Chapter 649: Gains in the exam
Priscilla stood there in the quiet corridor, the echo of Lucien's footsteps still lingering like an aftertaste of venom.
Her hand remained clenched at her side—tightly, violently—until her knuckles turned white beneath the satin of her glove. The pain in her shoulder pulsed in rhythm with her heartbeat, but it wasn't the ache that consumed her.
It was the helplessness.
The indignity of being touched—branded—by someone who wore cruelty like a crown and called it authority.
She couldn't strike him.
She couldn't speak against him.
Not here.
Not yet.
Her lips parted, but no breath came.
And then—
Soft footsteps.
A faint rustle of fabric.
"Your Highness," Idena said gently, voice low as she approached, eyes flicking to Priscilla's stiff posture. "Are you—"
"I'm fine," Priscilla said before the question could finish.
Too quickly.
Too sharp.
Idena said nothing more, but her gaze lingered at the shoulder Lucien had gripped, her brow subtly furrowing.
Priscilla finally exhaled—long, slow.
A breath to bury the fire.
To chain the scream.
Then, without another word, she straightened her coat, turned toward the arched corridor ahead, and began walking.
Not a single tremble in her stride.
No fury in her step.
But the silence around her deepened, as if the palace itself had noticed the fracture in its spine and had chosen, wisely, not to speak of it.
Because Priscilla Lysandra had learned, long ago, that in a house like this—
To endure was not weakness.
It was preparation.
****
The terrain had changed.
Gone were the fractured cliffs and elemental valleys that had once defined the outer zones. Here, near the center, the crafted space became something else entirely—tighter, denser, heavier. The air itself pulsed with ambient mana, saturated enough to thrum beneath Lucavion's skin like a second pulse.
It had been two days since the trial began.
Two days of movement, skirmishes, silence, blood. He had counted, loosely—thirty-seven eliminations by his hand, maybe more if you included the ones who'd fled and collapsed from lingering wounds later. Most hadn't been threats. A few had been decent. None had been interesting.
He stepped over the shattered remnants of what might have once been a small team's camp—a broken shield charm still flickering faintly under a collapsed stone pillar, blood smudged across the runes like an unfinished sentence.
[Still no signs of her?] Vitaliara asked, her voice calm but knowing.
Lucavion didn't answer right away. He just kept walking.
'Two days in,' he thought, gaze flicking upward toward the warped sky, where the false stars now seemed to watch more than shine. 'And the rhythm's starting to shift.'
The exam, as he remembered from the novel, spanned five days in total. Five days to decide who among nearly ten thousand would claim one of ten seats. Elara had carved her name into the trial during the final two—a miracle fighter rising from obscurity.
Which meant, if the pacing held true…
"The real contenders are about to wake up," Lucavion said aloud.
[Finally.] Vitaliara stretched languidly, though her claws remained just slightly unsheathed. [I was beginning to think this was just a traveling showcase of mediocrity.]
"To be fair," he mused, sidestepping a crater where a mana trap had recently detonated, "most of them were only here for a chance at being seen. Not to win."
[And yet they fought.]
"They always do. Hope is a fascinating addiction."
He stopped at a rise, overlooking a basin that pulsed with structured enchantments—half-ruined buildings arranged in a spiral, runes carved into the walls still glowing faintly with warding spells. A convergence zone.
Lucavion's eyes narrowed.
The moment stretched—silent, still—and then the air shifted.
He could feel it before he saw it: a subtle tightening, like the whole fabricated world had just drawn a boundary around itself. The wind stilled unnaturally, not from lack of motion, but because something larger had just wrapped its fingers around the sky.
He tilted his head upward.
There, far above the twin moons and false stars, faint outlines flickered into existence—geometric patterns interlaced with arcane script, forming translucent barriers that stretched like a dome across the heavens. They pulsed once with a deep, golden hue, then settled.
"Oh…" he murmured.
[Vitaliara stiffened.] [That's a seal.]
Lucavion's smirk returned, slow and inevitable. "It is."
[What does it mean?]
He didn't answer right away.
Instead, he turned his gaze back down to the spiral-shaped ruins in the basin below, the glow of active enchantments growing brighter, more focused. And then—he felt it.
A presence. No, several. New signatures blooming like stars coming alive across the horizon, each one tied to a point of power.
Just like the novel.
He exhaled.
"The Local Zones," he said softly, almost reverently. "So it begins."
The world answered.
A voice—not quite a voice, more like a chorus of echoes folded through layers of mana—reverberated through the terrain, clear and precise, resonating across stone, air, and bone.
----------
"PHASE TWO: LOCAL DOMINION TRIALS
Objective: Establish control zones by capturing one of the activated relics.
Designated contestants who successfully claim a relic shall be recognized as Zone Lords.
As a Zone Lord, you must defend your relic from challengers during the Dominion Period.
Sub-trials now apply. Your relic draws challengers. Defeating them strengthens your bond with the domain.
At the conclusion of the Dominion Period, all surviving Zone Lords shall be granted a cultivation boon derived from the relic's origin—unique, and irreversible."
----------
Silence returned, only for a heartbeat.
Then, far off, the ruins shuddered as golden light erupted from its center—no explosion, no sound—just a brilliant, pure pillar rising skyward.
A relic had activated.
Lucavion's eyes flicked toward the pulse of light, then beyond it. He could already feel the other pillars awakening, flaring in different corners of the central map.
"…There they are."
The golden light from the first pillar lanced through the darkened sky, piercing the false heavens with divine clarity. As the second, third, and fourth erupted across the distant terrain—each beacon painting its corner of the world with unique hues—Lucavion's eyes narrowed, not at the spectacle, but at the feeling that followed.
Then came the fifth.
To his east.
Its light was different.
It wasn't sharp or aggressive like the others. It bloomed—soft, vibrant, almost breathing with a gentle cadence. Green and gold wove together like spring after frost, and with it came the unmistakable pulse of something ancient and eternal.
The energy of life.
Vitaliara's breath caught, and her claws tensed against his shoulder.
[This…] she whispered, eyes wide, pupils narrowing like a predator scenting home. [This one…]
Lucavion didn't look at her—he didn't need to.
He could feel it too.
The warmth curling under his skin. The way the very ground seemed to pulse with dormant fertility. Not healing. Not magic. But vitality in its purest, unbound state.
Each pillar drew from its surrounding zone. Mana shaped by environment, by memory, by the themes of the land itself. And this zone—eastern, forest-choked, half-swallowed by thorned ruins and old stone groves—had long been marked in the novel as the cradle of renewal.
Life. Growth. Vital restoration.
The pillar's light pulsed again, its rhythm almost… familiar.
[If I reach that zone,]
Lucavion nodded once, calm as ever.
"I know."
[You—]
"I felt it," he said simply, finally turning his gaze east. His expression didn't change, but his stance did—more alert, more certain. "And I was already heading there."
Chapter 650: Gains in the exam (2)
Lucavion moved like ink spilling over a sacred script—fluid, inevitable. He descended the slope from the rise, his form a whisper in the saturated air. The eastern zone awaited. Not just with the promise of a relic, but with the kind of energy that made his bones remember being alive.
The terrain changed almost immediately.
Trees—tall, ancient, and draped in moss—greeted him like silent sentinels, their branches woven together high above to form a natural cathedral of verdant light. The pillar of vitality still pulsed in the distance, a heartbeat of gold and green that colored everything in hues of renewal. The wind here smelled different—earthy, rich, and tinged with something unmistakably alive. Not merely oxygen. Essence.
