The Invincible Full-Moon System Chapter 1978: The Plan (2)

Each whip that hissed against his skin was euphoria.

High Lord Rashal took the whippings without letting out so much as a grunt.

Compared to the terrible things that he had already endured in order to be in the position he was in right now, what were a few lashes? What was a fleeting moment of pain? They were nothing but necessary sacrifices that paved the road forward.

Humiliation, pain, and strength—he’s willing to sacrifice anything to reach the higher sky.

As a plebeian, a lowborn, someone who was born in poverty and rose through the power rankings, High Lord Rashal knew that people like him couldn’t be stingy. Patricians, the highborn, could rise in power while maintaining dignity and pride.

But that’s a privilege for their kind, one that High Lord Rashal was dying to have.

Yet the cards were already dealt, and he needed to play his.

Losing in a battle of wit against High Lord Ursa meant the end was near.

High Lord Rashal knew it. Embraced it. And that paved the road to finding another path that he could take.

One that would allow him to go through this dire situation and come out on top.

Frankly, he was having the same thoughts as Davina and Lilliana—eliminating the option to choose High Lord Ursa over him. It would fester resentment, friction—but it would most certainly buy him time to find another way to survive.

And for the time being, that was enough.

Perhaps now that he had lived the life of a political figure, his mind was in tune with the sisters.

It was Rex who had suggested another path.

Rex was an emperor in the Mortal Realm; he had confessed about it, and thus he knew the lives of people like them. But there’s one thing that made him different—he never aspired to be or was born as one. He was also born with a humble background. And yet, he never wanted to become a political figure.

Someone who sat at the top and oversaw many.

Due to that, his way of thinking remained completely outside the box.

A mixture of the world of highborn and lowborn.

And with that forged mindset, he suggested another plan in case the situation was worse than expected.

’If the enemy is familiar with the battlefield, then change the battlefield.’

High Lord Rashal, Davina, and Lilliana had been too focused on playing the game when almost all the pieces on the board were owned by High Lord Ursa. They could still triumph, but the chances of doing so would be extremely low.

Possible, but why bother? Nobody is forcing them to play in a disadvantageous field.

Of course, Rex’s plan was reserved for when things were too overwhelmingly bad.

And things are overwhelmingly bad from the moment they departed for this humiliation-fest.

Just like Rex suggested, they changed the battlefield.

In this context, the battlefield was the entire Primordial Meadow and its officials, who were all leaning toward High Lord Ursa—as he had reigned as a High Lord far longer than High Lord Rashal. And how does one change the battlefield when the entire realm was already under High Lord Ursa’s palm?

It’s quite simple.

All Rex and the others needed to do was look up.

High Lord Ursa’s heart skipped a beat.

He had grown accustomed to High Lord Rashal’s infuriatingly neutral expression, a mask that had never cracked before; thus, seeing the triumphant smile felt deeply wrong. In this moment, he believed with absolute certainty that a neutral mask was infinitely preferable to this.

Despite the bloodied torso, High Lord Rashal smiled.

And that smile sent a cold spike of alarm through High Lord Ursa’s chest.

It was the smile of a man who had already gotten what he wanted.

High Lord Ursa’s instincts screamed that he had fallen into a trap, though he could not yet see its shape.

Not even a little, and that’s even more unnerving.

Just then, the ballroom trembled.

Rumble—!

Not the trembling of a dropped chandelier, a cracked wall, or a slammed door—but a deep shudder that travelled up through the marble floor and into the flesh and bones of every guest present. A tremor that made everyone look down at the floor instinctively.

It was the pocket dimension—the pocket dimension was actually trembling!

As a High Lord for hundreds of years, High Lord Ursa’s pocket dimension is naturally more stable than normal.

Some would even say that its stability was close to a proper realm.

For it to shake this much should be very unlikely.

It would take a powerhouse among powerhouses to even do a tremor a quarter of this magnitude.

But it’s not impossible.

An overwhelming presence slipped into the pocket dimension like a blade through silk, and the pressure of its arrival crashed down upon them all. Glasses shattered on tables. The floating chandeliers swayed violently. And some of the younger guests began to panic.

Every guest felt it—an entity of such magnitude that the pocket dimension strained to contain.

High Lord Ursa whipped his head toward the entrance.

His eyes narrowed in absolute confusion. Who? What? The presence was world-breaking, immense—utterly suffocating. It was leagues above him or any other High Lord in the ballroom. An entity of this caliber shouldn’t even be interested in someone like him.

Outside the main mansion, the ground began to crumble.

Pieces of it dissipated.

Great chasms split the manicured ground with a searing hiss—the sound of fire being put out by water. The fissures plunged deep, ripping through the earth and into the dimensional void below, which was a bottomless abyss of churning, raw energy where the unprotected would be shredded to pieces between realms.

The destruction spread outward, swallowing gardens, fountains, entire wings of the estate, and it only continued to grow as the presence grew heavier. An entity of this caliber would most certainly alert the Overseer, as the pocket dimension was still located within the greater realm of the Primordial Meadow.

