An isolated corner of the stands at Mountcrest City Stadium.
Several boys from Mountcrest City Second High School, who had just failed to make an impact in their own trial instances and whose grades were aggressively mediocre, gathered in a tight circle.
The leader was a student named Jax, distinguished by his dyed, striking yellow hair.
He was currently looking around the arena irritably, his eyes filled with a distinctly unfriendly glare.
“Hey, have any of you found that kid Leon yet?” Jax asked in a hushed, urgent tone.
“I haven’t seen him anywhere, Jax,” a tall, thin student answered, shaking his head.
“Logically speaking, with a garbage class like Beast Tamer, shouldn’t he have been instantly slaughtered and forcefully teleported out of his Nightmare instance by now?
He ought to be sitting on a bench out here, covered in dust and weeping.” “Do you think he knew we were planning to jump him and chose to hide beforehand?” another short, heavy-set student guessed.
“Damn it, keep looking!
A piece of bottom-feeding trash actually dared to put his mouth on my goddess?
I’m going to physically break both his legs today.” Jax gritted his teeth, his face twisting with envy.
“Exactly!
Goddess Claire was definitely manipulated by his sweet talk!” The tall, thin student chimed in, his tone dripping with sarcasm.
“Once we drag that fraud out into the open and expose his pathetic reality in front of the entire student body, Goddess Claire will definitely wake up and realize her mistake!” Just as this group of disgruntled teenagers was muttering curses and plotting how to teach Leon a lesson—as if enacting a petty assault would somehow bridge the massive social distance between them and the unapproachable silver-haired Sword Saint—the entire stadium suddenly erupted.
Whoosh!
A deafening, collective roar tore through the massive arena, sounding like a colossal boulder crashing into a perfectly still lake.
Countless spectators abruptly stood up from their plastic seats, their faces written with shock, hysterical excitement, and profound disbelief.
Their arms raised in unison, pointing directly toward the largest public projection screen floating in the center of the stadium.
“Look at the rankings!
Fourth place globally!
It’s an applicant from Mountcrest City!
Our local student’s popularity metrics have violently surged straight into fourth place on the overall global chart!” “My god!
Look at that stream headline…
it’s absolutely outrageous!” “A Beast Tamer?!
A Beast Tamer from Mountcrest City?!
Is this a structural glitch in the server?!” “The concurrent viewer count for his channel…
it just blew past sixty million!
And the line graph is still climbing in a vertical spike!” A chaotic wall of voices surged across the stands like a massive tidal wave.
Jax and his companions froze in their tracks, feeling as though a bucket of ice-cold water had been dumped directly over their heads from a towering height.
Mountcrest City…
Beast Tamer…
Could a coincidence of this magnitude truly exist in reality?
An ominous premonition, resembling a cold, venomous viper, suddenly slithered up their spines and coiled tightly around their chests.
Almost simultaneously, the group jerked their heads upward, their wide eyes locking onto the massive central projection.
The public feed had just switched over to feature Leon’s live broadcast.
To maximize organic engagement and hook the casual viewer, the Prodigy platform’s backend algorithm had cleverly embedded a high-definition, looping highlight reel into the corner of the screen where Leon was currently waiting for the second wave to spawn.
The footage captured Zoro fracturing the solid bedrock, transforming into a blurred blade of emerald-black light that instantaneously sliced hundreds of Elite Black Rock Giants and their massive regional Boss in half, turning a terrifying army into piles of glassy, shattered rubble.
The high-definition slow motion, captured from multiple professional angles and accompanied by thunderous, cinematic background orchestration, was accented by a massive cascade of exploding scarlet maximum-damage metrics.
Boom!
Jax and his inner circle felt their minds go completely blank, a harsh, high-pitched ringing exploding inside their skulls as if a live grenade had detonated within their thoughts.
“This…
how is something like this even possible?!” Jax’s voice fractured with extreme horror and total bewilderment.
His lips trembled violently, his eyes widening so extensively they looked ready to pop out of their sockets.
“Am I losing my mind?
An undocumented orphan…
where on earth did he acquire a monster of that caliber?!” The tall, thin student and the heavy-set boy stood completely paralyzed, their fingers twitching uncontrollably as they pointed toward the screen, resembling patients suffering from advanced palsy.
On the screen, the black-haired teenager standing calmly in the center of the black rock platform now appeared entirely unfamiliar, radiating a terrifying, dominant pressure that made their skin crawl.
“Damn it!” Jax hissed.
Even faced with this reality, his petty pride refused to yield.
He absolutely refused to accept the reality of Claire and Leon being together.
In his twisted logic, a goddess belonged to the collective fantasy of the masses, not to a single, real individual.
Looking at that handsome face projected across the stadium sky, Jax was so consumed by jealousy he wanted to grind his teeth down to white dust.