He passed under an archway of gnarled roots that had formed a natural gate, the carvings on them not made by mortal hands, but by time and magic. Flowers bloomed in impossible shapes across the forest floor, glowing faintly as if the sunlight itself had decided to stay after dusk. Vines twisted in patterns resembling sigils—some ancient, some new—and the very ground exhaled mana like breath from a sleeping god.
'It's alive,' he thought, fingertips grazing a bark that felt warm. Not metaphorically. Not poetically. Alive.
[There are echoes here,] Vitaliara murmured. [This place has memory.]
She wasn't wrong. Every step forward felt like a negotiation with the land. Not resistance. Not welcome. A test.
"Good," Lucavion said, adjusting his grip on his estoc. "It means we're close."
They entered what might've once been a garden-temple, now half-swallowed by the forest's stubborn reclamation. Stone bridges arched over pools of crystalline water that shimmered with bioluminescent fish, their scales trailing mana. In the center, the relic pulsed—rooted in a tree grown through the ribcage of an ancient colossus. The corpse was fossilized in stone, its armor half-buried, its helm now a perch for nesting birds.
But nothing stayed quiet for long.
—CRRKK—
The underbrush ahead snapped violently.
Lucavion paused, his gaze sharp. Then came the howl. Not from wolves. Something lower. Thicker. Older.
The first monster lunged from the canopy—twisted and moss-covered, its limbs like gnarled branches, its face a hollow split of teeth and vines. It moved like a puppet on forgotten strings, and the forest responded to its hunger.
[A Warden Beast,] Vitaliara hissed, ears flattening.
Lucavion didn't flinch.
He tilted his head slightly, eyes narrowing as he watched the creature emerge fully from the underbrush—its body half-coated in bark, half-covered in pulsing, leaf-veined muscle. A crooked crown of antlers extended from its skull like broken branches, and vines slithered down its limbs, dragging mist and spores in its wake. Where its eyes should've been, two glowing pits radiated faint green light.
"A what?" he asked dryly, adjusting his stance—not in fear, but in vague interest.
[A Warden Beast,] Vitaliara replied, her voice low and steady. [A creature bound to the natural cycle. Very old. Very stubborn.]
Lucavion's eyes narrowed further. "Bound to… life?"
[Yes.] Her tail flicked once. [You forget who I am, Lucavion. I'm the Mythical Beast of Life—my lineage remembers what the world forgets.]
The Warden Beast let out a guttural creak, its breath exhaling spores into the air, and its massive form stalked forward, pressing clawed, root-like feet into the ground like a thing testing the soil it once ruled.
[It's not artificial,] Vitaliara continued. [I can feel the memory in its mana. This one lived long before this place existed.]
"Mid 4-star?" he guessed.
[Maybe slightly higher,] she murmured. [But not overwhelming. It's here, but it's not wild. Which means…]
Lucavion nodded slowly, the pieces already arranging in his mind. 'So the Headmaster didn't just create this whole space from raw magic. Of course he didn't.'
Creating monsters from scratch wasn't impossible—not for someone with the Headmaster's reach—but to populate an entire dimensional pocket, with different terrains, different relics, different themes?
'Too resource-heavy. Too unstable. Even high-tier spellwork has limits. No—he borrowed.'
He looked at the beast again, and now he saw it differently—not just as a guardian, but as a piece relocated from elsewhere. A living relic, summoned and bound by a spell more elaborate than it had any right to be.
[This one was brought in,] Vitaliara confirmed, as if reading his thoughts. [Taken from a living territory, and anchored here.]
Lucavion's eyes flicked to the glowing relic pulsing at the center of the garden-temple.
"Guarding it. Of course."
The Warden Beast let out a second low howl, its jaw creaking open like an ancient gate. Moss clung to its back in drooping sheets, and spectral butterflies peeled off its shoulders with every twitch.
The Warden Beast took another step forward.
The ground trembled beneath its weight, but Lucavion didn't react. Not with fear. Not with aggression. Just a faint, deliberate exhale—like a chessmaster watching the final move before a checkmate he already predicted.
"Let me guess," he murmured, voice edged with quiet amusement. "It's going to attack no matter what I say."
[That's the role it was given,] Vitaliara replied, calm but alert. [But that doesn't mean we need to follow the script.]
Lucavion tilted his head, considering the creature again. It was powerful, yes—at least a mid 4-star as he'd guessed—but more importantly, it was old. Its mana wasn't wild or feral. It was ceremonial. Rooted. A relic in flesh, placed here to simulate conflict.
'Like a test,' he thought. 'But not for me.'
His eyes narrowed as the realization bloomed behind them, sharp and slow like dawn.
"I don't need to defeat it," he said aloud. "I just need to *take back what's already ours."
Vitaliaras' tail twitched once, the faintest ripple of anticipation running through her coiled form.
[Exactly.]
Lucavion stepped forward—casual, unbothered. The Warden Beast tensed, claws digging into the moss-covered earth, breath rattling with spore-laced intent.
But Lucavion raised a single hand.
Not to fight.
To offer.
"Stand down," he said, his voice low but resonant. "You recognize her, don't you?"
The beast hesitated.
For the first time, it didn't move. Its breath slowed, the spores no longer drifting with hostility but hanging in the air like uncertain dust. The glowing pits of its eyes fixed on Vitaliara—small, perched on his shoulder, but undeniable.
[You feel it,] she said, her voice no longer whispering. It carried now. Deeper. Older. Her presence surged, the quiet pressure of divinity rolling off her like heat from the sun. [I am of the same cycle you were born from. But higher.]
The forest responded.
Leaves shifted, branches swayed—not from wind, but reverence. The very roots around them thrummed like strings plucked by memory.
Lucavion stepped aside, giving her space.
Vitaliara leapt down from his shoulder, graceful as moonlight through trees, and landed before the Warden Beast. Her body shimmered faintly, her form drawing in mana from the very air, from the relic's light, from the soil that had always known her name.
The beast lowered its head.
Not in defeat.
In recognition.
[You were borrowed,] Vitaliara said gently. [Pulled from your homeland, forced to guard a relic you do not understand. But I… I remember your forest. I remember your name.]
Lucavion felt it before he saw it—mana spiraling upward, coalescing in delicate threads of green and gold. Not violent. Not destructive. Restorative.
The same energy she used when she faced the Nyxaliths. Or, as she had called them—forks. Low-grade echoes of herself. This was the same. A lesser beast, born of the same divine root.
[Return,] she whispered.
And the Warden Beast shuddered.
Chapter 651: Gains in the Exam (3)
The Warden Beast's breath came slower now—deep, rhythmic, a lullaby carved from the old world's lungs. Its massive form, once poised to destroy, now softened into light. The final threads of its essence lifted from its bark-veined limbs like mist rising from morning soil, spiraling gently into the air.
Vitalaira didn't move at first.
She simply stood there, eyes locked on the dissolving beast. She didn't speak again—not with words. Not yet. But the forest around them understood. It had heard her.
And it obeyed.
The clearing brightened—not from the sky, but from beneath. The earth began to glow, faint at first, then steadier, as if something beneath the soil had awakened. Lines of mana—thin, bioluminescent veins—crisscrossed underfoot, converging around the base of the ancient tree that housed the relic.
Lucavion took a breath, slow and steady. The air here had changed. Not denser. Not heavier.
Fuller.
Then Vitaliara turned to him.
[Lucavion, sit.]
He blinked.
"Commanding me now?"
[Yes,] she said simply, padding over to the moss-covered stones beneath the relic. [This place is not like the others. The mana rising from here—it's unfiltered, pure, life-shaped. You won't get a better chance.]
