A few hours had dragged on in the pocket world, and the nineteen survivors—no, seventeen now—had been reduced to the same state: motionless on their pillars, legs crossed, breaths controlled, cultivating desperately to keep from collapsing.
The silence was not one of peace, but of suffocation.
At first, everything seemed manageable. The eggs absorbed little, a nearly imperceptible drain, like newborn hatchlings nibbling at the thread of our energy. But as time passed, their hunger turned to ravenous greed. It was no longer an exchange—it was a brutal plundering. The eggs had become insatiable leeches, sucking prana at absurd levels, as if they meant to strip away not just our energy but our very life force.
That was when we were all forced into the only possible stance: meditate and cultivate in continuous flow, pulling energy in and pouring energy out, in a frantic attempt to keep pace.
The tournament had ceased to be merely a competition of strength or strategy; it had become an intimate struggle against energetic collapse.
And collapse did come for some. Two competitors, one in the volcanic region and another in the underground labyrinth, slumped sideways before they could resist. The glow of their eggs died out, and the pocket world expelled them without ceremony.
Only seventeen remained.
I, however, should have been the first to fall. No matter how much I had fought until now—in anyone's eyes, I was just an early awakening rank, with no reserves to withstand such insane draining. And yet, there I was, cultivating in silence, serene, as if nothing had happened.
The answer was clear, one known only to me and a select few.
With every pulse of my egg, I felt the drain double. But where anyone else would have crumbled apart, my body simply adjusted the flow. The secret? Two cores burning like furnaces in parallel, spinning and pouring energy without pause. A luxury no one else here could even imagine.
That was when I noticed the stares. From the six pillars surrounding mine, their attention turned toward me. Nathanael observed in silence, Norwenna bit her lip in doubt, Leon scratched his head as if he couldn't make sense of it. Even the clan heirs who had ignored me until now watched with a mixture of suspicion and fascination.
I should have been collapsing. I should have been groaning, trembling, faltering. But instead, I cultivated calmly, breathing steadily, showing no signs of failure. That, more than any strike dealt in battle, was what began to make me dangerous in their eyes.
"How much internal energy does this bastard have?" Alden asked openly to the others.
"Shut up, Alden," I replied with a smirk.
Laughter echoed faintly at the top of the forest, and we all went back to cultivating in silence.
**
The hours dragged on like centuries until the long-awaited moment finally arrived. In the last moments of the tenth day, just before the first egg cracked, the entire pocket world began to collapse.
The barriers between regions dissolved like glass turning to dust, and the forest below us fragmented into white particles. Everything was swept away—trees, rivers, mountains—erased into an endless void.
The horizon became a paradox: above us, a black ceiling, deep as a starless sky; below, a white floor, blazing like the light of a white dwarf.
Suspended in that abyss between shadow and radiance, the seventeen pillars were rearranged into a perfect semicircle. We were chess pieces set on a final board, drawn into the same cenacle to witness the awakening.
Then, the first egg broke.
It was the competitor from the swamp—the same one who had reigned alone in his region. A wave of prana burst from his pillar, shooting upward like a laser into the void above. The impact reverberated like thunder, rattling bone and mind alike. Instinctively, we all turned our heads to witness what would be born from it.
But there was no time to linger. A second egg split open, bursting with energy. A third followed, then a fourth, and soon the rhythm became an avalanche. Each egg that cracked stole our focus, dragged our senses, overshadowed the last display.
In minutes, the cenacle was consumed by an unprecedented spectacle.
Sixteen columns of energy, each unique in color and intensity, pierced the void toward the heavens, like cosmic spears defying the skies. The sound was that of an ancestral choir, as if the beasts themselves were singing their own birth. The glow of the columns reflected in our eyes, and it felt as though the entire world was holding its breath to witness the first song of the newborn beasts.
I stared at my egg, doubt flickering across my face. 'When will it happen?'
As if it had heard my thoughts, the first cracks appeared.
A phenomenon unlike any before began to spread through the pocket world.
