Absolute Cheater - Chapter 288

Chapter 288: Glimpse of Law III
“Show me all of it,” she growled.

The thorns tightened. Illusions of people she’d killed danced around her—mocking her, accusing her. Their faces blurred, but their voices cut like blades.

“Monster.”

“Liar.”

“You’re not worthy.”

But she didn’t flinch.

“I never claimed to be righteous. Only strong enough to survive.”

A pulse erupted from her core—an overwhelming surge of defiance and clarity. It wasn’t guilt that she brought forth. It was acceptance. The Sovereign Key didn’t want purity.

It wanted identity.

And Valeris was absolute in hers.

The thorns burst into violet flame, consumed by her intent. One by one, the mocking figures vanished, their cries silenced. The sky of thorns collapsed into a single point of light—a jewel of condensed will.

She reached out.

And grabbed it.

[Sovereign Key Resonance Achieved]

[Key Type: Dominion — Law of Command]

[You may now imprint your Will upon reality. Command is no longer influence—it is Law.]

Her eyes snapped open. The Sovereign Key flew into her chest, embedding itself within her soul like a blazing brand.

Her aura erupted—no longer subtle, no longer building.

It declared her.

Asher opened one eye, eyebrow raised. “So… What did you get?”

Valeris stood slowly, her expression calm, eyes glowing with a dangerous glint.

“Command.”

A single word.

But spoken with a weight that made even the void pause.

“Okay then, we have four keys now. Only three remain,” Asher said, a spark of anticipation in his eyes. “I can’t wait to see what they unlock.”

Valeris nodded, her expression calm but focused, before speaking.

“I know where the next one is. But getting to it… that’s going to be a whole different kind of trial.”

Asher rose to his feet, brushing invisible dust from his robes. The last traces of void energy still clung to him like ash, but he barely noticed. His mind was already racing ahead.

“Where is it?” he asked, turning to Valeris.

She didn’t answer immediately. Instead, she turned her gaze upward—though the void had no sky, no stars, no direction, her eyes seemed to find something in the endless black.

“There’s a place,” she began slowly, “called the Cradle of Silence.”

Asher raised an eyebrow. “Sounds inviting.”

“It’s not,” she replied dryly. “It’s a sealed realm buried beneath the Hollowed Wastes, an ancient battlefield where Sovereigns fought during the First Collapse. Time barely moves there. Spirit sense is muffled. Communication breaks down. It’s like the world itself is muted.”

He frowned. “Why would a Sovereign Key be there?”

Valeris met his gaze, eyes gleaming. “Because that battlefield still holds the souls of the dead… and one of them was a Sovereign who never passed on. His will lingers. And he guards the fifth key.”

Asher let out a low breath. “A soul-bound Sovereign warden?”

She nodded. “One bound by hatred. And regret.”

A grin tugged at Asher’s lips. “Then we’ll just have to convince him to let it go.”

Valeris returned the smile—but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Or we’ll have to take it from him.”

The space between worlds bent like melting glass, and a pulse of ancient energy signaled the end of the void realm. Valeris moved first, stepping through the rift without hesitation, her figure briefly outlined in violet light before vanishing. Asher followed moments later, the last beat of the Primordial Heart echoing into silence behind him.

The world they stepped into felt immediately wrong.

The sky above was a muted gray, neither day nor night, and the wind carried the scent of ash and iron. Before them stretched a vast plain of broken weapons, shattered banners, and bones that refused to rot. Jagged ruins jutted from the earth like the ribs of a long-dead beast, and the ground was stained a dark, brittle red.

The Hollowed Wastes.

Valeris took a breath, then knelt to touch the soil. It cracked beneath her fingers, revealing not dirt—but powdered spirit stone, turned black from centuries of decay.

“This was once a place of miracles,” she said. “Now it’s just… echoes.”

Asher glanced around, his hand drifting toward the hilt of his blade. “It still feels thick with presence. Like the land remembers the blood that was spilled.”

“It does,” Valeris replied. “And it hates the living for forgetting.”

They walked forward in silence, weaving through rusted relics and warped statues that once depicted Sovereigns now long dead. For a time, there was nothing—no movement, no sound, not even the chirping of insects. Just silence, as heavy and suffocating as a tomb.

But far behind them, a different silence moved.

Not empty, but hunting.

Shadows flickered across distant ridges. Six figures watched the pair from afar, crouched low beneath cloaks of woven void-thread and soulsteel. Their eyes glowed with unkind light, and each bore the mark of a Devourer Cult—those who fed on fallen Sovereigns and sought to consume the legacy of power left behind.

“She’s here,” one of them hissed. “Valeris of the War-Crowned Path. The one who bound the Sovereign Key of Command.”

Another nodded, his mouth stretched into a grin too wide for his face. “And the boy with her… that’s the one who walks with death, isn’t it? The soulflame freak?”

“yep, the same freak who comprehended the Law of Death as his first law” Another said as they looked at Asher and Valeris.

Their leader, cloaked in robes of hollowed bone, raised a hand for silence.

“We follow. We do not engage—not yet. Let them break themselves against Hal-Kareth. Then, when they are weak… we strike.”

A chorus of hisses echoed through the stillness before the figures vanished once more into the dust.

“I really wonder how a living flesh taste like”

***

Back at the front of the Wastes, Asher and Valeris stood before a half-buried monolith—its surface etched with ancient runes barely visible beneath layers of dust.

“This is it,” Valeris whispered.

Asher tilted his head. “The entrance?”

“No,” she said. “The gravestone.”

She placed her palm against the stone—and the runes flared to life, burning with cold violet flame. The ground trembled. Then cracked. Then opened.

From the depths below, a chilling voice rose—deep, slow, and edged with sorrow so vast it bent the world around it.

“Who disturbs the silence… of Hal-Kareth?”

Asher drew his weapon.

Valeris only smiled. “Let’s wake him up properly.”

And they descended into the Cradle of Silence.