Lucavion glanced at the tree behind her, its roots thick and tangled, pulsing with quiet light. He gave a short nod and stepped forward, settling beneath its canopy, his back resting against its trunk. The moment he did, the ground answered—mana rising into him like water soaking into parched earth.
His body tensed.
[Don't try to absorb it,] Vitaliara instructed. [Not directly. You're not using this to advance your core. Your [Flame of Equinox] is already compressed to its peak. If you try to push it further now, it'll collapse.]
"So what am I doing?"
[Strengthening the channels.]
Lucavion's eyes narrowed. He closed them.
[Your mana veins and ganglions—they're still rigid, overstructured. Human cultivation isn't made for you. But here, now, this vitality can do what structured methods won't. You must guide it. Gently.]
She leapt onto a nearby stone, watching him like a priestess beside a sacrificial flame.
[Start with your lower abdomen. Find the central ganglion beneath your dantian. Let the mana seep in—don't force it. Let it choose.]
Lucavion followed her voice, steadying his breath. The warmth rising through the soles of his feet flowed upward like smoke, curling through his legs, weaving into the subtle lattice of his inner network. His focus narrowed. Ganglions—the nerve-like clusters of mana response—lit up under the flow.
One by one, he found them.
He didn't command.
He invited.
And the vitality responded.
It poured through him like spring floodwaters, but not to empower. To refine. His veins—the conduits that carried his power—groaned under the tension, their density shifting, their width expanding in microfractures before knitting back together stronger, more efficient. Each breath deepened the process, his body humming low with pressure, his blood heated not by fire but by the quiet song of life itself.
[Good,] Vitaliara murmured. [Keep going. Don't resist the change.]
His chest thrummed with energy—not chaotic, not blinding.
Just right.
It lasted less than two minutes.
And then—
It changed.
Lucavion's eyes shot open.
He hadn't moved.
Hadn't reached out.
But the vitality rising from the tree—the leftovers, the ambient residue Vitaliara had let drift free—moved on its own.
Straight into him.
The pulse was clean. Warm. And real.
Not like devouring. Not like conquest.
Like recognition.
His body drank it in, and he felt the shift—not just in the veins, not just in the ganglions.
In everything.
Like the world had acknowledged him. Not as intruder. Not even as heir.
But as part of it.
[That's… new,] Vitaliara said quietly, voice laced with wonder.
Lucavion opened his eyes fully. They gleamed faintly gold-green, just for a breath, before returning to obsidian black.
[That's… new,] Vitaliara said quietly, voice laced with wonder. [I didn't expect that.]
Lucavion didn't speak yet, still listening to the echoes beneath his skin. The vitality wasn't burning or pulsing like most mana did—it was nesting. Seeping into tissue, curling into bone. His muscles twitched subtly, not from strain but from adaptation. A low warmth ran through his spine, not sharp like heat, but steady, anchoring.
[Vitality isn't supposed to do that,] she murmured, leaping lightly to his side. Her eyes, glowing faintly in the relic's light, narrowed with studious focus. [Your muscle fibers… they're absorbing it. Your bones, too. Like they're drinking it directly.]
Lucavion finally moved, flexing a hand, watching the way his fingers responded—cleaner, sharper. As if they'd shed microseconds of delay that he hadn't even known were there.
"What does that mean?" he asked, quiet, curious.
[It means your body isn't just evolving to hold more power,] she replied, tail flicking in a tight motion behind her. [It's becoming power. You're not just cultivating energy anymore. You're rewriting the rules it obeys.]
Lucavion opened his mouth, something sharp and amused ready on his tongue—
—SWOOSH!
His head snapped to the right.
Too fast.
Too close.
A flicker—just the barest whisper of motion—and then pressure behind him, sudden and sharp, like the kiss of a blade at the base of his neck.
He didn't move.
Didn't blink.
Didn't need to.
The estoc was in his hand before thought caught up to motion, raised just a fraction—not to strike, but to check.
The air behind him split like paper.
A figure stepped into clarity from nothing—a ripple in space folding open to reveal a cloak the color of smoke, boots soundless even on leaf-covered ground. No presence. No mana signature. Just intent.
"Well," Lucavion said calmly, gaze forward even as his blade held steady to the side. "You're late."
Lucavion's blade remained poised, its point still faintly tilted toward the now-empty air behind him.
And yet… nothing moved.
No leaves stirred. No breath. Not even the usual hum of the forest's deeper rhythm.
He exhaled slowly, lowering the estoc just an inch—just enough to signify he'd noticed, not enough to say he'd let his guard down.
"Disguises, cloaking, silence techniques," he mused aloud, gaze still on the tree before him. "And still, you rely on theatrics."
The silence deepened.
He tilted his head slightly.
"No reply?" A faint smile tugged at the corner of his lips. "You must be nervous."
Nothing.
Not a twig snap, not a single heartbeat out of rhythm. Even Vitaliara remained still, her luminous eyes narrowed, tail frozen mid-flick as she scanned the surroundings with a predator's patience.
Lucavion's fingers flexed once around the hilt of his blade.
"Or perhaps," he murmured, lowering his voice to something almost playful, "you just want me to turn around again. Make a show of it. Pretend I don't know you're crouched—" he shifted his foot slightly, feeling the faintest breeze, "three steps off-center, hidden by a mana veil fine enough to pass through most detection arrays."
No movement.
Just quiet tension.
A heartbeat passed.
Then another.
Then—click.
The subtle sound of shifting weight on moss-covered stone, deliberate and measured.
Still no figure.
But a voice came, finally, light as drifting ash and just as elusive.
"What was that just now?"
The voice was no longer behind him—it came from across the relic, threaded with curiosity, and something sharper. Something that watched too closely.
Lucavion didn't glance toward it.
He simply exhaled, slow and measured, as if the question had been tossed into a still pond and he'd chosen not to disturb the ripples.
"I imagine you're referring to the beast," he said lightly. "Or the technique I used."
A pause.
A silence so complete it almost hummed.
Then the voice again, this time laced with a hint of tension.
"You dismantled a Warden-class in a single motion. Its mana defenses alone should've repelled any direct compression. Yet your flame… pierced it. Broke the channels. What was that?"
Lucavion shifted, stretching his fingers once before letting them rest lazily on his hip.
"I like to call it art," he replied with a smile that didn't quite touch his eyes. "But if you're looking for a name, you're a little late to the gallery showing."
Another silence.
Not empty—no, far from it.
The forest suddenly felt off, as if the angles had subtly shifted. Light bent wrong. The sound of rustling leaves echoed twice, like a playback from another direction. His heartbeat came delayed—then too early. The chirp of a distant bird warped into a whisper.
Illusion.
Not crude. Not haphazard.
This was an artifice, a layered distortion of space and sense.
Lucavion closed his eyes for just a breath, letting go of the noise in his ears, the flickers in his sight.
'So she wants to play with perception.'
Unfortunate.
Because she'd chosen the one target she shouldn't.
Where most relied on aura, scent, sound—Lucavion had something far more insidious.
He could feel vitality.
The rhythm of life. The flow of breath through soil and skin, the quiet tension in coiled muscle, the scentless pulse of being.
And there it was.
A ripple.
Above.
He opened his eyes just as the illusion shimmered once—then fractured like glass catching too much sun.
And in that instant—
SWOOSH!
A blur descended from the canopy. Cloak trailing, dagger glinting, intent deadly and direct.
Lucavion moved without sound.
His body rotated half a degree, his foot grounding with perfect poise, and the estoc was already there—angled back, tip rising like a drawn breath—
CLANG!
Steel met steel.
