Chapter 229: What’s On The Schedule For Tomorrow?
The stone fissure cracked as the spear absorbed the monstrous recoil. Creed’s body launched upward like an artillery shell!
He didn’t try to climb around the horizontal roof. He launched himself completely out into the open void, arcing through the empty air, bypassing the three-meter overhang entirely!
For a split second, suspended hundreds of feet above the jagged basin floor, Creed was weightless.
Then, three hundred and twenty kilograms violently grabbed him, yanking him downward toward the abyss.
Mid-air, Creed twisted his torso with the violent, acrobatic precision he had forged during his alleyway duel with the monk.
His right hand snapped out, not toward a hold, but reaching back to yank his spear out of the fissure as he cleared the lip—and with a savage, desperate heave, he drove the pointed butt-spike of the spear straight down into the flat rock above the overhang!
CRUNCH!
Sparks flew. The steel bit into the granite.
Creed’s downward plunge violently jerked to a halt.
The sheer momentum nearly tore his right arm from its shoulder socket, a sickening pop echoing in his joint.
Blood sprayed from his palm as his grip slid down the shaft, but his fingers clamped shut like an iron vice.
He was dangling over the edge, held only by a spear planted in the rock.
Down below, Nicholas and Emerald looked up, completely paralyzed by the sheer, unhinged audacity of the move.
"UP!" Creed roared, a sound torn straight from the depths of his soul.
Veins ruptured beneath the skin of his left arm as he reached up, caught the edge of the stone terrace, and dragged his battered torso over the lip.
He rolled onto the flat upper ledge, coughing violently, spitting blood onto the stone.
He had bypassed the obstacle.
Above him lay the final twenty meters. A smooth, sixty-degree incline leading directly to the shining archway of the finish gate, where Instructor Varien stood with his arms folded, watching with wide, stunned eyes.
Creed tried to stand.
CLINK.
Six hundred and forty kilograms!
Bam!
The sound was a dull, heavy thud inside his skull.
A localized gravitational weight of over one thousand four hundred pounds slammed down onto Creed’s neck and spine.
Creed fell instantly to his hands and knees. The stone beneath his palms splintered into spiderweb cracks from the sheer downward pressure.
His ribs groaned, pressing inward against his lungs, making it impossible to draw a full breath. Blood began to drip steadily from his nose, spattering against the grey stone.
Behind him, sounds of desperate struggling echoed.
Nicholas Grey had somehow scaled the lip, his aristocratic face twisted into a mask of pure, bloodied rage.
Using small climbing pitons he had hidden in his sleeves, he dragged his frame over the crest.
Right behind him was Damien Blackthorne, crawling on all fours like a wounded bear, leaving a smear of dark blood on the rock behind him.
"The seat... is mine!" Damien roared, his voice muffled by the mud and blood coating his face.
Nicholas didn’t speak.
He just lunged forward, crawling inch by agonizing inch, his gray eyes burning with cold, desperate hunger.
The prize was twenty-four hours in the Path Resonator. For someone with Nicholas’s family ambitions and dangerous secrets, that prize was worth dying for.
Ten meters to the gate.
Creed was pinned. His forehead touched the freezing stone.
His vision was swimming with red and black spots. The brand beneath his headband throbbed with a cold, mocking rhythm, reminding him of how small, how fragile he was compared to the cosmic forces of the universe.
’Just tap out,’ the voice of weakness whispered. ’You’re a summoner without summons. You’re a boy from Section 7 playing against nobles who have eaten dragon marrow since birth. You don’t have to break your back for an academy class.’
Creed’s bloody fingers curled, scraping against the granite.
’Section 7?’
He remembered eating expired nutrient paste in a leaky room with debt collectors kicking his door.
He remembered bleeding out in the cavern of the Trial of Self while the world told him he was nothing. He remembered facing down a towering Beast King alone in the freezing sky of the Bastion.
He hadn’t crawled out of the dirt just to bow to a piece of enchanted metal.
’Mountain,’ Creed thought.
He didn’t have his Source to manifest the Path of the Mountain. He couldn’t summon the great mirage of the towering continental peak.
But a Path was not just magic. A Path was an understanding.
What was a mountain?
A mountain does not care about the weight of the sky. It does not yield to the storm. It sits in the crushing dark, absorbing pressure for ten thousand years, and remains standing.
Creed stopped resisting the weight. He stopped trying to fight the collar as an enemy.
He aligned his skeleton.
He drove his palms into the stone. He stacked his wrists directly under his elbows, his elbows under his shoulders, his vertebrae locking into an unbreakable, vertical column of bone.
Clank.
Slowly. Impossibly.
Creed Walden rose to his knees.
Nicholas, crawling five meters away, looked over. His eyes widened in absolute, sheer awe.
