Nerion and Leo ran, the Silverback Wolf's desperate speed driven by the cataclysm ahead. They reached a high, jagged ridge several kilometres away from the heart of the conflict at Mount Karol, granting them a terrifyingly magnificent view. The very air smelled heavy, thick with the sharp, metallic tang of ozone and a strange, sulfurous heat that no natural storm could produce. A furious, heavy deluge hammered the forest, yet directly above Mount Karol, the downpour seemed to be fighting another sort of clouds, a massive, churning mass of brilliant, white light that seemed to hide the very essence of heaven itself. Through the competing storms, lightning, coloured white, black, and ethereal gold, stitched the sky shut.

  High on the slopes, Arbak the Cloud Serpent coiled, her scales shimmering with an impossible light that turned the rain into prisms. “How dare you demand for the Fruit, Kerchak?” her voice boomed, slicing through the storm with a sound that felt both ancient and melodic. “It’s in my territory, and rightfully belongs to me. Leave… I’ll owe you a favour and can even reward you heavily.”

  Her sleek, elegant, and beautiful body undulated as she spoke. She’d rather not fight Kerchak, even though she was slightly stronger and could probably fend him off. But she was on the last step before succeeding. This chance was once in a lifetime, one that may not ever come again, even were she to live several more centuries.

  Kerchak’s features became dangerous. A smile, as cruel as a winter's dawn, adorned his savage visage, and he roared heavily. His body underwent a titanic shift, the power being held back for days unleashed at once. He grew up, all the way to a hundred meters, his black fur thick and powerful, standing like an obsidian monument. The strange, celestial lightning began travelling to his mane, transforming his dark horns until they looked like lightning itself was growing out of his head. His scar, a deep, jagged line caused by Arbak in a former scuffle, became even more evident, glowing with latent fury.

  Arbak understood there was no way around this. Retreat was not an option. Her hiss was a vibration in the atmosphere, a psychic weapon that made all who listened to it enter a small, bewildering illusory state. Nerion and Leo, despite the distance, stumbled and shook their heads as the world warped for a second. Arbak’s body underwent an awe-inspiring expansion in response, her sleek form lengthening to over five hundred meters, an incredible vision of serpentine might, a small horn growing on her forehead. Though she was not a dragon, her might was truly the vision of celestial might.

  Mount Karol, a peak that was like a sword that penetrated the Sky, dwarfed under the pressure of the two Rank 8 Beasts. They moved with a casual, devastating power that made the stone beneath them tremble and fissure.

  The cities beyond the woods were not spared the consequence. Radom and all the nearby settlements noticed the terrifying changes in weather. Mikael, back at the Orphanage, now partially healed and his level steady in the Emperor Rank, felt it the most. He knew these changes were the by-product of a fight among high-ranking powers, and his face, usually a mask of drunken apathy, was now taut with pure dread. He turned his head, counting heads. Everyone was present in the Orphanage... Everyone, except... “Nerion,” he muttered, his Emperor Qi tightening. “Shit, I hope you’re not playing in the Woods right now. You better come home with utmost haste.”

  The fight started. Kerchak’s moves were raw, unmitigated violence in every strike, a mountain of brute force that sought only to impose its will. Lightning accompanied every smash and attack, the very definition of force and dominance. Arbak was the opposite, moving like liquid light, a vision of perfect fluidity. Her tail appeared from nowhere, striking Kerchak right where he least expected it. Her body adapted to every attack, and the elements bent to each and every move. Kerchak opened his mouth and lightning came right from it, a breath of destruction that cleaved a part of the mountain itself. Arbak answered with a rain of light from the clouds, trying to drown him.

  Watching this, Nerion, with his ocular acupoints fully open, understood the battle through the lens of his own struggle: Kerchak was pure Imposition, the Warrior's ultimate expression. Arbak was pure Yielding, the Adept's ultimate expression. The mountain crumbled beneath their feet because the world's fundamental forces were fighting for dominance.

  Yet, as the two Beast Lords tore the landscape apart, Nerion understood something else, something Mikael had never taught him. The beasts did not possess the complicated philosophy of TAO or TIMBER that humans used to filter power. Kerchak and Arbak simply reached out with their prodigious, evolved bodies and manipulated Natural Energy in its rawest form. Their movements weren't just attacks; they were the environment’s most primal screams. This was the true gift of AEON to the beasts. The forest around them, for two kilometers, was ablaze and completely razed, pure destruction, the terrible aesthetics of the violence of the natural world.

