Prime System Champion [A Multi-System Apocalypse LitRPG]

The sheer absurdity of the cosmos forces you into bizarre, unexpected corners of leadership. Sometimes, you are actively debating existential deletion methods with ancient Ascendants in dead universes.

Other times, you are acting as a very overpowered, exasperated high school physical education teacher for teenagers who have suddenly realized they can control gravity because they ate too much Void-Beast brisket.

A month passed without another blue-flash planetary announcement declaring a new competitor in the 'Great Crucible.' The rush of 'First Clear' candidates seemed to have bottlenecked abruptly at five.

"Perhaps the difficulty curve is steeper on worlds without pre-existing mythological infrastructures," Jeeves noted during one of our evening logistical briefings. "Or perhaps, Master, they lack a sentient black hole managing their economy and solving structural collapse puzzles."

"Don't flatter me," I murmured, watching the lights of Bastion slowly ignite from my balcony. "It means the easy, well-prepared worlds are locked in. The stragglers… the remaining five… they will likely be the survivors of brutal, drawn-out wars of attrition. We can't ignore them but we should put a little more focus on the top five. They probably also lack standout individuals that deviate from the expected curve."

That underlying unease — the realization that my relentless focus on individual, high-end Mythic synthesis and auction-house procurement was leaving me disconnected from the very people I was building walls for — had grown too sharp to ignore.

The whispers I picked up on the wind while Veiled throughout the city only amplified it.

"I heard the Lord doesn't even sleep," a Dweorg apprentice had whispered to his friend near the foundries. "They say he punched a hole in the Kyorian death-ship with his bare hands!"

"My brother said he fought a god made of blazing fire and won a mountain of gold for us," an Elven merchant murmured in the marketplace.

I was becoming a mythology before I had even finished my second cup of coffee most mornings.

"I need to step back from the macro," I realized, running a hand through my hair. "If I lead an army into this integration war and I don't even know their names, I'd just be treating it like I am deploying drones."

And so, I commandeered the 'Depths Vanguard' cohort for the entire next month.

It was an exclusive class within the Academy's program, composed of students who had spontaneously developed profound spatial or gravitational affinities following our subsidized 'Void-Diet' initiatives.

There were exactly twenty-four of them. They were a volatile mix of profound talent and arrogant incompetence.

I stood in the center of an open-air training arena customized heavily by Leoric. The floor was a dense, specialized null-steel grating that dispersed ambient mana fluctuations.

The class was attempting to execute a basic [Localized Gravitational Drop] exercise against sturdy practice dummies.

"Not quite," I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose. "Jared, you aren't trying to sense the fluctuations, you're just following the skill pathways. You will never truly master your skills if you just rely on the System."

Jared, an incredibly intense seventeen-year-old human from a devastated farming territory that was destroyed by the Kyroians during their exodus, lowered his shaking hands. He had bright, burning eyes and a deeply ingrained work ethic, possessing a very strong Soul capacity. But his application was painfully blunt. "It… it feels like it wants to float, Lord," Jared grimaced, his brow shining with sweat.

"I would rather you didn't call me Lord, especially in the ring. You can call me Instructor Eren," I corrected, pacing forward. "And of course it wants to float. You're pouring too much Spirit and not enough Mana control into the structure. Don't force it; anchor it. Watch, I'll do it slowly."

I flicked a finger, barely using a fraction of Authority, establishing a harmonic link like I learned on Sylvaris. A boulder fifty feet away slammed instantaneously into the null-steel grating, completely flattening the dummy into powder.

The class let out a collective gasp.

"That was… fast," whispered Vesk, a young, muscular S'skarr female standing nearby. Her species historically struggled with abstract spatial magics, heavily preferring raw elemental or physical enhancements. Her natural resistance to acquiring these specialized abilities meant she worked twice as hard as Jared just to conceptualize the math. Their slower Affinity and Essence refinement due to the lack of the Primordial Soul lineage many from Earth benefited from is also a testament to that.

"It's about understanding the environment," I told Vesk, gesturing to the air around us. "A S'skarr feels the heat of the swamp. An Elf hears the resonance of the wood. Gravity isn't just weight; it's an atmosphere. Tune your core to the baseline frequency of the planet, and then simply… disagree with it in a small area."

In the corner of the group, two Dweorg brothers, Kram and Bror, were currently vibrating intensely, trying to cooperatively levitate a rather confused-looking goat.

The goat began to lazily drift upward, bleating in profound annoyance.

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"Excellent control on the lift, Kram!" I encouraged. "Now, Bror, anchor the field! Don't let the goat hit the ceiling! Decrease the relative weight while increasing spatial friction."

Bror's thick, runic tattoos flashed brilliantly blue as he aggressively forced the mana field to stabilize. The goat stopped abruptly, hovering perfectly still, chewing casually on nothing.

"By the Ancestors, we did it!" Kram laughed, clapping his brother on the shoulder. Their dense Dweorg bodies weren't naturally aligned for mana manipulation, making the success a massive testament to pure, stubborn effort.

The most enigmatic member of the class, however, was a very young, incredibly quiet Elven boy named Elyon.

While the others struggled with lifting or crushing, Elyon possessed an innate, terrifying aptitude for Spatial Disruption.

During a sparring session near the end of the third week, he was paired against Jared. Jared aggressively generated a gravity crush, aiming to pin the slender Elf to the mat.

Elyon didn't block or use any evasive skills.

