Date: Unspecified

Time: Unspecified

Location: Myriad Realms, Card World, Way Beyond, Ocean Supreme’s Territory, Bay Of Butch.

"Well, I won’t let you die then," Veerott declared, smacking his chest confidently.

Aqualas looked at him with a faint smile that slowly curled into a smirk. "Ah, my hero."

Unfortunately, Veerott completely missed the sarcasm dripping from her words. Instead, he proudly puffed out his chest even further, sneaking a glance at Seraphina from the corner of his eye before boldly declaring, "Let’s go. I’ll deal with both Supremes while you and Aqualas take care of your enemy."

"That’s not it. He commands a small army of powerful demigods, and each of them could fight a Supreme to a stalemate, or even defeat one. You two are strong, but if they form a battle formation, you’ll be lambs at a butcher’s mercy. We need to be smart about this."

Seraphina was beginning to get a headache from repeatedly warning her two muscle-brained friends that this situation could not be solved through brute strength alone. It wasn’t that they failed to understand her. If anything, she was certain they understood perfectly well.

They simply didn’t care, utterly confident in their own overwhelming power.

"Oh, Princess," Aqualas sighed, shaking her head before saying, "You’re underestimating us. We’re far stronger than the last time you saw us. Veerott alone should be enough to solve your problem. I’m only tagging along because I’m bored."

The Ocean Supreme spoke with such effortless confidence that it sounded less like arrogance and more like a simple statement of fact. To beings like Aqualas and Veerott, overwhelming force was not a trump card, it was their natural state of existence.

"Actually, Sera, you’re so weak that it’s starting to erase all my feelings for you," Veerott said, trying to provoke Seraphina in the childish hope that putting her down would somehow make her pay more attention to him.

"Good for you, Veerott," Seraphina replied with a completely nonchalant smile before immediately returning to the real issue. "The enemy I’m dealing with can create Celestial Rule Domains. Not only that, he’s so proficient with them that he created something called a Double Celestial Rule Domain. It basically renders opponents far stronger than him completely helpless inside it."

"That’s simply impossible," Aqualas denied immediately, her expression turning serious for the first time. She spoke as though Seraphina had just described something fundamentally absurd.

Both Seraphina and Veerott turned toward her in confusion.

Aqualas let out a long sigh before finally explaining, "Mortals cannot create a Celestial Rule Domain. To create one, you need your own Celestial Force. Only true Celestials, like the will of our Card World, possess such a force, which is why they alone can create Celestial Rule Domains.

"The only reason some of us Supreme beings can even do it is because we are essentially extensions of the Card World’s will itself. Even then, we still have to sense Celestial Force and master it to that level, and that does not come nearly as naturally to us as understanding the meanings of our innate rule.

"I never told you this back then because you said you were done trying to recreate the technique after wasting half a century of your life on it. I didn’t want to see you disappointed again. Besides, you made it clear you had no intention of pursuing it anymore."

Listening to Aqualas, Seraphina’s eye twitched violently while the veins along her neck and forehead began to bulge and pulse visibly.

For the first time since arriving on the island, Seraphina’s calm composure showed obvious cracks. The veins along her forehead pulsed faintly as she recalled how she had spent another half century during her imprisonment trying to recreate the lost art of the Celestial Rule Domain.

Yet she said nothing about it to Aqualas. She knew the Ocean Supreme had hidden the truth out of genuine concern for her.

In the end, Seraphina could only blame her own rotten luck.

"No, I don’t know how, but he really can create Celestial Rule Domains. He even developed a technique to create a pseudo Celestial Rule Domain. Look..."

As she spoke, Seraphina summoned a pseudo Celestial Space Domain for Aqualas and Veerott to witness.

The surrounding world instantly distorted. Space folded unnaturally around them as if reality itself had been forcefully rewritten. The sky darkened, the air grew heavy, and invisible pressure descended upon the island like the gaze of a higher existence.

Aqualas and Veerott’s eyes widened in shock.

If Seraphina had not already warned them that it was a fake, it would have taken them quite some time to realize this was not a genuine Celestial Rule Domain.

"Amazing... he figured out a way to use borrowed Celestial Force to mimic a Celestial Rule Domain. This is incredible. It’s the closest a mortal could ever come to creating a true Celestial Rule Domain."

Aqualas spoke while carefully sensing the domain with her Intent Sense, genuine admiration flickering across her face. For the first time, she seemed truly impressed by what a mortal had accomplished.

Veerott did the same, but he went a step further. Rather than merely observing it, he began studying the structure of the domain itself, trying to comprehend and recreate the technique through sheer instinct and talent.

"Also, there are records of an ancient Card Apprentice using Celestial Rule Domains. Mortals can definitely create them," Seraphina argued stubbornly, clearly unwilling to let the matter go.

From the look of things, her revenge and the affairs of the state could wait. Right now, proving the possibility of mortals creating Celestial Rule Domains mattered more to her.

It had become one of her greatest obsessions, something she had already wasted nearly a century pursuing.

This unhealthy obsession only grew when the royal family had banned her from learning the art of creating pseudo celestial rule domains, but the royal instructor taught her in exchange for cutting all the causality between them. He used to be part of her faction, but now he supported the Southern Princess so wholeheartedly that he had severed all ties with her. That alone showed just how far her influence in the Southern Region had fallen.