Within a well-furnished mansion, 15 young geniuses were gathered. However, the mood in the air was stifling as endless killing intent and darkness threatened to destroy the entire courtyard.

"Who did this?" A skinny, but tall and handsome young man asked with a darkened expression.

RolRol, who still had tears in her eyes, kneeled beside Asyna's bed, holding on to her delicate hand. Every so often she would take a moist towel to wipe the sweat off of her smooth chocolate skin, but the worry in her brows never disappeared.

Just beside Asyna lay Lilith, but RolRol completely ignored her as though the white-haired beauty had next to nothing to do with her.

Aside from Asyna, RolRol and Lilith, the Devil Path quadrants had sent twelve other geniuses from their five super powers, each having sent three of their own. So, when those of the Dark Elvin Clans saw Asyna's sorry state, their angered boiled to new heights. Asyna was their princess, how could they allow such a slap to the face? If their Emperor found out about this, living through his punishment would be a gift already.

As for Nightmare Palace, their anger was even fiercer. They were so powerful that they were even capable of lording over the vicious Devil Path quadrants, how could they allow such a thing to happen to their own Princess?

The worst part was that Lilith's injury was even worse than Asyna's, which completely baffled them. From RolRol's words, Asyna had had her manifestation shattered and almost suffered damage to her divine sense. None of them could understand what level of Presence it would take to do something like that to someone with a soul as powerful as Asyna's

The problem was that the only person who would know the truth was Asyna because Lilith's treasure had been used to hide particular fluctuations of energy. If not, they might have alerted their enemies to the fact they were here. However, now, that added layer of protection was acting as a double-edged sword because they knew next to nothing about their enemy except for the fact he had prowess capable of defeating Asyna without even making use of his wills or energy cultivation.

Even if Asyna woke up right now, she might not be able to give them an accurate accounting because she had been forced to retract her divine sense the moment she sensed the threat of Dyon's Presence.

"If you want to know who did this, how about you look at your cold-hearted witch of a fiance?" RolRol replied with disdain. They could all clearly feel the anger RolRol felt toward Lilith at this point.

Although their quadrants were allied, it was only for the sake of survival. If they didn't band together, the Conventional Path cultivators would have a much easier time of killing them all. Because of this, they never really acted as a cohesive whole, and they disdained Nightmare Palace pretending to be their decided upon leader. Couple this with Lilith's arrogant and aloof personality and it was a recipe for disaster.

Of course, this usually didn't matter because Lilith had the talent necessary to suppress them all. Although she wasn't the most powerful among them, her potential was enough to scare them all. In addition, they all knew that the only reason why some of them were stronger was because she was purposefully suppressing her cultivation. If not, she would have stepped into the celestial realm as much as a year ago already!

Hearing RolRol's words, the tall young man's brows furrowed even further. If it was a normal individual who talked to him like this, he would have burnt them to dust before their words even fully formed. But, RolRol was the favorite grand daughter of the Patriarch of the Eclipse Sect. If anything happened to her, that crazy old man wouldn't care about their plans and directly come here to seek judgement.

Taking a deep breath, he smoothed the lines of rage on his face. "Little sister RolRol, I understand you don't like my fiance very much, but this is very important. Please put your anger aside for the moment for the sake of the greater good. What senior injured our two princesses?"

"Senior?" RolRol scoffed. "It's because of that arrogance that you all will fail sooner rather than later. It was a member of the younger generation that did this to them. Maybe if your Nightmare Palace was a little more aware of itself, this wouldn't happen!"

The young man almost didn't think he heard correctly. Although he had been asking RolRol was happened, he already had many assumptions of his own.

Despite this being a weak quadrant, Lilith and Asyna were still saints. Aside from himself, in fact, all of them were mere saints. So, it only made sense for him to jump to the conclusion that some celestial ranked elder had done this to the two princesses for some reason or another. However, this was completely out of his expectations!

This feeling made him feel very uncomfortable. He was the Prince of the Fulgur Black Clan, one of the five supreme powers of their quadrants, Sokzac Fulgur. Because of his talent, and for the sake of building better relationship with Nightmare Palace, he had been betrothed to Lilith at a very early age on the caveat that he marries into their family. Although it was a bit demeaning for a man to do such a thing, he still readily agreed.

However, despite all the success in his life, he had rarely faced adversity, let alone a member of the younger generation that could make him feel any pressure besides maybe the 14 in this room together with him. Yet, he met another in this backwater quadrant? Before they even stepped foot into the Epistemic Tower? How the hell was he supposed to feel?

Seeing Sokzac's surprise, RolRol snorted adorably. "He was only 32 years old and he didn't use any wills or energy cultivation to defeat them. In fact, Asyna speculated that he had very high attainments in formation theory, yet he didn't use his soul at all."

"32 years old?" A member of the Fulgur clan snorted with disdain. To them, there was no glory in defeating Lilith and Asyna if you were so old.

"You idiots are still at it!" RolRol raged. "This isn't our home! The rules here are different! He's 32 years old, yet his Presence is so powerful, don't you understand what that means?!"

The young man who spoke earlier felt like there was a fly caught in his throat. That was right If he was 32 and had such a high level of Presence, that meant that he had already completed his trials. Considering his power, the trial level he completed shouldn't be low either.

"According to the title testing stone, he had potential surpassing a Duke. But, the stone shattered before it could accurately assess him. I suspect that he's lying about the fact he's a Duke for one reason or another. Even if I couldn't feel his Presence, Asyna's soul had already evolved into the celestial realm and her manifestation cultivation wasn't that far behind either. Yet he shattered one and nearly shattered the other! That's not something a mere Duke could do." RolRol continued, clearly exasperated.

"Our elders told us that the first thing we should have done when coming here was to get protective treasures for safeguarding against Presence, but you all disdained the idea of doing so because you're too stubborn and arrogant! Now we've suffered not one, but two losses because of it.

"We have no pills good enough to repair Lilith's soul because it's too powerful. We also don't have any pills to heal Asyna because her body is also too strong. It'll take months for both of them to recover. In fact, because of the nature of Lilith's injury, it could take her years to fully recover! We might even be forced to use the funds we would have used on that treasure to heal her instead, delaying their trials even further and affecting their trial results!

"All of this could have been avoided!"

Being reprimanded by a cute 17-year-old girl made them all feel uncomfortable, but her words were true. Their elders had warned them of the dangers of Presence.

Among all the young masters of the Conventional Path, many of the more talented ones who received the grace of their sects and clans were protected against the Presence of others. This was because the difference between those with and without Presence was far too great. There was a reason that it was the hallmark of the rulers of the martial world.