Her blade caught against his in a burst of pressure, the strike arrested mid-air. Her eyes—just barely visible behind the veil of illusion—widened for a fraction of a heartbeat.
"Nice try," Lucavion said softly, their weapons locked between them. "But I don't fight by what I see."
Chapter 652: Who is this person ?
The viewing chamber of the Citadel pulsed with sudden light—no longer veiled by camouflage or masked by spatial turbulence.
The event had unfolded clearly. Publicly.
And the chamber reacted as though the very laws of reality had just… blinked.
Silence followed the display—one that wasn't born from awe, but disbelief so complete it swallowed sound.
Dozens of mages froze mid-sentence, mid-calculation. The aetheric projections circling the main observation pillars replayed the moment again and again.
There was no violence. No explosion.
Just a white cat walking across moss-covered stone, its steps elegant, measured. Toward the Warden Beast.
And then the Warden simply—
Knelt.
Its monstrous form—immense, ancient, and coiled with territorial aggression—had bowed. Not under threat. Not under spell. But willingly.
Its mana hadn't shattered.
It had surrendered.
A senior analyst broke the silence first, voice cracking slightly. "The… the beast didn't fight. It submitted."
Another mage shook his head. "That's not submission. That's reverence."
"Then how—"
"He didn't use any spells," another added. "There was no aura burst. No coercion. Nothing to command the beast."
More voices now, overlapping in a rising hum of confusion.
"Could it be an illusion—?"
"No, no, the Warden's structure rejected all illusions on entry. That creature is ancient. It wouldn't yield to misdirection."
"Then what was it?"
"Who is that contestant?!"
"Candidate 7342—Lucavion," someone supplied. "Estimated four-star rating, but the projections are inconsistent. Earlier analysis marked him as Tier Three. His elimination count is rising exponentially."
"He's manipulating the relic's mana without drawing from it directly—"
"That's not manipulation. That's resonance. He's not consuming the zone's energy. He's syncing with it."
"This doesn't make any sense."
But then—
A new voice entered.
Deeper.
Slower.
Unmistakable.
"…That is a mythical beast," the Headmaster's voice said, his tone quiet—but it spread like thunder across the chamber.
Every mage stopped.
"…That kid," he continued, "is contracted to a Mythical Beast of Life."
The room nearly cracked.
Someone choked on their breath.
Another dropped a quill.
"A—what?!"
"Impossible. There's no record—no signature—how did we not detect it before?!"
The Headmaster didn't elaborate. He didn't need to. The weight of his words had already changed the air.
Mythical beasts were legend. Not metaphorical legend—literal. Higher beings born of the world's primal origins. Known not for power alone, but for dominion over abstract forces. Time. Death. Life.
And Life...
"Warden-class guardians yield only to higher-ordered entities," whispered a scholar-mage, her lips pale. "Not through combat. Through hierarchy."
"She didn't dominate it," another muttered, replaying the moment. "She recognized it. And it obeyed."
Keleran's voice cut in, sharp. "Where's the familiar registration data? That beast—has it ever appeared in an academy contract roster?"
A fresh wave of panic surged through the Citadel's observation chamber.
Dozens of mages clustered near the central pillar, their fingers flying over suspended arrays of script and code, glyphs blinking erratically as they dug deeper into the familiar registries—pulling from sealed records, archived threads, restricted channels normally kept buried under political clearance and war-time classification.
Because that word—Mythical Beast—was not one to be used lightly.
And now, it had a face.
"…Who is this boy?" someone whispered.
Keleran's jaw clenched. "Cross-reference his application. Lucavion—pull his lineage, origin, arcane signature. Any affiliations, any documented contracts—now."
Another mage, pale and shaking, gestured toward a floating scroll. "That earlier incident—the collapse in Quadrant Thirty-One. The Vekorith disappearance. We couldn't detect any magic signature then… but now?"
He expanded the recording.
And there she was.
The white cat.
Faint. Barely visible.
But present.
Not fleeing. Not watching.
Walking.
Straight into the site where Vekorith had dissolved.
"You mean to say…" another mage began, breath catching, "...that both events—the Warden surrender and Vekorith's vanishing—are linked to that creature?"
"And to Lucavion," someone else added, quietly.
Then, a shout: "I've found a record."
The chamber stilled.
The mage, eyes wide with disbelief, highlighted the thread for all to see. The floating scroll projected above the core lens—lines of ancient war-record transcripts unraveling, each word stamped with timeworn authority.
"A cat. White-furred. Golden-eyed. Often seen perched on the shoulder of General Gerald... during the war."
A hush fell over the room, thick and immediate.
Then—like shattering glass—
"Wait. You mean—the Starscourge?"
Dozens turned, the name falling from stunned lips like a taboo dragged back from the dead.
"Gerald. Starscourge Gerald. The Slayer of Loria's Heavens. That Gerald?"
"The man who razed the Fifteenth Aether Army in a night—who vanished during the Grand Collapse—that Gerald?"
"How is this young man—this Lucavion—connected to him?!"
Another voice broke through. "It can't be the same creature. Familiars are bound. When a contractor dies, they don't just go free—they collapse. Fade. Their essence deteriorates without sustained arcane support."
"That's the law of contract sorcery—everyone knows that."
"No familiar can be linked to more than one mage. Especially not across generations."
"But if that's true—then how is this even possible?"
The answer came not from panic.
Not from analysis.
But from above.
From the one man whose silence weighed more than their chaos.
The Headmaster's voice dropped like a curtain across the entire chamber.
"…Mythical Beasts," he said, "are not familiars in the common sense. They are not bound by the same threads. They are not born of mortal mana, nor sustained by it. They do not exist for their contractor. They simply are."
He descended a single step from his arcane ring, the eleven conceptual spells orbiting him shifting—subtly, reverently.
"They are echoes of the world's original will," he continued, "the remnants of what existed before even the Aether was named."
He paused.
Then, softly—
"Especially a Beast of Life."
The word Life resonated with a weight that couldn't be mimicked. Not power. Not threat. Just truth.
Unyielding. Fundamental.
"As long as life persists," he said, "so shall she."
Eyes turned back to the image of the cat, now framed in the projections above the central obelisk. Her white fur gleamed faintly under the relic's light, her golden eyes not watching the beast she had silenced—but the boy who had followed her without hesitation.
Lucavion.
A stunned murmur rippled through the Citadel.
The Headmaster's words had struck like scripture—undeniable, ancient—but they left behind more questions than answers.
A younger mage near the base platform broke the silence, his voice tentative, trembling beneath the weight of what he dared to ask.
"Are you saying…" he began, "that the Starscourge Gerald… truly died? And that the Mythical Beast of Life… perished with him?"
Heads turned. Even the floating arrays faltered for a second, the projection flickering before restabilizing.
"Because if that's what you're implying," he continued, swallowing hard, "then are we also to believe she—the beast—was reborn? And then… contracted herself to this kid?"
The silence that followed was immediate—yet, curiously, not filled with argument.
Because despite how outlandish it sounded, there was only one explanation that didn't violate the foundational laws of the world.
"She must have died," one of the elder analysts murmured, eyes locked to the flickering data across his thread-scroll. "There's no way for a familiar bond to linger this long otherwise. If she hadn't perished, she'd still be linked to Gerald."
"And Gerald…" another said, voice low, "hasn't been seen in nearly three decades. No message. No trace. Not even whispers."
"It fits," Levrinne added, almost reluctantly. "He was called the Starscourge, yes—but his strength came from what stood beside him. If she died, and then returned… this new bond, this Lucavion—it's not a fluke. It's a continuation."
"And if the Beast of Life chose to return," Keleran said grimly, "then it means the world needed her to."
