Inside the reserved chamber, the silence was almost sepulchral. Competitors lay motionless, each on their bed of energy, bodies mangled, bones broken, bleeding, but alive. It was the inevitable price of facing monsters of their own generation.
The colossal artifact of the Demonic Kingdom—the jewel that made the tournament possible—continued to snatch each participant back from the brink of death at the exact moment the final blade would have reached them.
Without it, half of those youths would already have vanished forever.
Suddenly, the silence was ripped apart by two exasperated screams.
"AAAHHHHHHHHHHH!"
Out of nowhere, two bodies materialized in the center of the room.
Wagner and Moura.
Eyes glazed, breathing ragged, smoke rising from their skin as if they had been spat out of a volcano.
The others, already battered and hardened by the torment of the competition, flinched.
No one in that chamber was a stranger to pain, but what stood before them was not merely pain.
It was distilled agony.
Faces hardened. Some eyes widened. Others instinctively stepped back.
The two newcomers were charred.
Their armor, once gleaming with the pride of their families, had fused into their flesh. Molten iron still smoked over exposed muscle. Their arms were nothing but raw flesh, no skin left. The stench of burning metal and seared meat filled the chamber, heavy, nauseating.
And yet, their faces—though horribly scarred—showed "only" second-degree burns. As if, in the very last second, they had shielded their heads from an impossible flash.
It was a grotesque sight. A silent warning: what had struck them was not a mere defeat. It was something that had ripped them out of life itself.
Immediately, mages swarmed into the room.
Healing magic resonated, green and golden chains wrapping around the twisted bodies. Runes glimmered beneath charred skin, struggling to keep organs functioning, restoring blood where veins no longer existed.
Meanwhile, the other participants exchanged glances. None dared to speak aloud, but the question lingered in all their eyes:
What in hell had happened to them?
In the arena, in the coliseum stands, a scene that would be forever etched into Atlas's collective memory unfolded.
Everyone—commoners, merchants, citizens, even the representatives of the twelve families—were on their feet, eyes fixed on the colossal Orb that projected the fight.
At the start of the match, murmurs had rippled like a boiling marketplace:
"Serves him right! Ambushed competitors and now he pays the price."
"What a disgrace, the twelve families needing to hunt down a single boy, and with prepared artifacts no less."
"This isn't a tournament, it's an execution!"
Opinions clashed, but no one looked away from the suspended sphere. Tension hung in the air with every image it displayed.
And then, fate turned.
The axe deflected by Glenn—a simple, yet brilliant move—shifted the tide of battle.
To the crowd, it was no longer surprising to see him slip away by a hair's breadth or to vanish through long-distance portals. They had already witnessed him fleeing from the Behemoth and understood Glenn was not just brute force. He was cunning, manipulation, deception. A mage who danced with death and made his enemies stumble under their own weight.
The crowd awaited the reversal. With every strike, every clash, the suspense grew. Wagner and Moura pressed forward with brutality; Glenn endured, wounded but unbroken. The tension stretched, and the entire coliseum held its breath.
Until, at last, the final plan revealed itself.
The sky opened, and the Orb projected the image of a blazing blue meteor tearing across the forest heavens, plummeting at insane speed upon the two competitors.
The impact shook the entire coliseum.
No words were needed: bodies reacted on instinct. Thousands rose at once, as if struck by thunder. As if to remain seated while witnessing that scene was a crime.
Even in the royal tribune, the solemn silence that always accompanied the great names was broken.
Drakk, the Divine Blacksmith, rose from his seat, eyes blazing like blades forged in the heart of a furnace.
At his side, Lyra also stood, her eyes glimmering with an indecipherable emotion.
And then, everything turned white. The image vanished in the flash.
When the projection returned, it showed Glenn, far from the impact zone, being carried in Norwenna's arms. A dark prince and his unlikely princess.
There were no comments.
No sound.
The entire coliseum was entranced, petrified, as though their collective breath had been ripped from their chests.
Until, suddenly, a raw, genuine voice erupted from the stands:
"HOLY SHIT!"
And then, as if that spark had lit gunpowder, the coliseum exploded in shouts, applause, laughter, and roars.
The chaos of jubilation set the crowd's hearts ablaze. Glenn hadn't just fought.
He had written history before their very eyes.
**
Inside the narrow cavern, it felt like standing in the belly of a sleeping beast. The walls closed in around me, and only thin beams of cosmic light streaming through the cracks lit the space. They danced in the air like liquid ropes of stars, emanating from the black stone altar at the center.
At its peak, a copper tray held that translucent liquid, so clear, so absolute, it merged with the darkness, as if it were a fragment of liquid void.
Hovering above, slowly rotating, floated the glass prism that held my beast egg.
What once fit in the palm of my hand had already grown to the size of an ostrich egg. I watched it closely, pulsing, mercilessly absorbing the energy of the other eggs I had stolen during the tournament.
Each strand of power rose from the transparent liquid, passed through the prism, and plunged into the shell, making it vibrate in an impossible spectrum of colors—colors that did not exist in any other world, a forbidden reflection that forced the eyes to see what they should not.
"Owwww… easy there," I muttered, feeling sharp pressure on my back.
"Don't be such a wimp. They're just a few light burns," Norwenna replied in that tone that mixed mockery with care. Her hands spread the fresh ointment across my scorched skin, but every touch still burned like molten iron against my wounds.
I sighed and let my head drop forward.
The price had been steep.
