Atlas stared at the floating pieces of the scythe. Even the blade that had seemed too powerful a moment ago was now in pieces, floating in front of him like broken fragments of black metal.

He knew what would happen next. The knowledge had already entered his mind when he assimilated Kankon-Rei, so this was not something he was doing without understanding.

Still, even after knowing the result, he felt it was the only choice if he wanted to progress faster. If he wanted to reach a higher place quickly, if he wanted to make his revenge possible without wasting years moving one step at a time, then he had to do this.

Atlas looked at the floating pieces for a few more seconds, then spoke one last time.

"I hadn’t given you a name, right? That was a good coincidence. When you integrate with me, I will give you a good name."

The pieces of the scythe hummed.

This time, the hum was stronger than before. The glow around the broken pieces also became brighter, as if the weapon was happy to the point it could not hold back its reaction.

Atlas smiled faintly and spoke again.

"Hmm, let’s do it...my first ever comrade."

He paused for a moment after saying that. The word comrade felt strange in his mouth because he had never used it for anyone before. But for this scythe, it did not feel wrong.

"Even though you have my own Bloodline in you, you seem to have a different...sense of self or consciousness? I don’t know what to call it, but we are a team from now. Let’s grow strong."

Atlas spoke those words in a firm tone. He did not smile or said it in some grand way either. He said it directly, because that was what he thought.

The pieces hummed again. Then slowly, they drifted toward him. Their direction was clear. They were not moving toward his chest like the Codex. They were moving toward his right hand.

Atlas lowered his gaze toward his right hand, and the next instant, the pieces moved so fast even his current perception could not fully follow them.

They entered his hand.

Yes, they entered his hand, but the process was not exactly like the Codex returning to his chest. The Codex always entered him almost casually, like it already had a place inside him.

The moment the broken scythe pieces entered his right hand, Atlas felt a clear change spreading from his arm.

His shadowy white skin was going back to normal.

No, not fully normal.

The shadowy white color faded from most of his body, but his skin looked cleaner and more refined than before. It did not look like the skin of someone who had been through so much inside a ruin. It looked smooth, controlled, and stronger in a way that was easy to notice.

Atlas stared at his right hand. Then his gaze shifted to the back of his left hand, comparing both of them.

They looked different.

His right hand, from the elbow to the tips of his fingers, looked whiter than the rest of his body. It also had a sharper feeling to it. His fingers looked clean, his skin looked refined.

His left hand was still normal. After every Attribute increase, that hand had also become cleaner and more refined, but it was not at the same level as the right hand. The difference was clear.

Atlas moved his right fingers slowly, closing and opening them a few times. There was no pain. There was no rejection. The scythe had really integrated with him.

Atlas smiled faintly seeing this, then spoke.

"Hmm...Now then, what should I name you?"

He went into thought for a few seconds. Since the ability he had used before was Fuzai-jū, and since the scythe had accepted Non-Existence and Zero through him, the name had to match that direction. After a short while, one name occurred to him.

"Fuzai-jū was it?...then, you will be 環魂零 — Reiden. In Kanji or whatever that language entered my head, it means Zero Severance. It matches with the Active Vector and...most of all, it fits you."

The moment Atlas gave the name, his right hand hummed on its own.

It was not loud. It was not something that filled the ruin. But the vibration was clear, coming from inside his right arm like the weapon was answering from there now.

Atlas nodded as he concluded it liked the name.

He stood up properly after that and shifted his attention over the chamber for a long moment. His gaze moved across the broken floor, the cracked stone, and the pedestal at the end of the chamber. There, the relic was floating.

Atlas could not gauge its rank. He had no proper method for that, but he wanted to try his newfound power, and in his eyes, the best test subject was that relic.

Atlas walked toward the pedestal at the end of the chamber, where the relic was placed. It floated slightly above the ground, and its shape looked like a monocle, the same type he had seen on Nors Solace’s eye.

But Atlas concluded this one was much higher rank than that one. The Spirit this relic was releasing was on a completely different level. Even without a proper tool to measure it, he could feel the difference. The relic on the pedestal was not a normal object.

Atlas stopped in front of it, just about a meter away.

He raised his right hand vertically upward and closed his eyes for a moment. He remembered the knowledge that had entered his mind when he assimilated Kankon-Rei. The motion was not only about swinging his hand. It had to match the Active Vector properly. If the form was wrong, the result would either fail or create unnecessary strain.