  Watching this spectacle, Nerion stopped thinking entirely. He only felt. He followed Arbak's fluid movements here, then Kerchak’s powerful strikes there, synthesizing the contrast in his small frame. The First Form of the Free Flowing Fist came to life. It started slow, then sped up, an embodiment of the battle itself. Qi naturally flowed in the movements, the ambient Natural Energy accompanying its terrible beauty. This was the potential: integrating the Fist would immensely strengthen Nerion, supplementing his Qi with Natural Energy, giving him an advantage over any opponent of equal rank, and combining defense, attack, agility, and counter-strength.

  But as he moved, a familiar, agonizing truth resurfaced. When he tried to exert his "will" with Qi, the raw Natural Energy rejected him, dispersing instantly. He could use the Fist with Qi alone, but this rejection, this defiance of the fundamental First Law of AEON, meant his true power was capped at less than 50%. He was left with an above-average technique, nowhere near the devastating world-class martial arts that harnessed explosive Qi circulation. This was the very problem Mikael, and his ancestors before him, had faced.

  It wasn’t over. As he fought the rejection, Nerion felt his Qi started to increase organically in his body, but his Mana started to volatilize inside his Mana Palace. AEON’s shackles were binding him, forcing a choice. The path of the Warrior would consume the path of the Adept. Nerion knew this had to happen, it was the Law. But standing on that ridge, watching the two forces of the world tear each other apart, he truly didn’t want it to happen. Ever since he had heard about the might and beauty of both TAO and TIMBER, he couldn't get rid of the idea of ??becoming an expert in both. He had heard time and again that it was impossible, but Nerion refused to not even try.

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  Sometimes ignorance can be quite bold.

  The storm above Mount Karol became a shattered cathedral, its sky a tapestry of dying stars, their light bleeding into the void. Kerchak’s hundred-meter war form roared, his antlers blazing like molten forges, his scar a searing wound of vengeance. His Stormrend Roar erupted, a sonic tempest that fractured the peak, sending shards of stone spiraling like daggers. Arbak’s immense coils surged, her prism-cloud scales weaving starlight into a shimmering veil, her small horn pulsing with celestial wrath. Her Starveil Strike lashed out, a whip of radiant energy that sliced the air, igniting it into a haze of white flame. The earth pulsed like a dying heart, the forest a graveyard of molten thorns.

  Nerion watched Arbak counter a devastating attack, the movement mirroring the Free Flowing Fist. Once more he tried to follow the move in his mind, but his internal logic immediately seized up.

  The fundamental contradiction gnawed at him: The First Law of AEON.

  Nerion was still a child, unburdened by the centuries of dogma that had crippled every warrior before him. He dismissed the belief that Qi and Mana were mutually exclusive. He recalled the Law's sacred words, which rang not as a decree, but as a riddle in his mind:

  The boundless Energy of Heaven and Earth is not a thing to be created or destroyed, but a river of one flow, divided at the fount. It pours forth only as Qi, or as Mana, and never as both. For how can the hand that imposes its solitary Will as Qi also open in submission to the boundless Will of Mana?

  As Nerion was lost in his ruminations, the battle growing fiercer by the second, unbeknownst to him, the Genesis Stone in his chest started pulsing, and emitting a faint heat, softly but surely. His Ocular Acupoints, lost in the fight between titans, started seeing something else. The flow of Natural Energy around the Beast overlords, Qi and Mana separating and joining over and over.

  “It is not a rule of separation”, Nerion realized, his breath shallowing in the thin air. “It is a question!”

  The whole world, built on rigid dichotomies, Heaven and Earth, Rich and Poor, Command and Yield, had misinterpreted AEON's challenge. He didn't need to choose sides; he needed to find the single, hidden motion that satisfied both demands simultaneously.

  His desire was simple: his dream, to be strong enough to keep everything he had and protect everything he wanted to protect. He needed both Qi to fight and Mana to fulfil his dream. Both are the Natural Energy of Heaven and Earth; they are the two sides of a coin. A coin is not used for just one face, but for its entirety.

  He knew, with the clarity of sudden wisdom, that his goal was not apostasy, but unification. He had to answer AEON's question with his own body.

