Liam's gaze was locked with his opponent's.
Across the arena, the young man stood with one hand resting lightly on the hilt of his rapier, the other tucked behind his back in the casual posture of a noble at ease. He tilted his head slightly and offered a small, courteous smile.
"Let me introduce myself," he said, voice smooth, his tone laced with deliberate calm. "I'm Julien Laurent."
The name hit Liam like a weight. The Laurent family—famed across the Kingdom of Light. Their influence reached beyond Flesa, into the capital and the central pillars of the kingdom. They were not just nobles. They were power incarnate.
Julien's smile widened, and he leaned forward slightly, lowering his voice into a near-whisper that somehow carried across the silent arena—mockery infused in every word.
"I'm also a C-plus ranked warrior… and an elementalist."
Liam's heart clenched. His breath caught in his throat. C-plus? Against someone who was barely at D-minus?
His hands tightened around the grip of his sword.
'They want me dead,' he thought bitterly. 'No question now.'
But he didn't flinch. Instead, with a burst of mana, fire enveloped his blade, wrapping it in dancing crimson flames that hissed with heat. He sent all his force into his legs and lunged forward, closing the distance between them.
His flaming blade came down in a vicious arc aimed at Julien's chest.
Clang!
Julien parried the attack with a single flick of his wrist, the rapier barely moving as it deflected Liam's strike. The young noble's expression didn't even change.
Liam didn't stop. He pressed on with a flurry of strikes, using every ounce of strength and speed he had—slashes, thrusts, unpredictable angles. A barrage meant to overwhelm, to find a gap.
But Julien blocked them all. Effortlessly. His movements were precise. Minimal. Each parry a whisper, each step a measured dance. He wasn't just toying with Liam—he was testing him.
Liam spun with another strike, only for Julien to lean aside and sidestep as if he had seen it coming a minute before. And then, for the first time, Julien's expression shifted—his gaze sharpened. A low gust of wind stirred the dust around his feet.
Then, the wind rose. It wrapped around Julien's rapier, spiraling in tight coils, shrieking softly like a storm in a cage. The rapier lashed out—faster than before, a blur of silver and wind.
But Liam had been waiting for it. With a snap of his will, he activated the speed enchantment on his ring. A surge of acceleration flooded his limbs. He twisted away, narrowly avoiding the blade—and in that single heartbeat, saw his opening.
He brought his sword up with everything he had. Flames flared with renewed intensity as he slashed toward Julien's neck—his heart pounding, muscles straining, desperation and fury in the arc of the blow.
For a moment—just one breathless moment—it looked like it would land. But with impossible speed, Julien pivoted. His rapier snapped up to meet the strike with a jarring clash of metal.
'He's this fast even now?' Liam's eyes widened. His chest tightened.
Julien took a step back, the wind still dancing around his blade, but his eyes flicked to something behind him. With a low, predatory growl, Liam's conjured creature lunged from the shadows behind Julien.
It looked like a caracal—large and sinewy, its smoke-laced fur shifting between shadows and starlight. Two long tails arched behind it, their flickering crimson tufts crackling with power. Its eyes glowed a deep, baleful red, fixed on Julien's exposed back.
It was Liam's hidden trump card—a spirit he'd poured every scrap of spare mana into summoning.
The creature leapt in a single, fluid motion. Claws stretched wide, aiming for Julien's unprotected spine.
But before it could land the blow—
Boom!
A sphere of compressed wind erupted from Julien's body in an instant. The barrier expanded outward with explosive force, catching the spirit mid-pounce. It struck the swirling air shield with a shriek, claws scraping uselessly against the howling gale.
The impact hurled the caracal backward like a ragdoll. It crashed in to the arena floor behind Julien, skidding across the rough stone and tumbling to a stop in a haze of red dust.
The shockwave didn't stop there. Liam, caught fully in the blast radius, was flung back as though struck by an invisible hammer. He hit the ground hard, his breath exploding from his lungs in a choked gasp. Dust and grit flew into the air, momentarily obscuring everything in a cloud of debris.
He coughed, struggling to pull air back into his lungs, every rib screaming in protest. The flames wreathing his sword guttered and died, leaving only a dull, scorched blade clutched in numb fingers.
As the dust began to settle, Liam forced himself to lift his head. Across the arena floor, the caracal spirit was already trying to rise again—tails lashing weakly, its luminous eyes still locked on Julien.
But before Liam or his creature could react, Julien was already moving. He stepped forward with a fluid, almost elegant rhythm—his motions closer to a dancer's than a swordsman's. Wind coiled tighter around his rapier as he advanced, his expression calm and unhurried, as if even this effort barely warranted his focus. In a single blink, he lunged. His blade struck like a needle—precise and lethal. The caracal spirit leapt aside, trying to dodge, but the wind trailing Julien's thrust twisted in midair, stretching unnaturally toward the spirit. With a sharp hiss, it sliced straight through the caracal's flank, tearing a ragged hole in its shimmering, starlit body. The creature let out a high, piercing scream—half-beast, half-ether—before its form unraveled into drifting motes of smoke and vanished from the arena floor.
Liam was already back on his feet, his breathing shallow but determined. Without hesitation, he activated his amulet. A pulse of pale silver light flickered across his chest, and clarity rushed through his veins, steadying his thoughts. As he sprinted forward, five spectral crows burst into existence around him, their dark wings spreading wide as they took flight with a ghostly rustle. They darted toward Julien in coordinated arcs, weaving and circling in an effort to blind him, to give Liam even the smallest opening.
