Ryker stood in silence as the world fell into the same lull that he had.

A God had fallen.

The skies split open and the mournful tears of the world fell from above.

His grandmother seemed to find a window in her Tribulation to take advantage of. With a final push, she crossed over the final threshold.

A God had been born.

The two events were in sharp contrast to one another, both as shocking as the other. Or so it seemed.

At the very least, it had been decades since the last God was born in their world. The birth of one, and by such unexpected means at that, was something that should have taken hold of the world.

And yet, no one could do anything but look at the young man who stood with a golden tree to his back.

In the far-off distance, Jaana watched with tears brimming in her eyes. These tears weren’t just because of the injuries that littered Ryker’s body, though they had been there for a long time because of that…

No, this time, there was a fresh set of tears, a set that came from memories that were surfacing in her mind time and time again. Every hiccup she heaved and shaggy breath she intook came with another.

The weight of the Silver Mirror had made the man she loved into a twisted, forgotten version of himself. Every day, she had watched the Ryker she knew as a child become a different man. It was incremental, but it happened before her eyes nonetheless; it was impossible for her not to have noticed.

The weight of those events truly pushed her down. She wanted to help, but she didn’t know how.

There was nothing more painful than watching someone you saw as family suffer, and yet being completely unable to do anything to change their situation.

That feeling of helplessness had been on her chest… until the day Ryker called her his wife for the first time.

That was the first time she had gotten the inkling that he had freed himself. But it wasn’t until today that she truly saw the results of it all.

This was her Ryker. This was Ryker Valorian.

He was a man who had made it to the Peak of the Mythics Realms at just 22 years of age… the first man in history to kill a God despite not being one himself.

This was the man he had always wanted to be, and it made her smile through the tears seeing him like this.

No one knew better than her how much work and effort he had put into this… how much blood, sweat, and tears.

And now, he stood as the center of the world’s attention even while a God was being born right before them all.

Ryker looked up into the skies, a whip in one hand and a chain in the other. One was wreathed in gold, and the other was flickering with a gorgeous amethyst color, something looking to be carved out of the gem, and at other times seeming to flicker with violet flames.

With a breath, Ryker suppressed his emotions and took a step into the skies. He didn’t directly join the battle with his grandfather as he hadn’t lost his mind.

He was in luck that Rail had been heavily injured before their battle started, and that he was able to take advantage of the man underestimating him to take his arm and sever his connection with one of his Contracts.

That second wound is what had truly done Rail in.

However, these two Gods had seen what happened. There was no way they would take him so lightly. And it didn’t help that he was more fatigued than he ever had been before. At the very least, he couldn’t recall ever experiencing such a thing in recent memory.

Luckily, he didn’t need to try so hard.

The moment he joined, the two Gods were immediately on their back foot. They knew that if they were careless, the whip formed from the body of the Eldertree would be the death of them.

Then, Ryker’s grandmother descended from the skies.

Lightning was probably the most destructive of the elements, so much so that many classified it as a Variant Type even though it technically wasn’t.

Ryker had never seen his grandmother attack before, but when he did, he guessed that his grandfather, at least when he was alive, certainly didn’t have a good time when he pissed his grammy off.

It wasn’t rare to see someone go all-in on one element like this. But it was rare for someone to go all in on such a difficult element to manage and control, especially given the rarity of such beasts.

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However, his grandmother had taken a unique path. She was even willing to give up Circle Talent in exchange for the right element. In fact, she doubled up on some of her Contracts, taking in Spirit Beasts from the same species.

This together made her Lightning Type affinity reach the absolute extremities of what was possible.

Now, looking thirty years younger and with a pair of eyes that looked like balls of flashing lightning, her appearance imprinted true fear into the hearts of the two Gods…

That was because she was too powerful.

Much too powerful.

The moment she descended, Pavao was struck in the chest despite his attempts at being careful and was almost blasted out of the skies.

His robes were torn to ash, and a cavity was almost torn into his body.

The moment this happened, they realized that there was simply no saving this.

Ryker had grown up before their eyes, his grandmother had far more power than she should, and they had lost the Eldertree.

This was a loss through and through.

“You all have no idea what you’ve done,” Andrea growled, her old, wrinkled face twisting up with rage and fury.

“Get the fuck out of here, old crow,” Ryker said indifferently. “Tell Jorin to wash his neck and wait patiently for me.”

Leopold gave Ryker a look. The words that Ryker spoke now seemed to say that he wanted to let them go for now, but this much was odd.

Ryker didn’t seem like a forgiving person, and since they had the advantage, why let them go?

Of course, Leopold was experienced enough to know that this was for the best as well.

Ryker’s grammy had just been through a Tribulation. Though she looked spry, she was actually at the end of her fuse.

