Nacasia

The black-clad swordsman had long since lost the ability to move. Terrifying auras locked onto him one after another, causing the mind driven only by obsession to tremble, as though he had to look upon the world anew and reassess the person before him.

—He saw a fist the size of a sandbag.

Hua Yi threw a punch, shattering the space between himself and the black-clad swordsman as though breaking glass.

Indescribable truth coiled around his fist. Faintly, Amphoreus's river of time boiled because of it, stirring up Crystalline Fragments. Countless streams of Spacetime intertwined, veiling the past in the mist of [Mystery].

The black-clad swordsman moved. The auras pinning him down were dispersed by the force of the punch, allowing the mysterious man to unleash his full strength and raise his broken sword to block it.

Unfortunately, he crumbled at the first touch.

There was not even a moment of stalemate. Hua Yi's fist swept through everything like rotten wood.

"!"

Cerces, the mature and beautiful goddess, tried to process what was happening before her—what Hua Yi had done.

She fully mobilized the authority of [Rationality], yet still failed to comprehend that resplendent punch.

"Ugh..."

Cerces was left dazzled and entranced. She staggered, nearly losing her footing and becoming a drifting duckweed in the vortex of truth, sinking into it and almost passing out on the spot.

Only an Emissary could barely grasp scattered fragments of truth, gaining something from it within an instant that could not be measured by any unit of time.

Himeko took a deep breath.

"The black-clad swordsman has vanished, but he wasn't shattered by that punch. It was more like you sent him away—he isn't a monster birthed by the Black Tide, is he? Or is there some hidden truth behind the Black Tide?"