"Already?!" Lisanna's exclamation was a sharp, panicked squeak, her silver fork dropping from her grasp to clatter against the polished ferrocrete.
Elysia's reaction was a different beast entirely. Where Lisanna's fear was an outward explosion, Elysia's was an implosion of icy dread. Her entire body went rigid, her spine straightening into a rod of high-tensile steel. The casual warmth of the morning meal vanished, replaced by the chilling frost of her noble upbringing.
"The Exchange Chamber?"
The name left Elysia's lips as a strained whisper. Her brows, perfect silver arches, knitted together in a knot of profound and sudden worry. She clenched her fists, her knuckles turning white. It wasn't just a room; it was a stage.
An arena where status was forged and futures were shattered under the scrutinizing gaze of the family elders.
"Chloe," she pleaded, her voice tight with urgency, "is there any way we can delay this? If they've summoned us there… it can only mean one thing. They want to test them."
Her grey eyes, now wide with a genuine fear that eclipsed her usual pride, snapped to Orion. "And I'm certain they won't hold back. They'll treat this as a formal appraisal of potential assets. They may even bring Commander Magnus."
The name fell into the air like a block of granite.
Lisanna nodded rapidly, her bubbly demeanor completely evaporated and replaced by a frantic, wide-eyed concern. "She's right! My father and mother never pull their punches in the Exchange Chamber! It's their preferred method for… trimming the fat." She shuddered. "Ah, they'll want Orion and Lyra to fight Commander Magnus, and he'll bring several of the Silver-Ranked household guards! It's a trial by fire! How can they possibly compete with that?"
Orion and Lyra simply blinked, observing the two noblewomen with a shared, detached curiosity. Logically, Orion understood this concern was a byproduct of the intimate bonds his System was forging—a biological and ethereal imperative for them to care.
But to witness such unvarnished panic on their behalf was an interesting, tingling sensation in their chests. It was a warmth, a form of connection they had never experienced from anyone besides each other.
Before Chloe could deliver her placid, professional response, Lyra let out a loud, contemptuous snort. It was a sound utterly devoid of grace but overflowing with raw confidence. She waved a dismissive hand, as if swatting away their aristocratic anxieties like annoying flies.
"Stop fussing, princesses," she scoffed, her tone dripping with disdain for their high-society fears. "Anyone they drag out to 'test' us is irrelevant. They can't win. They won't even make us sweat. Hell, bring on a proper C-Rank Hero. It'll just be a bore."
"You—!" Elysia snapped, whirling on her, the fear in her eyes instantly igniting into pure frustration. "You cannot bring the arrogance of the Sump into the halls of the Apex! This is a different world! The thugs you brutalized were stray dogs fighting over scraps. Everyone you are about to meet has been meticulously trained since childhood, nurtured with limitless resources, and given instruction by masters of their craft! The average C-Rank Hero patrolling the Strata cannot hold a candle to a C-Rank warrior born and bred by a great house!"
"That's right!" Lisanna chimed in, her tone hurried as she desperately tried to bridge the chasm between their worlds. "Do you know Captain Comet? The C-Rank who single-handedly defeated the villain Tremor yesterday? The news was everywhere! He's famous across the entire Strata, with a growing reputation even in the Apex! Well, he's from a lower noble family, one with a respectable lineage, and even he is only considered 'slightly special' in our families' eyes! You have to treat this with the seriousness it deserves! We must use our words, our diplomacy, not force!"
In that singular moment, as the pleas of the noblewomen hung in the air, Orion and Lyra shared a look. It wasn't just a glance; it was a silent conversation, a complete and total understanding that flowed between them. A smirk, identical in its absolute, unshakeable confidence, bloomed on both their faces.
They turned back to the frantic duo, their calm a stark contrast to the escalating panic.
"We appreciate the concern," Orion said, his voice a smooth, calming balm. "But you're underestimating just how much can change in a single night. However… to calm your nerves, we'll give you a taste of what's to come."
His gaze lifted, sweeping past them to the master control panel on the far wall. "Elysia. Activate the Silver Puppets. You said they're rated as being equal to a near-Peak C-Rank Hero in terms of raw power, correct? Then let us show you just how easily we'll crush them."
"You—!" Both Elysia and Lisanna started to reject the idea out of pure instinct, but the words died in their throats. Their eyes were involuntarily drawn to the scene around them—a graveyard of twisted, ruined steel puppets, machines that were already rated as the equal of peak D-Ranks and solid C-Rank Heros.