As for Ryker, his level of fatigue and injury was far too high.

Leopold could still hold on, but he had to expend a great deal of energy as well in order to fend off these two together.

With the Spirit Energy of the planet having been drained, this placed them at a great disadvantage. The moment they ran out of Spirit Energy, they would be finished.

Letting them go was the smartest decision. He just didn’t expect Ryker to make it.

What Leopold didn’t know was that this wasn’t why Ryker wanted to do this. The reality was that they needed to move faster, much faster than this.

If they didn’t prepare in time for the fallout of all of this, there would be no chance to regret it.

Although Ryker seemed like a reckless person, that was just an outsider’s view. Leopold didn’t spend nearly enough time with his grandson to understand his true nature, which was why he always pegged Ryker the way he did.

But Ryker had always put caution first and foremost above all things. He only took calculated risks. He guided his life by a set of rules that had saved it many times.

If he really wanted to kill these few, he could use the Eldertree to absorb some corpses and heal himself. Although he had never tried it, he was fairly certain that he could figure out how to pass on some Spirit Energy from the Eldertree to his grandmother and grandfather as well.

However, the first priority right now was to pack up the Valorian Clan and move to a region that could actually be defended. Otherwise, they would all be wiped out.

Andrea sneered. She had figured out Leopold’s thought process and thought that they still had the likely upper hand. But she didn’t understand Ryker’s true thoughts.

“Do you think you’ve already won—?”

She had barely managed to speak these words when Ryker suddenly attacked.

“If you don’t understand your situation, I’ll be happy to show you.”

As Andrea dodged backward, fear lighting her eyes as she locked onto the golden whip, the Eldertree swayed.

All of a sudden, the branches of the Eldertree shot out, piercing through the skies and into the ships in the skies.

Screams began to echo as the branches pierced into people, sucking them dry.

The energy pulsed, and then Ryker, who seemed to be on his last legs, began to resurrect right before their eyes.

He flicked his wrist again, and this time, his whip was even faster than before.

Pavao and Andrea’s eyes opened wide. Their eyes snapped toward Rail’s corpse at the same time and to their horror, Ryker had reacted first.

A branch pierced right through his heart, and a large suction force came through it.

Although he didn’t turn to ash in an instant like the others, he seemed to have lost over 50 pounds in a single instant. With a second pulse, he was nothing but skin and bones. With a third, he was nothing more than bone.

Power surged, and Ryker prepared to attack once again after Andrea dodged for a second time.

“Run!”

The

two realized just how nice Ryker was being to them, and they turned tail.

Ryker didn’t pursue as they rushed onto their ships. Sensing his grandfather’s gaze on him, he looked over.

“It’s complicated,” Ryker said simply. “We need to move. We can’t stay here.”

“There’s no easy way to move,” Leopold said after a while, choosing not to press Ryker for now.

This was their home planet. Although they had contingencies, they were obviously for a much smaller number of people.

Considering this was their home, it had the greatest protections. If there was ever a situation where they needed to escape, the assumption was that very few of them would be remaining. So they didn’t have a method of taking millions of Valorian Clan members out of here.

They would be hard-pressed to take away just the Main Branch, let alone the Side Branches.

“Sure there is,” Ryker’s lip curled, looking toward the Treasure City in the distance. “Those things move, you know.”

Leopold’s gaze flickered. “Did you know?”

Ryker didn’t have to ask to know what his grandfather was speaking about. He was obviously referring to the plans the Mystery Mastery Alliance had laid for the sake of sucking Planet Valorian dry.

“All Treasure Cities are parasites. The question is to what extent. I’m not a god; I don’t know everything.”

“That’s a good non-answer.”

Ryker shrugged.

Had he known about the formation? He did.

But the problem was that he couldn’t do anything about it. The Treasure City was too deeply entrenched, and the plans had been laid long before he was born.

The only surefire way to deal with it without risking the planet was to just kick the Mystery Master Alliance out and take over the Treasure City themselves.

Soon, Leopold realized why that was.

When they evacuated all of the Valorian to the Treasure City and Ryker entered its control center, the planet was blown away.

It looked as though an enormous beast had taken a bite out of Planet Valorian. The Treasure City was so deeply entrenched that it looked as though they had just ripped the heart of the planet out.

Now, the question was, where would they go?

Toward this, Ryker chose to listen to his grandmother’s suggestion for now and made his way to the Adurna family.

Just when he wanted to finally relax, he realized that his grandfather wasn’t going to let him off the hook. And as for that matter, neither was his mother, father, and grandmother.

It looked like he was actually going to have to explain.

As for how they would deal with knowing that their world was just a prison… well, only time would tell.