Creed wasn’t using magic. He was forcing his own skeletal structure to act as an unyielding pillar.
With a ragged, bloody gasp, Creed pushed himself up onto his boots.
He stood.
Under six hundred and forty kilograms of pure, bone-crushing gravity, Creed Walden stood fully upright.
His knees trembled violently. The veins in his neck were stretched so taut they threatened to burst through his skin. Blood streamed freely down his chin, dripping from his lips. His headband was soaked dark red.
He gripped his dimensional spear in his right hand, using the weapon not as a crutch, but as an extension of his balance.
Damien reached Creed’s left, his hand clawing at the stone, desperate to crawl past. Nicholas was three paces away, throwing his entire upper body forward in agonizing lunges.
Creed didn’t look at them.
He fixed his bloodshot, piercing blue eyes directly on Instructor Varien, who stood frozen behind the finish line, completely stunned.
Step.
Creed’s right boot slammed down. The stone cracked beneath his heel.
Step.
Nicholas reached out, his hand crossing the five-meter mark. "Walden—!"
Step.
Creed’s vision went completely white. He couldn’t feel his legs anymore. He couldn’t feel his spine. He was moving on pure, distilled, unadulterated human stubbornness.
He dragged the crushing weight of the world forward.
Step.
Two meters.
Damien let out a choked sob of pure exhaustion, his arms giving out as he collapsed flat against the ground, unable to lift his chin.
Nicholas threw himself forward, his fingers clawing at the finish line, inches away—
THUD.
A battered, mud-soaked boot crossed the threshold first.
Creed took one final, massive stride, planting his spear shaft squarely across the center of the archway.
BZZZZZZZZT!
The gate chimes screamed in an ear-splitting, victorious crescendo.
[FIRST PLACE: CREED WALDEN.]
[ELAPSED TIME: 42 MINUTES, 11 SECONDS.]
[STATUS: VERIFIED.]
The instant the system registered the victory, a brilliant blue pulse erupted from the archway.
CLICK-HISS.
The Aegis-Null Collar around Creed’s neck unlocked, snapping open and falling heavily to the ground with a dull, metallic clang.
Instantly, the suffocating lead vanished from his veins.
His Silver-stage Fundamental Sources roared back to life like a starved furnace! Force and Aura erupted simultaneously, flooding through his battered pathways, surging through his torn muscles and cracked bones with rejuvenating, intoxicating warmth.
A faint silver sheen rippled across his skin as his Peak Stage 5 Physique absorbed the shock, repairing his ruptured tissues in real time.
Creed didn’t collapse.
He stood tall in the center of the gate, his chest heaving, his dark uniform torn and soaked in blood, his hand locked tight around his spear.
A second later, Nicholas Grey’s hand slapped across the line, securing second place. The silver-haired youth collapsed instantly onto his back, his chest rising and falling in violent spasms, staring up at the sky with a mixture of bitter defeat and absolute, terrified awe.
Damien Blackthorne rolled over third, staring at Creed’s standing silhouette as if he were looking at an ancient monster disguised in human skin.
The rest of the Elite Class were still scattered across the cliff face, broken, hanging from ledges, or being evacuated by medical golems.
The entire northern ridge fell into dead silence. Only the howling wind of the basin filled the air.
Instructor Varien slowly lowered his clipboard.
The seasoned Gold-rank combat instructor, a veteran who had fought through bloody dimensional wars, stared at Creed for five long, silent seconds.
Finally, Varien let out a slow breath, his square jaw relaxing into a grim, genuine smile.
"Class Captain Creed Walden," Varien spoke, his voice carrying clearly across the ridge.
He reached into his uniform pocket and pulled out a sleek, obsidian token rimmed in pulsing gold runes. He tossed it forward.
Creed raised his left hand and caught it cleanly out of the air.
"Your twenty-four-hour block in the Tier 1 Path Resonator is officially logged under my personal clearance," Varien said, his eyes gleaming with deep, unmasked respect. "Go to the infirmary, patch yourself up, and take your prize. You’ve earned it."
Creed looked down at the heavy gold-rimmed token in his palm. It was cool, solid, and hummed with immense, latent authority.
Beside him on the ground, Nicholas Grey slowly tilted his head, catching Creed’s eye. Beneath the silver-haired boy’s exhaustion, a cold, conspiratorial smirk tugged at the corner of his bloody lips.
The key was secured.
Creed closed his fist around the token, slipping it into his pocket. He wiped the blood from his chin with the back of his hand, looked down at his defeated classmates, and let a slow, arrogant smirk spread across his battered face.
"Good workout, Instructor," Creed rasped casually, his voice smooth and unbroken.
"What’s on the schedule for tomorrow?"