The siblings' words were backed by a mountain of evidence. Their growth wasn't just impressive; it was unfathomable. And even now, after a night-long battle that would have left any other Talented individual in a coma, neither Orion nor Lyra showed the slightest trace of fatigue.
A wild, impossible, and utterly intoxicating thought sparked in both their minds: Could they really do it?
Elysia let out a long, shuddering sigh, the conflict warring in her expression. Finally, she leveled a strong, determined look at them.
"Fine," she conceded. "But don't be moronic about this. If you can't do it, then admit it. There are other ways to solve problems besides brute force."
Lisanna nodded, forcing a bright, encouraging smile onto her face, though her eyes were still filled with worry. "That's right! If you win, that's wonderful! But if you don't, we can still figure this out together!"
Lyra just waved her hand again, already bored with the conversation. "Force is a better, more efficient, and more permanent solution in most cases. Now, less talking. Bring them out."
Elysia and Lisanna exchanged a final look of shared resignation. With Chloe standing by as a silent observer, they moved to the control panel. With a deep breath, Elysia begrudgingly entered the command sequence.
"Activating two 'Cryo-Vanguard' Silver Units," the facility's synthetic voice announced, its tone flat and devoid of the gravity of the moment.
The very air grew heavy. A low hum resonated through the ferrocrete floor several meters in front of the siblings.
Two massive panels hissed open, retracting into the ground with the precision of a well-oiled guillotine. From the darkened pits below, two humanoid constructs rose on hydraulic lifts.
They were magnificent. They were terrifying.
Towering over nine feet tall, their bodies were not the blunt, utilitarian metal of the previous puppets. These were sleek, terrifyingly beautiful war machines, crafted from overlapping plates of a lunar-silver alloy that seemed to drink the light. Intricate, glittering patterns of silver frost spiderwebbed across their chassis, not as decoration, but as visible conduits for the cryo-aether thrumming within their cores.
A palpable wave of cold pressure, an Aetheric presence that dwarfed anything the steel puppets had produced, rolled off them, making the air crackle and bite.
The Silver Puppets' optical sensors flared to life, glowing with an icy blue light that seemed to hold a chilling, calculating intelligence. Their gaze locked onto the siblings, and the sheer force of their synthesized will was an attack in itself—a psychic pressure designed to crush the morale of any lesser C-Rank Hero before the first blow was ever thrown.
But Orion and Lyra simply smiled.
In that instant, the atmosphere of the entire training facility warped. Aether, raw and untamed, swirled into existence around them.
Crystalline ripples of impossible ice and pure, golden light pulsed around Orion, a paradox of opposing energies held in perfect, harmonious balance.
Around Lyra, the change was more violent. Streams of glittering, dissonant Aether began to flow around her like a living shroud, the very air around her limbs distorting and shimmering with contained power. She smashed her fists together, and a deafening CRACK echoed through the room.
"That's more like it," she purred.
And then, she was gone.
There was no build-up, no crouch, no explosive first step. One moment she was there, the next she was a blur of motion, a living missile screaming across the floor. The sheer wind pressure from her launch sent debris and scraps of metal scattering like leaves in a hurricane.
Mid-charge, she drew her arm back and unleashed a punch that didn't even aim to connect. An intense, focused stream of pure, vibrating Aether—a lance of molecular dissonance—erupted from her fist.
The power output was so colossal that Elysia and Lisanna's eyes widened in sheer terror. It was a magnitude greater than anything she had demonstrated during their all-night session. They felt suffocated by the pressure wave, the air forced from their lungs, even from behind the relative safety of the control panel.
The nearest Silver Puppet reacted with the speed of a supercomputer. Calculating the existential threat, it moved. It slashed downward with a mighty sword formed of condensed Ice Aether, a blade so fundamentally cold that microscopic ice particles spontaneously condensed in the air along its path, leaving a glittering trail of diamond dust.
The lance of vibration and the sword of absolute frost clashed.
There was no grand explosion of light and sound. There was only the sickening, high-pitched scream of a billion micro-fractures occurring at once. The vibrational frequency was simply too intense, too conceptually destructive. It didn't just break the ice sword; it unraveled it, shattering its Aetheric structure.
The attack blasted through the puppet's guard and slammed into its chest. The nine-foot construct was thrown back several meters, its beautiful silver plating cracking like porcelain under a sledgehammer.
