BOOM!

Balls of fire rained from the sky like a divine judgment, turning the city into a sea of destruction. Houses crumbled beneath the impacts, streets shattered, and countless civilians were crushed as terrified screams filled the air.

The chaos shifted to a single house. Inside, a woman clutched a child as they screamed at the top of their lungs, their voices trembling with fear.

Then a blazing fireball crashed through the roof, and in an instant, both mother and child were swallowed by the inferno and disintegrated without a trace.

A man with white hair and a full white beard screamed at the top of his lungs, his voice filled with despair as he reached out helplessly to them. Then, darkness swallowed him completely in the next moment.

After that, everything fell silent.

No screams.

No explosions.

No single sound at all.

It felt as though an eternity had passed in the endless void.

Then, Rentaro’s eyes snapped open, glowing with a brilliant blue light for a brief moment before the radiance vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

He shot upright from the bed, his back arching forward as ragged breaths escaped his lips.

His chest rose and fell rapidly while countless notification panels flooded his field of vision, appearing one after another without end.

[Ding! With memories comes history! You have obtained the Fragment Of Memories!]

[Description: One of the great Fragments of the Supreme Ruler’s Soul-Core.]

"Huh?" Rentaro slowly rubbed his face with both palms, dragging them down as he tried to steady himself.

After a brief moment, he lowered his hands and lifted his gaze once more, his eyes settling on the countless notification panels floating before him.

"Fragment Of Memories?" He stared hard at his status panel and his stats. "Is it referring to those memories that I kept seeing?"

Rentaro’s eyes narrowed as he read the description of the Fragment of Memories, as immediately as he read it, the full understanding came to him almost instantly.

A Soul-Core was the foundation of the body, much like a foundation was to a house. It held everything together, the strength a person possessed, the blood flowing through their veins, and even the countless receptors spread throughout their body.

Without it, the entire structure would collapse.

"So those memories were of the entity that I saw in the abyss back then? No, rather it’s more efficient to say that those memories were of Chronos himself."

Rentaro remained silent as the memories washed over him. He could feel the emotions buried within them, the rage that burned like an inferno, resentment that had festered for what seemed like thousands of years, and hatred so deep it seemed capable of swallowing everything in its path.

"So that’s what he meant back then. My anger shall be your ally, and my wrath your weapon." He muttered under his breath, recalling Chronos’s words back the moment he marked him.

Using his ability, Hypnos intended to kill Rentaro once and for all by trapping him in an endless nightmare, forcing him to relive his worst memories again and again while his Soul-Energy was steadily drained away till he had no life in him anymore.

What Hypnos didn’t know was that after obtaining the Fragment of Origin, Chronos’s Soul-Core had become Rentaro’s. Every nightmare, every painful memory he forced upon him wasn’t just Rentaro’s, it was also Chronos’s.

By continuously bombarding him with the strongest anguish, pain and despair contained within those memories, Hypnos unknowingly did the impossible.

The scattered fragments of those memories began to reassemble, eventually condensing into the awakened Fragment of Memories.

The moment it was born, the very thing Hypnos had used to destroy Rentaro became the cause of his own downfall. His attempt to break Rentaro had instead awakened something far beyond his control, and that mistake became his end.

"I see."

Rentaro fell silent as the memories settled within his mind. Not only had he learned a little of the truth behind his Soul-Core, but he had also learnt a bit of the truth behind the Sanctuary itself.

Sylvaria’s grandfather had been right all along, they were being watched.

Humanity’s struggles, sacrifices, victories, and deaths were nothing more than entertainment. Their lives had been reduced to a grand spectacle where unseen spectators laughed, drank, and cheered for their own amusement.

But the identity of those spectators was something humanity could never have imagined.

Not monsters, not demons, not even some unknown cosmic race.

No... They were New Olympus.

And for the first time, the weight of that truth settled heavily upon Rentaro’s shoulders.

The more Rentaro thought about Hypnos’s words, the more certain he became, when he saidhis existence caused the Sanctuary’s programming to collapse. If he had to take a guess, the Sanctuary itself was likely nothing more than a tool created by New Olympus for their own entertainment.

And if that was true, then everything humanity had suffered, their lives being changed, their comrades falling in battle, and their friends dying, it was all because of them.

The realization made Rentaro clench his fist so tightly that his knuckles turned white, rage surging through him like a storm.

Then, a sudden creak from the door snapped him out of his thoughts.

"Ah, you’re finally awake." The vice-captain of the Fifth Soul-Squad said walked into the room. The closed the door slowly behind him. "I never imagined that after one month, you’d fall into the same situation again, but this time it’s me visiting you instead of the captain. Are you alright?"

Rentaro slowly glanced down at his hands, then over the rest of his body as if confirming they were still intact. After a brief pause, he exhaled softly and said. "Yeah, I didn’t expect my Soul-Energy to be depleted after that match."

Although, his Soul-Energy was yet to be fully restored after using Timeless twice, and to make it worse, using two divine grade skills at the same time with his current body.

"At least there were no casualties, humanity can rest easy for now."

"Huh?" Rentaro’s brows jerked in confusion. "What do you mean?" He tried looking for a way to explain why and how he passed out in an empty hallway for no reason, but it didn’t seem like the vice captain thought that way.

"I don’t blame you for not knowing, you must have gotten knocked out the moment it happened."

"The moment what happened?"

The vice-captain fell silent for a brief moment, then he said. "The moment the fifth level of the sanctuary collapsed."