The Central Arena of Aethelgard Academy was a vast bowl of silence beneath the midnight moon. It was cold and the air felt like it was waiting for something to happen.
The four Sun-Cores were currently powered down to a low hum. They looked like giant and unblinking eyes watching the sand. David Silver stood in the exact center of the dueling circle.
This was the same spot where he had defeated Sterling Greyjoy with a rusted piece of junk. Beside him was Rachel. She was a silver shadow in the darkness. Her eyes were shimmering with her spirit-sight as she scanned the perimeter for the Inquisitor’s patrol.
"The Sentinels are on a five-minute rotation," Rachel whispered.
Her voice was tight with a tension that David could feel through their mental link. "I have blinded the Great Eye in this sector, but it is like putting a bandage on a lighthouse. They will notice the gap soon. We have to be fast, David. If we get caught here, there will be no trial."
"Fast is my specialty," David answered.
His palms were sweating even though he tried to act cool. "Relatable humor, David. You are about to perform open-heart surgery on a world-ending summoning circle while standing in the middle of a target range.
If this were a career choice, my guidance counselor would have had a stroke. My parents would probably ask about the health insurance benefits."
— [Infinite Regeneration System] —
[Host Information]
[Name: David Silver]
[Life-form: Human / Engine-Bearer]
[System Note: Your ’Anxiety’ levels are currently providing a 12 percent boost to your ’Adrenaline’ output. I suggest you use that energy to focus. The runes are exactly four inches beneath your boots. Please try not to explode.]
David knelt on the ground. His fingers brushed the hard-packed sand. He activated Ghost-Hand Mastery and Reality Resonance at the same time. The world did not just change in his vision. It became transparent.
Beneath the sand, he saw the plumbing Barnaby had warned him about in the Archive. It was not a series of simple lines. It was a sprawling and jagged web of black mana.
It looked like oil, and it pulsed with a strange, hungry heat. It was like the body of a parasite wrapped around the arena’s foundations. It was a demonic thing from the depths of hell.
"Liora is not just summoning something," David murmured.
His golden-violet eyes traced the flow of the black oil. "She is replacing the local laws of physics with Void-logic. Every rune is an Edit command. She is telling the ground that it is no longer stone. She is telling it that it is a doorway for the Unspoken."
"Can you fix it?" Rachel asked.
She knelt beside him. She placed her hand near his. Her own mana acted as a stabilizing anchor. It was a cool and silver light that kept the black corruption from sensing David’s intrusion.
David reached out his mana-sense. He touched a single rune. The feedback was like sticking his hand into a blender! The Static core in his chest groaned. The Tier 8 complexity of the circle lashed out at his Tier 3 presence. It was too much for a Novice to handle.
"I cannot do it," David wheezed.
He pulled his hand back. His fingers were trembling and the tips were blackened by a flash of necrotic frost. "I am a Tier 3 trying to edit a Tier 8 manuscript with a crayon. I do not have enough ink.
The pressure of the circle is too high. If I try to force a change now, it will just use my own mana to finish the summoning faster. I would be helping the cult."
[Alert! Reality Editing requires a higher ’Sovereign Rating’.]
[Current Capacity: Tier 3 Novice.]
[Required Capacity: Tier 5 Arcane Grandmaster. You are currently too weak to save the world. How embarrassing.]
David looked at his status screen. The Dread-Seal was sitting at 12.5 percent cracked. It was a massive leaden weight. It was a dam holding back an ocean of Engine-Mana that his body desperately needed. He could feel the power on the other side of the seal, but he could not reach it.
Rachel looked at the darkening sky. She saw the black veins coiling beneath the arena sand. "The High Inquisitor will be here in less than an hour for the Soul-Probe, David. If you do not have the power to fix the circle now, we have already lost the war. You have to break the dam. You have to do it now."
"If I break the dam here," David said while looking her in the eye. "There will be no more hiding. Everyone from here to the Capital will see the flare. They will know I am a Vessel."
"Then let them see it," Rachel said.
