The air inside the Oval Arena grew taut, a bowstring pulled to the breaking point. Thousands of spectators held their breath, their lungs frozen in anticipation as the final grains of hope began to slip through the commoners’ fingers.

  Then, a shimmer of light trembled in the challenger’s tunnel.

  A roar of raw emotion erupted from the stands. A messy-haired boy in the pristine white uniform of a first-year stepped into the light. His blue eyes were calm as a mountain lake, seemingly deaf to the collision of jeers and cheers. Behind him followed two figures in identical attire, their faces hidden behind cold, expressionless iron masks.

  “Rein!”

  The name thundered from the commoner side, a desperate incantation to ward off the pressure of the noble houses. Rein didn’t look up. He walked with a small spell-bird circling his head, chirping in rhythmic notes that felt absurdly cheerful against the life-and-death stakes.

  He led his masked companions to the center of the field. A judge, draped in long white robes, stepped onto the scarred bedrock to summon the leaders. Rein raised his staff, moving into position opposite William Sterling. The highborn heir gripped Stormcaller with unyielding arrogance. As their gazes met, a physical weight rolled outward—a pressure so dense the front-row spectators felt it prickle against their skin.

  The judge recited the rules, his voice amplified until it echoed like a funeral knell. The rights and dignity of every commoner mage now rested on the shoulders of this enigmatic first-year.

  The judge’s hand snapped down.

  “Begin!”

  All six surged forward. Troposphere-tier spells chained together in a blinding blur of elemental light. The mana density warped the air, turning the fight into a shimmering haze of violence.

  But the initial spark burned out fast. To the thousands watching, it became painfully clear that Rein’s side wasn’t just retreating—they were being dismantled. The gap wasn’t just skill; it was the “blessing” of noble blood and the artifacts it could buy.

  Boris saw the problem from the stands. Storm Surge, in Victoria Montague’s hands, wasn’t just a mana storage; it was a catalyst. It altered the cohesion of the water itself. A simple crescent Wave Slash transformed into a vibrating, high-frequency arc—a blade of liquid power. The massive curve of water slammed into the two masked mages. The force hit like a falling mountain, launching them across the field. They hit the stone wall with a sickening crack, their Magic Armor shattering like glass. They slumped to the ground, limp.

  “Cheaters!” the commoners screamed, but their voices were drowned by the storm.

  Rein darted and twisted, his back slick with sweat. He tried to channel Lightning Bolt with Delay Casting through his staff—the finisher that had dominated the AGMT.

  It did nothing.

  Stormcaller acted like a localized black hole for electricity. It swallowed the charge Rein released, fed it through a glowing rune-circuit, and hurled the stolen power back. A blinding white bolt detonated the bedrock at Rein’s feet, scorching the stone black and sending jagged fragments flying.

  Rein threw himself aside. He glanced at his fallen teammates, his calm mask finally shattering into panic. He turned toward the judges, his voice a frantic shout.

  “This won’t work! I surren—”

  The last syllable died in his throat.

  A cold like a void speared through his back. A massive scythe of pure darkness—woven from living shadow—punched through his chest. Bright red blood erupted, soaking into his white uniform, drowning the fabric in crimson.

  The arena erupted in chaos. People surged to their feet. Some screamed until their voices cracked; others simply stared, hands over their mouths as if to keep reality from entering.

  Rein’s voice came out as a wet, broken groan. Blood flooded his mouth, thick and hot. He coughed, his eyes blown wide with denial as the shadow-scythe lifted him off his feet. He struggled for a heartbeat—two—and then his strength collapsed. He went still.

  A graveyard silence settled over the Oval Arena.

  The commoners’ hero was dead, and the hope he carried had been extinguished by the cruelest shadow the Academy had ever seen.

  “So the part where you said I’m the heart of the plan—was that a lie?”

  Sophia’s scream tore through her raw throat. Her breath was scalding fire in her lungs as her boots hammered against the uneven floor of the dungeon. Every stride was a battle against the pressure of the deep. Behind her, the sound of hundreds of chitinous claws raked the rock—a nightmare closing in.

  [It wasn’t a lie. You really are important,] Rein replied through the Mana Resonance Link. The flat, clinical calm in his voice made Sophia want to see red.

  [The research notes are specific,] Rein continued. [This centipede has a predatory instinct for Stratosphere-tier mages. It feeds on dense mana to catalyze its own evolution. The problem is that a diluted Troposphere-tier signature like mine isn’t enough to make it commit. It needs a high-density target to go all-out.]

  Sophia’s face went hot, the rage spreading all the way to the tips of her ears.

  “You lunatic! So I’m just premium bait now? And this ‘small obstacle’—what is that supposed to be?”

  [According to the schematics, the fourth floor has a dedicated transit shaft straight to the surface,] Rein said, his voice a rapid-fire attempt to smother the fire he’d lit in her mind. [The mechanisms have been jammed for centuries, but don’t worry. I’ve already calculated the fix. Now, just try to keep up.]

