The decade of foundational training had ended not with a celebration, but with a shift in the chamber's atmosphere. The air, always thick with power, now hummed with a new, anticipatory frequency. K stood before us, his usual apathy replaced by a focused intensity.
"The foundation is laid," he stated, his voice cutting through the hum. "Bricks and mortar. Now, we must discover the blueprint. You will learn the language of your soul. You will call it Devinity."
He gestured, and the chamber's energy coalesced, forming a pulsating, multifaceted crystal that hovered between us. It was pure and clear, humming with a resonant frequency that made our very bones vibrate.
"The Resonance Crystal," K said. "It does not measure strength. It reveals nature. It will show you the source of your power. Place your hand upon it and release a trickle of your energy. Not for attack. For introduction."
He nodded to Anya. "You first."
Anya stepped forward, her expression a mix of determination and trepidation. She placed her palm on the cool surface. She closed her eyes, and a soft, silver light flowed from her hand into the crystal.
The crystal drank it in, and its interior began to swirl. Not with a single color, but with two distinct, brilliant strands of light. One was a fierce, vibrant gold, pulsing with raw potential. The other was a deep, nurturing green, radiating calm and vitality. The two lights intertwined within the gem, separate yet perfectly harmonized.
K's eyebrows rose a millimeter. A true sign of shock. "Two," he said, his voice low. "A dual affinity. A rarity I have not seen in an eon." He studied the swirling lights, his head tilted. "The gold... a potent form of Enhancement, beyond the mere physical. And the green... a deep well of Restoration, mending not just flesh, but spirit. A formidable combination. One to make you an unbreakable weapon. The other to ensure you can always get back up to fight. You are not merely a fighter, Anya. You are a bastion."
Anya stared at her hands as she pulled them away, the revelation settling over her. The brutal, kinetic way she fought and the deep, instinctive need to mend it all made a new, terrifying sense. Her path was clear.
Then, it was my turn. I approached the crystal, my mind already racing, the System's warning about my hidden affinity echoing in my thoughts. 'Conceal from all local entities.' I had to be careful.
I placed my hand on the crystal and let a thread of my power flow. Not the chaotic void, but the most straightforward energy I could muster: the crackling potential of Lightning.
The crystal erupted.
A storm of light exploded within it. A brilliant, burning orange for Fire. A crackling, violent white for Lightning. A shimmering, distorted silver for Space. The lights didn't just branch; they swirled into a chaotic, beautiful nebula of power, each strand vivid and defined, yet all vying for dominance.
K stared. His usual apathy shattered into genuine, unvarnished astonishment. "This is... unprecedented."
« WARNING: HOST IS ATTEMPTING TO ISOLATE AFFINITIES. » « CAUSAL ANALYSIS: INHERITED AUTHORITY DETECTED. HOST IS NOT LIMITED TO SINGULAR AFFINITIES. » « CONCLUSION: HOST MANIFESTS THE FULL SPECTRUM OF NON-CHAOTIC DIVINE ATTRIBUTES. »
I felt it too. It wasn't that I had three. It was that the crystal was overwhelmed, unable to categorize the sheer breadth of what I was. I could feel the potential for others, sleeping in my blood: the pull of Earth, the whisper of Summoning, the logic of Creation. I was a seed containing every tree.
"You..." K breathed, a rare loss for words. "You don't have an affinity. You have... authority." He looked at me as if seeing me for the first time. "The crystal cannot define you because you are not defined. You are a conduit. A potential god."
The air left the chamber. Anya looked at me, her eyes wide with a new kind of awe and fear.
After a long moment, K collected himself, the mask of the indifferent master sliding back into place. "Two affinities is a rarity that shapes empires," he said, glancing at Anya. He then turned his gaze to me, a glint of something unreadable in his eyes. "What you are... should not exist. The gods would have drowned you in your cradle had they known."
He waved his hand, and the crystal vanished. "Do not ask me how. I do not know. But it changes nothing about your training. Only the scale."
Curiosity finally broke through Anya's restraint. "And you?" she asked, her voice quiet but steady. "How many?"
K looked at them, and for a heartbeat, he seemed ancient, weary of countless millennia.
"Four," he said, the word simple and devastating. "Creation. Enhancement. Space. Summoning."
Deo and Anya could only stare. Four. To have two was a legend. To have four was a myth.
K saw their shock and gave a dismissive, almost bored shrug. "Don't look so impressed. I'm just built different." The casual, anachronistic line was so utterly at odds with the cosmic revelation that it was jarring.
He clapped his hands, the sound like a thunderclap. "Enough theory. Time for practical application."
The chamber around us warped. The infinite expanse folded in on itself, walls of shimmering, indestructible energy erupting from the platform to form a colossal, ancient-looking coliseum. Racks of weapons materialized along the edges: swords, axes, spears, glaives, guns of alien design, gauntlets, and whips every conceivable instrument of war.
"You have spent a decade building a foundation. Now, you will learn what it is to hold a weapon. We start at the beginning."
He snapped his fingers.
Two figures shambled into the center of the arena from a dark archway. They were humanoid, but twisted, made of jagged stone and flickering shadow. They moved with a clumsy, predatory gait. Their eyes glowed with a dim, malevolent red.