At the exact same moment, Orion moved. To Elysia and Lisanna, it looked as though he hadn't moved at all. He simply condensed a terrifying spear of purest ice in his hand and thrust forward. It was a movement of such profound speed and economy that the world itself seemed to lag behind.
One moment he was still, the next a spear had simply materialized in the air, roaring toward the second puppet like a comet carved from a frozen star.
A screaming torrent of glacial Aether tore through the facility, its passage leaving a trail of flash-frozen condensation in the air.
The second puppet, its processors calculating a fatal-level threat, retaliated instantly. It conjured a massive ice boulder in front of it, a sphere of compressed cryo-aether that pulsed with an extreme, crushing weight, an ordinance designed to flatten main battle tanks.
The razor-sharp stream of ice met the crushing boulder. It didn't slow. It didn't decelerate. It didn't even register the impact. The boulder was annihilated on a conceptual level, shattering into nothing more than glittering dust motes that hung suspended in the chilled air.
The remaining force of Orion's attack slammed into the second Silver Puppet. Its dense alloy plating didn't just crack; it broke apart in frozen chunks, the kinetic force sending it careening backward until it smashed clean through the reinforced far wall, leaving a gaping, frost-rimmed hole.
There was only silence, broken by the faint hum of the facility's power systems.
Elysia and Lisanna had forgotten how to breathe. One strike. One strike each, and they had effortlessly dismantled forces that stood near the very peak of the C-Rank.
The sheer, mind-numbing absurdity of it was staggering.
And then, it got crazier.
Lyra let out a low, dangerous chuckle. "Oh. You barely defended against our probes. Let's see what you can do against a real attack."
As if in response, the two damaged puppets reacted. Their internal reactors went critical. Ice Aether Energy, blindingly white and absolute in its intensity, began to pour from their damaged frames, flooding the room with a pressure that made the very foundations of the building groan.
The sheer power radiating from them triggered the facility's highest-level defenses. A shimmering, hexagonal Aether shield automatically deployed around the control panel, enveloping Lisanna, Elysia, and Chloe in its protective embrace.
The noblewomen couldn't even process the shift. All they saw were blurs of silver and blue as the puppets, now operating at maximum, suicidal output, slashed out with their instantly-repaired ice swords, their speed utterly, terrifyingly inhuman.
But it wasn't absolute. Orion and Lyra were faster.
"Hah!" Lyra shouted, a predator's cry of exhilaration. She clapped her hands together, but this time it was a wider, more deliberate motion, as if she were gathering wordly energy around her.
She then thrust her palms forward, unleashing an unstoppable, conical wave of vibrating Aether energy.
This attack was a masterpiece of terrifying control. The shockwaves didn't just travel; they fed upon themselves, the vibrating particles stacking and amplifying in resonance, growing exponentially more destructive with every inch they traveled. It was an avalanche of resonant oblivion.
The Silver Puppets shone even brighter, their processors identifying the incoming wave as an extinction-level threat. In a final, desperate gambit, their Ice Aether swords swelled, growing into massive, curved glaives of absolute zero. They smashed their weapons down in unison against the oncoming shockwave.
The resulting clash was a cataclysm. A tremendous, earth-shattering impact shook the entire facility to its core, a deafening stalemate of opposing absolutes.
The Silver Puppets trembled violently, cracks spreading like spiderwebs across their entire bodies as they struggled to contain the stacked vibrations tearing them apart from the inside out.
All the while, Lyra stood calmly, her feet planted, watching the spectacle with a faint, predatory smile, completely unaffected by the apocalyptic aftershocks rippling back from the epicenter.
And in that moment of supreme conflict, an intense, golden heat cut through everything.
Orion, drawing on his true, refined power just as Lyra had, stood poised. He held a dazzling spear made not of ice, but of pure, hard light—a blade forged from the heart of a star, its edge honed to a monomolecular level.
With a simple, economical thrust, an unfathomable lance of sharp, photonic Aether was unleashed.
It didn't target the puppets. It targeted the clash itself.
With a series of shattering, deafening explosions, the stalemate was annihilated. Lyra's stacked shockwaves were pulverized into raw, chaotic energy. The giant Ice Aether glaives were turned to ethereal dust.
The beam of light, now unopposed, continued its path, striking both Silver Puppets simultaneously. A thunderous explosion howled as they were sent flying backward like soaring bullets of molten slag. They smashed into the far wall with enough force to leave two nine-foot-deep indentations, sliding down to the floor as ruined, twitching heaps. Their blue lights flickered once, then extinguished forever.
The silence that followed was absolute.