"Vesper, Show me what you are."

​Without a word, Vesper simply vanished.

​This time, there was no spatial fluctuation. No sound. No violet mist. Because this time she did not step into a dimension, she simply ceased to exist in that spot.

​Instantly, Neo felt a microscopic pressure against the back of his neck.

​Vesper had reappeared directly behind him, her dark adamantite-fused fingers formed into a lethal spike, resting mere millimeters away from his spinal cord.

Even with his massively augmented Type 5 senses, Neo had only barely registered her reappearance.

She was truly a ghost.

Vesper was already terrifying because of her Unique Talent to manipulate space, but with this synthesis, she became infinitely more dangerous.

​Her transformation was a flawless piece of art.

​All of her old scars had completely disappeared, restoring the youthful vitality a woman of her age should naturally possess. Her physical body had also been intensely fortified, elevating her strength to the terrifying level of being able to shatter mountains with a single strike.

​She was now the ultimate combination of breathtaking beauty and absolute, overwhelming power.

​Catching sight of her flawless, recovered face in the mirror, Vesper unknowingly shed a single tear.

For countless nights, those brutal scars had served as a harrowing reminder of her agonizing days as a mining slave: the brutal torture, the clawing hunger, and the trauma of watching her parents die right before her own eyes.

​Until now, those haunting memories had thrust her down a bloody path of vengeance, forging her into the Arcane Assassin the entire Federation feared.

​She had long since slaughtered her parents’ killers, she had long achieved her goals, but now, fueled by this miraculous transformation and standing in the shadow of Neo’s godly power, she finally began to dream again.

​A dream of absolute freedom.

A dream of dominating the infinite sea of stars.

She didn’t want to hide forever. She wanted be a star.

And there’s only one person that could make it possible.

​She looked up at Neo’s impossibly handsome face with an worshiping gaze.

​Bowing at a perfect ninety-degree angle, placing one hand over her heart while extending her other arm outward, she swore her ultimate vow.

​"From this day forward, Vesper will live for you and die for you, My Lord. Please, tell me: what is your first order?"

With a noble grace, Neo lifted her up by her extended arm.

​Vesper straightened up, only to see him smiling. But it wasn’t a warm smile. It was dark, cold, and utterly terrifying.

​"Your first task is to go back the way you came and kill the man who ordered you to assassinate me."

​Vesper’s newly transformed void-like eyes trembled slightly, but she maintained absolute calm. She perfectly understood that this was a test of her newly sworn loyalty, and she was not going to disappoint him.

​"It shall be done, My Lord." 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

​With that, she instantly vanished into the void, leaving no trace behind.

​Neo remained standing there. In his palm, he held a small pulsating black core.

​"Well, this should be enough to grant me her evolved abilities."

​During the Synthesis process, he had covertly extracted half of her Synthesis Core.

He hadn’t taken it simply out of a greed for power. He took it to hold her very lifeline firmly in his grasp.

​If there ever came a day when she even entertained the thought of betraying him, she would face the brutal consequence immediately.

With a single thought, he could crush this core and instantly extinguish her existence.

​Without wasting another moment, he initiated the synthesis process on himself using the black core.

​The integration was obviously a success.

​[ Universal Synthesis — Successful ]

​[ You have gained new skills: Void Teleportation (C), Spatial Manipulation (C) ]

​[ Skill Details ]

​[ Void Teleportation (C) ]

​Description: The host can entirely bypass the physical dimension by briefly stepping into the absolute void. This allows for instantaneous, untraceable movement across vast distances without triggering conventional magical or thermal sensors.

​Effect: Grants the ability to instantly teleport anywhere within a planetary radius, provided the host has a clear mental image or spatial coordinates of the destination. Consecutive jumps or interstellar travel consume large amounts of Cosmic and Nether Force.

​[ Spatial Manipulation (C) ]

​Description: Grants the host absolute authority over the localized fabric of space. The host can bend, warp, and shatter the dimensional plane to their will.

​Effect: Enables the host to create invisible spatial barriers, lock down dimensions to prevent others from teleporting, and forge localized spatial rifts. Offensively, the host can compress the space around a target to crush them instantly or generate invisible spatial blades capable of cutting through nearly any known physical matter.

Neo immediately decided to test both of his newly acquired skills.

​Activating [ Spatial Manipulation ], he reached out with his mind and grasped the very fabric of space around him. With a mere thought, he parted the dimensional veil and smoothly submerged himself within the folds of reality.

​From this hidden sub-dimension, he could perfectly observe the physical world, but the physical world could no longer see him. It was a nearly flawless cloak.

However, with his newly heightened senses, he noted that moving at high speeds still generated barely noticeable spatial fluctuations rippling through the air.

​Furthermore, he found he could literally fold space itself. By overlapping two distant points in reality, he could drastically shorten the physical distance between them, making long-distance travel effortlessly simple.

​This was exactly the method Vesper had used to bypass his planetary shields and assassinate her targets with such terrifying efficiency.

​Next, he shifted his focus to [ Void Teleportation ].

​He pierced through the folded layers of normal space, gazing into the absolute deepest, darkest dimension that lay hidden far behind the delicate fabric of reality.

​Standing at the very precipice of the Void, a cold thrill ran down his spine. Even from the edge, he could feel its terrifying nature. It was a boundless, infinite expanse filled with nothing but absolute emptiness and annihilation energy.

To step into the Void was to literally walk through the dark, frozen graveyard of the cosmos.

And right now, he had acquired the power to move through it.

In the blink of an eye, he arrived Noir’s room to see what she was doing.

What he saw made him freeze completely.