Chapter 40—The Awakening of the Sovereign Blade.
Chapter 40—The Awakening of the Sovereign Blade.
The descent through the crimson spatial rift felt less like falling and more like being dragged through a meat grinder of raw cosmic force.
Wind screamed in Kaelen’s ears, a chaotic vortex of violent violet blood-red mana tearing at his dark coat as the three of them plummeted through the subterranean darkness beneath the Capital.
Above them, the last echoes of Marquis Vance’s apocalyptic orbital strike faded into a dull, rumbling thud, sealed away as the rift snapped shut and buried the surface world under fire and blood.
THUD! THUD! CLANG!
They hit the slick, wet cobblestones of a massive underground cavern with heavy, bone-jarring force. Tsubaki executed a fluid mid-air roll, his boots skidding across the damp stone while his dark katana flashed outward to secure the immediate perimeter.
Lyra crashed onto her knees beside him, gasping for air as the heavy, copper-scented air of the abyss filled her lungs.
"Kaelen!" Lyra cried out, her silver eyes widening in sheer panic as she scrambled toward him.
Kaelen lay flat on his dark back at the center of the ancient stone plaza, his body convulsing violently under a sudden, terrifying surge of raw energy.
The skin across his neck and arms was bulging with radiant, glowing violet veins that hummed with high-frequency cosmic static.
His Void Core, pushed past its absolute threshold during the escape from Arena Alpha, was undergoing a catastrophic meltdown.
---
[SYSTEM WARNING]
Void Core Overload: 96%
Critical Status: Internal Mana Highway Collapse Imminent
Time Until Fatal System Corruption: 30 Seconds
---
"His meridians are rupturing from the inside!" Lyra gasped, instantly pressing her glowing palms against Kaelen’s chest. Soft, golden light poured from her hands, but the moment her holy mana touched Kaelen’s skin, it was instantly vaporized by the volatile Void energy radiating from his body.
"No... no! My light can’t stabilize it! It’s too dense!"
Tears of pure frustration and fear welled in Lyra’s eyes. She had come to the Royal Capital for a single, desperate purpose: to win the tournament, gain access to the High Academy’s royal archives, and find the sacred cure to save her dying sister, Elena, who remained hidden under the oppressive guard of a corrupt noble faction in their home province.
She had trusted Kaelen, tied her destiny to his, and now, trapped in the lawless abyss beneath the world, the only man capable of burning down the nobility was dying right in front of her.
I can’t lose him here, Lyra thought bitterly, her hands shaking against his burning chest. If he dies, my sister dies. The nobility wins everything.
"Stand back, Holy Maiden. Your soft light will only ignite his core faster."
A calm, distorted voice echoed through the damp cavern gloom.
Out from the towering shadows of massive, iron-reinforced stone archways stepped the Red-Eyed Player. The blank white mask covering his face glinted beneath the faint, bioluminescent purple moss clinging to the cavern walls.
He walked forward with slow, deliberate steps, his crimson eyes burning behind the eyeholes of his mask.
Tsubaki immediately shifted into a low crescent stance, the tip of his dark blade pointed directly at the stranger’s throat.
"One more step and I sever your head."
"Lower your steel, samurai," the Red-Eyed Player said quietly, stopping five paces away and raising his pale, thin hands in a passive gesture.
"If I wanted you dead, I would have let Marquis Vance’s golden spear turn you into ash above. I paid a heavy price in spatial crystals to open that shortcut."
"Why save us?" Tsubaki demanded, his voice cold as ice. "What is your game?"
"My game is survival. And his," the Red-Eyed Player gestured toward the writhing Kaelen, "is destiny."
The masked figure knelt beside Kaelen, placing two fingers directly against the pulsing vein on Kaelen’s neck.
A blue system interface, invisible to ordinary eyes but flickering softly in the air, expanded above Kaelen’s body.
