To the north, Aurem's newest underling, the dragon demigod, surged back into battle.

Whatever humiliation it had suffered moments earlier was burned away by raw fury, its scales shining as it hurled itself once more at the Wrath abyssal and the horned abyssal capable of manipulating gravity. The sky above that front twisted violently as rage and gravity collided, draconic authority clashing head-on against abyssal corruption in a brutal, unstable equilibrium.

Aurem drifted after it, unhurried.

He did not rush to intervene. Not yet. His presence alone bent the flow of the battle, pressure bleeding into the surrounding space in a way that made both abyssal demigods hesitate, recalculating every movement to avoid being ambushed by the strange newcomer on the side.

Two against two.

The situation in the north was no longer so hopeless.

If anything, the two dragons had seized the initiative, and the abyssals were reacting rather passively.

To the east, the situation was far worse.

The liquefying abyssal demigod continued its advance, its powerful and strange domain spreading like a living wound across the land. Stone softened, walls sagged, and entire sections of fortification sloughed into churning black sludge that corrupted and dragged anything caught within it downward.

The domain was weaker than its full potential due to the repression of this world, its laws unrecognized by this world and constantly destabilizing—but even so, it dwarfed anything below the demigod-level of opposition.

And, unfortunately for those near the eastern side of the fort, no demigod-level existence stood against it.

Instead, dozens of 8-star tamers had committed themselves to holding that line.

They fought with the clear understanding that they were outmatched.

Contracts roared as spiritual beasts charged through corrosive semi-liquid terrain that ate at flesh and armor alike. Techniques detonated in sharp flashes of light and steel, tearing open pockets of stability before being swallowed again by the domain's advance. Every exchange left bodies behind. Every minute pushed the eastern front closer to collapse.

Even weakened, the abyssal outclassed them.

And yet, they did not retreat.

They held because they had faith that somewhere the fort's stationed 9-star tamer was still alive. And if they endured long enough, if they paid enough blood for time, he would return. Even if they may not be alive still to personally greet him.

Kain swallowed as he watched the moving display of self sacrifice.

He reached into his space ring and withdrew the thick, timeworn Chronicle of Primordial Essence exchanged from the system. The book rested heavily in his hands. But Kain couldn't tell if it actually felt heavier due to him using another page. Or if it was the psychological weight of potentially being able to save those 8-star tamers to the east...and still choosing not to.

His gaze lingered on the faded pages within.

Gone.

Used.

"If you were fully intact," he murmured, voice low, "I could've summoned an elite army from Pangea."

Hundreds of peak existences.

Enough force to drown this battlefield outright.

And even if he didn't summon so many, having hundreds of blank pages would make him less selective with the subsequent uses; more willing to use a page on the Eastern Front as well.

Then again, if the Chronicle still held that many blank pages, he would never have been able to afford it in the first place. The System would not have sold him something that could so casually rewrite wars for only a little over 900 SP

His eyes drifted to the remaining two blank pages.

Two more chances.

Two more trump cards.

He closed the book carefully and returned it to his ring.

"Not yet," he said quietly.

As much as he wanted to intervene on the eastern front, this trump card was too valuable to waste without absolute necessity. He had to think beyond the next minute. Beyond the next battle. The Abyss was not going to stop sending forces any time soon.

And, when it came down to it, this wasn't his home.

Kain had never forgotten that the abyssal invasion of the Celestial Empire was only a few months away.

Just then, Rumble!!!

A deafening roar pierced the sky, as if the heavens had been torn apart.

A low, rolling vibration that seemed to come from everywhere at once, as though the world itself had been struck like a vast bell. The sound reverberated through stone, through bone, through the air inside Kain's chest.

The battlefield stilled.

Even the abyssals hesitated.

Above the fortress, the previously fractured sky dimmed rapidly. Clouds churned and folded in on themselves, darkening into heavy, oppressive masses that swallowed what little light remained. Lightning flashed within them, frantic and violent, but none of it struck the ground, restrained by an invisible pressure that made the air feel thick and wrong.

A suppressed, eerie stillness settled over the world.

Then the rain fell.

Large drops struck the ground without warning, splattering against stone, armor, and shattered battlements with dull, heavy thuds.

The rain was red.

Not bright red.