Anyone foreign entering it, especially with this kind of power, would need permission.

But that is unless this entity was not foreign.

Just then, realization struck High Lord Ursa like a physical blow that made him recoil.

His eyes snapped back to High Lord Rashal, still smiling amid the wreckage of the doors.

Shock contorted High Lord Ursa’s features. ’How...? How could Rashal, a new High Lord with a feeble network of support, no ancient bloodline inside his body, and no sacred favour, summon an entity of this magnitude? Summon one of them? Even I couldn’t summon one of them this easily.’

The entity wouldn’t have answered High Lord Ursa’s call—much less the call of a man on the verge of ruination. For a second, High Lord Ursa’s mind raced—thinking of what High Lord Rashal could even do to make this possible.

And then, he remembered one thing—the evaluation.

As he met High Lord Rashal’s eyes again, he realized that it was really the evaluation.

Based on his intel, the evaluation should’ve happened days ago. It was the reason why he rushed his attack on the Cavity, so that High Lord Rashal wouldn’t have the time to fix things after the attack was successful.

It was the reason why he had been confident the moment Diamantona succeeded.

No matter how brilliant or resourceful High Lord Rashal proved to be—the damage to the Cavity could not be undone in a matter of days. It was simply impossible. Even if he swallowed his pride and begged for the evaluation to be postponed, time itself had become his enemy.

It was simply too pressing.

However, High Lord Rashal had a clever trick up his sleeve.

He postponed the evaluation to happen right on the day of the small banquet.

High Lord Ursa held this banquet to humiliate High Lord Rashal out of spite, and it bit him on the back.

Even though the evaluation was held to measure the capability of the one in charge to oversee the Cavity, it consisted of three sub-evaluations. One is the performance evaluation, while the other two are the corruption evaluation and the mind-soul evaluation.

Tests designed to ensure the High Lord overseeing the Cavity excelled in all the important factors.

Being unbreakable, internally incorruptible, and immune to the influence of Gods and Chaos alike.

And those evaluations required an examiner.

Someone who was capable of probing a High Lord, who is most likely a Transcendent Demigod.

In the Primordial Meadow, there was one faction that sat above and could do exactly that.

The Cluster Custodians.

Crack—!

And at that moment, a chasm split the entrance of the main mansion.

The marble floor of the ballroom’s grand foyer cracked open with a deafening roar, and from the depths of that impossible hole, a figure began to rise. It ascended slowly, inexorably—like a higher being from an entirely different dimension.

One where the rules of reality had been written in a different hand.

Shadows bled upward first, spilling—like liquid midnight before knitting themselves into an imposing and towering silhouette nearly ten feet tall. It emerged from the hole and closed it under it as if it were the entity that wielded the power of space within this pocket dimension, not High Lord Ursa.

A wide-brimmed hat woven from a deep blue darkness that shimmered with stars crowned its frame.

Beneath it hung a mask that looked eerily human at first glance, until the eye lingered.

There was no mask.

That flawless, featureless visage was its face—a smooth expanse of pale blue flesh as cold as moonlit ice, interrupted only by two lightless eyes that stared without blinking. The longer one looked, the more contorted the space around them became.

As though it possessed expressions too alien for reality to hold.

Its body was hidden beneath a deep blue cloak of living shadow, the same color as its hat.

No wind touched it, yet it rippled constantly, swallowing the creature’s true form.

Only its proportions betrayed what lay beneath—unnaturally thin arms that seemed far too long, narrow shoulders that sloped at impossible angles, and a frame so slender and distorted that it was impossible to decide whether it resembled a man, a woman, or something that had never belonged to either.

Just the sight of this figure alone made all the guests gathered in the ballroom look down.

To lower their heads as though the floor suddenly became really interesting.

And then the cold arrived.

A suffocating chill of standing before something that had never been meant to exist in this dimension.

Every instinct screamed to flee, yet every muscle refused to obey.

It simply stood there impossibly still, and slowly swept its eyes across the entire ballroom.

Of course, as the examiner of the evaluation, the Cluster Custodian was searching for High Lord Rashal. And he did find the High Lord, but his head tilted chillingly at the sight of the bleeding wounds marring the High Lord’s torso.

And then his eyes settled on the High Lord across from High Lord Rashal.

Even though the Cluster Custodian had only arrived at the scene, he already knew what had happened.

As surprising and rare as this situation was, two High Lords were actually fighting.

For his entire life, more ancient than anyone inside the ballroom and beyond, the Cluster Custodian had only seen this happen a few times. Most of the time, the High Lords knew that fighting among each other was a bad idea.

But then again, if it could happen, then it would happen.

That’s what he learned from living for so long.

The Cluster Custodian crossed the ballroom in soundless strides, moving toward the two warring High Lords until something flickered in his eyes. He halted mid-step. Then—with a slowness that felt almost impossible—he turned his head to the left.

Among the guests, there’s someone who has his chin held high.

Someone who is staring him in the eyes.

Someone who actually dared to meet his gaze head-on.

"Interesting..."