The volcanic crater fell into a terrifying, frozen silence. The only sound was the crackle of residual embers from the evaporated Ashen Demon King.
Tyler Vance lay collapsed in the black dirt, his knees shaking so violently they rattled against his star-iron armor. His mind had completely shattered.
A Level 50 Boss—a creature that had slaughtered three of his elite teammates and pushed thirty of the academy’s top students to the brink of death—had been deleted by a casual flick of a finger.
High above the arena outside, the hundred thousand spectators were in a state of absolute, chaotic hysteria.
Guild leaders were screaming into their communication devices, demanding background checks on Ethan Reed.
Down in the crater, Ethan walked toward Tyler, his footsteps slow and heavy. Every time his boot struck the ground, the ambient gravity dropped, forcing the surrounding students to crash flat onto their stomachs, gasping for air.
"Ethan... wait... you can’t touch me!" Tyler shrieked, scrambling backward like a frantic crab.
He pointed a trembling finger at the floating mana drones recording the scene. "The entire city is watching! The Vice-Principal! My father! If you touch me, it’s a capital crime! You’ll be executed by the high court!"
Ethan stopped just two feet away, looking down at him with those pitch-black, bottomless eyes.
"Executed?" Ethan murmured, a cold, mocking smirk playing on his lips. He looked directly into the lens of the nearest floating broadcast drone. "Let them try."
Before Tyler could even blink, Ethan raised his hand and delivered a backhanded slap.
PAAAAANG!!!
Tyler’s premium A-Rank star-iron helmet—worth millions of Credits—shattered into a cloud of metallic dust. The sheer kinetic force of the hit spun Tyler through the air like a top before he slammed face-first into the volcanic rock, losing half his teeth instantly.
"Stop it! Ethan Reed, cease your actions immediately!"
A booming, amplified voice roared from the sky. The space right above the crater ripped open, and the Academy Vice-Principal, a Level 70 S-Rank Mage named Marcus Vance, stepped through a spatial portal.
His face was twisted in a mixture of absolute rage and panic. Beside him were three high-ranking Vance family elders.
Marcus looked at his bloodied, convulsing nephew on the ground, then glared at Ethan with murderous intent. "You dare assault a core heir of the Vance family on a live broadcast? You trash F-rank criminal! Turn off the stream! Shut down the broadcast arrays immediately!" Marcus roared to the technicians outside.
But the broadcast wouldn’t shut down. Miles away in the Central District, Julian Cross smiled darkly as his elite hacker mages locked down the entire stadium’s network, ensuring the world saw every single second of the Vance family’s humiliation.
"Ethan Reed, drop your weapons and submit, or I will execute you right here for treason against the academy!" Marcus bellowed, raising a massive golden staff that surged with destructive thunder magic.
"Execute me?" Ethan asked calmly, taking his hands out of his trench coat pockets. The two obsidian daggers—Shadow Sovereign’s Twin Blades (SS-Rank)—materialized in his palms, bleeding a dense, sentient black mist that instantly choked out Marcus’s thunder mana.
Ethan turned to Cassandra. "Handle the elders. Leave the old bird to me."
"By your command, My Lord," Cassandra replied, her voice echoing with a freezing, absolute-zero chill.
She stepped forward, her snow-white hair billowing. She didn’t just draw a weapon; she activated her newly evolved SSS-Rank talent, Primordial Glacial Divinity.
With a wave of her hand, an apocalyptic wave of blue ice erupted from the ground.
The three Level 65 Vance family elders didn’t even have time to cast a defensive shield before they were instantly encased in solid blocks of primordial ice, frozen solid into pristine, unmoving statues right on the live stream.
Marcus’s jaw dropped in absolute horror. "Three Level 65 elders... frozen in one shot? What kind of monster are you?!"
"You talk too much for a dead man," Ethan whispered.
He moved. Backed by his 6,700+ Agility attribute, Ethan became an instantaneous streak of midnight. He appeared directly in Marcus’s blind spot, his twin blades executing the SS-Rank Void-Severing Asura Slash.
Marcus frantically triggered his ultimate defensive spell, Thunder Emperor’s Aegis, a massive gold barrier that could withstand a nuclear blast. But Ethan’s 10x damage multiplier from Eternal Domain made the void slash absolute.
CRACK!!!
The gold S-rank barrier shattered like cheap glass. The crescent of pure void energy tore right through Marcus’s legs, cleanly severing them at the knees.
"AAAAARGH!" the Level 70 S-Rank Vice-Principal screamed in agony, crashing into the dirt, clutching his bleeding stumps as his golden staff clattered away.
Ethan stood over the groveling Vice-Principal, placing the tip of his pitch-black obsidian blade right against Marcus’s throat, forcing the camera drones to zoom in perfectly on the man’s terrified, tear-streaked face.
The hundred thousand people in the Grand Arena outside went entirely, completely numb. A Level 70 S-Rank academy titan had been systematically dismantled in less than three seconds by a student they had called trash an hour ago.
"The Vance family wanted to play a game of survival inside this rift," Ethan said, his cold voice broadcasting to millions of households across the continent. "Consider this my official response. From this day forth... the city belongs to me."