The black sky—until then empty, starless, cloudless—began to deform. Dark masses condensed above us, while a deep, distant rumble rolled across the horizon, growing louder.
My egg shone with blue lightning, each spark tearing through the air like a blade.
Then, it exploded.
Not in silence, but in a titanic spectacle: a storm of lightning crashed down as if the peak of a volcano had spewed thunder itself. The entire sky was consumed by bolts, each flash igniting the void like the birth of a furious sun.
The sound that followed was unlike anything that had come before. Louder, more brutal, more overwhelming than the roar of all the other beasts combined. It was as if the pocket world had cracked in its very foundation.
"BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM"
**
Outside, Selene and Lyra watched the anomalies with sharp eyes. The coliseum was suddenly engulfed by a colossal shadow hovering above its dome. Selene rose, looked upward, and with tranquil understanding, floated toward the heavens.
A millennial encounter, awaited for ages, was about to take place.
**
Inside the pocket world, not a single competitor could resist: all were forced to clamp their hands over their ears. Then came the sound. Not a roar, not a howl, but a screech—deep, cutting, ancient.
"SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEECH"
That cry drowned out the birth of all the other beasts. Then, an ocean of electricity exploded through the space, blinding us all in an absolute flash.
The newborn beasts instinctively rushed into the arms of their masters, like children seeking refuge in their mother's embrace. Some trembled, unable to withstand the weight of the presence that dominated the space. Others, fragile, simply crumbled under the terror: Norwenna's strange creature—a branch with a flower for a head—fainted outright in her hands.
The brightness slowly waned, but the air still vibrated, charged with electricity, every particle of mana twisting as if reality itself were convulsing.
And finally, before me, the vision revealed itself.
Its colossal body was not made of flesh or fire, but of living thunder woven into shimmering plumage. Every feather was a captured lightning bolt, crackling and breaking apart only to be reborn in the very next instant. Its wings, spread in an impossible arc, bathed in a storm that radiated electricity across the white horizon. With every beat, thunder boomed like war drums, shaking the semicircle of pillars.
Its beak, sharp as a lance of light, sparked with blue and silver currents, while its eyes—two storm-born suns—swirled like electric vortices that could scorch the soul of anyone who dared meet them for too long.
The aura it radiated was not that of a newborn beast. It was the weight of a calamity, the birth of a myth, a harbinger of destruction and rebirth. The space around it warped like glass about to shatter, unable to contain the living storm that was this creature.
And then, it screeched again. Not a mere sound, but a tempestuous chant that reverberated in all directions, piercing body, bone, and spirit. A hymn of lightning. A proclamation to the world that something beyond comprehension had awakened.
The lightning that had set the space ablaze began to disperse, like a storm surrendering to silence after devastating the world. The phoenix, once colossal as a cataclysm, shrank in size, condensing until it took the form of a small bird. Its feathers now only crackled with soft static, tiny sparks running along the edges of its wings, cloaking it in an aura of restrained divinity.
That was when I felt it.
A warm, serene, harmonious energy blossomed within my heart. It was unlike any mana, unlike any prana—it was a bond. When our eyes met, I realized no distance could ever separate us. An invisible yet indestructible chain bound us, soul to essence.
"A phoenix…" I murmured, incredulous, my voice nearly swallowed by the silence that followed.
The small creature fluttered toward me, wings sparking, and before I could react, it nestled in my arms, rubbing against me with innocent liveliness. That gesture, so simple, dissolved the weight of the storm that still echoed in my bones.
Memories of my life on Earth surfaced. The endless days in hospitals, where the sound of machines was my only companion. I had never been able to keep a pet, had never known what such a bond felt like. A genuine smile, almost childlike, broke across my face. I pressed the little phoenix to my chest, holding it with a tenderness that felt overdue by a lifetime.
And as my heart warmed, the world—both inside and outside the pocket world—watched in absolute awe.
Only a lunatic could fail to understand what had just been born.