Rise of the Cosmic_Emperor

Aspasia had her veil equipped still since a part of her clan's custom was to make the veil removal an exaggerated event. The first time the groom will see the bride's face after marriage and all that shenanigans.

Aspasia put her hand down and the light of her bloodline activation dimmed as she looked past Hal at the other individual she had sensed entering the chamber and of course, it was Dakon who appeared frozen in time.

There were waves around his body that told of temporal manipulation and if one were to pay better attention with the use of keen cultivational expert senses, they would be able to detect almost imperceptible movements still being made by Dakon who appeared to have been frozen mid-speech.

Aspasia gave an unbothered shrug at the state of him but had her senses very tensed as there was no reason for her to believe the sapphirine gold-flecked-eyed intruder had good intentions in mind for her.

"So you impersonated Havi? No, you ARE Havi. He doesn't exist" Aspasia came upon the truth in seconds and Hal winked at her before waving his hand and causing a plush chair to appear for him to promptly sit on.

He discarded the curtains with another wave as he considered it to be hindering and useless.

Aspasia said nothing because she decided that there were more important things to focus on than the removal of a demarcation.

"Who are you?" she asked Hal and before he answered, Hal, directed her to take a seat and Aspasia did. The princess sat at the edge of the bed and the tense readiness to attack and defend herself was clear but Hal ignored it.

"My name is Hal. I introduced myself to your mother via a screen conference as the Sapphirine Prince" he said and Aspasia made an 'O' shape with her mouth at the recognition of the name that had no doubt been tossed around her earshot this past year.

"So it's you. Yes, I have heard of you. Although, I never heard that you were so... So..."

"So what?" Hal asked with a smirk to which Aspasia responded with a smirk of her own as she found it easier to let her words flow,

"So disarmingly attractive. Your looks are making me breathless and that is not an easy feat" she said.

"Why is it not?" Hal asked.

"I'm from the Phoenix clan. I am surrounded by male and female beauty and grace but yours eclipses them all and is very intimidating" Aspasia said.

"Don't be afraid" Hal said with his tone being extra fluid and mellow.

"I'm not afraid. You don't scare me. I said intimidating not scary, there's a difference. You incur insecurity, not fear" the princess said to which Hal nodded,

"I see. You should be afraid of me though" he said.

"I'm not. But why should I be? Are you here to kill me?" Aspasia asked and even as she did, she was rubbing the spatial ring on her finger as though inching to retrieve something.

Hal chuckled as though he had not noticed it,

"Kill you? Why would I do that? You're my ticket into your clan, specifically into your nuclear family" he said.

"So you admit to being going after my family," the Princess said with a 'gotcha' smile on her face but Hal's expression did not change.

"Well, of course, I'm going after your family. How else will I bring you all under me? How will I give you liberation?" Hal asked.

"Liberation?" the Princess asked with a tone that made it clear she found Hal's word use to be silly.

"Yes, liberation. You should not be tied to your progenitor and subsequently tied to Order, you should be tied to Infinity that is all that Order can never hope to be" Hal said.

"What?" the Princess asked in confusion and Hal paused and shook his head,

"Look at me, getting ahead of myself," he said with a chuckle and leaned back in his chair,

"I am speaking of things that you know nothing of. It's not a knock on your intelligence but rather on the lack of information. But that is to be expected, in fact, it is preached. There are things you do not need to know.

Princess Aspasia..." Hal called her name and let a few seconds pass before he continued,

"You are a smart lady with cultivation inching ever closer to the second star of the Transcendent beast realm.

It's why you are calm despite what you have seen me do to your Peak Semi-Transcendent husband... You are stronger than he is but he does not know that. Your strength is kept private.

Your spatial ring doubles as a pressure-suppressing Artifact.

Speaking of your spatial ring, it contains an Artifact infused with your mother's demigod energy, does it not?"

Aspasia's brows furrowed,

"You are-" she began but Hal interrupted,

"Wrong? Oh please, you don't have to lie. You don't have to hide it because hiding things from me is impossible-"

*BANG!* the bed was suddenly blasted back and so was Aspasia who was still seated on it and she had an artifact pointed at Hal. The Artifact had shot out an attack that had caused the backward movement of the bed and the attack struck at Hal who remained seated and stretched out a finger to create a barrier of Infinity and Sovereignty to stop the attack and he dispersed and absorbed it in a second.