« ALERT: SUMMONED ENTITIES DETECTED » « SCANNING... » « DESIGNATION: STREET-CLASS DEMIONS » « THREAT ASSESSMENT: NUISANCE » « AFFINITY: MINOR SHADOW / MINOR EARTH »
"Street level," K announced from a raised observation platform, his voice echoing through the coliseum. "The weakest of the weak. Scavengers on the edges of reality. You should be able to handle these in your sleep. Begin."
Anya's hands glowed with that confident silver light. I summoned a katana, the blade humming with latent lightning. After a decade of training, these things looked pitiful.
We moved in unison, a well-practiced pincer movement.
We were fast. We were precise. We were utterly, completely unprepared.
The humanoid on the left, the one of shadow, didn't lunge. It flowed. It became a smear of darkness, avoiding my spatial twist with an instinctual ease that defied its clumsy appearance. It reappeared inside my guard, a claw of solidified shadow forming from its arm and lashing out.
It wasn't aiming to kill. It was aiming to maim. The shadow-claw passed through my defending arm, not cutting it, but making it go instantly, utterly numb and useless. My katana fell from nerveless fingers.
« WARNING: NERVOUS SYSTEM ATTACK. RIGHT ARM NON-RESPONSIVE. »
At the same moment, the stone demion didn't punch Anya. It stomped the ground. The stone of the arena floor didn't crack; it liquefied around her feet for a split second, then solidified, trapping her up to her knees. She was a perfect, immobilized target. The demion's fist, moving with shocking, brutal speed, slammed into her chest.
There was a sound like a tree snapping.
« PARTNER STATUS: TERMINATED. » « CAUSE: THORACIC CAVITY COLLAPSE. »
Anya's eyes went wide with shock more than pain before the light left them. She slumped in her stone tomb.
The shadow demion's claw was already reversing its course toward my neck.
I had a millisecond to process it. The sheer, shocking speed. The ruthless, efficient tactics. These weren't mindless brutes. They were predators. And we were still prey.
The claw connected.
« SIMULATED DEATH #1: LOGGED. » « CAUSE: DECAPITATION. » «... » « ANALYSIS: THREAT REASSESSMENT REQUIRED. "NUISANCE"-CLASS DEMONSTRATES COMBAT EFFICIENCY 10,000% ABOVE INITIAL PROJECTIONS. »
Darkness.
Then, light. We stood whole once more at the entrance to the arena, the two demions shuffling back to their starting positions, waiting.
K looked down at them, his expression unreadable.
"The weakest of the weak," he repeated, his voice cold. "Let's see how many lifetimes it takes you to kill just one."
The demions began their shambling advance once more.
As they did, the truth of my situation crashed down on me, far heavier than any of K's blows. The revelation of my "authority" felt like a sick joke.
A potential god.
The words echoed mockingly in my head as I faced the shambling, clumsy Nuisance-class demion. Anya moved beside me, her silver light already flaring around her fists with a purpose mine never had.
If I'm a potential god, I thought, parrying a sluggish stone fist with my katana, the impact jarring my arm, why can't I do that?
I watched her. She wasn't just fighting; she was executing. Her every move was efficient, lethal. She flowed around the shadow demion's attacks, her enhanced senses making its movements look laughably slow. A single, precise punch from her shattered its leg, and she seamlessly pivoted to drive her elbow into its chest, making it explode into dissipating darkness.
If I'm a potential god, the thought was a bitter knot in my stomach as my own opponent, the stone demion, took a wild swing I barely dodged, why does everything I do feel so... clumsy?
I summoned Fire. A pathetic gout of flame that splashed harmlessly against its rocky hide. I tried Lightning. It crackled wildly, earthing itself into the floor instead of the creature. It was like trying to perform surgery with a sledgehammer.
Why does she get clarity, and I get chaos? I barely blocked another blow, the force numbing my arm. She has a path. I have a screaming void.
Anya finished her opponent and, without missing a beat, lunged at mine. Her silver-light-enhanced kick snapped the stone demion's head clean off. It crumbled into dust.
She stood there, panting slightly, a fierce grin on her face. The fight was her language, and she was already fluent.
I just stood there, my katana hanging limply in my hand.
K's verdict came. "Adequate."
He was looking at her.
I looked down at my own hands. The hands that were supposed to hold divine authority. They were just hands. They were shaking.
A potential god.
The words weren't a title. They were a taunt.
Anya walked over, her brow furrowed with concern now that the battle-high was fading. "You okay? You seemed... off."
"I'm fine," I lied, the words tight. "Just... figuring it out."
She nodded, but the doubt in her eyes mirrored my own. She could feel it too. The gap. The incongruity.
K had called me a potential god. But right now, facing the weakest of the weak, I had never felt more human. And I had never hated it more.
The humanoids reformed. The cycle was reset.
Why? The question screamed in my mind, louder than any of K's critiques. If I have this potential, why is it locked away? Why is she soaring while I'm scrounging for scraps?
The year of revelation was over. It hadn't given me answers. It had only given me a deeper, more frustrating question to haunt the millennia of training to come. The coliseum, our new world, wasn't a proving ground. It was a cage, and I was the only one who couldn't find the key.