Creating that meteor was not just risking my life, it was exacting a heavy toll on my body.
I could feel my prana core and mana core, both drained to dangerous levels. They were still there, recovering slowly, almost lazily. For a normal person, I should have been unconscious. For me, it was just exhaustion—but honestly, I was used to suffering energy collapses. And besides, I swore that every time I collapsed, I felt my recovery grow faster. But that was a matter for another time.
The egg, however, seemed indifferent to all the collapse and madness outside. With each passing second, it grew stronger. With every ray absorbed, it pulsed as if eager to be born. I could almost swear I heard a muffled heartbeat inside it, like a slumbering heart, a heart that one day would roar.
"Why do you keep hiding out in my cave day after day?" I asked, raising a brow. "Aren't you worried about your incubator and your beast egg?"
"Haa… no need to worry about that."
"What do you mean, no need to worry about that?"
"Exactly that. My incubator is well protected… hehehe."
I rolled my eyes, trying to imagine what the hell 'well protected' meant for an aberration like Norwenna.
"Owwww…" I groaned when she pressed against one of the burns again.
"What was that eye roll?" she accused, narrowing her eyes.
"What? I can't roll my eyes?"
"No!"
Norwenna finished spreading my special ointment across my back, and we pulled away a little. Well… we tried, but the cave was far too narrow.
We ended up each leaning against a wall, our bodies almost close, and for a moment we just stared at each other in the flickering light of the beast egg's altar, bathed in those impossible colors.
I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to enjoy the rest, but a few minutes later she broke the silence.
"So anyway… who were those two?" I asked, still curious.
Norwenna clicked her tongue, thoughtful, as if organizing her memory before answering.
"The pale-haired one, delicate build, who worked with threads… that was Wagner Wolframius. If I'm not mistaken, the fifth son in the Wolframius line of succession."
"And the other?"
"Moura Wolframius. He's from a collateral branch of the family. Honestly… I don't remember him clearly."
I fell silent for a moment, replaying the battle in my mind. The sound of water spears slicing the air, the flaming axe, the copper threads that nearly tore me apart. I drew in a deep breath.
"They were strong."
Norwenna folded her arms, looking at me with unusual seriousness.
"Yes. They were," she replied firmly, without hesitation.
The words lingered in the air, heavy with an uncomfortable truth.
The silence didn't last long.
"Hey…"
"Mm…" I answered, disinterested.
"Seriously, has anyone ever told you you're an absolute freak of nature?"
I raised my brows at the unexpected jab. "Compliments at this hour?"
"Phew… I'm serious. Do you realize you just dropped a meteor on a challenger?"
"Hehehe… think they'll give me some nickname like Meteor Thrower, Fallen Star, or something like that?"
"Go to hell." Norwenna huffed, losing her patience.
"Hehehe…"
She sighed, but there was a curious gleam in her eyes. "Honestly, I think the best decision I made was allying with you. I don't consider it very smart to be your enemy."
I smirked. "I wouldn't want to be my enemy either."
"Still, you know how hard that was to pull off. And besides, I couldn't repeat the same feat without a mage who can move a stone block weighing tons."
"For now."
"Huh? What do you mean?"
"You can't move a block of tons for now." I sighed. "Do you realize you're not even a Full Awakened yet? If you already have this much power at this level… I don't even want to imagine when you break into Champion Rank."
"I've been working on it."
Norwenna gave me a sharp look, as if trying to dissect me with her eyes.
"You haven't broken through because of your spatial affinity, right?"
I just nodded. I didn't need to say anything—she knew. I think everyone knew.
"I can imagine… the more atypical the affinity, the harder it is to cultivate," she replied, still with that half-acid tone she always used.
I didn't argue.
I just let my gaze drop to my own hand, to the black ring resting on my finger. The metal seemed to drink in the flickering light of the altar, as if it were made of solid void.
Sometimes I had the impression it pulsed faintly, like it was breathing, and from time to time it continued to siphon defined amounts of my energy.
Since I had found it, things had been changing. My spatial affinity, once chaotic and hard to control, seemed to respond better… but there was something unsettling too, a constant weight, a sense that I was tampering with something I didn't fully understand.
My chest tightened, caught between fascination and unease.
Norwenna didn't notice, or pretended not to. She simply leaned back against the damp cave wall, watching my silence.
Before I really let myself close my eyes to rest, I turned my face toward her.
"Have you already gathered your ten eggs?" I asked, my voice heavy with exhaustion, but still curious.
Norwenna, leaning against the cave wall, let out an almost lazy sigh before answering:
"Not yet, I'm missing four. I would have them if a competitor hadn't stolen six of the ones I'd gathered." The sincerity in her tone made me smile faintly.
Four bluish orbs appeared in my hand, hovering above my skin like small imprisoned stars. They were the beast eggs I had won in the fight against Wagner and Moura. Without hurry, I let them float toward her, each one spinning softly in the air until they settled in front of Norwenna.
She frowned, surprised. "What's this?"
"Payment for the information." I crossed my arms behind my head, trying to get comfortable against the cold stone.
"I wouldn't have managed without you."
The silence that followed was broken only by the distant crackle of energy in the beast egg's altar. Then, a timid smile bloomed on her lips—brief and delicate, almost at odds with the Norwenna I knew. She took the eggs without protest and then closed her eyes, letting her body relax.
That image of her, for the first time without arrogance or irony, was the last thing I saw before finally allowing sleep to take me.