In the barren battle planes, Elyahna's icy gaze sharpened as a sudden tremor of intent threads brushed against her senses. She skidded to a stop on her Ice wave with her frost blades, her breath crystallizing in the air. The glow from all six distant Inheritance Beacons shone steady, syncing with the pulse of power she detected.
At the same moment, Dimitri's mind flickered with psychic static. His eyes narrowed as he traced the surge back to the ice region. His fingers twitched, ready to manipulate the incoming energy—calculating, cautious, and unmistakably alert. Farther away, in the shifting shadows of the jungle, Vaylan Dusk Spire's keen eyes lifted from the ground.
The faint crackle of spiritual energy pricked his senses like a blade. His lips curled into a knowing smile as he spoke softly to himself, "Ash is rising… and so must I." Across the island, rival prodigies everywhere slowed, paused, or stopped outright, feeling the tidal wave of Animus threads surge through the ether. The game had just changed—and everyone knew it. Marla's eyes were wide with excitement, her breath caught in her throat as she stared at the glowing projection screen.
The image of Ash, now radiant with that fierce draconic aura and the shimmering blue of his transformed eye, held her utterly spellbound.
Beside her, Faeluxe paced back and forth, fists clenched, unable to tear her gaze away. "He's breaking limits no one thought possible," Faeluxe breathed, voice thick with awe. "Did you see that surge? his Animus threads are skyrocketing—he's rewriting the rules of this whole contest."
The crowd behind them swelled with thousands of cultivators, clan members, and curious onlookers glued to the same screen, the murmurs transforming into cheers with every new display of Ash's power. Marla grinned, turning to Faeluxe. "Our Ash... he's not just fighting to survive anymore. He's making a statement. Everyone's watching. And they're starting to realize he might be the one prodigy to beat."
Faeluxe nodded, eyes alight with fierce pride. The roar of the crowd echoed through the hall, a tidal wave of energy and hope centered on Ash's blazing ascent. My footsteps barely touched the frozen ground as I soared from the icy region, my movements fluid and sharp — a man reborn with newfound power and purpose. The glacial blue of my right eye gleamed like a beacon in the pre-dawn as I streaked toward the stone valley, the place where I first glimpsed the Hundred-Armed Giant meditating, surrounded by levitating boulders.
Confidence radiated from me like a wildfire.
The challenges ahead no longer felt insurmountable — I was ready. Meanwhile, deep in the shaded southern swamps, Nara the Snare moved like a wraith among the tangled roots and misty pools.
Her new Setkhefre puppet, gleamed with golden mummy bandages she'd painstakingly refined, clattered softly at her side—its Dead break dagger and scepter twitching with restrained power. Eyes narrowed, Nara stalked her prey: the dreaded Nine-Headed Emerald Hydra, its serpentine necks weaving through the thick swamp fog like living vines, each head snapping and hissing in venomous fury.
Setkhefre's tomb had sharpened Nara's resolve—and now, armed with her new puppet, she was ready to turn the tide. Nara moved with lethal grace through the dense swamp foliage, every step calculated, every breath measured. The air hung thick with humidity and the scent of rot, but her focus was razor-sharp.
Ahead, the Emerald Nine-Headed Hydra writhed amidst the murky waters, its nine venom-dripping heads snapping unpredictably like serpents in a deadly dance. Each head's eyes gleamed with primal intelligence, tracking her movements with unnerving precision. Without hesitation, Nara raised her marionette controller, weaving her spirit thread through the air like silver silk.
The newly forged Setkhefre Puppet stirred.
With a sharp command, Nara sent the puppet lunging forward, its golden Bandages shooting out to the nearest hydra head. The Bandages Wrapped around the throat of the Hydra Slowly choking that head off from the Air. This was the surest way of defeating a Hydra, not cutting the heads off, but strangling them! Simultaneously, Nara unleashed a volley of Animus mines, each shimmering orb spiraling toward the Hydra's other heads with deadly precision—designed to explode in bursts of searing necro-animus energy, disrupting the creature's regenerative powers.
