Chapter 201: The Will Of The World

Time had stopped.

Dust remained suspended above the ruined tower, and fragments of stone hung motionless in the air. The fires scattered across the battlefield no longer flickered, while streams of lightning remained frozen above the shattered buildings. Even the wind had disappeared, leaving behind a silence so complete that Reinhard could hear nothing beyond his own breathing.

Only he could move.

Above the tower hovered a world-shaped radiance, its surface covered in rivers of white light. It had no face or recognizable features, yet Reinhard could feel its attention fixed on the unconscious woman behind him.

Emily lay among the broken stones, her breathing faint but steady.

Reinhard raised his weapon and positioned himself between her and the radiance. His body was exhausted from the battle against Xanxus. His injuries made every movement painful, and the lightning surrounding him had nearly faded, but he refused to leave Emily exposed.

The light finally spoke. [Contamination detected.]

Reinhard frowned. "What contamination?"

[Foreign influence detected. The contaminated individual cannot be permitted to remain indefinitely.]

"Are you talking about Xanxus? He’s already been defeated."

[Another Corruption has been detected.]

The radiance shifted toward Emily.

[The contamination is present here.]

Reinhard stared at it, struggling to reconcile its words with what he had witnessed during the battle.

"Huh? How is Emily corrupted!? You saw how she didn’t use any powers or have features like Xanxus!"

Xanxus’s transformation had covered his body in black-and-white energy, and his spatial abilities had reached an unnatural level. Emily, however, had fought using her own Gnosis and Domain. She had not displayed the same monstrous characteristics, nor had she lost control of herself.

The Will answered without hesitation.

[Correct. She has no features or powers... Yet.]

Reinhard froze.

"What?"

[Foreign influence has been detected within her existence. Its influence may continue to increase until the individual can no longer maintain her original form.]

"Then tell me what’s happening to my wife."

[Her existence is connected to something that does not belong to this world. If the connection cannot be resolved, the contamination will eventually consume her.]

"And your solution is to erase her before that happens?"

[Removal may result in the destruction of the contaminated existence.]

"You mean Emily."

[Correct.]

The answer carried no hesitation. The Will did not sound angry, nor did it seem to consider Emily’s suffering relevant to its conclusion. It had detected a threat to the world and determined that removing the source was an acceptable solution.

Reinhard looked back at his wife.

He remembered the years she had spent trapped by her broken Gnosis, forced to watch other Awakeners advance while she remained unable to return to the life she had once known. Even after she regained her strength, she had not expected the world to hand everything back to her. She trained, struggled, and pushed herself through setbacks that would have discouraged most people.

Reinhard had watched her fight for every step forward.

She had finally reached S-Rank. She had returned to the battlefield, regained her independence, and proven that the future she wanted was still within reach.

Now, something else threatened to take that future away.

Reinhard turned toward the Will, his expression hardening. "As the Will of the World, you’ve seen the effort Emily has put into reaching S-Rank. You’ve seen how she fought to reclaim her life. And SHE was the one who stopped the Black Moon from descending twice."

His voice grew firmer. "How can you stand there and judge her to be corrupted?"

For the first time, the Will did not immediately answer.

Its radiance remained suspended above the tower, and the silence stretched between them. Reinhard could not tell whether it was reconsidering his words or simply processing information that had not changed its conclusion.

Then it spoke. [That is true. It was because of her that Aurlieus City did not connect to the other world during the first incident. It was also because of her that the Black Moon did not create a massive breach in Marvello.]

Reinhard’s expression shifted.

[But have you ever wondered how she was able to survive?]

He paused before frowning. "She closed the second one with Tepes by cutting the connection. As for the first one..."

His words trailed off.

He remembered the first Black Moon incident and the circumstances surrounding Emily’s intervention. At the time, they had focused on stopping the immediate disaster. There had been little opportunity to understand every detail of what she had done.

The Will supplied the answer. [She could survive and close them because deep within her sleeps the power of the Corruption.]

Reinhard went still.

The word reminded him of Vlad.

Vlad had left half of his power within Emily, yet no one had been able to detect it. His power had concealed and sealed itself so effectively that even those examining Emily’s condition had failed to recognize its presence.

Could the Corruption have done something similar?

[This power can be detected. In fact, the reason her Gnosis changed is because of it.]

Reinhard’s eyes widened. "Wait. That’s why her Gnosis became connected to Space and Time?"

He had assumed Emily’s new abilities were the result of her recovery and the changes her Gnosis had undergone. But the Will was suggesting that the process had begun long before she reached S-Rank.

Another memory surfaced.

One of the researchers had reported activity within Emily’s Gnosis even while it was broken. They had found the phenomenon unusual, but they had been unable to identify its source.

Reinhard’s stomach tightened. Don’t tell me it was the Corruption.

[Yes. The Corruption possesses the ability to evolve, allowing anything within this world to transcend its previous limits. However, it requires an incubation period. During this phase, the power restricts the user until it is fully prepared.]

Reinhard stared at the radiance. "No wonder Xanxus couldn’t use his Gnosis Authority properly. His power was still in that incubation phase."

[Correct.]

"Then Emily’s incubation period happened while her Gnosis was broken?"

[Yes. However, it would have remained in that state indefinitely had you not interfered.]

Reinhard shook his head. "Emily wouldn’t have used that power!"

[She would have. In numerous possible futures, she always has a reason to do so.]

The frozen world disappeared.