Her voice was a fierce chime of defiance. "I would rather be hunted as a companion of a God-Mage than die as a battery for a Void-Cult. Break it, David! I will hold the perimeter while you ascend!"
David took a long and slow breath. He felt the Phoenix Pulse humming in his chest. His new biological immortality was ready to catch the pieces of his soul if he shattered.
He looked at the 100,000x multiplier. He had used it to move and to read and to heal. Now he was going to use it to commit a spiritual insurrection against his own body.
"System," David thought. His gaze became as hard as stone. "We are not moving the mana today. We are not circulating it. I want you to apply the 100,000x multiplier to the internal pressure of the core itself. I want to turn the Static into a hydraulic press. I want to crush that seal."
[Warning! Forcing the Dread-Seal through internal pressure carries a 94 percent risk of total meridian rupture. You will likely turn into a puddle of meat.]
"The Phoenix Pulse will knit them back together while they are breaking," David snapped in his mind. "Overclock the pressure! Now!"
[Passive Multiplier Activated: 100,000x!]
The world did not just stop this time. It inverted! David’s consciousness was sucked into the dark and leaden center of his own chest. He saw the Dread-Seal.
It was a complex and glowing cage of ancient runes. They had been forged into his soul when he was a baby. It was a masterpiece of suppression.
In the first microsecond, which felt like a year, David began the squeeze. He forced his Tier 3 mana to condense into a single point. The pressure inside his core reached the density of a star. It was a pain that no human should ever feel.
By the fifth microsecond, or five subjective years, the meridians leading into his core began to glow white-hot. They started to crack and shatter. But the Phoenix Pulse roared through his system.
It healed the spiritual tears as fast as the pressure created them! It was a cycle of infinite destruction and rebirth. He was dying and living at the same time.
By the twentieth microsecond, or twenty years of subjective time, the Dread-Seal began to groan. The runes began to flicker and die. David did not push against the cage. He made himself so heavy that the cage could no longer contain his mass. He was outgrowing his soul.
"BREAK!" David’s mental voice roared.
By the fiftieth microsecond, or fifty years of constant pressure, the Second Seal did not just crack. It shattered into a million pieces!
In the physical world, David’s body arched backward. His mouth opened in a silent scream as a pulse of absolute and golden-white mana erupted from his chest. It was not a spell or a discharge. It was a rupture of reality!
BAM!
A pillar of golden light, fifty feet wide, shot from the center of the arena directly into the sky. It pierced through the clouds and through the Academy’s defensive layers. The Engine-Mana Pulse was so bright that for a ten-mile radius, the night was turned into a blinding midday gold. It was a miracle and a terror.
The shockwave knocked Rachel back twenty feet. She hit the ground but stayed on her feet. Her spirit-sight eyes were wide with awe. She saw the mana as a rewrite of the world’s color. The silver rifts above the Maw flared in response. They were vibrating in sympathy with the pulse.
David sat in the center of the flare. He felt his Static Core growing. The heavy feeling was gone. It was replaced by a huge pool of energy that felt like a captured sun. His energy channels were no longer narrow or blocked. They were wide paths filled with shining gold.
— [Infinite Regeneration System] —
[Host Information]
[Name: David Silver]
[Lifeform Level Jump: Tier 3 ➔ Tier 4 ➔ Tier 5!]
[Title Unlocked: Arcane Grandmaster.]
[Seal Status: 50 percent Cracked. Halfway to Godhood.]
David stood up. The golden light began to retract into his body. It coiled around him like a cloak of living starlight. His hair now had streaks of absolute white running through it. His eyes were spinning with a terrifying and mechanical precision.
He felt everything in the world. He could feel the breathing of every student in the dorms a mile away. He could feel the rust on the gears of the Sun-Cores. He could feel the heartbeats of the Sentinels as they began to run toward the arena.
"Relatable humor, David," he whispered.
His voice was vibrating with a new and resonant power. "You wanted a low profile, and you just turned yourself into a celestial lighthouse. I think average is officially off the table. I hope the hotel has a good room for a fugitive."
