Communications were cut off.
Duke Saduran slowly rose to his feet and opened his eyes. When his vision returned, all he saw was a vast expanse of deep gray mist.
This was, of course, the Void Realm: a shadow of the universe where space and time intertwined in chaos, a forbidden domain that only the highest-level extraordinary psychics could enter.
It was a stage suited to him.
The elderly Duke Saduran smiled and began his final combat meditation. He let the power of his spirit flow alongside his bloodline, stretching through his body, covered in old wounds, and across his mental world. Those indescribable spiritual forces circulated countless times through his mind.
When the meditation ended, the Grand Commander of the Starrealm Knights, known to the public as a weary old man, suddenly straightened his back, as though he had become fifty years younger in an instant.
At last, my time has come.
Ninety years of cultivation, training, meditation, and exploration; forty years of smooth sailing as a heaven-blessed prodigy; and fifty years of nightmares that plagued him day and night after his crushing defeat—all of it had been a flame that tempered his soul.
In the end, it had all led to this unique moment. He suddenly felt that the sole purpose of his life had not been to become Grand Commander of the Starrealm Knights. It seemed his whole life had been for this very moment.
He adjusted the angle of the sword at his waist. It looked no more than a ceremonial sword issued by the Imperial military to senior officers; it was hardly a weapon. Even so, Duke Saduran carefully positioned the hilt for the smoothest possible draw.
Now, filled with honor and sincerity, without fear, anger, or hatred, he strode toward the greatest battlefield of