As he did, Hal noticed that the attack did not pack nearly as much of a punch as he had expected and that was because Aspasia had only used it as a gauging tactic to know just what she was facing.

Now she flew at Hal with her cultivation blasting and her bloodline energy glowing around her. She had an attack primed but that was only to go ahead of her before she followed up with the true attack she had infused in the orb.

Before her attack hit, a black hole appeared to swallow it into a void and when it vanished, Hal was gone.

He appeared behind her and, calm as can be, he said,

"Let's not ruin your bridal hall"

Reality warped, space distorted and a tiny portion of the room became stretched wide to the size of a cathedral, and whatever damage they did would be contained to that tiny portion that was no more than a dot to the average eye.

What Hal had done would have been impossible with just the insight level of Reality or Space. Only by putting them together could one get such an effect. And this was without Hal adding a dash of Infinity boosting!

'Powerful' Aspasia noted but she shook away all awe in readiness to attack.

"And here I was expecting you would be civil throughout," Hal said with a shake of his head.

"You threatened my family," Aspasia said as she grew wings of her Pheonix bloodline with every singular feather packed with bloodline energy just itching to attack the infidel.

"No, I didn't. I proposed liberation." Hal said.

"Call it whatever you want, you won't have your way!" Aspasia said and as she spoke, she realized the reality and space warping hindered any possibility of calling for reinforcements.

She let out a terrible blast of her cultivation that would have destroyed the room had it not been for Hal's reality and spatial warps and then she began causing her feathers to individually charge Hal and smack him with the force of divinity contained within each one of them.

Hal noted that the counterpart of the Pheonix clan in the human continent was the Danes. They were both fairly directly connected to Progenitors who were a part of Order. The progenitors in question being the Primeval Pheonix Queen and the Primeval Virtue Queen.

It was a testament to how unbothered by the attacks Hal was that he allowed himself several nods at the similarities while letting his pressure alone disperse them all faster than Aspasia could follow and faster than she could activate the Artifact which Hal promptly ripped out of her hands.

"Hey!" Aspasia yelled in indignation.

"Was I supposed to let the attack hit me? To prove myself? Pfft, if you don't have the speed and strength to activate your trump card, then you shouldn't have it.

Besides, it would be such a waste" Hal said and tossed the artifact a few times.

Aspasia tried and found that she couldn't let out or make use of her cultivation pressure or Bloodline for that matter. It was still with her but she could not express it.

"What have you done to me?"

"I've put an end to this exhibition so now settle down," Hal said and with a snap of his fingers, Aspasia was back seated at the edge of the bed as though it had never moved and he was in his plush chair examining the Artifact.

"The moment you use the actual energy within this Artifact, your mother will be aware and while she can't come here instantly, she can air her grievances to the King.

I fear none of them and can take you away from here before they can say Aspasia, but it's all so unnecessary.

Here-" he said and tossed the artifact to Aspasia who caught it immediately.

"You're giving it back?" she asked.

"Of course," Hal said but his voice sounded in her ear because he had joined her on the bed.

He startled the Princess but she did not let it show and rather than leap away, she turned her face to stare even more directly into his eyes, hating the feelings that his stare was causing to rise within her.

When Hal placed a hand on her shoulder, Aspasia could not bring herself to pull away. Her ability to harness her cultivation and bloodline returned but she could not care less.

It was as though whatever resistance she was capable of she had expressed in the brief battle and any other intentions were crushed by the inability to resist successfully.

When Hal leaned closer, took away her veil, and nuzzled against her neck, Aspasia tensed up but did not move and when he sucked on the smooth skin of her neck hard enough to leave a mark, the Princess let out a moan,

"Mnngghh"

At the realization that she had moaned, she put a hand over her mouth to stifle any further obscene sounds.

Hal just chuckled against her neck as he said in a mellow whisper,

"Don't bother. Surrender to it. Surrender to the Liberation"