A pause.
Followed by the slow sharpening of eyes.
Then came a flicker on the central array.
A distortion. An active mana flare in Lucavion's zone.
"Another contestant's approaching," one of the analysts said, voice tight. "One of the flagged Tier 4 entries. We've been watching him since day one. Eastern sect representative. Specializes in mistwalking techniques and distortion blade forms. Ranked fifth in projected power."
A thin ripple cut through the forest zone's projection.
A figure burst from the edge of the tree line—cloak shimmering with illusion layers, twin blades glowing with spatial resonance. His form curved through the air like a serpent made of glass and will.
Descending.
Hard.
Fast.
Straight toward Lucavion.
Gasps echoed across the Citadel's chamber as the strike dropped like a divine verdict.
"Oh…" Keleran leaned forward, eyes narrowing with clinical anticipation. "This will be a good chance…"
A pause.
A faint smirk.
"…to see what the boy can really do."
Chapter 653: Bring it on
The clang of steel still echoed in the clearing when she disengaged, vanishing once more into the folds of illusion.
But Lucavion didn't chase.
He didn't need to.
Her vitality shimmered against the backdrop of the world like a heat signature beneath glass—fast, agile, but ultimately human. Not divine. Not something beyond.
Just another contestant.
'Skilled,' he noted, rotating his wrist with a slow, elegant twist as he brought the estoc back into line. 'But she bleeds like the rest.'
Then—she came again.
A flicker from the right.
No—left.
She split, twin shadows lunging in a pincer formation, both cloaked in mirage, the glint of her daggers barely visible through the shimmer of warped light. Her footsteps were silent, erased by mana-infused cloth, but her intent—ah, that was always audible, if you knew how to listen.
Lucavion pivoted smoothly, letting his left heel trace a crescent arc across the mossy floor, drawing the estoc upward in a high guard. He didn't look at her directly. His eyes remained soft, unfocused, tracking pulse rather than form.
CLANG!
Her right dagger met the flat of his blade—sharp, thin, serrated. Designed to parry and rake in the same breath.
He deflected cleanly, but she was already spinning, low, dagger two slicing in from below like a second whisper. Lucavion's free hand snapped down, bracing the estoc's hilt as he rotated the blade with precise torque.
KSHHH!
Sparks leapt between them as the second dagger ground along the edge of his estoc, her momentum dragging it in a long, screeching slide.
He shifted back, half a step, narrowly avoiding a follow-up feint aimed at his knee.
'Dual daggers. Illusion-stepped footwork. Uses trick angles to fish for openings.'
A faint smile pulled at the corner of his lips.
'Cute.'
She twisted again, using the blurred folds of her cloak to vanish mid-turn, her afterimage slashing forward—but Lucavion leaned left, sword sweeping sideways in a mirrored crescent.
The air screamed.
Her dagger met his blade again—this time higher.
CLANK!
He felt the force—stronger than expected. Her mana surged through the daggers in bursts, small pulses that reinforced the strikes just before impact. A timed amplification—subtle, but efficient.
Lucavion responded in kind. His estoc shimmered faintly as his mana surged down the length—not in violent flares, but a coating, fine as silk. Not flames. Just pressure.
Precision.
With every turn of his wrist, the estoc moved like a thread needle—narrow, surgical, constantly threading through the smallest openings between her slashes.
She came again, faster now.
Right. Left. High. Low.
Her form blurred and flickered, illusion veils disguising her direction. To an outside viewer, it would've seemed like she moved from all angles at once—three shadows dashing, only one real, the others a death trap for those who hesitated.
Lucavion didn't.
He stepped forward, inside her rhythm.
Let her illusions try to confuse.
He didn't fight rhythm.
He dismantled it.
CLANG! KSHHH! TINK—
The estoc twisted, caught the flat of her dagger, and pushed it wide—just as she leaned in for a throat feint with the second blade.
He ducked—not wildly, but just enough.
Steel hissed past his ear.
And then he moved.
His foot swept low, clipping her balance—not to throw, but to disrupt. Her knee bent instinctively, breaking the momentum of her illusion-linked sequence. She backflipped to reset, cloak fluttering in retreat.
But her breathing had changed.
Faster now.
Unsettled.
Lucavion exhaled, raising his sword in a loose, unhurried posture—still no flames. Just the soft shimmer of mana clinging to steel like dew on glass.
"You're skilled," he said calmly, voice light. "But you're relying too much on spectacle."
The shadows around her shimmered once more. Her form reappeared—partially.
Lower half revealed. Upper body flickering.
"And you're arrogant," she shot back, her tone clipped. "You think your sword can track what your eyes can't see?"
Lucavion smiled faintly.
"Oh, I'm not tracking with my eyes."
Then he moved.
Not lunging—drifting.
Like a shadow bleeding into motion, his blade trailing behind him, tip angled downward, the estoc drawn up in a spiral path—
And when she vanished again to strike—
He was already there.
CLANG!
Their weapons met mid-air, above his shoulder. Her downward strike, clean and perfectly aimed.
Blocked.
"I can feel your heartbeat," Lucavion whispered, eyes locking onto hers in that fleeting clash. "Your illusions don't hide that."
Her eyes widened.
Just a fraction.
But enough.
The pressure between them snapped the moment she disengaged—but Lucavion didn't pause.
He moved.
A single, smooth dash.
Not propelled by flame, not even reinforced by mana—just his own body, newly sharpened, newly tempered.
His foot struck the moss-covered ground, and he surged forward like a drawn blade let loose. The earth cracked slightly beneath his step, his boots sinking just a hair deeper into the softened forest floor. Not from weight—but from density. His muscles sang—not with strain, but precision. As though his very flesh had been rewritten to obey faster, cleaner, stronger.
'Faster than before,' he noted, his eyes gleaming with intent. 'Stronger too. Even without amplification… this body is evolving.'
He reached her in an instant.
Her cloak flared as she twisted to parry, but she was late—by a fraction. Lucavion's estoc dipped in from the right, feinted low, then twisted in a reverse flick to catch the underside of her left dagger.
CLANK!
She barely adjusted, her body arching back to avoid the riposte that kissed the edge of her shoulder. Lucavion didn't let the blade linger—he followed it through, pressure building as he flowed into a pivot-step, sword trailing behind his back before whipping forward again in a half-circle slash aimed at her ribs.
TINK—KSHHH!
She parried again, both daggers now crossed to form a shield—but he could feel it.
The shudder in her arms.
The sudden hitch in her rhythm.
Her stance was collapsing.
And yet—he held back.
He could have snapped through that guard.
Could have ended it with a single drive of the estoc through the line her daggers had opened.
But he didn't.
Lucavion exhaled, the force of his next step deliberately softened, dialed down to avoid crushing her under raw advantage.
'Let's not end it in one breath. Let's see how far she runs when she realizes she's already outmatched.'
And then—just as his estoc grazed the edge of her cloak—
She vanished.
No illusion.
No afterimage.
Just gone.
His blade passed through empty air, the taste of her vitality vanishing like a flame snuffed by wind.
Lucavion straightened, blinking once. His body didn't twitch, but the corners of his eyes flicked in the direction he felt it—
A blur retreating through the forest, slipping past the edge of the relic zone's mana signature.
'She's… fleeing?'
His brow lifted, not in surprise—but interest.
"Ah," he murmured, voice low, thoughtful. "So she knows when she's outmatched. Smart girl."
Vitaliara landed lightly beside him, her paws silent, eyes narrowing as she tracked the direction of the fading presence.
[She's moving toward to another zone.]
"Well, she was quite talented," Lucavion said, brushing a speck of bark from his coat as he turned toward the deeper forest, "so she should choose another zone."
