Chapter 82: Vector Change Lv4, Domain Expansion, [Great Freedom Nephalem] (Patreon)

Because the fog and snow had rolled in so suddenly, plenty of people quickly sensed something was wrong.

The women at Daniel's side reacted first. Crusch, having once set her sights on hunting the White Whale, was the first to recognize the dark shape lurking within the mist.

"Your Majesty, that fog — the White Whale brought it!" Crusch shot to her feet in her formal dress, alarm plain on her face as she turned to warn Daniel.

Emilia and the others went pale as well. The White Whale's infamous reputation as a monster was something they'd all heard of before.

It was said that anyone devoured by the White Whale would have their very existence erased.

"But why would the White Whale appear outside the royal capital?" Emilia asked, bewildered.

Ram and Rem exchanged a glance and answered without hesitation. "Isn't it obvious? It has to be the work of that inherently wicked Witch Cult!"

"Pandora, you mean?"

Everyone recalled the woman's ability, and it no longer seemed strange at all that she could have lured the White Whale to the capital's doorstep.

Daniel, unlike the rest of them, wasn't the least bit tense. He even had the leisure to add, "It's not just the White Whale. There are Great Rabbit out there too. That magic-laced snow falling from the sky — Pandora conjured it to draw the Great Rabbit here."

"What?! With so many people packed into the capital right now, is she trying to start a massacre by luring the monsters in?"

"Not quite. She's probably hoping I'll put on a show of force — and pick up a bit more prestige while I'm at it."

"Relax. Clearing out something this small won't take long."

Even as he reassured them, Daniel projected the broadcast from his Mental Power Scan onto the sky beyond the capital's walls.

So everyone watching got to see the true shape of that massive silhouette in the fog — a White Whale over fifty meters long, its downy fur drifting as it floated in the air.

On the ground below, the terrain was carpeted with countless Great Rabbit, horns jutting from their heads, eyes rimmed red, and every tree and blade of grass around the capital had already been stripped bare by their gnawing.

"Ribbit! It's the White Whale and the Great Rabbit! Everyone, fall back!"

"How is this possible? How did these monsters even get here — why hasn't a single warning come from the outposts?"

"It has to be the Witch Cult. His Majesty wiped out those Sin Archbishops, and now they've come for revenge."

"Don't panic, everyone. His Majesty will definitely deal with these monsters."

Listening to the chaotic murmuring rising from below, Daniel first offered a word of comfort to Crusch and the others beside him, then spoke.

"Silence!"

Cursed Energy laced through those words, and the crowd fell still at once.

Daniel rose from his throne and addressed the people below. "These are nothing more than beasts. There's no need for alarm."

Though he could have snuffed them out with barely a word, he decided to make a show of it.

Over the past few days he'd amassed seven million Domination Points, and combined with the +1 to a random superpower's level he'd earned from completing a task earlier, it was enough to raise Vector Manipulation by two full levels.

[Vector Manipulation LV2 → LV4. Computational power now rivals a photonic quantum computer. He can alter vectors within a five-hundred-meter radius of himself without physical contact, and can incorporate unknown vectors into his reflection without needing to analyze them first.]

White light flared in Daniel's eyes, and for an instant his thoughts seemed to accelerate to the speed of light — everything around him appeared to freeze in place.

But he pulled himself out of that state almost immediately. With computational power that high, he could even glimpse the future for brief moments, but that would take all the fun out of it.

Combined with his ability to manipulate vectors remotely across the surrounding area, Daniel was, for all intents and purposes, a low-budget god within that range.

Level 4 still couldn't alter a vector's fundamental property — turning heat into magnetism, for instance — but even without that, it was more than enough.

In that accelerated state of thought a moment ago, he'd already succeeded in analyzing Cursed Energy and discovered a way to translate superpowers into incantations.

A pair of wings made of pitch-black Cursed Energy sprouted from Daniel's back, lifting him into the air.

Under the gaze of the crowd, he raised a hand, two fingers extended like a blade, and spoke softly, a wild grin spreading across his face.

"Domain Expansion."

[Great Sovereign: Nephalem]

A resonant hum sounded.

In an instant, a wall of white light swallowed the entire capital — the White Whale and Great Rabbit outside its walls included.

When everyone opened their eyes again, Daniel hovered with a pair of wings on his back, a halo of interwoven black and white light crowning his head, seated upon a pristine throne suspended in empty space. Emilia and the others still stood behind him.

The surrounding scenery had transformed into a sea of stars.

The nobles and commoners alike found themselves standing on nothing, floating in the void of space, staring at the scene in slack-jawed disbelief.

The White Whale's several eyes darted about in confusion, scanning its new surroundings, while the Great Rabbit kept searching for something to eat but couldn't even find a place to plant their feet.

"D-Daniel! What is going on?!"

Emilia looked down at the cosmos beneath her feet, fear creeping in, and instinctively reached to cling to Daniel as she asked.

Daniel wrapped an arm around Emilia, explaining even as he revealed the nature of his technique to everyone watching.

"This is my Domain. As long as we're inside it, I can remotely control every vector within it and deploy a full-domain reflection — every attack, no matter who casts it, gets redirected straight back at whoever started it. Except mine, of course."

"The Domain's range depends on my Cursed Energy. Without expanding it, I can only rewrite vectors within a five-hundred-meter radius — the Domain lets me stretch that limit much further."

"Take that mindless beast, for example. It's about to kill itself."

Daniel tilted his chin toward the White Whale, watching it thrash and try to swim only to find itself pinned in place, mist beginning to rise off its body.

But before that mist could even spread, it had already begun eating through the White Whale's own flesh, exposing the white bone beneath.

"Roooar!!" The White Whale let out a terrified, agonized cry, but no matter what it tried, it couldn't force the mist away from its body.

It couldn't even pull the mist back into itself — all it could do was watch as the vapor burrowed inward and started tearing apart its organs.

Realizing it was about to die right there, the White Whale's eyes flashed with a last spark of savagery. It opened its enormous mouth, trying to unleash a soundwave to kill every living thing around it.

But the instant it let out its whale-cry, its entire body was blown apart by the force of its own scream, chunks of flesh and blood bursting outward and raining down among the Great Rabbit below.

The Great Rabbit didn't care whether the meat belonged to one of their own — they opened their mouths and bit straight in.

But instead of tearing the flesh apart, each rabbit found a fresh, bloody hole punched clean through its own skull by its own teeth, and they collapsed twitching to the ground.

Tens of thousands of Great Rabbit died by their own bite in an instant, leaving only the ones that hadn't been near any of the scattered meat.

Given enough time, though, these creatures would split and multiply right back to their original numbers — but Daniel had no interest in watching a chain reaction of rabbits.

He simply reached out and, from a distance, made the blood inside their bodies start flowing backward at high speed.

"Die."

Crack! Crack! Crack!

Bursts of blood and flesh exploded from the Great Rabbit like fireworks, one after another. In the blink of an eye, the horde of monsters that could have leveled a city lay utterly dead.

The people of the capital stared at the scene, dumbstruck, too stunned to even speak.

They'd always known Daniel was strong, but they'd never imagined he could be this strong — he hadn't even lifted a finger. He'd simply spoken a single line, and the monsters had torn themselves apart.

With the monsters dealt with, Daniel dismissed the Domain, and reality reasserted itself around everyone.

Once the crisis had passed, the women behind Daniel let out a collective breath of relief — but his brow furrowed, because he could tell things weren't actually over yet.

In the feed from his Mental Power Scan, black mist was spreading out from what had been the calm and quiet Sages' Tower, billowing outward in every direction.

"Damn it, Pandora. What are you stirring up now?"