Atlas opened his eyes and spoke.

"還痕零 — Kankon-Rei."

The moment he spoke the name, his hand came down in a slow motion. It was not like a sword stance. It was completely different. The movement was controlled, small, and direct. His hand first formed the vertical part, then smoothly shifted toward the horizontal motion, completing the shape of a small plus sign in the air.

The slash was only around five inches if measured directly.

But even making that small sign placed heavy strain on Atlas’s brain.

Why?

Because Atlas intended to reduce only the rank of the relic to Zero, but he had not accounted for everything around the relic. There was ambient Spirit in the atmosphere. There was space in front of the slash. There was even the air and the ruin structure around it. The Active Vector had already made one thing clear. It could reduce the rank of anything in this world to Zero if Atlas applied his Null properly.

So what stopped it from trying to touch the Spirit around the slash?

What stopped it from interacting with the space in front of it?

That was the strain Atlas was feeling. He was not simply attacking the relic. The slash was trying to take effect along its path, and Atlas had to keep the target focused while his current body and mind were nowhere near trained enough for that.

Fortunately for him, he was not nearly strong enough to affect space properly. Even Scratching space was already far out of his reach, so reducing its rank to Zero was impossible for the current him.

As for the Spirit in the atmosphere, that was different. It did get affected, but only around the small plus-shaped slash itself. The surrounding Spirit thinned for a moment around that sign, like that small area had been stripped down by force.

The moment Atlas fully formed the slash in front of him and gave a slight push during the horizontal motion, his right hand glowed faintly.

Then the plus-shaped slash shot forward at a speed even Atlas’s current perception could not follow.

WHOOOM

CRACK!

The moment the slash came into contact with the monocle, it cracked and split in two without any resistance.

But that was not all.

The monocle turned into dust in the next moment.

Then it was gone.

Completely gone from the pedestal.

Atlas stared at the place where the relic had been floating a moment ago. He did not understand the full result. From what he knew, Kankon-Rei should only restore the rank of the target to Zero. It should not directly erase the object itself. At least, that was how he understood it for now.

’It turned into dust...? But the Active Vector should only restore the rank to Zero, right?...then what happened?’

Atlas’s eyes widened slightly as he looked at the phenomenon.

Then his eyes sharpened because the slash had not stopped after cutting the relic. It was still moving forward.

And the moment it came into contact with the ruin wall.

BOOOOOOOM!

An explosion occurred.

Atlas felt the shockwave hitting his skin, but the shockwave was not normal. It did not only push things back. Everything around the path of the impact started breaking in a strange way. The debris into dust.

Even the Boss Monster behind him was affected, and parts of its skin were getting ripped off by the force moving through the chamber.

Atlas stood his ground, but his eyes stayed on the wall.

After a few moments, the shockwave faded away. The strange dust covering the wall in front of him slowly started to settle. Atlas could not look through that dust clearly, so he waited.

The moment the dust faded away, his eyes widened at the damage left on the ruin wall.

The tiny slash had destroyed that much, the wall was not only cracked. A large part of it had been broken and hollowed out.

Atlas stared at it for several seconds.

"What in the world?...I knew this was absurd, but what even is this?"

- - -

While Atlas was still trying to understand the result of his attack, in an entirely different place, inside Velmira’s private chamber, Velmira was speaking to Semekrus and Marvilas as usual.

Semekrus rested as the locket, while Marvilas remained connected to her as the sword. This was something she did often when she was alone, because these two were not ordinary objects to her. They had followed her for too long, and both of them could respond to her in their own ways.

But then, suddenly, the space in front of her ripped open.

Velmira stood up from her bed immediately.

Marvilas appeared directly in her hand.

Her eyes narrowed as she looked at the opening in front of her.

’...No one but one of them can do this... To rip open the space of my room directly.’

She did not move forward. She did not speak first either, her grip on Marvilas stayed calm, but her attention was fully fixed on the torn space.

A man stepped out.

The moment Velmira saw him, recognition flickered behind her eyes.

"You..."

Her voice became colder.

"Why are you here?"

- - -

[A/N: I’m providing the Kanji words in English terms to make the reading understandable, Atlas only speaks Kanji in those Attacks and terms, note this for later Chapters]