The Hydra hissed and struck back, necks whipping toward the puppet and Nara in a furious, coordinated counterattack. But Nara's eyes gleamed coldly. This was just the opening gambit—the beginning of a brutal, deadly dance. The Hydra's reaction was immediate and violent.
The head caught in Setkhefre's golden bandages thrashed wildly, its emerald scales flashing in the dim light as it tried to tear free. The other eight heads lashed out in unison, hissing with venom so potent it sent green steam rising when droplets hit the swamp water. The murk itself turned treacherous—massive waves surged as the Hydra churned the swamp bottom, dislodging rotted logs and jagged limestone outcroppings that suddenly jutted from beneath the surface. Vines writhed underfoot, tangling around Nara's legs, as if the beast's fury had awakened the swamp to join its attack.
But Nara didn't flinch. Her marionette controller flicked once—sharp, precise—and the Setkhefre Puppet's sorcerous core flared to life. Shadow bled from the puppet's gilded wrappings, condensing into three towering Shadow Servants, each with warped, elongated limbs. They surged forward to intercept the snapping heads, spectral claws raking across scale and flesh.
One of the Hydra's heads reared back to unleash venom spit, but the Puppet's other hand traced a sigil mid-air—Icicle Edge. Six jagged shards of spiritual ice erupted from the swamp mist, spiraling down to pin that head through the lower jaw, freezing the venom in its throat before it could spew. The golden bandages constricted further, glowing as they channeled necro-animus siphons into the bound neck, draining vitality.
The Hydra roared, the sound rolling through the swamp like thunder. Two of its free heads suddenly dove beneath the water, and the murky surface erupted with a blast of pressurized sludge, aiming to knock both Nara and her puppet off-balance. But Nara was already moving, sliding her spirit threads in a complex weave—pivoting her puppet on the bandage anchor, using the Hydra's own struggling head as a pivot point to swing it out of the blast zone, while her Shadow Servants dissolved into mist and reappeared flanking the beast.
The swamp had become a chessboard—and Nara, with Setkhefre's golden corpse as her queen piece, was making the Hydra dance exactly where she wanted.
The Hydra's thrashing made the swamp churn like a storm tide, but Nara's eyes were already scanning the environment—every twisting cypress root, every unstable shelf of muck and stone. She'd prepared this ground the moment she entered the southern swamps. "Dance for me," she whispered, tightening her grip on the marionette controller.
The golden bandages snapped taut, yanking the bound Hydra head toward the southeast, just enough to force the other eight to adjust their stance. The lumbering beast unknowingly began backing toward a cluster of half-submerged logs, each one hollowed and packed with Nara's vein-latched necro-animus mines. The Setkhefre Puppet moved with surgical precision, dragging its prey one step closer. Its Dead Break dagger flared green with corpse-light, slashing through the surface weeds to reveal the soft sinkhole mud beneath.
The Hydra struck again—two heads lunging low, one high, trying to force Nara to retreat. But she let the puppet absorb the charge, the golden wrappings acting like reinforced tendons, redirecting the brute force sideways. The Hydra's own momentum pushed it deeper into the sinkhole, where its massive weight began to drag it down into the unstable silt.
Then came the signal. The Puppet's scepter slammed into the water, sending a shock through the necro-mines. The swamp exploded. Dark green flames erupted in a jagged ring, swallowing the Hydra's lower half. The mines' corpse-fire didn't just burn—it leeched, drawing on the beast's vitality, slowing the frantic whipping of its heads.
Shadow Servants reappeared in the smoke, latching onto thrashing necks to keep them from pulling free, while above, the Icicle Edge spell began to reform—jagged shards poised to drop like executioner's blades.
Nara's trap had closed.
The Hydra wasn't just in a fight anymore—it was in a killing ground designed exactly for a creature like it. The swamp shuddered under the Hydra's fury. Each of its nine emerald heads moved with desperate, primal intelligence—no two reacting the same way. One head snapped down and bit through the golden bandages choking its sibling, teeth grinding against the enchanted wrappings with sparks of green venom. Another dove under the murky water, thrashing to pull the main body toward deeper channels beyond the trap. Two others bent low, spitting arcs of virulent emerald flame that turned the swamp gas into roiling curtains of fire.