  Grinding her teeth, Sophia burst into the chamber Rein had designated. Her Eagle Eyes skill snapped on by reflex. Her pupils dilated, turning the pitch-black cavern into a world as sharp and grey as a winter morning.

  It was a colossal vertical shaft, three hundred feet across, plunging upward into an infinite throat of darkness. She swept her gaze around the perimeter. Nothing. No door, no stairs, no shifting gears. And most importantly…

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  There was no sign of the messy-haired mastermind.

  “Where the hell are you?!” she screamed. The shout echoed up the stone, a lonely sound in the deep.

  “Up here,” a voice called from above.

  Hundreds of feet overhead, Rein sat with his legs dangling from a shimmering platform of Density-Modified Levitation. He was calmly chewing on a sandwich—looking for all the world like he was taking a lunch break at a Vitreol Shop—and waved at her with maddening laziness. High above him, a boulder the size of a small house was wedged firmly into the shaft, sealing their escape like a cork in a bottle.

  The ground shuddered. A booming tremor rolled through the tunnel Sophia had just fled. The centipede was coming. The stink of blood and the crushing weight of its mana thickened the air until even breathing felt like inhaling wet wool.

  Sophia shook her head in bleak disbelief. She looked up at the smug planner perched in safety, her eyes burning with murderous intent.

  “Survive first,” she hissed, her voice trembling. “And then I’m going to collect interest on this debt, you little bastard.”

  She crouched. Wind-aspected mana condensed beneath her soles, a coiled spring of kinetic potential. She prepared to launch just as the hundred-legged calamity shrieked—a sound that clawed at the nerves of the entire dungeon.

  Out in the arena—

  no longer a dueling ground, but an execution yard—

  Rein’s body hung limp. He was speared through the chest by the massive scythe of the Shadow Reaper. The shadow-construct turned slowly, almost theatrically, as if presenting its trophy to the high-ranking Student Council members.

  “This is the cost of offending your betters!” William Sterling thundered, his voice thick with the intoxication of triumph.

  Behind him, Isabella Vane—the Darkness Princess—stepped from the gloom. Her emerald eyes were cold as polar ice, fixed on Alexander and the Winter Faction.

  “I kept my promise, Alexander,” Isabella said.

  Though her voice wasn’t loud, a frigid dark mana threaded through it, making the temperature in the Oval Arena plummet.

  The noble stands erupted in waves of applause, hungry for the ruthlessness. But from the commoner stands came only sobbing and curses. The commoners had to watch their hero butchered, and their disappointment curdled into a dark, visceral hatred.

  Isabella did not flinch. She stood like a marble statue, unmoved by the voices painting her as a demon.

  High above, Alexander propped his chin on a fist. He did not look pleased. His thick brows were drawn together as he stared at the body dangling from the shadow-scythe. Beside him, Oliver Pembroke leaned in, his necromancer-black robes rustling.

  “This… isn’t what we agreed on, Alexander. Did Isabella go too far?”

  “She said she’d ‘handle’ him,” Charlotte muttered, her tone tight. “She didn’t say she’d execute him. If he’s dead, the optics of this plan might spiral out of control.”

  Alexander remained silent for a moment, his own mana rippling in an unreadable rhythm. Then he spoke, his voice as indifferent as cold steel.

  “So be it. Either way, the Council wins. Losing a pawn isn’t the end of the world.”

  He rose, his presence rolling off him like a physical weight as he walked to the edge of the tier to signal the judges.

  In the commoner stands, the mood was hollow. Boris stood rigid, veins bulging along his forearms as he fought the urge to leap onto the field. Beside him, Mira was drifting. Her eyes were unfocused, her lips moving in a frantic, repeated whisper.

  “Rein… where did you go…”

  The three white-robed judges were stepping onto the field for the closing rites when the world suddenly shuddered. It started as a vibration in the soles of their feet and swelled into a full-bodied quake.

  Stone ground against stone with a thunderous roar.

  Isabella’s instincts screamed. She felt a violent turbulence of mana rising from directly beneath her. She, William, and Victoria sprang back at maximum speed.

  The Shadow Reaper dissolved into mist and released “Rein’s” body. As the corpse fell toward the ground, the two masked teammates—who everyone had assumed were finished—snapped upright with mechanical precision. They lunged for the blood-soaked body at the exact moment the arena floor exploded.

  The blast hit like a geological cannon.

  A colossal centipede’s head burst through two feet of solid bedrock as if it were parchment. Chunks of rock flew outward like artillery shrapnel. A gaping maw, packed with thousands of razor teeth, chewed at the air. In a single, blurred motion, the monster swallowed Rein, the masked team-mates, and a storm of debris, dragging them all back down into its dark, hungry throat.

