Orson’s lifeless body lay upon the white marble floor of the open platform, leaving a fresh pool of blood that instantly evaporated into golden data particles in the air. The glass-masked Overseer turned slowly, aiming its red laser gaze straight at Davin, who remained trapped within the transparent energy cage.

"The Ledger subject anomaly failed to control. Executing total purge protocol," the dual mechanical voice thundered coldly in the open air.

Davin clenched his fists inside the cage. The pain of his stripped memories and the fury over Orson's futile death fused into a burning fuel of determination. He refused to end up a pile of dead data in this place.

With his jaw clenched tight, Davin channeled all his strength into his right hand. The Ledger's hourglass symbol pulsed fiercely, sending a surge of electric shock current straight into the energy cage's weakest points.

Zzzt... Crack!

The energy cage exploded into pieces of pixel light fragments. Davin leaped freely into the open air just as gravity on the platform abruptly vanished, leaving his body floating weightlessly in space.

The Overseers did not stand idly by. Two additional warden entities swooped down from a sky rift, raising their hands to unleash a barrage of high-speed red laser beams toward Davin.

"Let's see how strong your laws of physics really are!" Davin shouted amid the weightless air.

Davin deflected the first attack by waving his right hand, activating the Echo ability on the surrounding air molecules. He read the spatial history of the space and rewound it into an optical refraction mirror. The laser beam striking him bounced back, hitting one of the Overseer minions and melting its glass mask.

An epic, high-scale combat sequence erupted across the open skies of Aethelgard.

Gravity in that realm abruptly restored itself randomly, forcing Davin and the Overseers to fight amidst wildly fluctuating, up-and-down gravitational chaos. Davin streaked across the space, leaping from one floating island chunk to another colliding at high speed. Whenever an Overseer fired destructive energy, Davin bent the laws of space in its path using Echo, altering the enemy attack trajectory or manipulating local time to slow the wardens' movements for a fraction of a second.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Crystal energy explosions shattered the floating island rocks, creating a debris rain spinning in the sky wrapped in time-distortion visual effects—where Davin’s motion shadows lingered in the air like a lagging video recording.

Davin leveraged that time distortion. With a final leap leveraging counter-gravitational thrust, he lunged before the lead Overseer, slapping his palm bearing the hourglass symbol directly against the warden's glass mask surface.

"Return to your source system!" Davin shouted.

Golden-blue light exploded magnificently!

The Overseer’s core data history was completely rewound to the point of its creation. The flat glass mask shattered into a thousand pieces, casting a blinding white glare before the warden's giant body disintegrated into a cloud of data dust swept away by the cosmic wind.

One by one, the remaining warden minions collapsed and vanished in the same digital explosion.

Davin landed with his knee braced atop the shattered platform marble, his breathing rapid and shallow, sweat mixed with blood streaming down his temples. He had neutralized The Overseers.

Yet, amid the brief silence after the battle storm subsided, the sharp crack of an energy weapon echoed from the floating temple ruins below.

Bang!

Davin jerked. He whipped his head downward. At the edge of the nearly collapsed temple cliff, Valeri staggered backward, clutching her bleeding shoulder from a laser hit.

And even more shocking... Orson?

Orson’s body, which had previously lain dead on the platform, suddenly rose with eyes glowing red with system light—manifesting as an illusion projection or data clone controlled by the surviving Overseer programming, aiming its energy rifle to deliver a finishing shot at the helpless Valeri.

"Valeri...!" Davin screamed hysterically.

Without a second thought for his own safety, Davin dove headfirst from the open platform thousands of meters in the air, hurtling down through the golden clouds toward Valeri at full speed.

Right a fraction of a second before Valeri's second shot struck fatally, Davin crashed into the woman's body, pulling her tight and sending them both rolling down into the core passage of the temple's central system whose heavy doors stood wide open.

Boom!

They landed hard upon the temple core's marble floor while the steel doors behind them slammed shut automatically, cutting off all external threats completely.