  Nerion tried to execute this vision. He focused, pushing his vigorous Qi (L7) and his gentle Mana (L5) to move in unison through the First Form of the Fist. The result was immediate and catastrophic. His Qi, deprived of its proper flow, became a turbulent, boiling mess. His movements, once a synthesis of the titans’ grace, were now jarring and clumsy, the power instantly draining from his limbs. The Mana remained cloistered, but his entire body seized in a silent, punishing cramp. He gasped, the pain spiking through the semi-open Acupoints he had worked so hard to keep under control. The law of the world had not been broken; it had only reaffirmed itself with a violent, physical reminder.

  But Nerion was persistent. He watched the titanic clash of the Beast Lords once more, the Genesis Stone keeping its pulse, Nerion who was completely lost in the battle, finally became one with the world.

  The Beasts do not think about Qi or Mana. They only use their talents to utilize Natural Energy in its rawest form.

  Nerion understood. He was trying too hard. He dismissed the conscious goal of accumulating power. He let his mind go blank and simply followed the steps of the Free Flowing Fist, abandoning the use of his Qi and Mana entirely.

  The movements flowed like water, without intention or purpose. And in that single, clear instant, a moment less than a heartbeat, he felt it.

  A great tremor ripped through the Radon Woods, shaking the very ridge beneath Nerion’s feet. Arbak seeing a good chance during the fight transformed her tail into pure incandescent light, the clouds themselves surrounding every part of her sleek body, and stroke Kerchak on his chest.

  “Небесный кнут (Nebesnyy knut - The Whip of Heaven)”.

  At the very same time Nerion’s vigorous Qi and his gentle Mana began to move simultaneously, in a perfect, tenuous equilibrium. They did not mix, but flowed around each other, like a diagram of Yin and Yang forming within his core.

  The sensation was ephemeral, but it was real. Very real. The answer to AEON's question, fleetingly glimpsed.

  But that was it.

  The sensation was instantly shattered by the outside world. The primary truth reasserted itself: his internal energies were unbalanced, his Level 7 Qi far more vigorous than his Level 5 Mana. Worse, the Free Flowing Fist was fundamentally a Qi technique, and the seismic shift of the beast fight reached its terrifying zenith.

  WHAP!

  Kerchak, the Thunder Breathing Bear, let loose a roar that traveled for kilometers, a sound of pure, incandescent rage as he was thrown backwards. His body, marred by Arbak’s guerrilla strikes, was alight with fury, his eyes burning like embers. The Great Cloud Serpent, sleek and deadly, knew victory was hers. One final feint, one final strike, and the prize would be hers forever.

  But Kerchak, hateful, frustrated, and consumed by spite for the slightly-stronger Serpent, refused to allow it. He was a Rank 8 Great Magical Beast, inches from true Rank 9 ascension, and he would not be denied by his rival. He roared again, a sound that cracked the very stone.

  “Arbak, this is not over. Since I can’t get the fruit, you can forget about getting it yourself!”

  Arbak immediately ceased her final, lunging attack. “Calm down, Kerchak. We can both use the fruit. Don’t do something we could both regret!” she hissed, a desperate tremor entering her melodic voice.

  The Bear ignored her. The Fruit of the Mountain God was his chance for glory, and since his plan was ruined, he would take the most brutal revenge. He gathered all his power, focusing the full, terrifying might of a Rank 8 Beast into his right fist. A sun seemed to form over his head, a sphere of raw, thunderous energy that instantly evaporated the storm clouds surrounding the peak of Mount Karol.

  “NOOOO, STOP!” Arbak shrieked, her vast serpentine body surrounded by dazzling prisms of light, lashing out like a living light beam.

  But it was too late. Kerchak ignored her cry and struck the mountain with an unmitigated act of devastation.

  “Молния раскалывает мир (Molniya raskalyvayet mir - Lightning Splits the World)”.

  BOOOOOOOOOOM!

  The sound was not an explosion, but the cessation of all other sound. Mount Karol suffered an instant, cataclysmic eruption, exploding as if its core had suddenly become a volcano. The power unleashed vaporized stone, turned earth to ash, and sent a shockwave of destruction that killed every beast in the vicinity before they could even scatter. Nerion was completely dumbfounded, his eyes wide, his mind reeling from the sheer, unbridled destruction that defied the scale of anything he had ever known.

  Without wasting another second, the boy scrambled onto Leo's back. "RUN!" he screamed, his voice swallowed by the echoes of the destroyed mountain. They fled the ridge, plunging back toward the relative safety of the ravaged woods before the debris of the world’s fundamental laws could rain down and crush them.