  The brutality of the moment pulverized every scrap of logic and imagination. A collective silence fell over the thousands of mages in the stands—a vacuum of shock where words died in throats.

  The centipede’s body, hundreds of feet of churning chitin, shot into the sky like a titanic arrow. It slammed into the arena’s protective barrier—a shield rated to withstand Primary Stratosphere-tier strikes—and shredded it as easily as wet parchment.

  The hundred-legged reaper was in a state of unadulterated frenzy. One of its massive, multi-faceted eyes had been ruined by the very boy it had fixated on.

  Rein and Sophia clung to the creature’s head, hanging suspended in a howling gale. Rein clamped his jaw tight and drove Nighty—now in a humming saber form—deep into the monster’s eye socket. He used the embedded blade as a single, desperate anchor. His other hand gripped Sophia’s so tightly his veins stood out like thick cords.

  They channeled Might Enhance through their limbs to simulate brute-force strength, stacking Magic Shield and Magic Armor to their absolute limits to survive the bone-rattling impacts of the ascent.

  [LIZ: Millimeter-precision coordinates confirmed! We have surfaced in the geographic center of the arena, Rein!]

  Rein groaned inwardly as the data flashed across his vision.

  I said “near” the arena, LIZ. Not “through” it. If the Academy invoices me for the bedrock, I’m declaring bankruptcy.

  “You idiot, REIN—Hnghhh!” Sophia’s scream was almost inaudible over the dust storm and the wind that slapped her face raw. Her orange ponytail was a mess of grit and stone chips. She had never imagined that an “emergency exit” involved hitching a ride on a Disaster-class monster and drilling through two thousand feet of earth.

  [When I scouted ahead while you were playing bait, I found a rockfall blocking the primary route,] Rein replied through the Link. Even now, his mental “voice” remained annoyingly clinical. [I simply used a little kinetic creativity. I figured the centipede could act as our pneumatic drill.]

  “It’s your insane ‘creativity’ that’s the problem!” Sophia yelled back, gagging as her mind replayed the sight of the arena explosion. “I watched that thing swallow some poor guy whole—it was disgusting! It looked just like—”

  She froze, her Eagle Eyes replaying the high-resolution image in her mind. The realization hit her like a physical blow. She jerked her gaze to Rein’s face, inches from her own.

  [Yeah,] Rein said flatly. [That was a Shapeshifter. A temporary iteration of myself.]

  “What?!”

  “Talk later,” Rein snapped, urgency finally bleeding into his tone. “If we don’t drop this thing right now, this arena—and half the campus—is going to be rubble.”

  Above them, the centipede began to coil in midair like a black dragon. Its hundreds of segments were wrapped in dense, purple-black mana, which radiated a destructive pressure. It was a weight that felt like it had been dragged out of the deepest pit of hell. The roar that followed didn’t just vibrate in the air; it thrummed deep in their chests, heavy enough to bruise.

  Below, the stunned spectators snapped into a panicked stampede.

  William Sterling stood amid the ruin of his triumph, his hands shaking so badly that Stormcaller nearly slipped from his grip.

  “This is impossible,” he whispered, his arrogance replaced by raw, trembling disbelief.

  “An A-rank monster? No… that mana pressure is off the charts. It’s a Disaster-class. How is it here?”

  These entries expand the lore and mechanics introduced in this chapter.

  Completely optional—read only if you enjoy diving deeper into the system.

  Magic Weapons

  Storm Surge (Update)

  Storm Surge is not merely a mana reservoir. As shown here, it acts as a catalyst that alters water cohesion and oscillation, transforming a basic water slash into a high-frequency, vibrating “liquid blade” with drastically amplified impact force.

  Stormcaller (Update)

  Stormcaller behaves like a localized “electricity sink,” swallowing Lightning output and returning it through an internal rune circuit. This counters Rein’s Delay-Casted Lightning Bolt by reflecting the stolen charge back as a detonation strike.

  Magic & Spell Techniques

  High-Frequency Wave Slash (Water Spell)

  An enhanced water-blade strike generated through Storm Surge’s catalyst effect. The wave behaves less like a “splash” and more like a resonant cutting arc, hitting with “falling mountain” force and shattering Magic Armor on impact.

  Density-Modified Levitation (Rein’s Levitate Variant)

  A modified levitation platform capable of supporting stable “standing/sitting” surfaces at extreme heights, behaving like a solid floating scaffold. Rein uses it as a resting perch inside a massive vertical shaft.

  Monsters

  Colossal Centipede (Update)

  The centipede is drawn to dense, high-tier mana signatures and commits fully only when the target’s mana density is “worth evolving for.” Rein explicitly frames Sophia as the necessary high-density lure.

  Monster Classification

  Disaster-Class Monster (Reclassification)

  Reclassified on-site from A-rank based on mana pressure, barrier damage, and uncontrolled destructive behavior. This term implies a category of threat that can devastate large zones, not merely win fights.