Arthur Sterling stood in the center of the ruined courtyard and his heavy boots rested comfortably on the shattered bedrock.

The headless and mangled corpse of Apex Overseer Kaelen lay crumpled a few feet away, leaking golden luminescent blood into the soot-stained marble.

The entire planet was watching.

Through the Omni-Broadcast Node he had purchased from the system, every single living being in The Mortal Domain had a front-row seat to the impossible.

From the highest kings sitting on their velvet thrones to the lowest beggars shivering in the mud, they had just watched a man with no magical aura casually dismantle a literal God.

Arthur looked up and his gaze pierced through the smog. He wasn’t just looking at the sky. He was looking directly into the minds of the planetary elite.

"To the Kings, Emperors, and guild leaders of this world." Arthur’s voice echoed with a low and rumbling baritone that carried absolute authority into the minds of trillions.

"Your previous management failed you. They sold you out and treated your kingdoms like battery farms for the Apex Realm. As of this exact second, all of your assets, territories, and subjects should belong to the Vanguard Bastion." 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚

He let the silence stretch for a fraction of a second to let the weight of his hostile takeover sink in.

"Submit by nightfall and you keep your lives," Arthur continued coldly. "Resist and I will personally liquidate your bloodlines. The board has been restructured. Have a productive day."

With a mental command, Arthur severed the broadcast.

The oppressive silence of the ruined academy returned. It was broken only by the crackle of dying fires and the groans of wounded students.

Arthur turned on his heel with his dark coat billowing behind him. He didn’t look like a savior. He looked like an apex predator who had just claimed his territory.

Caden Cross stumbled out from the wreckage of the administration building.

The sixteen-year-old protagonist was a mess of lacerations and bruises. His cheap clothes were soaked in the blood of Cult hounds.

He leaned heavily on a splintered wooden sword and looked at Arthur with wide and reverent eyes.

"S-sir," Caden stammered before coughing and spitting a glob of blood onto the stones. "The surviving Cultists are retreating toward the city borders. What are your orders?"

Arthur analyzed the boy. His system interface subtly highlighted the faint pulsing aura of the Grandmaster tier Caden had just broken into. The kid was a goldmine.

"Take the surviving Vanguard students," Arthur ordered flatly. "Hunt them down. Leave no survivors. Hostile takeovers require aggressive downsizing kid. Go earn your keep."

"Yes, sir!" Caden shouted.

A fierce protagonist-fueled fire burned in his eyes despite his exhaustion. He turned and sprinted off to rally the terrified students.

Arthur watched him go and a dark smirk played on his lips.

[Ding!]

[Employee target ’Caden Cross’ has engaged 40 Cultists.]

[10,000x ROI Multiplier Activated! Host is passively receiving Grandmaster-tier combat experience.]

The sudden influx of energy was a warm and pleasant hum in Arthur’s veins. But it was barely a drop in the ocean compared to what happened next.

[Ding!]

[Residual Divine Energy detected from the corpse of ’Apex Overseer Kaelen’.]

[Processing ambient soul fragments through the 10,000x Multiplier...]

[Host’s internal energy reserves are reaching critical mass.]

Arthur gritted his teeth as a torrential flood of pure cosmic power slammed into his pseudo-ascended core. It was blinding.

The combined passive feedback from Caden’s fighting, Sylvia’s Arch-Mage regeneration, Morwenna’s abyssal recovery, and the dead God’s soul fragments created a violent hurricane of energy inside his chest.

His muscles bulged and the Dimensional Breaker Physique hummed past its absolute limits.

The stone beneath his boots spider-webbed because it was unable to handle the sheer gravitational density of his existence.

[Warning! Host has exceeded the absolute physical threshold of The Mortal Domain.]

[Initiating ’Mandatory Dimensional Ascension’ protocol.]

↳ Countdown established: 30 Days.

↳ Host must ascend to the Apex Realm before the dimensional barrier forcefully expels your existence.

Arthur exhaled a long breath and forced the raging energy down into a tightly compressed singularity within his core.

Thirty days?. That was more than enough time to finish his business on this dirt ball.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out the glowing Apex Coordinate Crystal he had looted from Tristan Blackwood’s shattered communication stone. It pulsed with a faint spatial frequency.

Normally, ascension was a solo endeavor. The physical laws of the universe dictated that a cultivator had to leave all worldly possessions behind when they shattered the sky.

Arthur didn’t care about the laws of the universe.

"System," Arthur commanded. "Analyze the crystal. I want to build an anchor. I’m not leaving my company behind when I move to the corporate office."

[Ding!]

[Analysis complete. Apex Coordinate Crystal can be refined into a ’Dimensional Anchor’.]

↳ Cost: 2,000,000 System Points.

↳ Effect: Links the host’s current spatial territory directly to your personal system space and bypasses ascension restrictions.

"Purchase it. Refine it," Arthur said as he tossed the crystal into the air.

The Ebonheart Cube detached from his shoulder and snapped its geometric jaws around the glowing crystal.

The pitch-black metal hummed violently as it absorbed the massive sum of system points. It restructured the spatial artifact into a heavy and intricate black ring.

Arthur snatched it out of the air and slid it onto his finger.

The Vanguard Bastion and everyone in it was now his personal transportable property.

Later that night, the fires had been extinguished and the dead had been cleared.

The academy was eerily quiet under a terrifying new order. In the highest untouched spire of the Bastion, Arthur stood by the grand window and looked out over the sprawling subjugated city below.

The heavy mahogany doors clicked shut behind him.

Sylvia Thorne and Morwenna stepped into the room.

The contrast between the two women was staggering.

Sylvia wore a sheer and form-fitting silk robe that clung to her lethal curves. Her silver hair cascaded down her back like liquid moonlight and she radiated an absolute-zero cold.

Beside her, Morwenna wore a dark crimson gown that barely contained her generous assets. Her deathly pale skin was marked with pulsing living black tattoos. Her liquid gold eyes burned with abyssal heat.

Both of them were bound to him. Both of them belonged to him.

"The planetary surrender is complete, Arthur," Sylvia said softly but entirely devoid of her usual icy arrogance. "Every monarch on the continent has formally submitted their leylines and treasuries to the Bastion."

"The little boy did well too," Morwenna purred.

She stepped up behind Arthur and wrapped her slender arms around his waist. She rested her chin on his broad shoulder and her fangs lightly grazed his neck.

"He slaughtered the remaining cultists. He’s quite the efficient little hound."

Arthur turned around. His towering frame dwarfed the two immensely powerful women.

"He’s a good investment," Arthur murmured as his hands came up to rest on their waists.

"But enough about the boy. I have a little something for you both."

Arthur triggered the feedback loop in reverse.

He didn’t just take. He invested.

He channeled the compressed 10,000x refined energy of the dead Overseer directly through his hands and into their cores.

Sylvia gasped and her glacial eyes went wide as the overwhelming god-tier mana flooded her meridians.

Morwenna let out a sharp and breathless moan. Her back arched as the pure cosmic energy ignited her abyssal bloodline.

"You’re both too weak for where we’re going," Arthur whispered. His voice was a low and commanding rumble that sent shivers down their spines.

"If you want to stand beside me in the Apex Realm, you need to break your ceilings."

The intimacy of the energy transfer was profound. It was a merging of souls and a dominant restructuring of their very existence.

The room warped around them. Arthur forcefully dragged both the Arch-Mage and the Demon Empress up the cultivation ladder and elevated them toward a state of pseudo-ascension.

They clung to him and completely surrendered to the absolute terrifying gravity of their Emperor.