The forty-foot nightmare didn't just run; it devoured the distance.
Every time the Abyssal Behemoth's cloven hooves slammed into the dirt courtyard, the remaining stone walls of the fortress groaned in protest. The sheer physical mass of the creature was absurd, but it was the dense, suffocating blanket of dark mana radiating from its flayed muscles that made it truly terrifying. It smelled like an open grave soaked in battery acid.
Rias stood directly between the charging monstrosity and the fragile blue Fort Core.
'I really, truly should have listened to the healer,' Rias thought, his breath catching in his throat. His arms were already shaking from the exertion of the previous three rounds, but he forced his fingers to lock around the rusted hilt of his sword.
[OH, IT'S BIG! IT'S SO BIG!]
Nyxaris screamed inside his mind, her spiritual presence practically doing backflips of manic joy.
[CUT ITS KNEES OFF! I WANT TO DRINK ITS KNEECAPS, RIAS! DO IT NOW!]
"You are genuinely unhinged," Rias muttered through gritted teeth.
He didn't wait for the beast to reach the core. Engaging a threat this massive near their only win-condition was a rookie mistake. Rias kicked off the dirt, channeling the last dregs of his compressed mana into his legs, and launched himself forward to meet the Behemoth halfway.
THWIP-THWIP-THWIP!
From the corner towers, the automated ballistas Serene had purchased fired their massive lightning bolts. The glowing projectiles tore through the air and struck the Behemoth squarely in the chest.
CRACK!
The bolts shattered like cheap glass against a brick wall. The monster didn't even flinch. The corrosive acid dripping from its exposed ribs simply melted the lingering lightning mana into harmless steam.
"Magic resistance is off the charts!" Aria yelled from the courtyard, her usual serene amusement completely eradicated. The Silver Rose bit down hard on her own thumb, drawing a bead of bright red blood. She slapped her bleeding hand against the stone floor.
«Abyssal Chains of the Damned!»
The ground beneath the Behemoth erupted. Massive, thick chains forged from pure, condensed shadow and fueled by Aria's own lifeblood shot upward, wrapping around the monster's thick ankles and massive forearms. The chains pulled taut, groaning under the sheer kinetic force of the beast.
For a single, agonizing second, the Behemoth was halted.
Rias didn't waste the opening. He slid perfectly beneath the monster's sweeping executioner's axe, feeling the wind pressure tear a fresh gash across his cheek. He planted his left foot, twisting his hips to generate maximum torque, and forced his mana directly into Nyxaris's core.
Judgement of Heaven. Second Form.
"Sky Severance!" Rias roared.
The pale white Sword Aura hissed into existence, extending from the rusted blade. Rias brought the sword up in a vicious, rising arc, aiming directly for the exposed tendons at the back of the monster's knee.
The blade struck.
CLANG!
Rias's eyes went wide. The recoil was so violent it nearly popped his shoulder out of its socket. The aura sliced through the outer layer of dark magic, but the monster's bone structure was ridiculously dense. He hadn't severed the leg; he had only managed a shallow, three-inch gash.
The Behemoth let out a deafening, gurgling roar of annoyance. With a casual flick of its wrist, it shattered Aria's shadow chains like they were made of wet paper.
The beast swung the flat side of its massive, rusted axe.
Rias tried to raise his sword to block, but he was entirely out of leverage. The flat of the blade slammed into his side.
CRUNCH!
Rias was launched backward like a cannonball. He skipped across the dirt, tumbling violently before slamming back-first into the base of the Fort Core.
"Rias!" Lira shrieked, instantly rushing to his side. Her hands glowed with frantic, blindingly bright healing magic, pressing against his bruised ribs.
Rias coughed, tasting copper.
'Okay. Yeah. That's an Arch-Bishop level threat, alright.'
[Get up! Get up! It's still looking at us!]
Nyxaris panicked, her bravado completely evaporating in the face of actual death.
The Behemoth slowly turned its glowing silver eyes toward the core, taking a heavy, earth-shattering step forward.
"No you don't."
Serene stepped directly into the monster's path.
Her emerald eyes were gone, replaced by a terrifying, molten gold. Her abyssal black coat was practically smoking. She had already drained her mana to zero, but she wasn't drawing on her core anymore.
She was digging into her soul.
'I am not a victim anymore,' Serene thought, her hands trembling violently as the flesh on her palms began to blister and crack from her own heat.
'I am not the girl crying in the ashes.'
Deep within her, the ancestral bloodline sparked. The Eternal Flame Ember—the mythical, unstable mutation of the fire element that she had never been able to fully control—woke up.
