The descent past the unpolished iron door was a physical shock. The air in the narrow corridor seed to entirely lack the concept of temperature. The opulent starlight marble of the Viceroy's palace gave way abruptly to walls of dense, unpolished basalt that swallowed light like a starving beast.
I didn't move my physical body from the Void. I kept my true self heavily Veiled, anchored tightly behind my proxy, and instead sent a highly compressed, semi-tangible 'Voice' of my [Symphony] down the corridor, effectively projecting my consciousness while keeping my internal kingdom safely upstairs.
The basalt tunnel ended abruptly in a small, spherical chamber lit by a single, hovering orb of grey light. The man in the charcoal linen robe stood by the orb, tracing his fingers through the dust on a stone table.
"You project your intent rather than risk your Soul," the man noted without turning around. His voice carried that sa deep, resonant silence I had felt upstairs. "Pragmatic. A survival trait the Pure born Scions completely lack. I am known as Oram."
I paused, keeping my projection guarded. The weight of his presence was staggering. He wasn't a System construct or a local Ascendant playing politics. He felt like a remnant of sothing much older.
"You're here for a sponsorship," I stated, abandoning the subservient drone of the proxy. "Looking to draft a fellow Void user before the Viceroy claims them?"
"We do not draft," Oram replied, a hint of disdain coloring his tone. "My Faction holds a delicate, heavily enforced treaty with the Architects. We do not seed our Scions into their Integration arenas, and they do not send their 'Adjudicators' into our territories. We exist in a state of ard, polite stagnation."
He turned. He didn't look offended. In fact, as his lightless grey eyes t my projected form, I saw a familiar, unsettling glimr — a profound, almost religious devotion that mirrored Syntheia's fanaticism, though heavily tempered.
"However, a mutual acquaintance… a rather eccentric archivist who enjoys hoarding cosmic histories… suggested I breach protocol and observe the Mythic Five in this specific sector."
"Thoth," I realized aloud. The ancient, librarian god who had guided towards Crystal City and provided crucial context regarding my Mana.
"Indeed," Oram smiled faintly, inclining his head in a gesture of profound respect that made my skin crawl. "He ntioned that a curiosity had manifested. A hybridized spark that refused to be categorized. He believed the long-awaited Scion of a new Path had finally drawn breath. When I saw the Adjudicator attempt to force a Binding Will upon you tonight, I prepared to intervene. A forced contract upon an Inheritor is an act of war, treaty or not."
He looked directly at the spot where my projected consciousness hovered.
"But then, I watched you weave a perfect falsehood out of ambient resonance and discarded mana. You essentially handed a god a blank piece of paper and convinced him he owned your soul. It was… remarkably elegant."
"It was necessary," I replied, the tension in my projected voice easing slightly, but only slightly. Trust was a luxury I couldn't afford. "The System is designed to feed the strong, and the Viceroy is using it to pad his own army. I intend to walk out of here unchained."
"And so you shall," Oram nodded, his voice dropping into a reverent whisper. "But walking out is rely the first step. When you hit the Ascendant threshold, the Pri System will no longer treat you as a localized anomaly to study. You will beco a cosmic variable. The empires that sponsor these wars… they will notice. You will need resources, knowledge, and safe harbor that a fledgling planet simply cannot provide."
He reached into his robe and pulled out a small, jagged piece of dark glass. It was a conceptual key.
"You do not trust , and you are wise not to," Oram said, placing the glass gently on the table. "You have spent your entire Integration fighting for every breath. I will not demand your fealty or offer you a poisoned chalice. This is an invitation. When the Crucible concludes, and if you still draw breath… use this key. It will open a pathway to a sanctuary where the Adjudicator's laws hold no weight. We can discuss your proper ascension then."
I looked at the glass. It thrumd with a familiar, comforting resonance.
"I appreciate the offer," I said, my projection reaching out to carefully absorb the key into my [Void Star's] internal storage. "I'll keep it in mind."
"Ensure you survive the Crucible," Oram murmured, bowing deeply from the waist, his form beginning to blur. "The true war has not begun."
He dissolved into the shadows, leaving alone in the cold basalt chamber.
I imdiately retracted my projected consciousness, snapping back into my heavily Veiled body standing in my inner world's Void plane.
"Eren?" Crys' voice was tight with anxiety through the link. "The Adjudicator is calling the first matches. It's starting."
I blinked, re-orienting myself to the blinding opulence of the Gala. "I'm back. Did I miss anything?"
"Just the Scion of House Lumis completely obliterating a Solo-climber from Sector 8 in under thirty seconds," Forn scowled, his fur bristling as he watched the massive, shimring projection screens hovering above the banquet tables.
The 1-on-1 Phase had no stakes, similar to the 16-on-16 death match rather than the battle royale. It wasn't about survival; it was purely about performance. The survivors were placed into a bracket, seeded intentionally to pair the heavily sponsored Scions against the "lucky" outliers.