Nara didn't flinch. The fire wasn't her enemy—it was a curtain. The Setkhefre Puppet surged through the burning fog, its scepter raised high.
It brought the head of the weapon down on the water's surface, unleashing a pulse of corpse-light that snuffed out the Hydra's swamp-flame like candles in a storm. From the shadows beneath the cypress roots, Shadow Servants swarmed upward, clawing at scale and sinew. They didn't have the strength to restrain the Hydra outright, but they didn't need to—every clawed hand was another anchor slowing the beast's movements, keeping it squarely in the killing zone.
A third head spat venom straight at Nara herself.
She slid sideways across a half-submerged log, her spirit threads flashing—snagging the puppet's golden wrappings and twisting them in midair to catch the venom spray, turning the cloth into a taut, venom-dripping snare. The Hydra's underwater head suddenly burst from the muck behind the puppet, aiming to crush it in its jaws—but Icicle Edge answered, the sky above splitting with six jagged lances of frozen soul-essence.
They plunged down, nailing that head and three others to the soft swamp bottom. The Hydra roared—no longer coordinated, its nine heads pulling in different directions, draining its own stamina in the process. Nara's lips curved. This was the part where predators stopped thinking about survival—and started making mistakes.
The swamp stilled for a heartbeat—only the ragged, enraged hisses of the Hydra broke the silence. Nara's eyes narrowed, her fingers tightening on the marionette controller until her spirit threads thrummed like drawn bowstrings.
"Now," she whispered.
The Setkhefre Puppet leapt, golden bandages unfurling in a blinding whirl, not as restraints this time—but as conduits. Spirit-thread sigils bloomed along their length, each one a seal crafted from the tomb's forbidden rites. With a violent flick of her wrists, Nara split her control—half her spirit threads lashing into the puppet to amplify its movements, the other half snapping directly into the golden wrappings.
The bandages shot out like living vipers, each one targeting a neck. One looped tight at the base of the first head, its sigils igniting with necro-animus fire. Another coiled around a second head, freezing scale and sinew solid with the Setkhefre's lingering ice-curse. Each bandage carried a different death mark—burn, freeze, crush, shatter.
The Hydra thrashed, but the Shadow Servants held its lower body in place, dragging its bulk deeper into the sucking mud of the swamp floor. "Sever the will, not the flesh," Nara murmured. Her spirit threads flared pure white, flooding into the puppet.
The Dead Break Dagger flashed, darting from one writhing head to the next—not slicing them off, but puncturing the skull just enough to flood the brainstem with soul-poison.Each strike was surgical, precise, robbing the heads of their nerve-scream before the body could signal regeneration. The Hydra's movements faltered—nine sets of eyes rolling back, venom-drips slowing to nothing. Finally, with a sharp pull of her marionette strings, Nara commanded the puppet to plant the scepter in the creature's central spine. A pulse of gold and black erupted from the seal, locking the entire carcass in an unbreakable stasis curse.
Steam hissed from the swamp water as the last traces of life bled away. Nara stood still for a moment, breathing evenly, then pulled her spirit threads back into herself. The puppet straightened, its golden wrappings slowly retracting, every bandage now soaked in the Hydra's emerald venom—a resource she would put to use later. The Nine-Headed Emerald Hydra had been defeated, and not a single head would ever rise again. The stasis curse had barely settled over the Hydra's colossal form when the swamp shook with a deep, resonant boom.
From the heart of the beast's corpse, a pillar of emerald and gold light surged skyward—ripping through the fog and clouds like a lance. The Inheritance Beacon's glow cast dancing reflections across the murky waters, turning the swamp's surface into a glittering mosaic.
Nara's expression didn't change, but her spirit threads trembled with the pulse of the Beacon as the system's voice echoed inside her mind:
[Inheritance Tokens Awarded: +25]
Her Puppet's single gold eye rotated toward her, almost approvingly.
