carriage. The horse had a faint green glow around its legs—an enhancement spell to make it run longer.

The System was showing him the truth of the world. He could see the magic that everyone else took for granted. He could see the "threads" that Julian and the others used to bully him.

He reached the gates of the Academy. The guards recognized him. They laughed as he walked past, still soaked and smelling of wine.

"Hey, Null! Did you enjoy the mud?" one of them shouted.

Adam didn't answer. He didn't even look at them. He focused on the HUD in his vision. He needed to find the faculty tower. He needed to find Catherine.

As he entered the inner courtyard, he stopped.

The Academy was vast, but one tower stood taller than the rest. It was made of dark, blue-black stone. Even from a distance, Adam could see that the air around that tower was different. The rain didn't fall there; it turned into snow before it hit the roof.

Adam stared at the tower. His new eyes zoomed in, and his heart nearly stopped.

A massive aura was radiating from the top of that tower. It wasn't like the yellow mist of the lamps or the green glow of the horse. This was a storm of jagged, icy blue light. It was so bright it hurt to look at. It felt sharp, like thousands of tiny needles pressing against his eyeballs.

[Warning: High-Level Mana Source Detected.]

[Subject: Catherine Cook.]

[Power Level: Calamity Class.]

[Danger Level: Fatal.]

In the middle of that blue storm, Adam saw something else. Deep inside the blue light, there were streaks of ugly, pitch-black energy. They looked like cracks in a mirror. They were pulsing, eating away at the blue light from the inside.

"What is that black stuff?" Adam whispered.

[System Analysis: The target is suffering from 'Soul-Frost Corruption'] the voice echoed in his head. [Her own power is turning against her. She is dying, Sovereign. And she is in more pain than you have ever known.]

Adam looked at the "Ice Witch's" tower. He thought about the woman everyone feared. The woman who was supposed to be a goddess among mages.

She wasn't just cold. She was rotting from her own magic.

He took a step forward, his feet crunching on the wet gravel. He was a Null. He had nothing. He was a boy who had been thrown out of a party like a piece of trash. And now, he was walking toward a "Calamity Class" mage who was dying of a magical curse.

"How do I even get inside?" Adam asked.

[Find a way, or die] the System replied coldly.

Adam looked down at the timer in the corner of his vision.

[Time Remaining: 71 Hours, 42 Minutes, 10 Seconds.]

The countdown was ticking. Every second was a step closer to his heart stopping. Adam gripped his tattered suit jacket and began to walk toward the tower of ice.

He didn't know how he would do it. He didn't know what he would say. But for the first time in his life, Adam Cook wasn't just a victim. He was a hunter.

And his first target was the most dangerous woman in the world.

As he approached the base of the tower, the temperature dropped. His breath began to come out in white puffs. The ground was covered in a thin layer of frost.

Suddenly, a shadow fell over him. He looked up.

Standing at the entrance of the tower was a tall woman with hair as white as a blizzard. She wore long, flowing robes of deep indigo. Her eyes were a piercing, unnatural blue, and they were fixed directly on him.

It was Catherine Cook.

"A Null?" she said. Her voice was like the sound of glass breaking on a stone floor. "How did a piece of dust like you wander into my garden?"

Adam felt the air in his lungs start to freeze. He couldn't move. He couldn't speak.

[Warning: Extreme Pressure Detected!]

[Favorable Impression: -90 (Hostile)]

The mission had begun. And if Adam didn't speak in the next five seconds, he was going to become a human popsicle.