The true purpose of this phase was painfully obvious. It was another shot at an audition. Hovering outside the translucent golden do of the arena were hundreds of 'Spectator Galleons' — enormous, opulent vessels built from polished ivory and glowing mana-steel. They belonged to the rchant kings, imperial ambassadors, militaries, and imperial lords from across ten sectors. They were looking for the most lethal, the most efficient, and the most moldable assets to purchase and bind before Ascension.
The arena for this phase was a massive, floating disc of polished white gold, completely devoid of cover or environntal hazards. It was a sterile, perfectly balanced stage designed to showcase raw Mythic execution to the highest bidders.
"Match Four: Crysanthe of the House of Opal against Daelon of the Sun Forge," the Adjudicator's voice bood.
"Guess it's my turn," Crys projected, a predatory smile spreading across her crystalline face as she stepped onto the teleportation pad.
Her opponent was a heavily armored Vanguard from a renowned rcantile faction — a massive, hulking brute wielding a Tower-Shield that glowed with overlapping kinetic wards. He looked like a walking bunker, his armor exuding a dense, solar heat.
The mont the match began, Daelon slamd his shield down, activating his Mythic skill, a skill my [Omnipresence] identified as [Citadel of the Undying Flare]. A do of semi-solid, localized solar-stasis expanded around him, essentially rendering him immune to physical impact by incinerating anything that crossed the threshold.
Crys simply floated three inches off the ground and tilted her head.
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She activated her newest, most combat oriented Mythic skill, [Chrono-Severance].
She attacked the concept of the shield's duration. I watched through my [Lattice Perception] as the athyst light of her Mythic skill wrapped around the stasis do. She didn't forcefully try to break it; she simply 'aged' the mana sustaining it by a thousand years in a single microsecond.
The unbreakable fortress groaned, flickered, and shattered into dust as its durability expired instantly.
Daelon stared, dumbfounded, as his ultimate defense evaporated. Before he could raise his physical shield, Crys appeared directly in front of him, having stepped completely outside the tiline, and flicked him in the center of his chest plate with a single, crystalline finger.
The concentrated temporal force behind the flick sent the massive Vanguard flying backward, skipping across the white-gold arena like a skipped stone until he crashed into the barrier, unconscious.
The match lasted four more minutes before Daelon was defeated.
The ballroom erupted in a mixture of shocked gasps and frantic, aggressive bidding from the spectator galleons above. The screens flashed with rapidly escalating nurical values next to Crysanthe's na. She reappeared beside , looking profoundly bored.
"He relied entirely on the System structure of his skill, sothing I also used to always do before..." she muttered, "Understanding, asuring, calibrating, and resonating or whatever you call it with the different types of Mana is scarily too important. We probably should spend more ti learning that Sylvaris stuff, Eren," she then added through the Void link.
I definitely agreed.
"Match Seven: Forn of the Murk-Lanes vs. Solara of House Solis," the Adjudicator announced.
Forn's match was a much ssier affair. Solara was a Scion of light-affinity, a fast, evasive caster who peppered the arena with searing, blinding beams of concentrated plasma. Forn, operating purely on survival instincts, spent the first five minutes scrambling frantically, using his shadow-daggers to deflect the worst of the burns.
The Gilded Heirs in the ballroom laughed, viewing it as a prolonged execution.
But Forn, to his credit, wasn't panicking. He was working. Every ti he deflected a beam, he left a tiny, microscopic sliver of his shadow-essence embedded in the floor.
When Solara finally paused to cycle her mana, preparing a massive, arena-clearing Mythic strike, Forn snapped his fingers.
The tiny slivers of shadow-essence didn't explode. They linked together, forming a massive, complex sealing-ward directly beneath the Scion's feet. The [Shadow-Bind] skill locked Solara's mana-circulation instantly, causing her massive spell to violently backfire. The Scion was engulfed in her own plasma, screaming as her protective avatar shattered, ending the match.
The laughter in the ballroom died instantly, replaced by furious muttering. A 'rat' had just outsmarted a favored daughter.
"Match Twelve: Eren Kai of the Void Star vs. Morvan of the Crimson Spire."
I felt a cold thrill of anticipation as my na was called. Morvan was a towering mass of cracked, lava-veined skin and burning hatred, a demon lord from a sector adjacent to the Cinder Throne.
I stepped onto the teleportation pad, keeping my proxy securely layered over my true form.
I materialized on the white-gold disk. Morvan recognized my proxy from the previous clash — the "support" gravity mage.
"I will boil the marrow from within your bones," Morvan roared, his Domain flaring into a blinding inferno with a signature my Hunger was hungrily demanding.
He didn't wait for the starting bell. He slamd both hands into the floor, activating [Cataclysm's Maw]. The entire arena instantly turned into a boiling sea of magma. The heat was conceptual, designed to burn not just flesh, but the mana within a cultivator's veins.
I let the facade drop slightly, just enough to reveal the true nature of my impossibly high fire resistance. I didn't use the Fla of my Domain to fight his fire since my natural reinforced Body was enough to deal with the environnt; I simply unleashed the [Void Star's Hunger].