A tiny, blindingly bright golden spark manifested between her outstretched hands. It wasn't a roaring wave of fire. It was just a spark, no larger than a marble. But the moment it appeared, the temperature in the artificial dimension spiked so drastically that the very air began to distort and ripple.
Trent, sitting nearby, threw his arms over his face as the ambient heat threatened to singe his eyebrows off.
"Burn to nothing," Serene whispered, her voice layered with an ancient, resonant authority.
She thrust her hands forward. The golden spark shot across the courtyard like a bullet of pure, condensed sunlight. It bypassed the Behemoth's corrosive acid armor entirely, sinking directly into the center of its massive, flayed chest.
For a heartbeat, there was silence.
Then, the golden flame expanded.
VWOOOOOOSH!
A column of majestic, golden fire erupted from the inside of the monster. The Behemoth threw its head back, letting out a horrific screech of genuine agony as the Eternal Flame began to incinerate its dark mana from the inside out. A massive, glowing crater was blown straight through its torso.
Serene collapsed onto her knees, gasping for air, her hands scorched red and trembling. She had given it everything.
But the system had classified this monster as a Calamity for a reason.
Even with a hole blown through its chest, the Abyssal Behemoth refused to fall. Its silver eyes flared with pure, unadulterated hatred. The dark, pulsing chains wrapped around its arms loosened, dropping to the ground as the monster gripped its rusted executioner's axe with both hands, raising it high above its head to bring it down directly on Serene and the core behind her.
"Move!"
Aria screamed, rushing forward, but she was too far away.
Lira threw herself over Trent, sobbing.
Serene looked up at the descending blade, her golden eyes wide, completely unable to move her exhausted body.
Rias pushed himself off the Fort Core, ignoring the agonizing pain in his ribs. He didn't raise his sword. He knew he couldn't block it.
Instead, his bloody fingers fumbled into his pocket and pulled out the intricately carved wooden totem they had won in the first round.
The Sovereign's Echo.
'Let's hope this isn't a dud,' Rias prayed.
He gripped the totem and crushed it in his palm.
CRACK.
The moment the wood splintered, the world simply... stopped.
The roaring of the monster, the crackling of Serene's residual flames, the desperate screams of Lira—it all muted into absolute silence. The massive executioner's axe froze mere feet above Serene's head, suspended in mid-air. The artificial gray sky darkened instantly, turning pitch black as a suffocating, overwhelming pressure descended upon the courtyard.
It wasn't mana. It was pure, unfiltered Intent.
A thick, swirling mass of inky black shadows bled out from the crushed splinters in Rias's hand. The shadows didn't just pool on the floor; they gathered, rising and compressing, knitting themselves together until they formed the silhouette of a tall, broad-shouldered man.
The phantom wore no visible armor, just a flowing, tattered cloak woven from the night itself. It had no face, only two piercing, hollow white eyes that stared straight ahead.
In Rias's hand, the rusty sword went completely, deathly still.
[...Master?] Nyxaris whispered, her spiritual voice cracking with a thousand years of grief and longing. [Raseus?]
The shadow summon—the phantom projection of the ancient Sword Sovereign, Raseus De Solaria—did not speak. It didn't acknowledge the sword, nor did it look at the terrified students.
The phantom simply raised its empty right hand.
From the abyss of its cloak, it drew a blade made entirely of condensed, starlight-white aura. The ambient pressure in the courtyard became so heavy that Rias was forced to his hands and knees, unable to even breathe under the sheer weight of the Sovereign's existence.
The phantom stepped forward. It didn't rush. It moved with the casual, elegant grace of a man taking a stroll through a quiet garden.
It stepped directly beneath the suspended executioner's axe, positioning itself right in front of the frozen Behemoth.
The phantom shifted its stance.
Rias's crimson eyes widened. He recognized the posture perfectly. It was the exact stance he had been practicing every single morning. It was the absolute, flawless peak of the 'Judgement of Heaven'.
The phantom drew the starlight blade back.
Judgement of Heaven-Third Form: The Heaven's Divide.
There was no sound of tearing air. There was no explosive shockwave.
The shadow simply swung the blade horizontally. A single, imperceptible line of white light flashed across the courtyard, passing straight through the forty-foot monster, continuing outward to slice cleanly through the massive stone walls of the fortress, and disappearing into the synthetic horizon.
The phantom lowered its arm. It stood there for exactly three seconds, its hollow white eyes gazing out at the ruin, before the shadows comprising its body simply dissolved into ash and blew away in the wind.