His voice rose into a shrill, manic pitch.
While it didn’t register to the wider stadium crowd, it reached the immediate ears of his companions.
Right at that exact millisecond— Thud!
A heavy, compact impact resounded.
Jax felt a massive, explosive kinetic force smash directly into his backside.
Before his brain could even formulate a question, his equilibrium shattered, and he stumbled forward under the momentum.
He crashed heavily onto the floor, face-planting into the concrete in a humiliating display.
His cheek scraped hard against the rough, industrial cement, drawing blood as a sharp, burning pain flared across his skin.
“Who?!
Which bastard dared to kick me?!” Jax scrambled to his feet, clutching his bloodied, abraded face as he whirled around to roar at his assailant.
The tall, thin student who had just been actively reinforcing his malicious insults was now standing perfectly balanced in the exact spot Jax had previously occupied.
“Leo?
What the hell is the meaning of this?!” Jax’s face was a toxic mixture of wild rage and complete confusion.
He couldn’t comprehend why his loyal ally, who had been actively helping him plan a physical ambush on Leon, had suddenly launched a treacherous sneak attack against him.
“How dare you!” Leo bellowed, deliberately raising his voice to a theatrical, righteous volume to ensure the surrounding rows of spectators could hear every single syllable clearly.
He paused, adjusting his face into an expression of almost religious devotion as he looked toward the screen.
“How dare a pathetic worm like you address my Father Lin directly by his birth name?!
You dare speak disrespectfully of my Father Lin in public?
You must be completely tired of living!” “In my objective evaluation, Father Lin and Goddess Claire are a match made in heaven, a flawless union ordained by destiny itself!
It is as if the God of Love personally tied a golden thread between their souls!
Your pathetic barking out here is nothing more than the desperate squealing of a clown blinded by his own inadequacy!” These words struck Jax like a literal thunderbolt from a clear blue sky, leaving him entirely paralyzed, while the remaining members of the circle stood equally dumbfounded.
However, it didn’t take long for the rest of the boys to read the writing on the wall.
Exactly!
Was Leon someone they could afford to cross now?
The guy commanded a contracted beast that clearly operated at a Mythic tier.
His livestream popularity metrics had violently breached the global top four across all corporate networks, and he was actively drawing the scouting eyes of international conglomerates and top-tier military academies.
Leon was already a giant dragon uncoiling its wings to ascend into the heavens.
Compared to him, what were they?
They were nothing more than a handful of rotten tomatoes and bruised fruit.
What was even more terrifying was the realization that the news of them asking around for Leon’s apartment address and threatening to break his legs had likely already leaked out to the wider student body.
If Leon decided to settle scores after clearing his instance, a single thought from him could structurally ruin their entire families.
If they didn’t immediately identify a scapegoat to offer up as a sacrificial lamb and completely distance themselves from the situation right this second, they would never get another chance to survive the fallout.
The remaining students exchanged rapid, frantic glances, their heads nodding in absolute consensus.
The decision was reached within a fraction of a heartbeat.
“He’s completely right!” the short, heavy-set student shouted, stepping forward aggressively as he pointed an accusing finger at the bewildered, bleeding Jax.
“You absolute degenerate, Jax!
I’ve known for a long time that you harbored toxic malice and revolutionary jealousy toward my ultimate Godfather!
I have spent months quietly enduring humiliation, staying by your side and acting like your friend, purely waiting for this exact glorious moment to expose your rotten, treacherous nature to the world!
Taste my ultimate technique—Monkey Steals the Peaches!” He lunged forward, executing a vicious, low-line grab.
Another boy refused to be left out of the loyalty display, screaming at the top of his lungs, “Father Lin and Holy Mother Claire are a flawless match!
A degenerate like you actually tried to organize a conspiracy to sabotage their love?
Outrageous!
Receive my strike—the Thousand Years of Death!” He circled like a predator behind Jax, locking his fingers into a sharp wedge to launch a brutal piercing attack against Jax’s lower spine.
The third student was even more ruthless.
He launched himself into the air in a flying pounce, aiming his legs straight toward the yellow-haired boy’s neck.
“Today, I will utilize the deadly scissor-kick technique that Grandfather Lin personally demonstrated to cleanse our school of this toxic element and crush your filthy skull!” “Are you people completely insane?!
Ah!
Stop!
Stop hitting me!
Someone help!” Jax was instantly overwhelmed, engulfed in a flurry of fists and boots launched by his former best friends.
His agonizing screams echoed across the isolated corner of the stands, rapidly drawing the eyes of the wider, amused stadium audience.
Meanwhile, at a much higher societal echelon, a massive storm was quietly brewing.
The supreme powers of the world—the elite global corporations, the top-tier mercenary guilds, and the premier international combat universities—were all being thoroughly alarmed by the sudden, violent emergence of this unprecedented dark horse.