The Monolith pulsed again, its surface shimring with new nas—new obstacles.
Rank 79.
Korin Dareth.
Riven's eyes narrowed as the na settled into place, glowing with a faint violet hue.
"Korin?" soone echoed from the crowd. "He's a barrier mage, right?"
"Yeah," another replied. "Known for being a pain to fight. Dual-core formation—barrier and force magic. Defensive first, but his counterstrikes are brutal."
Riven didn't blink.
The higher he climbed, the more the nas ant sothing. These weren't just placeholders or inflated egos wrapped in diocre mana control. These were contenders—sharpened through conflict, hardened by ti.
But still not Cassiel.
He stepped forward once more, his presence cutting through the thickened air like a drawn blade. The Elder looked up from the pedestal, nodded, and accepted the next offering of cores without a word. The ritual had grown silent now—efficient, seamless. Riven gave no grand announcents, and the Elder didn't waste breath repeating what everyone already knew.
A fresh summoning circle lit the floor.
The barrier shimred into place.
Korin appeared in a slow swirl of purple light, his robes long and layered with enchantnt glyphs, his forearms covered in tallic cuffs brimming with condensed runes. He wasn't flashy. He wasn't loud. But the mont his boots touched the dueling tiles, a pressure settled across the ring.
Not crushing—but solid. Like standing at the foot of a mountain.
Korin adjusted his sleeves and t Riven's gaze across the arena. "You're the one with the black fire, right?" His voice was calm, even. Not mocking. Just observant.
Riven didn't answer. He stepped into the ring with the sa unwavering gait, flas dancing faintly along his arm—not fully lit, not fully hidden.
"I figured." Korin rolled his shoulders. "I've been watching your fights. The others couldn't slow you down… I wonder if I can."
The Elder raised his hand.
"Begin."
Korin didn't move.
Not at first.
Instead, dozens of thin, translucent glyphs blood around him—barriers stacked upon barriers, forming a rotating lattice of mana that pulsed with quiet strength. Lines of force wove between them, turning defense into offense.
Riven moved forward, unbothered.
Flas rolled across his skin in slow, deliberate waves, coiling like a predator at rest.
He threw the first strike—a horizontal arc of fire ant to test range.
The fla slamd into the outermost barrier and rippled harmlessly across its surface.
No surprise.
Korin flicked his fingers, and the barrier collapsed inward like a hinge, redirecting the kinetic force. A pulse of compressed mana shot toward Riven like a spear.
He leaned sideways, letting it pass. It exploded behind him in a sharp burst of sound and light.
Korin lifted one hand and spoke under his breath. A second layer of barriers solidified around him—denser this ti, visibly reinforced with runes of binding and mana compression.
"You can't cut what you can't reach," Korin said calmly.
Riven exhaled once.
Then surged forward.
Flas burst in his wake as his foot hit the tile. His blade ignited mid-stride, abyssal fire roaring to life with a hiss that sent nearby students flinching back.
He struck the barrier head-on.
The impact rang like iron on glass.
And held.
But Riven didn't retreat.
Instead, his hand slid across the surface, and the flas—his flas—spilled over it like oil over water. They didn't explode. They sank.
The barrier began to flicker.
Korin's brow furrowed, and he pushed mana into the runes faster, drawing a third and fourth shield layer around him like armor.
Riven's expression remained unchanged.
A second slash. Then a third. Then another.
Each strike not with brute force—but with intention. Precision. The black fire didn't need to shatter—it needed ti. Ti to eat.
And it was eating.
The outer shields began to crumble. Slowly. Piece by piece.
Korin gritted his teeth and threw his hand out—projecting a force pulse ant to knock Riven back.
Riven slid away, only to reappear behind the ripple, charging low and fast, heat blurring his outline.
He struck again.
This ti, the barrier cracked.
A single fracture arced through it like lightning.
Korin scowled. "You're more persistent than I thought."
Riven answered with a burst of fla.
Crimson Mirage.
Afterimages exploded across the field.
Korin turned, trying to track them—barriers shifting in all directions, but not fast enough.
Riven ca from above.
He landed a spinning heel-kick against the final barrier, his foot wreathed in fire.
It shattered.
And Korin stumbled.
The black fla was already climbing his coat.
He tried to cast—tried to summon another glyph—but Riven was there.
One clean slash across the front of his robes. No wound. Just heat.
Too much heat.
Korin dropped to one knee, panting, the runes on his arms beginning to overload.
"Enough," the Elder called.
The barrier fell.
[Rank 79 Achieved – Riven Drakar]
Gasps followed—louder this ti. Harsher. As if so had truly believed he would be stopped here.
He hadn't.
Riven turned without a word and walked to the edge of the ring, flas dying down to flickering embers.
Nyx t him with a faint tilt of her head. "He almost made you work for it."
Riven didn't smile. "Almost."
The Monolith still glowed beside them. Still warm. Still waiting.
Another na waited behind it.
Another step closer to Cassiel.
Another step closer to going ho.
Riven rested his palm against the Monolith once more. Its glow pulsed like a steady heartbeat—rhythmic, asured, unrelenting.
He felt the fatigue settle faintly into his limbs, not enough to slow him, but enough to remind him: this climb wasn't without cost. Korin had lasted longer than the others. His magic wasn't built for offense, but his discipline, his structure—it had tested Riven's control.
Not his strength.
But his patience.
He welcod the pressure. The rising resistance. It ant he was getting closer.
The Monolith shimred, reacting to his mana signature. New nas spun across the surface, each one glowing brighter, heavier with weight.
Behind him, the crowd pressed closer, their murmurs rising in pitch. Students whispered nas now with reverence, so with fear. Others watched in silence, their eyes wide as they stared at the boy who had once been little more than a footnote—now a na carving its way toward the top.