The Red-Eyed Player’s eyes narrowed behind his mask. "Fascinating... So the rumors from the inner palace were true."
"What are you talking about?" Lyra snapped, wiping the sweat from her forehead.
"Look closely at his core structure," the Red-Eyed Player instructed, pointing at a glowing, pitch-black geometric ring wrapped tightly around Kaelen’s heart inside the holographic interface.
"During the Academy’s mana evaluation test back in Chapter 8, Kaelen’s potential flared as a true S-Rank. The king and his inner council saw it instantly. But a commoner with S-Rank Void potential is a direct threat to the divine right of the nobility."
Lyra gasped, her breath catching in her throat. "The King... he suppressed him?"
"They injected a covert Royal Dominion Binding Seal into his mana pathways while he was unconscious during the evaluation," the masked figure explained coldly.
"It forced his system status to read as a pathetic E-Rank, locking away eighty percent of his natural mana capacity so the High Houses could keep him weak, manageable, and easy to control. They meant to keep him as an E-Rank commoner forever."
"Those disgusting bastards..." Tsubaki muttered, his grip tightening on his hilt until his knuckles turned white.
"However," the Red-Eyed Player continued, a faint, dark smirk audible in his voice,
"the Marquis drove him too far. The sheer, absurd volume of Void energy Kaelen absorbed from Malakor’s core, combined with the stress of blocking an S-Rank orbital strike, has created an impossible pressure vessel inside his chest. The royal seal isn’t suppressing his mana anymore—his mana is about to shatter the seal into pieces."
BOOOOOOM!
A violent shockwave of pure, pitch-black kinetic force erupted from Kaelen’s chest, blasting Lyra, Tsubaki, and the Red-Eyed Player backward across the stone plaza.
Kaelen hovered three feet off the ground, suspended mid-air by a swirling, planetary ring of violet lightning and cosmic gravity.
His eyes snapped open—no longer human, but twin burning orbs of endless, starry black void.
Deep within his mind, far past the physical pain racking his body, a brilliant cascade of crimson system notifications shattered through his consciousness.
---
[SYSTEM CRITICAL ALERT]
System Integrity: Threatened
Foreign Royal Binding Seal Detected: Core Level
Void Core Overload: 99%... 100%
CRACK!
---
An audible, glass-shattering sound echoed through Kaelen’s soul. The pitch-black geometric ring around his heart fractured, bursting into a cloud of useless gold dust that evaporated into nothingness.
---
[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION]
Royal Dominion Binding Seal: COMPLETELY DESTROYED
Recalibrating True System Status...
Restoring Dormant Mana Pathways...
Player Status Updated: Rank Correction Complete
True Rank Restored: RANK S — VOID ARCHITECT
Class Evolution Unlocked: VOID SOVEREIGN (High-Tier Deity Class)
Divine Weapon Re-Summoned: GOD-SLAYING VOID BLADE — "ECLIPSE"
---
The violent violet storm surrounding Kaelen collapsed instantly, sucked directly into his right hand as a blinding beam of dark stellar light coalesced in his palm.
Out of the compressed spatial tear emerged a long, single-edged divine longsword. Its blade was forged from deep obsidian metal that absorbed the ambient light of the cavern, etched with glowing violet runes that pulsed in sync with Kaelen’s heartbeat.
The moment his fingers wrapped around the hilt of Eclipse, a massive wave of absolute pressure pressed down upon the entire cavern floor.
---
[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION]
New Skill Unlocked: Void Sovereign Authority (Passive)
New Skill Unlocked: Dimensional Cleave (Active — Rank S)
---
Kaelen dropped lightly onto his boots, landing soundlessly on the damp cobblestones, his divine blade held casually at his side.
The suffocating, crushing aura radiating from his body was no longer chaotic. It was refined, vast, and terrifyingly absolute—the undeniable presence of a true S-Rank predator wielding a divine weapon.