It was dark, congealed, like old blood diluted just enough to flow. The drops carried a faint metallic sweetness that lingered in the air, subtle but unmistakable, sinking into the senses in a way that made the chest feel tight and heavy.

Kain stiffened.

The moment the rain touched his skin, he felt it.

Energy.

Source energy.

His reserves ticked upward in a steady, unmistakable flow, warm and heavy as it poured into him. In the System as well, his originally empty SP 'wallet' began to tick upwards as well, numbers climbing without him having to do anything as the rain soaked into the surroundings.

For half a heartbeat, relief surged through him that he could finally restore some of his empty reserves, even managing to channel some to Pangea.

Then confusion.

Then realization hit him like a hammer.

His breath caught.

Red rain.

'When heaven's sanctioned rules are slain, the world responds with crimson rain.'

He hadn't seen this phenomenon before.

But he had seen reference to in text held by the Order after being recruited as a Pathfinder.

"Heaven… weeps," Kain murmured.

His voice felt small.

Around him, surviving defenders stared upward in stunned silence, some reaching out instinctively as the rain streaked down their armor. A few fell to their knees without understanding why, grief pressing down on them without a clear source.

An 8-star tamer screamed from a soul deep pain somewhere to the east, likely indicating a broken contract.

The sound cut short abruptly.

Kain's jaw tightened.

An 8-star tamer and his contract had died.

The severity of the war here hit him even harder now. They were all close to death.

High-level deaths in the Celestial Empire were almost unheard of. Power at that tier was not something lost casually. They were a precious resource for any country, and even enemies rarely killed them in battle. For one, they were too hard to kill usually. Secondly, most 8-star tamers usually belonged to a faction. Therefore, when captured, they were suppressed and traded for precious resources—but rarely destroyed.

And even when a high-level tamer or their contract died, there was no guarantee of triggering this blood rain.

The rain did not fall for death itself, but for what had been lost alongside it.

Domains—stable laws, manifested rules that had earned the world's recognition.

A domain was not merely power. It was understanding refined into structure, laws enforced strongly enough that reality itself bent to accommodate them. When such laws were destroyed—truly destroyed—the world noticed.

One could poetically say that heaven wept when a genius was lost, but the truth was colder than poetry. The world was reacting to the sudden absence of rules it had already accepted as part of itself.

But not all domains were equal.

The rain did not fall every time a high-level being died.

Kain exhaled slowly, grounding himself as he sorted the knowledge he had once memorized and then set aside. There was a reason he'd worked so hard to make sure the System Ratings for all of his contracts' latest evolutions was 5-stars.

Kain's gaze drifted, unbidden, to the memory of his own contracts' System Info Panels.

System Rating: ★★★★★ (5-stars).

He had continuously delayed their evolutions until he could get the materials to guarantee such a quality.

Not because it guaranteed a ★★★★★ domain.

It didn't.

Laws were not handed out by the System.

But that rating raised the ceiling. It meant his contracts could, potentially, refine laws up to that quality, beyond the hard limits that crippled so many cultivators before they ever realized why they had stalled.

Without that rating, no amount of effort would allow a contract to manifest a ★★★★ or ★★★★★ domain.

With it?

The possibility existed.

The frequency of realizing such high quality domains, and the differences in the world's favour granted by those domains, is best exemplified by this blood rain.

A 9-star tamer, or a demigod-level creature, would always trigger this phenomenon upon death. They all must be geniuses to reach that level after all; there was no exception. To reach that level, the laws embodied within their domain had to be refined to at least a ★★★★ quality. The world recognized those laws fully.

Their destruction left a hole.

An 8-star tamer, or a violet-grade creature, had only about a ten to twenty percent chance of triggering the rain. Not because their level was insufficient, but because only about that percent of them ever refined their domains to that same ★★★★ threshold. And they were often considered geniuses.

Most never did.

A 7-star tamer/indigo-grade existence?

Less than one percent.

So rare it was often dismissed as myth.

Kain looked at the red rain soaking into the battlefield and felt the energy pouring into him.

Four-star domain quality.

At least.

That was the threshold.

Which meant the contract that had fallen had embodied laws strong enough that the world itself had noticed their erasure. It was the true loss of a genius for the human race.

Kain clenched his fist slowly.

The rain continued to fall.

Energy entered him, although he could hardly rejoice.

And somewhere on the eastern front, another scream was cut short as the liquefying abyssal's domain swallowed more defenders.

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