He then sent a wave of the magma using a combination of another Mythic skill to superheat it into temperatures reaching the core of Old Earth's sun. It also sohow teleported, through a strange, subtle Fire Concept I couldn't identify, Veiled by a Mythic Authority purely focused on bypassing my Domain for a microsecond. The fire instantly engulfed .
I simply opened the localized partition of my internal continent. I commanded the space of a thousand feet around to Consu.
The roaring wave of conceptual Fire surrounding simply… vanished. The raw, violent energy sucked directly into the dark void within my Soul, instantly converted into clean, dense Essence that refueled my reserves.
Morvan's fiery eyes widened in disbelief. He pushed harder, dumping massive amounts of his Tier 7 core into the Mythic skills, trying to overwhelm my capacity through attrition.
I stood in the center of his inferno, completely untouched, feeling the satisfying, heavy warmth of the absorbed mana settling into my soul.
"Your fire lacks density," I projected, my voice cold and echoing across the arena.
I didn't want to drag this out. I didn't want to show the spectators the full extent of my skills, nor did I want to reveal the Fla that marked as a true anomaly.
I drained his mana reserves as quickly as possibly then activated [Vault of the Void] while subtly interweaving [Omnipresence] Essence using Sylvaris arts. I opened a portal directly beneath Morvan's feet.
The demon dropped, expecting to fall into a sub-space layer where he could easily use his flight or fla teleportation skills to escape. But I didn't send him to sub-space. I sent him to a specific coordinate in the highest atmospheric pressure point located ten miles above the arena, a space I had mapped during the descent.
He reappeared high in the sky, completely disoriented, and the sudden, overwhelming crush of the atmosphere hit him like a physical blow. He plumted, his lava-skin cracking under the imnse kinetic pressure of his own fall, amplified a hundredfold by my Void gravity manipulation, while also instantly Consuming any attempts at using mana.
He hit the white-gold floor of the arena with the force of a cataclysmic teorite, the impact shattering his avatar instantly.
The match was over.
"ASPIRANT KAI VICTORIOUS. OPTIONAL EXIT AVAILABLE."
I imdiately triggered the opt-out clause. The 1-on-1s were purely for show, and the System only required us to prove our worth in a single duel before allowing us to withdraw from the remaining bracket.
I returned to the ballroom, the silence of the crowd far more palpable this ti. I hadn't used a flashy, visually stunning Mythic. I had simply diverted a demon's attack and dropped him on his head using basic spatial manipulation.
To the untrained eye, it looked like I had gotten lucky, my Void nature being a direct counter while having the benefit of a stronger Domain and a higher Authority. To the Ascendants and the wealthy sponsors watching from above, it just looked... efficient.
"That was almost too subtle, Eren," Crys smirked as I rejoined them near the balcony.
"It should be okay, their strongest Perception focused cultivators might have noticed sothing but it shouldn't be enough, besides, the Veiling only shows basic capabilities and blocks most things already," I replied, accepting a fresh goblet of wine from a passing attendant just to maintain the illusion of my participation.
The duels continued for another two hours, the remaining Aspirants violently showcasing their destructive capabilities, desperate to impress the floating galleons above. I watched ticulously, my [Lattice Perception] recording every spell, every aura-shift, and every physical tell of the survivors.
I reaffird quickly that while 'Mythic' was the highest asurable tier of System skill, the tag was incredibly broad. A Mythic skill dedicated to improving the fertility of a planet's soil was functionally useless in this arena, but absolutely essential for a thriving civilization. The combat Mythics on display here were brutal, but many were painfully linear — reliant entirely on raw mana output rather than conceptual understanding.
They were very powerful, but they were also predictable. I wondered where these local Scions ranked compared to the elites of the Greater Universe.
"PHASE THREE: THE MARKET OF RIT," the Adjudicator announced, his golden form descending to hover above the ballroom. "THE SPONSORSHIP NEGOTIATIONS ARE NOW OPEN. REVIEW YOUR BIDS, ASPIRANTS. YOUR FUTURE AWAITS."
The projection screens above the galleons shifted, displaying a chaotic, rapidly scrolling list of offers. The air in the ballroom grew thick with tension and greed as the true business of the evening comnced. Representatives from the galleons began teleporting directly into the ballroom, swarming the remaining Aspirants.
My proxy interface chid.
I opened the notification panel, expecting a handful of mid-tier mining consortiums or rcenary bands interested in my 'gravity' skills.
Instead, the panel practically exploded. Dozens of high-priority pings flooded my vision, the nas of ancient, powerful syndicates and noble houses lighting up the screen in different colors. The bids weren't just for sponsorship; most were aggressive, demanding offers of imnse wealth and resources in exchange for imdiate, absolute loyalty and subservience.
I froze, my eyes locking onto one specific notification that sat in the middle of the list, pulsing with a bright, golden light.
[Sponsorship Offer: Patriarch of House Vorr]
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