[Or she's hoping you'll chase.]
He didn't answer that—not with words. His eyes lifted instead, gaze slipping between the towering trees and the soft tremble in the air that only he seemed to feel.
And then his smirk deepened.
"Quite a lot of people are coming now."
He could sense them.
Not their mana signatures—that was too noisy, too crude. But the brush of vitality through the treeline. The faint ripples of tension where life displaced life. Contestants, drawn by the beacon of fading light. By the dead Warden Beast. By the mana-rich relic that now sat like a throne beneath the ancient tree.
Lucavion turned his back to the woods, facing the relic once more. His hand settled lazily on the hilt of his estoc, not in defense—just... readiness.
"Bring it on."
He was itching for a battle once again.
Chapter 654: Lucavion
The garden terrace was high-walled and formally tiered, carved from old imperial stone and gilded with whispering vines that bloomed in unnatural rhythm to the ambient mana. It wasn't a place for commoners, or even lesser nobles—it was for imperial-blooded eyes only.
And yet even here, the attention narrowed when she arrived.
Priscilla Lysandra.
The overlooked princess. The unspoken name behind court whispers. The daughter of the Empire's mistake.
But today?
She did not enter quietly.
Dressed in subdued grays, her cloak swept behind her like a shadow trimmed in silver. Her guards did not follow. Her steps were unhurried. Measured.
Deliberate.
Heads turned.
Some bowed. Some hesitated. None greeted.
She paid them no mind.
Her gaze passed them, cut through them, until she reached the edge of the uppermost platform, where a private viewing altar had been installed—bare, unadorned, and oddly unclaimed.
A perfect spot.
She sat.
The projection shimmered before her, a disc of layered illusion magic hovering above the slate pedestal—scry-woven, tuned to the primary broadcast feed. Every zone of the entrance trials, filtered and condensed, cycling on rotation.
Day three.
Already, the weaker had fallen. The field was thinned. The forest no longer looked like a proving ground.
It looked like a war zone.
Priscilla watched without expression. Her hands remained still on her lap, though her eyes missed nothing.
Candidate after candidate appeared. Names were listed below their images—identities, house affiliations, ranks. Some she recognized. Most she didn't.
A few fought well.
Others simply survived.
Then the scene shifted again.
A forest clearing.
At first glance, nothing unusual.
But then the narrator swept in.
The moment she saw him, her breath caught—not visibly, not audibly—but in the silence between heartbeats.
Black coat.
White cat.
And those eyes.
Unbothered.
Unrushed.
Him.
It was him.
The boy from the terrace. The one who had spoken with riddles and half-smiles. Who had stared down House Crane. Who had made her question what she knew and what she missed.
There he was, standing alone at the center of the broadcast—sword at his side, cloak stirring faintly in the wind, his posture effortless.
The relic tree glowed behind him.
The remains of a Warden-class Beast shimmered on the ground nearby.
A ripple passed through the terrace as Zone Twelve expanded across the viewing disc, the enchanted illusion clarifying with crisp, wide-angle precision.
The moment she appeared—Elayne Cors—the shift in atmosphere was palpable.
Even before her name materialized in glowing script beneath the image, those present had already recognized her by stance alone.
Whispers spread like smoke.
"Elayne Cors…"
"The Blade of Nothing…"
"She's there. Finally."
From the lower tiers of the terrace, where young nobles and higher-ranked courtiers gathered in hushed, eager clusters, excitement stirred. Several leaned forward, expressions sharpened with interest. Some even smiled—tight, expectant.
Because Elayne was not unknown.
She was celebrated.
A good assassin, a phantom with blades, that was what they called her.
Blade of Nothing.
After all, she looked cool in the first two days and she had dismantled quite a lot of people on her own.
And now, she had finally appeared again.
All eyes—noble and otherwise—turned to the center of the illusion.
To her.
And yet—
There he stood.
Still.
Unbothered.
Priscilla's gaze never shifted from him.
Her fingers, still folded across her lap, curled ever so slightly.
The air shimmered on the projection. Elayne moved like a blur. Her body vanished beneath distortions. Shadows twisted in impossible arcs. Leaves blew the wrong direction. Every sound played twice.
And yet—
He didn't move.
He read her.
Her rhythm. Her intent. Her heartbeat.
No flinching. No desperate parries. No drawn-out clashes.
Only understanding.
Counter after counter, step after step, she struck with precision and speed honed by years of elite training. Twin daggers curved through angles designed to blind the eye and deceive instinct.
But he flowed between them.
Like water made steel.
Each parry was a question answered. Each deflection a riddle solved.
One noble watching nearby leaned forward, his voice dry with disbelief.
"Did he just counter her footwork?"
Another muttered, "That… shouldn't be possible. No one's ever adjusted to her phase rhythm that fast."
And still, the duel continued.
It wasn't just a fight—it was a dismantling.
He read through every illusion as if it were glass.
When Elayne's last barrage failed, when she pivoted and broke rhythm to vanish outright—
He was already there.
His blade met her mid-air, parried perfectly, and with a whisper of steel on steel, forced her into retreat.
The crowd didn't cheer this time.
They watched in a silence carved from awe.
Even the nobles who had praised Elayne sat stiff, unsure if they were still rooting for her—or simply stunned.
Because the boy…
The black-eyed stranger…
He wasn't just fighting her.
He was breaking her.
And Priscilla saw it all.
The flicker of strain in Elayne's arms. The fatigue that bled into her footwork. The doubt. The hesitation.
All against someone who had not even once drawn on his flame.
She leaned in slightly.
Not in excitement.
But in scrutiny.
He hadn't flared power. He hadn't declared strength.
But every movement was refined.
His body moved like a thing that had already passed through battle and simply returned to it, perfected.
When Elayne finally disappeared into the woods—fleeing, not repositioning—the reaction was instant.
A mix of disbelief and murmurs rippled across the garden terrace.
Someone whispered, "She ran."
Another said, "Who the hell is that boy?"
And finally—
A few heads turned.
To Priscilla.
As if her silence had become an answer in itself.
She didn't look back at them.
Her gaze remained fixed on the projection.
And her thoughts?
A quiet, low hum beneath her breath.
He wasn't lying.
He said I'd see interesting things at the academy.
Her fingers twitched faintly.
I didn't expect I'd be watching one of them cut through Arcanis' best before the trials even ended.
The projection shifted again, its hovering glyphs rotating with a soft hum as the arcane scrying system updated its readout. The name appeared—slowly, almost reluctantly—as if the Empire's records had been forced to give it up.
Candidate – Name: Lucavion
No house.
No title.
No affiliation.
Just that single word, etched in gold-light script across the screen.
And to Priscilla—
It hit like a note struck perfectly in the center of silence.
Her lips parted, barely.
"…Lucavion."
The name tasted familiar. Not by memory. But by rhythm. Of course that was his name. No other would have fit the way he carried himself—like a secret that had decided to walk into a battlefield just to see who would flinch first.
Her gaze lingered on the name for a long, still moment.
And then—
Footsteps behind her.
Soft.
Deliberate.
"Your Highness," came Idena's voice, respectful but edged with curiosity. "You recognize him?"
Priscilla didn't answer that.
Not directly.
Instead, she kept her eyes forward.
"That's his name," she murmured. "Lucavion."
So little… and yet it explained so much.
Even the name itself seemed out of place. Not fabricated—but unmoored. Like a name one chose for themselves rather than inherited. Something born in shadow. Survived, not given.
Idena stepped closer, her tone dipping lower.
"I will look into him at once."