He just took half a step backward, and simply vanished in a distinct, familiar flicker of non-euclidean physics.

He reappeared flawlessly directly behind Jared, gently tapping the larger boy on the shoulder.

"Good fight," Elyon whispered softly.

I watched from the sidelines, leaning heavily against the railing, feeling a profound jolt of recognition. That wasn't a standard system [Blink] or some other short distance teleport. That was an unrefined expression of Void Walk. It was costly, slow, and extremely limited, but it still had a Void signature, albeit without truly leaving into subspace.

"How did you do that, Elyon?" I asked, dropping down into the arena, staring intensely at the slightly nervous boy.

Elyon fidgeted, looking at the null-steel floor. "I… I didn't push myself, sir. I just saw the… the quiet spaces between the noisy ones. And I stepped into the quiet space. It tastes like the special spicy meat you gave us."

My [Void-Star] hummed a warm, approving note in my chest. He was actively sensing the sub-layers of the Lattice.

"We are going to focus very heavily on that, Elyon," I said seriously, patting his thin shoulder. "If you perfect that, you will be functionally untouchable to anyone below Tier 5. But be incredibly careful; staying in the quiet space too long will… let's just hope we don't find out. Keep the hops under two seconds max."

For a month, I completely stopped retreating to my isolation chamber to bang my head against the seemingly impossible combination required for my Fifth Mythic. I let the 'Ouroboros Fold' and the 'Harmonic Catalyst' percolate passively in my subconscious.

Instead, I taught. I observed and I corrected stances.

I found that by deconstructing my impossibly high-tier understanding of spatial manipulation and extreme gravity into easily digestible, foundational blocks for beginners, my own profound grasp of the fundamentals sharpened dramatically. When you have to explicitly explain to a confused S'skarr why twisting space tears matter, you suddenly perceive nuances you previously aggressively bullied your way past using raw, absurd mana density.

The 'Deep Vanguard' evolved incredibly quickly under my focused tutelage and the overwhelming abundance of Ferra's high-tier resources. They were bonding, laughing during the gruelling cooldown periods, and bickering over optimal spell angles.

Jared was becoming the primary 'anvil', learning to condense gravity to crush incoming attacks into useless dust. Vesk was surprisingly utilizing her robust biology to anchor violent spatial shear zones that tore through targets indiscriminately. Elyon was slowly developing a terrifying stealth capability. And the Dweorg brothers developed a tag-team tactic that involved launching dense objects at railgun speeds.

They were raw, heavily flawed, and prone to blowing up target dummies unexpectedly. But they were utterly fearless, driven by a desperate, happy eagerness to protect their revitalized home.

During a late-night campfire drill simulating limited-visibility scenarios, I overheard Jared and Elyon talking softly by the edge of the illusionary darkness.

"Do you think the Emperor on Wahash was scary?" Jared whispered, stoking a small magical flame. "They say Master Rexxar literally flattened the guy into the mud without taking a single hit."

"I also heard that master Eren fought a literal angel from the sky and made it apologize," Elyon whispered back, his wide eyes shining in the dim light.

I chuckled quietly from where I sat cloaked under the [Veil], pulling a skewer of Void-sausage off a nearby grill without disrupting their conversation.

It was incredibly endearing, but also intensely concerning. They viewed me as an absolute fail-safe. If the Great Crucible arrived, I wouldn't be able to physically blanket every city or fight every skirmish. They had to learn how a real war functioned when the 'Lord' wasn't there to delete the problem instantaneously.

As the fourth week of our intensive curriculum drew to a close, I called the twenty-four panting, bruised students together in the center of the training field.

"Alright, listen up," I projected, raising my voice to cut over the sound of Bror aggressively bandaging his knuckles. "You guys have the theory. You have the raw power output. You've successfully exploded most of Leoric's expensive target dummies, and you managed not to invert your own spinal columns."

They grinned, exhausted but clearly proud.

"But training against lifeless steel is artificial," I continued, crossing my arms and looking them each directly in the eye. "It doesn't dodge efficiently. It doesn't lay traps. It doesn't actively hate you."

The smiles slowly faltered, replaced by an attentive, serious tension.

"So," I grinned fiercely, "We are upgrading the curriculum."

Jared shifted uncomfortably. "Are we sparring with the other advanced Zenith cohorts?"

"No," I replied, uncrossing my arms and gesturing grandly toward the massive, obsidian silhouette of Nexus Delta-09 looming faintly on the distant horizon outside the city walls. "We're taking a field trip."

A wave of anxious murmurs rippled through the class.

"I am personally guiding the Vanguard cohort into a local Tower," I announced loudly, cutting off the whispers. "We will establish a forward camp. We are going to systematically clear hostile territory together. You are going to practically apply everything you learned under heavy stress, against moving, heavily armored, deeply hostile targets that explicitly want to tear your throats out."

Elyon looked slightly pale, clutching his staff. Vesk grinned, a terrifying show of S'skarr fangs, cracking her neck.

"You are not students next week," I promised, meeting Jared's wide eyes. "You are the line. You are Ferra's Shield. Get your best armor and weapons forged personally by Leoric, he already knows to expect you so meet with him before the end of this week to pick your gear. Pack heavy rations. Sleep well this weekend."

I turned to leave, tossing a final command over my shoulder.

"Be at the eastern gate Monday morning at dawn. Do not be late. The monsters usually don't wait."