Reinhard found himself standing in Aurlieus City, surrounded by buildings consumed by fire. The sky had turned black and white, and the streets were filled with shattered relics and fallen Awakeners. Civilians fled through the smoke while something walked calmly toward the heart of the city.

Its body was covered in black-and-white energy. Space twisted around its limbs, and the air distorted with every step.

Reinhard recognized the figure before it turned toward him.

It was Emily.

His wife walked through the burning streets while the city collapsed around her. There was no hesitation in her movements, no sign that the destruction troubled her. She looked like Xanxus during his transformation, except that the power surrounding her seemed even more deeply connected to her existence.

[In this future, she used the power after her family was abused and used against her to force her cooperation with the first Sinner.]

Reinhard’s hands trembled.

He could imagine the anger Emily would feel if someone used her family to control her. He knew how fiercely she protected the people she loved, and the thought of someone deliberately exploiting that devotion made his chest tighten.

But the Will did not allow him to remain with the first vision.

Aurlieus vanished, replaced by Elyndor.

The combat city’s buildings glowed with black-and-white light. Their structures flickered and shifted, as though reality itself could no longer decide what shape they should possess. People ran through the streets, including Awakeners, Bloodkins, and ordinary civilians.

Behind them, a massive creature emerged from the darkness. Countless tentacles swept through the streets, reaching for anyone unable to escape. Its body was a shifting mass of distorted flesh and black-and-white energy.

[In this future, she broke after learning that her adaptive father, Vlad, had been cut into pieces and used for experiments.]

Reinhard’s expression changed.

He knew what Vlad meant to Emily. He had seen the trust between them and understood how much her father had contributed to the person she had become.

The thought of Vlad being tortured and used in experiments was horrifying enough. Seeing the destruction that followed made it worse.

Then the vision changed again.

Marvello appeared beneath a black-and-white sky. Buildings burned along the streets, and people who had once lived ordinary lives had become distorted figures attacking anything nearby. The corruption had spread through the city, turning familiar streets into a nightmare.

[In this future, she gave up after you were killed. She wished for the entire world to experience her hatred and despair.]

Reinhard could not speak.

The first vision had shown what others could do to Emily. The second had shown how deeply someone could wound her through her family. The third showed what might happen if she lost the person she had chosen to share her life with.

The Will’s voice continued as the burning city faded.

[There are many more futures in which this occurs. Their number approaches infinity.]

The ruined tower returned around them.

[This power will find the smallest weakness within your wife and push her beyond her limits. Her suffering will become the means through which it gains control. Eventually, she will become a tool that destroys everything around her.]

White radiance gathered around Emily’s unconscious body.

[It is better to destroy her now than to allow her to awaken one day and discover what she has done.]

Reinhard stepped forward, blocking the light.

"She is still my wife."

[Move aside.]

"No."

The answer came immediately.

The Will’s radiance intensified, and the pressure forced Reinhard’s exhausted body to tremble. His injuries burned, and his legs threatened to give way. He understood that he could not defeat a force that had appeared without effort and frozen the world around him.

But he had no intention of moving.

[Did you not understand the futures I showed you?]

"I understood them."

[Yet you still wish to protect her?]

"Of course."

Reinhard looked down at Emily. He remembered her determination when she first began fighting to recover her strength, the frustration she endured when progress came slowly, and the way she refused to let others decide what her future should look like.

He remembered her standing at S-Rank, having finally reclaimed what she had lost.

The Will was asking him to abandon that future because it had seen the ways she might break.

"Just because she can become like that doesn’t mean she will. People have always tried to put limitations on my wife. They’ve told her what she can do, what she can’t do, what she can become, and what she must never become."

He tightened his grip on his weapon.

"And every time, she has proved them wrong. She fought to recover her Gnosis. She returned to the battlefield. She reached S-Rank. She stopped the Black Moon twice. She has earned the right to decide her own future, and I won’t let you take that away from her."

The Will’s light remained fixed on him.

[Are you willing to bet the lives of everyone in those futures on that belief?]

Reinhard did not answer immediately.

He understood the danger.

The visions were not harmless possibilities, and he could not dismiss the lives lost in them simply because they had not happened yet. If he chose to protect Emily, he would have to find a way to prevent those futures from becoming reality.

He looked back at her.

"Yes," he answered at last. "I’m willing to bet on her, because those futures aren’t the ones Emily and I will walk."

He raised his weapon.

"I’ll find a way to free her from whatever connection she has to the other world. I’ll find a way to stop this power from taking control of her. I’ll protect her without sacrificing everyone else."

His gaze hardened.

"I refuse to let anyone harm her. Anyone who tries to use her as a tool, anyone who wants to steal her future, and anyone who decides she should be destroyed before she gets the chance to fight back is my enemy."

He faced the world-shaped radiance.

"That includes you. And it includes the other world that wants to use her."

The Will said nothing.

For several seconds, the frozen world remained silent.

Then an overwhelming pressure swept across the tower.

The sky began to change despite the frozen flow of time. Multicolored lightning tore across the heavens, illuminating the ruins with flashes of impossible light. The pressure grew so immense that the air itself seemed to tremble, and Reinhard felt as though the entire world was approaching its end.

He had challenged the Will of the World itself.

The radiance turned toward him, and for the first time since its arrival, Reinhard felt that its attention had changed.

He tightened his grip on his weapon, refusing to take a step back.

Oh damn...