The Dowager had seen Pandora twisted by corruption.
She had watched kingdoms rise and fall.
She had stood at the edge of oblivion more tis than she could count.
But as she watched the two boys move through the tide of abominations, she felt a rare and unsettling truth settle into her chest.
She had no fra of reference for this.
For a long mont she simply stared, her breath caught sowhere between disbelief and awe.
’Am I sensing this wrong?’
The thought pressed in, sharp and insistent. But her senses had never failed her, not once in all her years.
These creatures were Rank 9. Monsters that could tear apart armies if left unchecked.
And yet they were collapsing around those boys like brittle leaves in a storm.
Her gaze fixed first on the red-haired one.
A corrupt beast lunged at him, tendrils snapping forward.
The Dowager blinked.
It was as if a slice of reality had been cut and moved.
One heartbeat the monster was mid-lunge.
In the next, its flesh blistered and charred, its body collapsing into ash before it ever touched him.
The boy barely bothered to lift his head.
Hands still resting in his pockets, he walked through the chaos as if strolling through a quiet courtyard.
Each creature that reached toward him simply erupted, their deaths silent and instantaneous.
Burned alive, without a gesture.
Without focus.
Without effort.
But what left her even more shaken was the boy with the shield.
He didn’t guard.
He didn’t brace.
In fact, his stance was so open it made her flinch every ti a corrupt creature swung at him.
Yet the attacks never landed.
Not because he dodged or redirected them, but because the world itself refused to let them strike.
Claws passed through him like mist.
A creature’s talons should have carved through flesh.
Instead, they cut nothing but air.
Then, without warning, the creature staggered back as a new wound tore across its own body.
The kind of wound the boy should have received.
The Dowager stared at him with a rising chill.
’This isn’t illusion... it’s a law-level phenonon. A reversal of harm? A displacent of fate? How is a child wielding sothing like this?’
The two of them carved through the swarm. Not with struggle nor with strategy.
But with the casual precision of beings who had long surpassed the limits of mortal progression.
Around her, the mist trembled under the pressure.
She exhaled slowly, feeling her heartbeat stutter before settling again.
"What happened..." she whispered, her voice barely carrying over the hush of disintegrating monsters.
"What happened in the three years I was gone?"
Her gaze drifted toward Leon, who remained calm and steady, as if this display was nothing more than a mild warm-up.
"When," she breathed, almost to herself,
"did the youths of Pandora beco this powerful?"
****
The Dowager watched the battlefield with a stunned quiet that settled sowhere deep in her chest.
The mist around the periphery trembled under the shock of what she was seeing.
For all the long years she had guarded this cursed place, for all the horrors she had endured, nothing compared to this. Eden and Adrian moved through the swarm of rank nine abominations as if they were dancing, as if this mont had been waiting for them.
What shocked her even more was the expressions on their faces.
They were smiling.
To them, this wasn’t a desperate fight inside corruption’s cradle.
It was freedom.
A chance to stretch power they had only just begun to understand.
They had never imagined fighting rank nine’s this early in their lifetis.
And they had certainly never imagined stepping into the divine stage so soon as well.
And yet here they were, two young n carving through a horde that could have erased entire cities.
All because of one person.
Leon Kael, their Captain and Overlord.
They had chosen their allegiance long ago, but here, surrounded by the worst the Hallow could offer, the vow they carried hardened into sothing absolute.
Adrian and Eden were resolved.
They would be his vanguards until the end of days.
A creature suddenly lunged for Eden.
But he simply let out a slow breath.
His eyes sharpened, and sothing ancient stirred.
His Lord Talent.
A corona of quiet heat wrapped around Eden as [Blaze Emperor’s Mandate] surged to life.
It wasn’t normal heat.
It wasn’t the warmth of fire or the glow of molten stone.
It was a fundantal warmth that belonged to existence itself.
Eden could feel the heat of every creature in the field, the heat held in the drifting air, the heat in Blessing perched on his shoulder, and most of all, the heat that breathed through the universe.
The heat that pushed the stars apart.
The heat carried in the slow crawl of cosmic expansion.
Eden moved his fingers slightly.
A tide of temperature vanished from the air around him.
And In a mont ti thickened.
The lunge of the creature slowed until it nearly stalled, trapped in a bubble where even motion felt reluctant to continue.
Once the beast was caught, Eden lifted his hand.
Corruption flowed through his fla, and he unleashed it in a quiet burst that roasted the monster from the inside out.
Ti snapped back into place, and the charred corpse collapsed in a single lifeless thud.
To others, it looked like the creature had jumped, burned, and died in a heartbeat.
Eden knew better.
He had bent the world for a mont.
He didn’t pause.
There were a hundred corrupt beasts, and fifty of them belonged to him.
His steps quickened.
He glanced at Blessing with a spark in his eyes.
"Let’s show the captain what we’ve been working on."
Blessing crossed her tiny arms and gave a delighted smile.
"The ancestor is sure to be pleased."
She drifted forward until she hovered in front of Eden’s chest.
The air trembled between them.
Eden’s bright red flas rose in spirals.
Blessing’s corrupt violet light pulsed in steady waves.
Together, they whispered the command.
"Blazing Void."
Both lights shot outward at once.
They collided, rged, and twisted into sothing neither fla nor corruption had ever been.
A new light erupted across the periphery, bright enough to make the mist recoil.
****
-Authors Note-
Mass release if we reach top 60 of golden ticket ranking.
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