The Priestess was only a Four Star Devout, but the flood of Dark Holy Energy that turned into the protective armor was at the Champion level.

The high-level energy came from a tiny spatial fissure in her dantian, which he only noticed because of his active perception. It didn't surprise Aaron as much, since Lana had also killed the fire elementals with Light Holy Energy of a higher level than hers. That was clearly a common trick for Priests.

However, this time, something else came from the fissure.

A piece of a soul.

It rooted itself in the Priestess' soul and quickly overwhelmed it, replacing her mind with something new. Aaron had little time to analyze it. The first tendril was followed by multiple others, and he retreated almost to the other side of the room to dodge them all.

The still awake Devouts, less than twenty, kept attacking him. He absentmindedly threw throwing daggers at their spells' weak spots, and the casters either fell dizzy or simply gave up and switched to attacking Alys instead. She also had no trouble fending against the weak attacks.

"How long can you hold, Herald of Light?" an ominous male voice came from the Priestess. "I can hold forever."

Aaron was too old to shit-talk after a fight started, but he knew whatever had possessed the high elf — supposedly the God of Darkness — wasn't lying. After all, the energy at use now came from the fissure, not from the Priestess herself, and even weak Champions had way more energy than Aaron did.

The worst of all was that her life didn't matter anymore. Her body was but an object being used by that soul, a meat suit protecting her dantian and the spatial fissure inside. Aaron could reap her heart off or behead her, and the corpse would keep coming, keep being a threat.

Instead, to destroy that enemy, he needed to close the spatial fissure. Unfortunately, he had no way to accomplish that with Three Star Arcane Energy. Well, he could use his Arcane Energy to activate a formation that would close the fissure, but that required the right materials and time to set it up, and he doubted his enemy would wait while Aaron went shopping.

He was left with two workarounds, both of them quite crude. The first was to carve the Priestess' body open and fill the spatial fissure with physical materials. The Concept of Continuity of the Laws of Space and Time didn't like to be challenged. As long as he filled the fissure entirely, they would act on their own accord to seal it shut.

But that was both too hard and too clean. He had come to topple the board, and that required him to humiliate the powers that be. Which left him with the alternative.

The second option was so simple and dumb, it would certainly utterly enrage the possessing entity. It only required him to kill the Priestess, then touch her corpse directly. Thus, his goal became making an opening through the energy armor for a few instants, which would allow him to do both things he needed to do.

He imbued his body with Qi and shot towards the avatar.

"Patriarch!" yelled Alys and Lana with worry in unison.

"Fool!" barked the entity, shooting dark tendrils at him again.

Though the Dark Holy Energy was at the Champion level, speed wasn't one of its defining characteristics. Aaron's high purity Qi made him just fast enough to dodge all spearlike tendrils.

It was tricky though. His body bent in ways it shouldn't be possible as he even slightly damaged his bones to achieve some angles. Instants later, both his Vital Energy and Qi worked together to heal him as he moved ahead. He was already glad he had started cultivating the healing energy.

Aaron was halfway through to the Priestess. And then she simply disappeared.

Right after that, tendrils started appearing from all sides out of thin air to attack Aaron. He kept dodging them, but as the entity had said, Aaron's limited Qi couldn't compete with the enormous energy pool from a Champion.

Or from a god. Full invisibility, like what he had just witnessed, should be beyond most Champions. He was guessing the God of Darkness was limited by the Priestess' Four Star level and could only send his power at the Champion level, just like Lana's attack had been two levels above hers. That would mean Aaron was fighting someone with much greater energy reserves.

A battle of attrition would be suicide.

He became more certain of his guess when he failed to feel the Priestess completely. The specialty of the God of Darkness' Holy Energy was stealth, but Aaron's passive energy sensitivity was just too good. He should be able to feel any hidden Champion around.

The best way for him to counter stealth would be with an Arcane skill, but his dantian was empty. Fortunately, the Temple of Darkness itself had the answer for his troubles.

He moved to the nearest corner and calculated the attack path and speed of all formations that had been activated before he cut their fuel. With that in mind, he determined the path he himself had to take so the attacks would go through the entire room. He also had to move in a way such that he would be well-positioned to kill the Priestess the moment she was hit by a formation's attack and got revealed.

Then, he canceled the layer of Arcane Energy stopping the formations. The skill that had created the layer hadn't been a sensory art, so he couldn't reuse its energy and was still out of Arcane Energy. Well, mostly. The Arcane hurricane in his dantian was helping him regenerate fast, but what he had wasn't enough to do anything useful.

As soon as his blockage disappeared, a barrage of fresh attacks came from the formations, and he ran ahead at high speed. He followed the previously calculated path at a precise speed, considering the speed of the incoming attacks, whether they would follow him when he dodged, and how quickly the formations could attack again.

But once again, when he was halfway through to the other end of the room, something happened. A wall of darkness appeared in front of him.