Priscilla finally turned to her attendant, her voice cool, composed.
"You shall do that."
Idena bowed her head. "Of course."
But even as she turned to leave, the attendant hesitated.
"…Shall I consider him a threat, Your Highness?"
Priscilla looked back to the screen.
To that still figure now standing beneath the relic tree, coat rustling faintly in the breeze, cat asleep on his shoulder as if the battlefield were a garden stroll.
She studied him.
Then whispered—almost to herself:
"No."
A pause.
"But neither is he harmless."
Then she put her hand on her lips.
"An interesting name. Lucavion."
Chapter 655: Lucavion (2)
On the other side, the city still wrapped in the amber glow of the Festival of the First Flame.
Though most of the revelry would peak after dusk, the streets were already alive—children chasing illusion-kites shaped like phoenixes, perfumed vendors hawking flame-glazed fruit, and tiny fireworks that popped with flower petals instead of sound. Somewhere in the distance, temple drums beat steadily beneath the crackle of celebratory spellbursts, marking the noon hour with reverent rhythm.
Elara sat beneath a carved awning laced with ivy charms, her fingers wrapped around a cup of floral tea that still steamed faintly. The establishment they'd chosen for lunch was perched on a high terrace overlooking one of the quieter squares—still festive, but less chaotic than the main thoroughfare. White paper lanterns bobbed on enchanted strings above their heads, occasionally dipping low enough to cast warm pools of light across the table. The scent of spiced citrus and grilled meat mingled in the air, carried on soft wind.
Aurelian was halfway through a honey-dipped flatbread, gesturing animatedly with one hand as he tried to both eat and explain a rune conversion theory at the same time.
"I'm telling you," he said, mouth half-full, "if you reinforce the loop structure with a mirrored leyline echo, you don't just stabilize the projection—you amplify it."
"That only works in theory," Selphine said, spearing a piece of roasted fig with her fork. "In practice, mirrored echoes are notoriously unstable. You're better off stacking a conditional anchor. Less flashy. Less risk of your eyebrows ending up on the ceiling."
Aurelian looked offended. "You just hate things that sparkle."
"I hate things that explode when someone sneezes near them."
Elara took a slow sip of her tea, letting their rhythm play out. She had offered her own thoughts earlier that morning—an adjustment to a resonance-binding glyph that helped mana cohere more cleanly in layered castings—and though Selphine had raised a brow, she hadn't disagreed.
They'd spent the morning in one of the rented study rooms above the archive wing, windows cracked open, pages strewn across the floor in organized chaos. It had felt… normal. In the way rare days sometimes do. Like nothing pressing was hunting them, no memories clawing their way up from under skin.
Now, they shared the meal as casually as any old friends might—until Aurelian leaned back with a satisfied sigh and pointed his fork lazily skyward.
"You know," he said, "I could get used to this. Good food, good theory debates, minimal death. A marked improvement over last week."
Selphine smirked faintly. "Let's see if you still say that after the mage trials next month."
"Oh please," Aurelian said. "What's a little arcane dueling between friends?"
"Unclear," Elara said, setting her cup down with a soft clink. "Depends on whether you're planning to duel me."
Aurelian paused. Then grinned. "I take it back. Death might be preferable."
They laughed—softly, but real.
Around them, festival music floated in from the streets below. A troupe of dancers passed by the edge of the terrace, trailing flame-colored silks enchanted to shimmer like burning feathers. Somewhere, a choir of young acolytes sang a prayer to Lysandra in rounds—voices rising, falling, overlapping like waves breaking over stone.
And above it all, high on the city's spires, the broadcast continued.
The laughter at their table faded as a subtle ripple passed through the air—not of magic, but of attention. A murmuring, shifting weight, like a tide turning.
Aurelian was the first to notice it.
He leaned forward slightly, glancing around the terrace. Conversations at nearby tables had slowed. Waitstaff paused mid-step. Even the lute-player in the corner missed a chord.
Then came the voice.
Not a person's, but the clean, clipped tone of the illusion-broadcast—projected from the spire-mounted pillars overhead. Clear. Authoritative. The sort of voice designed to silence a city.
--------------
"PHASE TWO: LOCAL DOMINION TRIALS
Objective: Establish control zones by capturing one of the activated relics.
Designated contestants who successfully claim a relic shall be recognized as Zone Lords.
As a Zone Lord, you must defend your relic from challengers during the Dominion Period.
Sub-trials now apply. Your relic draws challengers. Defeating them strengthens your bond with the domain.
At the conclusion of the Dominion Period, all surviving Zone Lords shall be granted a cultivation boon derived from the relic's origin—unique, and irreversible."
----------------------
Aurelian's eyes snapped to the nearest broadcast feed—now showing the forested arena from a high, floating perspective. The terrain, until now quiet and stretched in watchful calm, shifted.
Then—
BOOM.
Across the vast expanse, six pillars of radiant light erupted from the earth, like spears hurled skyward by something ancient and buried. The image trembled as mana surged upward, distorting the projection. Each beam was a different color—crimson, violet, deep jade, silver, golden-white, and void-black—and where they struck the clouds, the sky cracked with soundless thunder.
Gasps echoed from below the terrace, festival-goers now pressing toward every visible illusion screen.
Even the dancers paused mid-step.
"Well," Selphine said, cool and low, as she turned to face the projection fully, her half-eaten fig forgotten, "that escalated."
"What in the hells is a 'Zone Lord'?" Aurelian muttered, already sketching sigils on his napkin, trying to mirror the spell matrix blooming across the illusion feed.
Elara rose slightly from her chair, her hand braced on the table's edge as she watched the image shift—now zooming in on one of the relic sites: a massive stone structure, overgrown and pulsing with faint inscriptions. Contestants were already converging on it, some casting protective wards, others clashing in front of the steps like ants around honeyed steel.
"It's a land claim," she murmured, eyes narrowing. "Relic-based. Whoever holds one becomes a focal point. The sub-trials will push others toward them—it's not just survival now. It's territory."
"And incentive," Cedric added, his arms crossed as he watched with unreadable eyes. "A cultivation boon from a relic's origin? That's enough to shift someone an entire rank if they're lucky."
Selphine frowned. "Or kill them if they're not."
Elara's gaze remained fixed on the relic site flickering in the projection—where one contender had just been thrown off the steps by a concussive blast of air and rolled, limp, into the underbrush.
She didn't flinch.
"It's the nature of an opportunity," she said quietly, but with steel under the calm. "For an Awakened, risk is the toll we pay for advancement. If you approach every chance like it's your death sentence, you'll never move forward."
Aurelian grinned, still half-bent over his napkin. "Spoken like someone who's nearly died more times than I've had proper breakfast."
"I'm still here," Elara replied, lips tilting faintly. "Which is more than most."
Selphine leaned back, arms crossing, not in disagreement but in wary restraint. "And sometimes caution is what keeps you alive. Not everyone can charge into the storm and come out cleaner."
"That's the thing," Elara said, her voice low but steady. "You don't come out cleaner. You come out changed."
The air between them hung for a moment—thick with unspoken memories, quiet wars fought far from relics and trials.
Then the projection shifted again.
The scrying feed moved from relic to relic—cycling between battlefronts scattered across the trial zone. One showed a narrow riverbank where a fire mage and a shadow cultivator clashed in brutal rhythm. Another, a cliffside, where a lightning-fast spear-user fought two illusionists at once.
They were skilled. Precise. Blood marked the ground in places, and names flashed—contestant identifiers updating as alliances shifted and broke apart.
But none of it was new.
None of it held the tension of change.