A second chime followed—colder, sharper:
[Current Token Count: 34]
She allowed herself the faintest of smiles. Twenty-five tokens from one target was no small feat—and with the Hydra's venom and her puppet's newfound lethality, she could hunt for more. The Beacon flared one last time before dissipating into motes of light, its brilliance fading back into the swamp's shadowy gloom. Nara turned without hurry, already calculating her next move. Somewhere out there, other prodigies were feeling the surge… and she intended to make sure they knew exactly who it belonged to.
All across the Little World, cultivators froze mid-step. A shockwave of predatory intent rolled through the air—dense, wet, and serpentine—laced with the faint metallic tang of venom. It carried with it the unmistakable signature of a fresh Inheritance Beacon. In the ice-choked north, I was vaulting over a ridge when the pulse hit me. My right eye—the newly merged Glacial Soul Eye—flared bright blue, threads of frost light tracing patterns over my vision. My Solar Pyre Veins glowed with sunfire.
I felt the Spirit threads and the swamp-born essence in the surge and muttered under my breath, "That's… Nara." My lips quirked into a grin, "She's hunting big game too." In the Barren Battle plains Elyahna paused in her cultivation, frost forming on her lashes as her gaze tilted southward. She recognized the invasive, choking sensation in the Animus wave. Spirit-thread controlled, interwoven with a constrictor's will. Her expression tightened. High atop a crag where storms danced between jagged peaks, Dimitri's vitality flames flickered erratically as the pulse disrupted his focus.
He exhaled a slow plume of smoke from his pipe, eyes narrowing. "So the puppet witch claims her prize…" And in the twilight realm between shadow and light, Vaylan Dusk Spire simply smiled from beneath his hood, the umbral light across his form shimmering in approval. "Another predator in the field. How delightful." All across the Little World, prodigies recalculated their paths—some to avoid the swamp… others to seek it.
Nara stood in the steaming shallows, her breath slow and even despite the fading thrash of the Nine-Headed Hydra's corpse. Her spirit-thread lines still hummed in the air, tethered to the Setkhefre Puppet's gilded frame. But now, she wove them differently—broad arcs of Animus that laced through the swamp like an invisible web. She could feel them—those distant pulses of awareness brushing against her own like wolves scenting blood. Ash. Elyahna. Dimitri. Vaylan. Others she didn't care to name. They knew. Her lips curled into a thin, humorless smile.
"Good. Let them come."
The Puppet's golden bandages unfurled into the mire, disappearing beneath the muck, trailing spirit-thread filaments in their wake. Each was a trigger point; a snare designed to tighten and crush if disturbed. She sank qi into the roots of cypress and mangrove, reshaping the terrain with subtle force—shallow pits yawning open, lined with sharpened swamp wood spikes slicked in venom.
Half-submerged mines, each no bigger than a fist, glowed faintly under the water's surface, ready to burst into necro-animus shockwaves. Between them, she set bear-trap constructs woven from hardened spirit thread—teeth poised to clamp down on any fool who stepped wrong. The swamp was no longer neutral ground. It was hers.
Lantern light shimmered across the starbite but it did little to cut the gloom that clung to the shadows. It was in that gloom the Black Cowl assassins moved—silent, sinuous, armed with short blades slicked in qi toxin. Their plan was simple: get aboard, slit throats, vanish. They never made it past the aerial parking dock. Snake Man was waiting.
The five new serpents Marla had gifted him, each coiling from his shoulders and waist, slithered and hissed with emerald eyes aglow. Their scales shimmered with that uncanny glassy sheen—the mark of petrification. One brush, one bite, and flesh would turn to lifeless stone. Hammerhead stood to his left, a tower of muscle and scarred hide, his Saw fish snout blade resting across one shoulder. His tusked grin said he was hoping they'd try. The first wave of Black Cowl killers leapt from the shadows—only to be met by the First Bend of the Broken Serpent.
Snake Man's body swayed like water, every joint loose and unpredictable, his torso lengthened and shoot out across the deck! One of Marla's serpents struck past his ribs, fangs glancing a throat! The assassin froze mid-step, a startled hiss dying in his lungs as stone swept through his body! The Second Bend—a sudden whip-like snap of Snake Man's spine—sent two serpents darting past his waist, striking low. Stone blossomed from the assassins' calves up, locking them in place before Hammerhead swung his Saw fish blade in a brutal arc.