Aaron jumped high, twisting his body to overcome the obstacle, but the top of the wall expanded and became a sharp blade. He was moving quick enough to still dodge most of it, but the blade still cut off some of his skin on the left arm and leg.

The worst part of it wasn't the injury but losing the pacing of the run. Many incoming attacks were in the wrong position now, some of them close enough to hit him in a few instants.

He took throwing darts out of his ring and threw them at the weak spots of the energy attacks, destroying a few of them but only weakening the remaining ones. Many of the formations were good enough that he couldn't easily destroy their attacks.

Five different formation-powered skills hit him as he dodged the others and recalculated his path. One of them tried to bind him but was too weak to succeed. Three others cut his skin deeply, but the damage wasn't lethal and was already being healed healing by Vital Energy and Qi. The fifth blinded him by covering his eyes with Dark Holy Energy, and without Arcane Energy, he couldn't remove it. Also, at the One Star level, Vital Energy was like Qi in that it couldn't leave the cultivator's body.

Not that he needed his eyes at the moment, his five senses and passive energy sensitivity were enough to dodge incoming attacks and keep running. He recalculated his path and resumed his plan. If another wall appeared in front of him, he would need an alternative plan though.

What appeared next wasn't a wall though, but a dark box. At the same time, sharp tendrils came from the walls, trying to turn him into a sieve.

Aaron swapped the throwing darts for a shield, still holding his sword with the other hand, and started protecting himself. The attacks coming from all sides weren't much different from his fight against the Mouth-Man, except he was stronger when compared to back then.

Unlike with the elementals, he had no trouble hacking the tendrils because they didn't burn as fire did. They needed to be physical enough to damage him and were thus physical enough to be blocked and destroyed.

He kept at that while analyzing the energy of the box. From Champion level onwards, skills got complicated enough that he couldn't spot their weaknesses at a glance. However, it took him way longer than he thought it should.

That was the last nail; he was now sure he was fighting against a powered-down God of Darkness.

A god that clearly wasn't used to fighting though. The same box that trapped Aaron and spawned tendrils also protected him from outside attacks. He was arguably the safest he had been since the start of the fight.

Half a minute later, Aaron finally understood the box and located its weaknesses. It was time for his counter-attack.

Qi Martial Arts: Absolute Limit!

He started with the same technique he used against the Mouth-Man in the end. Qi practically exploded inside his body, then compressed absurdly. He pushed the compressed Qi into his every organ, every cell, every millimeter of his being, taking his body to the absolute limit it could support.

It was literally his absolute limit. If he stayed more than a minute in that state, all his cells would explode and kill him instantly. Though he was at a higher level than the last time he had used it, that only made him faster and stronger. The skill's purpose was to end a fight quickly, not to get in a battle of attrition, so its maximum length remained the same.

Aaron used his increased speed to cut all tendrils easily and throw new darts at the weak spots of the box. Then he jumped ahead and used a single strike of his sword to blow one of the boxes' walls to pieces.

The box immediately started regenerating, but he was too fast and left with ease. That put him once again at the mercy of the incoming attacks of the formations. Now much stronger and faster due to his absolute limit, he had no trouble dealing with them.

And deal with them he did, thrusting, and cutting, and throwing darts. He didn't need them to find the Priestess anymore, for the box had as much trapped him as given him time to regenerate his energy. Thanks to the hurricane in his dantian, he now had barely enough Arcane Energy to fill the entire room with his active perception.

That's what he did. Arcane Energy exploded from him. He immediately located the Priestess and ran straight at her.

Qi Martial Arts: Elusive Steps!

His go-to movement technique synergized perfectly with his absolute limit. Aaron seemed to teleport to the place he felt the energy was at, so fast that the possessed Priestess didn't even react. His sword hacked at the armor of darkness repeatedly until it beheaded her.

A head flew.

Aaron then quickly touched the corpse's neck before the dark energy could cover it. Only specially made spatial folds could hold living beings without killing them, so spatial rings came with a safety measure that prevented living beings from being stored inside them. A corpse was dead though, and Aaron pulled it into his ring.

Spatial folds existed both outside spacetime and in a cultivator's soul. So, Aaron suddenly had a spatial fissure in his soul. That would be lethal to most, but he swiftly pushed his Four Star Qi at it. That and his innate soul defenses were enough to close the fissure with a pop.

There was still part of a god's soul inside him though.

A battle of souls was a battle of experience and willpower. Aaron's willpower was at the limit of that world, but he was surprised to find the God of Darkness' willpower wasn't at such a limit though. Maybe that was the reason the God of Rule was the boss?

Either way, he crushed the lingering soul with ease. It barely had the time to cry out in anguish before he extinguished it. He smiled while imagining how humiliating it would be for the God of Darkness to feel itself being stored like a common object, then being crushed like an ant.

'Let it be a lesson for all who dare treat me and mine as pawns,' he thought.

However, the battle wasn't over yet. He deactivated his absolute limit and went around the room, destroying walls and the floor, crushing the formations hidden within.

A few moments later, peace returned to the room.

He had won.