Chapter 501: 501

The flaming goblin mage spoke first, his voice crackling with heat and ritual authority.

“By the rules that bind us, battle here is forbidden.”

With those words, he and the two other mages vanished, their forms flickering out like candles snuffed in the wind. It was not a retreat. No, far from it. Their magic flared as they blinked away, not concealing their trail, but broadcasting it—like beacons flaring in the dark, daring Ikenga to follow.

And he intended to.

A smile tugged at the corner of Ikenga’s lips. He prepared to vanish in turn, to simply blink after them. But as he gathered his will, he felt it—the pressure of this world resisting him. A thick, unseen weight wrapped around his existence, slowing his thoughts, constricting his being. It was no surprise.

After all, Ikenga had severed his connection to this world long ago.

Not just a detachment, but a decisive, sundering. He had shattered the bond between himself and this world resisdent that once recognized him as a god in turning making this world accept his presence. With that break came a price: rejection. The world no longer welcomed his presence. It suppressed him, pushed back against every breath he took, every movement he made.

But Ikenga learned something from observing Gurnak and Vorenza fight.

It was something he had applied in his confrontation with the old mage—an innovation born from necessity. Since the world sought to suppress him, all he needed was to forge a sanctuary within it. A boundary. A personal space in which the world’s rules no longer applied.

A domain.

It was within this controlled sliver of space that he had dismantled the old man with such eerie ease. And now, as he prepared to leave, he remembered it again. The very earth beneath him recognized his defiance. The ground groaned, not in protest, but in awe, as if peeling back its skin to reveal his presence.

He set that thought aside.

Crouching low, Ikenga let his power coil within him. Then, with a single, fluid motion, he launched himself skyward. The world howled in protest as he broke free, a shockwave bursting from the point of his departure. Trees bent. Mountains shuddered. Clouds swirled in spirals from the vacuum left behind.

In the blink of an eye, he was in the void of space.

Suspended in the silence between worlds, he looked to the moon—the resting place of his other eyes. Orbiting it, he saw the great plant he had once seeded there, its roots winding through moonrock, designed to merge with the eyes and extend his perception.

Through those eyes, he watched the goblin mages—not fleeing, but transitioning—leaping from their origin world to another, farther planet. They moved with purpose, threading their path through the stars.

Ikenga did not rush. He simply became. His form dissolved into a point of golden radiance, compacted and pure, then shot forward like a spear of divine light.

By the time the goblin mages touched down on the barren, dust-ridden surface of the new planet, Ikenga was already behind them. Silent. Waiting.

And this time, there were no rules to stop what came next.

The flaming mage spoke first, his voice steady but edged with restrained fury, the fire wreathed around his form flaring in response to his emotion.

“We had previously approached Your Highness to talk, to understand. To learn why a being like you— revered, once aligned with balance—would choose to consort with demons. We sought discourse. But your choice… your audacity in taking one of our own has made that impossible.”

Ikenga didn’t respond right away.

He stood in silence, his figure outlined by the soft, fading glow of his arrival. Though he appeared solid, his form flickered faintly—more suggestion than substance, like he was present and absent all at once.

He was repeating something he had done before, a technique he first used on the moon, hoping it would give him a better chance here. He had assumed that being on neutral ground, a planet unfamiliar to all of them, would put him and the three mages on equal footing.

But the moment he set foot on the soil, he realized just how wrong he was.

Despite the distance between their worlds, his godly vision picked up on the faint but unmistakable tether connecting the three mages to a structure that pulsed with quiet power. In his eyes, it was no simple building—it was the Mage Towers.

Those towers, rooted deep in their homeland, was still feeding them. Still sustaining them. Their strength wasn’t waning—it was being maintained.

Ikenga, on the other hand, was far from his own world and domain. His divine energy was limited here, his influence restrained.

Now he understood their confidence—their boldness, even beyond the safety of their world.

Too bad they didn’t understand him.

Not really, not yet.

He was quietly grateful they wanted to talk. It gave him more time.

More time to understand the planet they had landed on.

His incorporeal state wasn’t just for show—it was part of an ongoing process, a way to attune himself to the essence of this dead world. A world stripped of life. No water. No animals. Not a single living organism is found on this barren planet.

From the outside, his form seemed ghostlike, but it was hiding something far more deliberate.

He was using his body to mirror the condition of the planet itself. A slow, careful imitation. At the same time, within his form, different plants flickered into existence—growing, withering, fading away—none of them able to adapt to the harsh, lifeless terrain. Not yet.

But he was getting closer.

The longer they talked, the longer they postured and delayed, the more time he had to search. To experiment. To find something—anything—that could take root here.

And when he did, this barren world would no longer be theirs to stand on.

With that in mind he responded voice deep and measured, resonating across the empty plains.

“You approached me not to understand, but to verify your fears. You came bearing veiled suspicion and smiling hypocrisy. You asked questions not with open minds, but with judgments already cast.

And as for the one you speak of…”He raised a hand, a curl of memory unfolding like smoke. “He offered himself in arrogance. He believed his power alone would unveil me, define me. He left me no choice but to show him the truth of what he stood upon. I did not take him. I merely revealed his weakness. The rest… he did to himself.”

There was silence for a beat. The flames around the goblin mage roared higher, lashing at the sky. The second mage—a figure cloaked in wind and lightning—stepped forward.

“He was our kin,” she said coldly. “We cannot let that go unanswered.”

Ikenga tilted his head slightly, the faintest glint in his eye.

“Then answer it. But know this—your pursuit of vengeance will not lead to justice. It will only drag you closer to the abyss that took him.”

The flame mage annoyed with Ikenga’s tone attacked as he roared “Then let’s find out”

The fire mage raised a hand, and the sky cracked open with a bloom of searing light. A huge hand of flame moved toward Ikenga, twisting in the air like it had a mind of its own. The others followed in step—the wind-and-lightning mage unleashing a wind storm that was surrounded with lightning , and the starlight mage lifting his staff, drawing threads of radiant power from the void itself.

Ikenga didn’t flinch.

He was already moving—no, being moved. His curse had taken hold, one of most used. “Isolation” he had whispered minutes earlier, and now that whisper had become law.

As the attacks closed in, his form bent and twisted in ways that weren’t natural. His body veered from strikes just before they landed, as if some unseen force guided his every movement. A tendril of fire grazed his shoulder—missed. A bolt of lightning split the ground beneath his feet—too slow. Even the precise, slicing light of the starlight mage failed to land. Their power met empty air and shifting shadows.

He raised a hand, and the ground beneath him shifted.

The dead earth cracked.

From it, wooden roots twisted upward, sharp and barbed, blooming into massive constructs of wood that pulsed with unnatural life. Some glowed with embers, borrowing the nature of fire. Others shimmered with a wet sheen, bending toward water. A few sparked faintly—raw energy dancing along their length like they’d tasted lightning.

The roots shot forward—burning, slashing, entangling—each one aimed with precision.

The fire mage, recognizing the inherent danger of his own element turned against him, didn’t try to simply incinerate the flaming root. Instead, with a subtle flick of his wrist, he inverted its heat. The burning wood sputtered, then frosted over, brittle ice cracking along its length as it continued its trajectory. He then unleashed a precise jet of superheated air, not at the root itself, but at the ground behind it, the sudden expansion of the air propelling him backward with surprising speed, putting distance between himself and the encroaching vegetation.

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