The impact turned them into dust and shards.
From there, the fight became a rhythm—
The Fourth Bend, snake man exploded in a flurry of contortion attacks! His fighting style was bizarre to behold. The Seventh Bend, Snake Man Folded himself into a Ball and rolled down the dock, his Serpents striking at the legs of the Black Cowl Assassins. The Thirteenth Bend, the deadliest of all—Snake Man exited the tight ball he had tucked into with explosive force! His qi burst knocked several Black Cowl Assassins off the dock and into the water below.
His Arms and right leg stretched out, all eight fingers on his hands excluding the thumbs stretched and shot out! Each of his fingers found an Assassin, puncturing their auras and turning them to stone! They crashed to the dock as brittle statues, shattering on impact. Hammerhead bellowed with laughter as he knocked another pair into the harbor, their petrified bodies sinking in bubbles.
More shadows stirred at the edge of the dock. The assassins hadn't all come at once—they were probing for an opening. But between the petrifying serpents and the relentless crush of Hammerhead's blows, the Starbite's gangplank remained untouched. The Stone Valley unfolded before me like a wound in the continent—vast and sunken, its floor strewn with titanic slabs of granite and basalt that floated lazily in the air, each boulder drifting as if in some slow, ancient orbit.
The valley walls were sheer cliffs of weathered stone, layered in striations of deep gray, copper, and ochre, whispering of ages long before the Meeting of the Hundred Clans. Wind moaned through the gaps between the levitating monoliths, carrying with it a deep, thrumming resonance that Ash could feel in his bones.
Somewhere ahead, beyond the labyrinth of drifting rocks, was the place he had first seen it—The Hundred-Armed Giant. A being so still, so impossibly vast, that even the drifting boulders seemed to keep a respectful distance. Back then, it had been meditating, eyes closed, its forest of arms resting on its knees or folded in silent mudras, each palm cradling a different chunk of stone like sacred offerings.
Now, I could no longer see it directly. The giant's silhouette was hidden deep within the inner ring of floating boulders, but its presence pressed against his senses like the gaze of a slumbering mountain. I dropped into a crouch atop a jagged outcrop, my Battle Aura-surge still buzzing faintly in my veins from the ice region. My crystalline blue right eye gleamed, letting me read the subtle flows of qi here—
And what I saw was staggering.
The entire valley was saturated in some kind of gravitational Animus, woven into eddies and pooled around each boulder. Like the tides of an unseen ocean, these forces shifted slowly but constantly, bending space in ways that could crush the unwary. I smiled faintly, "So… a dance through a storm of stone." I stepped forward, letting the first pull take me in, boots skimming along the edge of a drifting slab before vaulting to the next, body weaving in harmony with the strange gravity.
The path toward the Giant was dangerous, but the pattern of the boulder orbits was there—subtle, intricate, and barely predictable. Far ahead, a deep rumble echoed through the valley, low and resonant. Something had noticed me.
The sound came first—
a grinding, splintering crack of rock on rock, like the valley itself was yawning awake.
My eyes narrowed as a shadow detached itself from the underside of a massive, spinning slab ahead. What I had taken for a jagged outcrop was unfolding—limbs splitting from the boulder's bulk, a squat head turning with a spray of gravel and dust. The thing dropped silently onto another floating stone with enough force to make the slab lurch in its orbit. It was roughly humanoid but built entirely of weathered granite—thick plates of stone layered over a dense Animus core that pulsed like a molten ember in its chest.
I straightened, fissures in its body lit with orange Animus glow, each crack line tracing sigils older than the clans themselves.
When it spoke, its voice was like two boulders being ground together:
"Only the worthy may approach."
With no warning The guardian's arm split into a dozen jagged shards and shot toward me in a whip-fast flurry. The air between them howled from the force. My Vorpal eye head band surged to life, my crystalline right eye tracking every incoming fragment. My eyes rolled back as I let wisps of intent flow into the Vorpal Eye Headband Talisman.