But Julien did not falter. His blade moved with that same effortless grace, slashing through the crows mid-flight. One by one, they burst into showers of ethereal feathers and vanished with fading cries. By the time Liam reached him, there was no distraction left. He swung his sword in a wide arc, desperation lending force to the strike, but Julien's rapier rose to meet it, parrying with ease. In the same motion, Julien twisted his hips and drove his boot forward in a sharp, punishing kick. The impact crashed into Liam's chest, knocking the breath from his lungs. He flew backward and tumbled across the arena floor, dust and grit scraping his skin raw.
Gasping, he lay there on his side, every limb heavy with exhaustion. Pain throbbed behind his eyes and along every nerve. Julien began to walk toward him, each step measured and unhurried, like a man certain of victory long before the fight began.
"Shall we end this?" Julien's voice was smooth, almost bored, as if he were asking about the weather.
Liam's mind raced. He had no more illusions to hide behind, no more tricks to stall for time. There was only one thing left. His hand slipped into his cloak, fingers finding the folded paper worn soft from so many readings. He drew in a ragged breath, closed his eyes, and began to whisper.
A prayer—not the polite recitation of a faithful man, but the desperate invocation of someone with nothing left to lose. Even if it summoned something terrible. Even if it destroyed him alongside his enemies. He spoke the words anyway.
"The Creator — an eternal presence, neither good nor evil, bearer of both light and shadow, who forged balance from chaos and gave form to the formless.
From nothing, You spoke.
From chaos, You sculpted stars.
In shadow, You placed the seed of light;
In light, the promise of shadow.
The Creator, who sees without eyes,
Whose voice echoes in silence—
Guide me as You Guide all."
For a moment, nothing happened. Silence pressed around him so heavily it felt like it might crush his heart. Then he blinked—and found himself somewhere else entirely.
All around him stretched a vast, endless white. The ground, if there was any ground, gleamed like polished bone. There was no roof above—only an infinite, hollow brightness that seemed to watch him from every direction. Before him loomed a colossal bank of fog, swirling in currents of pure white and threads of deep, pulsing red. Shapes shifted within it, impossible to focus on. But when he strained his eyes, he glimpsed a throne carved of something too white to be stone, and a figure seated upon it.
When the voice spoke, it did not echo so much as resonate through the fabric of his body.
"Your prayer has reached the heights beyond the veil, and so have you. Speak, mortal—why have you come here?"
Liam stood frozen, unable to make his tongue move. He had imagined calling up a devil—some howling beast that would tear his enemies limb from limb. But instead he was here, in the presence of something vast and terrible in its calm, and he could feel no corruption or malice at all. Only a solemn weight.
He clenched his fists, trying to force words out of a throat gone dry. 'Do you really just want to stand here like a coward?' he demanded of himself. He swallowed, gathered every shred of resolve he still possessed, and spoke.
"I… I want you to give me power. Enough power to kill them all—every last one of my family."
The fog did not shift, and no face emerged. But he felt the gaze fall upon him like a hand, pressing against his spirit.
"Power to kill is not a gift freely given. It is a chain. And I will not forge such shackles for you."
The voice was softer now, but no less vast.
"Yet I shall grant you a different boon—the power to uncover your true path, and to walk it without fear."
Liam's lips trembled. He did not know whether to curse or to weep. But in the end, it didn't matter. Anything was better than this emptiness. "I… I will take it."
There was a long pause that stretched across the white eternity.
"For all that you seek, a price will be demanded in equal measure. Will you bear this burden?"
"I will do anything," he whispered.
At that moment, a sheet of parchment appeared before him, suspended in the air. A pen materialized beside it, floating patiently. Runes glowed along the parchment's edges like tiny coals, shifting as he looked at them.
"Then swear it. Bind your name to mine. No other god shall you call upon, nor any altar kneel before but mine alone. Should you betray this covenant, the white fire shall consume you, body and soul, and your name shall be forgotten."
Liam reached for the paper and the pen without hesitation. His hands did not tremble. What had any other god done for him, in all these years? Nothing. He pressed the nib to the parchment and signed. The instant his name was complete, the letters flared with light.
He looked up to see if it was done, when an unbearable pain shot through his entire body. It felt as if his bones were turning to molten iron. A strangled cry tore itself from his throat, and he collapsed, limbs thrashing uncontrollably against the cold white floor. Something inside him—something deeper than flesh—was changing.
…
Leo stood at the edge of the deck, watching the crew prepare the boats for the journey to the island. The sound of shouting sailors and creaking wood filled the air, but then—suddenly—he felt it. A pull. Something calling to him.
Without a word, he excused himself and returned to his quarters. Once inside, he closed the door, let out a slow breath, and stepped into his domain. The moment he entered, he realized what the pull was—Liam was calling him.
With a simple gesture, Leo reached across the connection and pulled Liam into his domain. Here, he had full control. Time moved slower than in the real world. Thanks to layers of illusion and spatial manipulation, he could make it even slower for Liam.
After some world playing and acting as a god, he produced an unbreakable contract, one he had prepared well in advance. Crafting it hadn't been difficult; he had studied enough books to know exactly how to structure it.
His plan was simple. Once Liam signed the contract, Leo would send him back and immediately pour as much mana into him as possible. He would also support him with portal magic and telekinesis, doing everything he could to tip the balance in their favor.
But before he could do any of that, Liam signed the contract—and collapsed. his body hit the ground with a dull thud.
Something was wrong.