The world abruptly unfroze.
Sound rushed back in all at once.
The Abyssal Behemoth stood perfectly still. The executioner's axe was still raised above its head.
Then, a perfectly straight, glowing white line appeared horizontally across the monster's waist.
Thud!
The entire top half of the forty-foot monstrosity simply slid off its bottom half and crashed into the dirt, severed with surgical, conceptual perfection. The dark magic sustaining the beast evaporated instantly, its massive body dissolving into harmless, gray pixels.
Silence reclaimed the courtyard.
For a long minute, nobody moved. Nobody dared to breathe.
Serene sat on the dirt, her eyes wide, staring at the empty space where the monster had just been. Aria Ashborne, the genius who was never surprised by anything, had a look of profound, unadulterated awe plastered across her beautiful face.
[...He's still perfect,]
Nyxaris sniffled in Rias's mind, sounding completely overwhelmed. [Did you see his elbow placement, Rias? Did you see it? You better have taken notes!]
Rias let out a long, wheezing laugh, letting himself collapse flat onto his back in the dirt.
"Yeah, Nyx," Rias mumbled aloud to the sky. "I took notes."
⟨Special Round Cleared.⟩
The system's voice felt almost anticlimactic after what they had just witnessed.
⟨Threat Level: Calamity - Eradicated.⟩
⟨Calculating Rewards...⟩
The massive Fort Core pulsed with a blinding, triumphant light. In front of it, a chest materialized. But it wasn't wood, gold, or platinum. It was forged from pure, translucent crystal, glowing with an ethereal inner light.
"We lived," Trent gasped, finally lowering his arms from his face.
Lira burst into relieved tears, flopping backward onto the grass.
Aria elegantly walked over to Serene, offering the exhausted girl a hand. Serene took it, wincing as she pulled herself up on her scorched palms. Aria immediately cast a soothing, cool wave of shadow-magic over Serene's burns to numb the pain.
"You are an absolute madman, Leonhart," Aria said, looking over at Rias, who was still starfishing in the dirt. Her dark eyes were sparkling with sheer amusement.
"I thought we were going to die, and then you pull a literal god out of your pocket."
"I told you I'd keep things entertaining, didn't I?"
Rias groaned, slowly sitting up and rubbing his bruised side.
Serene walked toward the crystal chest, her posture regaining some of its usual aristocratic pride despite the soot and burns.
"You took a massive gamble," she stated, looking back at him.
"But... I cannot deny the result. You earned your keep today, Rias."
"Just open the box, President," Rias smiled tiredly.
"Let's see what a dead Calamity buys us."
Serene placed her hand on the crystal lid. It opened soundlessly.
She reached inside, her expression shifting to one of deep confusion. Slowly, she pulled out the reward.
It wasn't a weapon. It wasn't a piece of armor.
It was a small, ancient-looking compass made of tarnished brass. The glass was cracked, and instead of pointing North, the needle was spinning wildly in chaotic circles.
"A broken compass?" Trent asked, dragging himself to his feet.
"We fought a forty-foot demon cow for a broken compass?"
Rias frowned, his gamer instincts analyzing the item.
"Check the system description."
Serene tapped the object. A holographic panel popped up, displaying text that made all of them freeze in their tracks.
[Item: The Navigator's Paradox]
[Tier: Mythic (Special Event Item)]
[Description: This compass does not point North. It points toward the user's greatest hidden threat. Grants the faction the ability to bypass one set of rules in the upcoming Second Trial.]
Aria let out a low whistle. "Bypass the rules? In an academy tournament? That isn't just an advantage. That's a cheat code."
Serene tightened her grip on the brass compass, her emerald eyes locking onto Rias's crimson ones. The exhaustion in her face was completely replaced by a fierce, terrifying determination.
"Arey and Aurelius are going to regret letting us survive today," she said, her voice a promise of absolute ruin.
Rias slowly got to his feet, tossing the rusty, over-fed spirit sword over his shoulder. He looked at the ragtag group of exhausted, battered students standing around the glowing core. They were messy. They were barely holding it together.
But they had just cleared the hardest round in the tournament.
'The side-characters are officially off the script,' Rias thought, a genuine smile breaking across his bruised face.
'And tomorrow, we're going to rewrite the rules entirely.'
⟨Trial One Complete. Commencing Teleportation to Academy Grounds.⟩
The blue runes lit up the ground once more, and as the light swallowed them, Rias couldn't wait to see the looks on the Princes' faces.