They didn't understand.
He wasn't here to impress them.
He was here to finish sothing.
Nyx moved at his side, her presence quiet but steady. She hadn't spoken again since Korin's defeat, but her eyes hadn't left Riven once. She didn't need to ask what was next.
She already knew.
Riven's gaze slid across the next row of nas. His fingers curled slightly against the Monolith's surface as one flickering rank solidified before him.
Rank 59 – Lira Vonn.
No murmurs this ti.
Only silence.
Nyx tilted her head. "That one might be interesting."
Riven didn't reply. He was already walking toward the Elder. Another duel. Another test. Another na to burn away.
The Elder didn't even need a prompt this ti. The mont Riven handed over the next cluster of mana beast cores, the old man was already moving—preparing the circle, summoning the next opponent, marking the rank.
The crowd had fallen into a strange rhythm now. Not cheers. Not jeers. Just anticipation. A collective hush clung to the dueling grounds like fog, thicker with each victory, every rank shattered underfoot.
[Challenge Issued: Riven Drakar vs. Lira Vonn – Rank 59]
The Monolith flared.
Riven stepped into the ring.
Lira Vonn arrived in a burst of violet light, her silhouette rising smoothly from the arcane glyphs. She was tall, statuesque, with sharp cheekbones and braided silver hair that swung like a blade behind her.
But what drew attention most were the orbs floating behind her shoulders. Six of them—each a polished crystal core bound in mana rings, gently orbiting her like planets around a sun.
A spellcaster. Mid-to-long range, control specialist. Her type of fight wasn't about brute power—it was about controlling the battlefield.
"You've been busy," Lira said as she folded her arms, voice calm but cold. "But it's different up here. You don't just burn your way through the top sixty."
Riven didn't answer.
She raised a hand.
The six crystals lit up instantly, mana flowing through each in a different hue—wind, ice, lightning, force, water, and air. They shifted in rhythm, rotating around her in a constantly changing formation. A living array of elental precision.
The Elder gave a nod.
"Begin."
No hesitation.
Lira snapped her fingers. Two of the orbs surged outward—one of wind, one of arc lightning. The wind orb launched first, slicing through the air like a compressed disc, while the arc orb flared beside it, crackling with bright static energy.
Riven didn't dodge.
He stepped forward.
The wind disk hit—but lted on contact, swallowed in black fire that hissed across Riven's shoulders. The arc blast followed a heartbeat later and was consud just the sa, drawn into the curling abyssal heat leaking from beneath his cloak.
Lira narrowed her eyes.
Four more orbs activated.
She ford a layered storm of pressure—ice lancing toward his feet, a pulse of force from the right, a blade of condensed water from the left, lightning raining down from above in sharp bursts.
It was clean. Coordinated. Beautifully lethal.
And utterly ineffective.
Riven's fla surged as he advanced, heat blooming across the ring.
He ducked beneath the force blast, sidestepped the water blade, let the lightning strike—only for it to vanish into his aura. His body moved like fire incarnate, his steps fluid, calculated, unstoppable.
His sword ignited now—black fla coiling in full, burning with quiet hunger.
Lira took a step back.
"Fine," she murmured. "Let's see how you handle this."
The six orbs shot skyward, then locked into a complex formation above the platform. Lines of mana wove between them, forming a glowing lattice of control magic that pulsed with power.
At the center: Lira.
Her mana surged. A high-level formation designed to amplify multi-elent casting and pin down faster opponents through sheer volu and precision.
The vortex collapsed around Riven.
The arena scread with elental magic—whips of water, arcs of lightning, pressure bursts, frost spikes—all converging at once.
Still, Riven didn't retreat.
He lifted one hand, and the dark flas beneath him exploded upward, cloaking his body in a flickering veil of void-laced fla.
Then—he moved. Straight through the vortex, through the chaos—his form blurring as Crimson Mirage activated mid-stride, scattering afterimages in his wake like burning echoes.
Lira's eyes snapped between the flickering afterimages, trying to isolate the real Riven. But the heat distorted her vision, her array, her focus. The devouring pressure of his mana was warping her control, unraveling the perfect choreography of her spellwork.
Then he was inside the formation.
A single downward slash carved through the center orb. It shattered in a pulse of mana and collapsing elental threads.
Another orb burst a second later.
Lira gasped, staggering back as the formation collapsed in on itself. She began casting a fallback array—but Riven was already there.
His blade stopped just short of her throat—so close that Lira could feel the heat radiating off the abyssal flas coiled around the edge. They didn't roar or crackle. They whispered. A low, insidious hiss that seed to gnaw at the very air between them.
Lira's chest rose and fell in uneven breaths, her arms still half-raised, trembling. What remained of her elental array had already fizzled out into scattered trails of light behind her. Her robes were scorched at the hem. Her mana was frayed. And she knew—if Riven had swung a hair further, this match wouldn't have ended with surrender. It would've ended in silence.
The Elder raised his hand, his voice firm but calm, cutting through the lingering tension.
"Enough."
The mana barriers lowered with a soft hum, the dueling circle dimming as the magic faded from the platform.
And then the Monolith flared.
[Rank 59 Achieved – Riven Drakar]
For a mont, no one spoke.
No cheers. No gasps of awe.
Just a sharp intake of breath that seed to ripple across the gathered crowd like the first gust of wind before a storm.
Then the whispers began—not filled with disbelief, but dread.
He had broken into the top sixty now. Not with trickery. Not with luck.
With fire that didn't burn, but devoured. With movent that couldn't be tracked. With silence that threatened more than any shout ever could.
Gasps echoed across the Training Grounds—but they weren't from surprise anymore.
They were from fear.
From the realization that Riven Drakar wasn't just climbing the rankings.
He was claiming them.
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