Aurelian leaned back in his chair, chewing absently on a piece of fruit. "It's not bad. But nothing like yesterday's wild ones. Where's that axe guy when you need him?"
"Or Sparkjaw," Selphine said dryly. "I'm shocked he hasn't claimed a relic just for the aesthetic."
Elara's eyes narrowed slightly, still following the feeds. Her fingers tapped once against the base of her cup, a quiet rhythm as the illusions flicked past more sites—more fights.
A slow build.
Nothing remarkable.
Not yet.
Until—
The projection stilled.
"Oh…..It is that guy from the terrace!"
Chapter 656: Lucavion (3)
Selphine's voice cut through the tension like a thread drawn taut.
"Oh… It's that guy from the terrace!"
Aurelian blinked and leaned forward so fast his napkin fluttered off the table. "Wait—what? Where—?"
The projection hovering above the plaza shifted sharply—refocusing on one of the six relic zones: a clearing surrounded by colossal root-bridges, the air thick with ambient mana. And there, standing at the very center beneath an ancient tree still humming with radiant energy, was—
Him.
The same smirk.
The same unruly sweep of black hair, parted just enough to reveal sharp cheekbones and an expression that danced between amusement and challenge. His eyes—pitch black, deeper than ink—held the same unreadable depth they had when he faced down nobility with a smile and a sword.
And there it was again—his blade.
Long. Sleek. An estoc forged without excess, glimmering with a thin sheen of mana that caught the light not like fire, but like clarity. Poised in his hand with such ease it barely looked like he held it at all.
And nestled on his shoulder like royalty: the white cat.
Still curled. Still yawning lazily. Its tail flicked once in perfect dismissal of the chaos gathering around them.
Aurelian exhaled. "Stars above… he's actually claiming one."
Selphine narrowed her eyes, scanning the scene. Around the boy, other contestants were already approaching—some cautiously, others with clear aggression. Yet he didn't move. Didn't posture. Just stood there, loose-limbed and completely, infuriatingly at ease.
Elara didn't breathe.
Or if she did, it was shallow—measured not by instinct, but necessity.
Her gaze locked onto the figure in the projection, unblinking. Not a flicker of doubt in her eyes now. Not a whisper of disbelief. Just the slow, inevitable shift of something ancient cracking inside her chest.
"It's him…" she whispered.
Her voice wasn't loud. It didn't need to be.
"Luca," she said, barely above a breath. "He's alive."
And with the words came the rush.
The memory.
The vortex screaming open like a god's open mouth, the sky turned wrong, Cedric too far, everyone too late—and Luca, standing behind her one moment, and in front of her the next. Shoving her back. Not with anger. Not with fear. Just a look.
A smile.
"You're not ready to play hero just yet."
And then he was gone.
She had thought—
Gods, she had thought—
She hadn't let herself hope. Not really. Not past the first few weeks. Not when the search parties returned empty, not when the tides returned his cloak, not when even Eveline had gone quiet on the matter.
And now—
Now he stood in front of a relic stone with that same impossible smirk and a cat, as though he hadn't walked into the abyss at all.
As though he meant to come back.
"Elowyn?" Selphine's voice was quieter now, more careful.
But she didn't look at them. Not yet.
She watched the way Luca shifted his weight casually, the estoc glinting with restless promise in his hand as three contestants began circling him. He didn't tense. Didn't even fully acknowledge them.
Just smiled.
Like the world was still a game.
'You idiot,' she thought, something bitter and sharp curling through her throat. 'You stupid, arrogant, impossible idiot—'
But beneath it, quieter—aching—
'You're alive.'
And she didn't know what to think at all.
The moment settled around Elara like the hush after a storm—thick with weight, trembling with something unspoken. Her fingers remained lightly wrapped around the teacup, but she no longer tasted the warmth. Her gaze was still locked on the illusion feed as Luca stood beneath that relic tree, his posture a picture of maddening ease, the kind that tugged at memory like a half-finished song.
He looked just the same.
The hair, the smirk, the deliberate weightlessness in the way he held his weapon—as if the blade itself floated on amusement.
And yet…
The scar was gone.
That faint, silver-etched reminder that used to slash across his right brow—gone as though it had never existed.
Now, she could see his whole face more clearly. The contours were still him, unmistakable, but there was something…
'Familiar.'
Too familiar. In the way a melody haunts you even if you've never quite heard it before.
Elara blinked and inhaled slowly, suppressing the sudden flutter in her chest. 'Focus, don't spiral.'
She shoved the odd recognition aside, folding it down like parchment in a drawer not meant to be opened.
"...So?" Selphine asked finally, her voice cutting through the fog. Calm, but not without care. "Now that you've seen him... is he the same person you knew?"
Elara didn't answer right away. Her lips parted, but no sound came.
Not because she didn't have thoughts.
But because too many rose at once.
Her hands, resting gently on the edge of the table, curled just slightly—barely perceptible, unless you knew her well. She tilted her head, still watching the projection where Lucavion—Luca—now shifted slightly to intercept another approaching contender.
The movement was unmistakable. A tilt of the blade, a lean into threat, but not fully engaged.
He was baiting them.
Testing pressure. Judging breath. Reading every twitch like a page.
Just like before.
Elara exhaled, quiet but deep, letting the breath ground her.
"...Yes," she said finally. "He's him."
Selphine raised a brow. "That's not exactly a rousing affirmation."
"No," Elara murmured, a wry edge touching her voice. "But it's honest. He moves the same. Fights the same. Holds power like it's a language only he speaks."
"But?" Selphine pressed gently.
Elara's eyes flicked toward her, then back to the screen. "But something's different."
She didn't elaborate.
Because how could she?
How could she explain the strange shift in her chest when she looked into his face? The ghost of recognition that didn't belong—not to memory, not to their past, but to something older. Something deeper, nestled just beneath conscious thought.
A thing her instincts noticed before her mind could name it.
Aurelian leaned forward suddenly, his elbow knocking his teacup just slightly—but not enough to spill it. His eyes had narrowed, caught on a flicker in the illusion-feed's edge.
"Oh, wait," he said, the words slipping out in a low hum of intrigue. "Fight's about to break out."
Selphine arched an eyebrow. "Another one?"
"No—look." Aurelian pointed, half-rising from his chair, eyes gleaming now with the thrill of spectacle. "That's her. The illusionist from the third-tier trials. The dual-daggerist."
Elara followed his gaze as the projection shifted again, drawn to the sudden change in mana pressure and momentum inside the relic clearing. The light around the ancient tree shimmered with residual radiance, and just outside its core perimeter—a ripple. A blur of shadow and steel.
Selphine's mouth parted, recognition sparking in her voice. "That's Elayne Cors."
Aurelian grinned. "Blade of Nothing."
Elara's brow twitched upward at the nickname, but she said nothing. She remembered the name. How could she not? Elayne Cors, the commoner-born specter from the lower city districts. No noble backing. No house seal. Just a reputation built off clean kills, failed scrying attempts, and a body count that moved in silence.
Her tagline, whispered through every betting hall during the pre-trials, had become legend.
"I don't speak. I end."
And now—
There she was.
A flicker.
A distortion in the air, barely visible—until she chose to be.
Her form blinked into partial view like a mirage breaking through haze. Twin crescent daggers gleamed in either hand, one held backward, the other in a forward grip, both coated in a faint sheen of mana so sharp it sliced the surrounding light itself. She didn't posture. Didn't taunt. She moved.
Straight for Luca.
On the projection, he shifted. Slowly. Calmly. His blade angled down, his body turning just enough to face her without taking a true stance.
And yet the tension was already razor-fine.
"I really want to see the guy you spoke that highly of…."