Kaelen slowly looked at the blade in his right hand. The dark steel hummed with a familiar, ancient resonance, as if greeting its master after centuries of imprisonment.
He could feel every atom of space within a hundred-meter radius, shifting and bending to his very breath. His physical strength, speed, and mana reserves had multiplied tenfold in a single second.
The seal is gone, Kaelen thought, his mind crystal clear. The king tried to chain me. The Marquis tried to erase me. But they only forged me into something greater.
Deep inside Kaelen’s heart, a cold, quiet fire burned brighter than ever. He wasn’t concerned about their kingdom. He wasn’t concerned with their noble titles, their bloodlines, or their corrupt throne.
His ultimate goal remained unchanged, etched into his very soul: he needed to reach the ultimate prize of this world—the Holy Grail. He needed its divine, reality-warping power to make a single, absolute wish: to tear through the dimensional walls of this realm and return home to his original world, back to his mother’s side.
And anyone who stood between him and the Grail—be it a Marquis, a King, or a God—would be erased from existence.
"Kaelen...?" Lyra whispered softly, stepping toward him with hesitation, overwhelmed by the sheer, crushing weight of his new S-Rank aura and the divine sword radiating in his grip.
Kaelen turned his galaxy-bright eyes toward her, the cold, intimidating pressure softening instantly as he looked at his companions.
He willed the divine blade Eclipse to dissolve into a violet spatial rift, vanishing back into his soul space.
"I’m fine, Lyra. Better than ever."
"Your status... and that blade..." Tsubaki remarked, a rare, genuine grin playing on his lips. "It feels like I’m standing next to an ancient dragon."
"It’s his true form," the Red-Eyed Player said, walking back into the light of the plaza and bowing slightly toward Kaelen.
"Welcome to your true power, Kaelen. And welcome to Undercity Zone Zero."
Kaelen turned his gaze past the plaza, taking in their new surroundings for the first time.
Stretching out beneath the subterranean ceiling was a colossal, sprawling metropolis built into the hollow earth. Iron skyscrapers lit by flickering red mana lanterns twisted toward the jagged stone ceiling.
Clandestine airships hummed through the dark skies, while shadowy figures, rogue players, and exiled mages crowded the narrow, neon-lit alleyways below. It was a lawless, thriving underworld—a place where the kingdom’s military had no power and where only the strong dictated the rules.
"This is Zone Zero," the Red-Eyed Player explained, pointing toward a massive, central obsidian tower that dominated the subterranean skyline. "The surface world believes you are dead, vaporized by Marquis Vance’s orbital strike. Up there, the Marquis is claiming victory and hunting down the rest of your commoner allies. But down here, in the dark, you are a ghost."
"Ghosts can hunt," Kaelen said quietly, his voice carrying a dark, chilling promise.
"Exactly," the Red-Eyed Player smiled behind his mask. "Zone Zero is ruled by the Void Syndicate—five underground crime lords who control every illegal mana mine, black market auction, and secret portal leading into the High Tier Dungeons where the divine relics are hidden. If you want to reach the Holy Grail, Kaelen, you need to conquer the Syndicate and claim this city as your base."
Lyra stepped up beside Kaelen, her silver blade glowing with renewed, stubborn resolve. "And if we take the Undercity, we can use its secret passages to strike back at the surface... and rescue my sister from the High Houses."
"Then our path is clear," Tsubaki added, resting his hand on his katana hilt.
Kaelen looked out over the vast, glowing underworld of Zone Zero, his dark coat fluttering in the warm subterranean breeze.
The tournament was over. The academy was behind them. The noble faction thought they had crushed the commoner rebellion, unaware that they had merely released an S-Rank monster with a divine sword into the shadows.
"Marquis Vance thinks he buried us," Kaelen said softly, a dark, dangerous smile spreading across his face as his galaxy-bright eyes flared with infinite Void light.
"Let him celebrate. By the time he realizes we survived, his entire kingdom will belong to the shadows."