[System Note: Your ’Sovereign Rating’ has increased by 400 percent. Your mana capacity is now sufficient to edit reality for approximately three minutes without rest.
Also, every Inquisitor in the kingdom just got a notification on their ’Great Eye’ that a God-Mage just woke up in your backyard. You are very popular now.]
"Let them come," David said.
He looked at his hands. They were steady and strong. He knelt back down over the black runes of the summoning circle. To his new Grandmaster eyes, the Tier 8 complexity of Liora’s work was no longer a maze. It was a flawed and ugly piece of code. He saw the bugs and he saw the leaks.
"Rachel! I need you to anchor the spatial fabric!" David called out. "I am going to start the Edit!"
Rachel scrambled back to his side. Her face was pale but her eyes were filled with pride for him. She did not ask how he had jumped two Tiers in a microsecond.
She just placed her hands on the sand. Her silver mana flared to meet his gold. "Do it, David! I will hold the ground even if it breaks!"
David touched the central Void-Anchor rune.
[Reality Editing: Initialized.]
[Target: Greyjoy Summoning Circle.]
[Multiplier: 100,000x!]
David did not just change the rune. He overclocked the meaning of the ink. He told the circle that instead of pulling a Void-God into the arena, it was now a massive spiritual grounding wire.
He rerouted the logic so that when Liora triggered the sacrifice, the energy would not go to the rifts. It would be safely dispersed into the deep earth.
"Edit: Redefine Gate to Drain," David commanded.
In the first microsecond of the edit, David rewrote the first thousand runes. He corrected the harmonics of the spell. By the tenth microsecond, or a subjective year of work, he restructured the conduits.
He hidden his edit beneath a layer of fake corruption so Liora would not notice the change until it was too late. He was a master of deception now.
As he worked, the golden light of his ascension began to fade. it settled into a pressurized hum beneath his skin. He was a Tier 5 Arcane Grandmaster. He was a Vessel who had finally found the ink for his pen.
But the silence did not last.
A thunderous sound echoed from the Academy’s main gates. It was the sound of a hundred armored boots hitting the stone. A flare of blinding and sun-crested light erupted at the entrance. Inquisitor John had arrived with a squad of Tier 6 Purifiers.
"THE ARENA!" John’s voice roared.
It carried across the campus like a physical blow. "SEAL THE PERIMETER! FIND THE SOURCE OF THE PULSE! DO NOT LET ANYONE ESCAPE!"
David snapped his eyes open. The Edit was nearly complete. He looked at Rachel and saw the urgency in her eyes.
"We are out of time," David said. "The Great Eye is here and he looks very angry."
[Status Update: Reality Edit is 92 percent complete. It will function, but the grounding will be messy. There might be some small earthquakes.]
"Messy is better than a Void-Crater," David said. He grabbed Rachel’s hand. "Flash-Step: Chronos-Drift!"
In a blur of golden-grey light, they vanished from the center of the arena. They were gone just as the first Inquisitor’s scouts reached the dueling circle. David did not run to his dorm. He ran to the Below Floors exit he had memorized. He needed to be invisible again, even if he now felt like a sun trapped in a jar.
As they reached the shadows of the forest, David looked back. The arena was swarming with light. The low profile was dead. David Silver, the Static loser, was gone forever.
"Tier 5," David whispered while looking at his glowing palms. "I jumped the fence, System."
[Relatable humor: Yes, you did. And now the fence is on fire and the dogs are barking very loudly. I hope you are ready for the Imperial Games, David. Because as of tonight, you are the most dangerous man in the Empire. You are a fvcking legend.]
David Silver grinned. It was a sharp and cold expression that was 100 percent Vessel. "Good. I was getting tired of being the only one who knew how the story ended. It is time for a new Chapter."
The Second Seal had cracked and the world was finally starting to feel the weight of the Engine. The Games were coming and David Silver was not worried anymore. He was the one who had rewritten the answers. He was ready to win!