Lines of celestial script ran across my mind's horizon.
"Chrono Field" I whispered.
The atmosphere became rarified and thick like amber. I pivoted sideways into the pull of a nearby boulder's gravity, letting it sling me out of the whip's path. My Ninja boots barely brushed the stone's surface before I launched again, landing in a crouch just two slabs away from the guardian. But the creature outside of the Chrono Field didn't pause—it leapt after me, using the drifting monoliths like steppingstones, moving with a speed no mere chunk of rock had any right to possess.
I grinned. "Alright… let's see how you dance." The Chrono Field bled away, time slamming back into motion with a thunderclap. The shards that should have torn me apart instead sliced harmlessly through empty air where I had been, gouging deep trenches into the floating boulder behind me. The guardian landed on the same slab I now stood on. Its feet didn't so much strike the stone as merge with it—the entire surface rippled like molten rock, gravitational vectors twisting as if the slab itself was obeying its master. It swung again, but I was ready.
My fingers traced a phantom diagram in the air lines bending, folding—reproducing the exact spatial arrays from the vorpal eye path, technique "Horizon Break."
The space between us buckled. The guardian's strike passed through a distorted plane and reappeared directly into its own incoming punch! The impact jarred the valley like a landslide.
"Your move,"
The guardian's intent flared, molten orange searing through every fissure in its body. It planted both hands into the slab beneath it—
And the entire valley shifted. Dozens of floating boulders groaned and twisted, their orbits suddenly breaking apart. Massive stones were drawn into spiraling, unpredictable vectors, slamming and ricocheting off each other like a slow-motion meteor storm. So that's how it wanted to play it. It wasn't going to chase me through space-bends—it was going to rip the battlefield apart until I had nowhere safe to land.
A grin split my face.
"Fine. Let's take this upstairs."
I flexed my back, calling the raptor feathers into full burn. Compressed flight essence ignited under my skin, my aura flaring into a razor-thin slipstream. The sudden kick of acceleration launched me straight up, slicing through the thin air between colliding monoliths. The guardian tracked me instantly, both arms splitting into jagged stone spears that hurled after me like seeking harpoons. I spun between them, riding the upward thrust until the whole valley lay sprawled beneath my boots.
I raised my hand, drawing my qi to my Ram chakra pints in my palms, each line of instruction etched in my mind from cultivation with the mind pearl.
"Thousand Lords… Spirit Palm!"
A colossal palm of pure golden light blossomed around my real one, overlapping until the lines between spirit and flesh blurred. The air quaked as the palm descended. The guardian's aura buckled—its movements faltered, gravity flows stuttering for a heartbeat.
I didn't aim to crush stone.
I aimed to shatter its soul-field.
The echo of the palm's strike rolled through the Stone Valley, rattling the floating boulders into chaotic drift. Below, the guardian staggered for the first time, its core dimming like a dying ember. The strike slammed home, not against stone, but through it—spirit force bypassing armor to hammer the guardian's qi or life force directly. It shuddered violently, fissures spiderwebbing outward in molten light. Plates of stone exploded outward, spinning into the void between floating monoliths. Its qi body fractured with a keening wail, light bleeding into the air like molten glass before snuffing out entirely.
The victory lasted exactly half a breath. The qi shockwave didn't just roll through the valley—it plunged straight into the colossal form seated at its heart.
The Hundred-Armed Giant inhaled.
It was the sound of a mountain range collapsing into the sea.
One titanic eyelid twitched open, spilling molten-orange light into the drifting void. A dozen stone arms shifted, stretching out like great branches breaking free of centuries of stillness. Every floating boulder in the valley lurched, drawn into new orbits as the Giant's gravity swelled and warped.
Chunks of rock spiraled away into the void, others collided and fused into monstrous new weapons clutched by the awakening arms.
My heart was hammering, but I couldn't help grinning.
"Guess we're doing this…"
Above me, a shadow like an eclipsed sun swept across the battlefield—the Giant raising one of its hundred hands, fingers the size of towers, and reaching directly for me.