Chapter 213: Second to Enter

The gate sealed behind Elara with the same heavy final sound that had closed behind Ryzek.

Lian stood on the pale stone platform and waited.

For a short time there was only silence. The dead man’s broken aura remained steady over the space, neither rising nor falling. The dark metal surface of the gate gave nothing back. No vibration. No light. No hint of what the space beyond was doing as it prepared the next trial.

Then the sounds began.

They were different from Ryzek’s.

The first impacts were sharper, faster. Less grinding weight, more precise collisions. Lian heard the clear ring of a blade striking silver plating, followed by a short, controlled burst of movement. Elara was not absorbing hits the way Ryzek had. She was cutting and relocating, using speed and placement instead of raw endurance.

A heavy crash interrupted the pattern almost immediately.

Something large had closed the distance. The sound that followed was a dense sequence of impacts — blade work under pressure, the scrape of bone armor, a brief flare of energy that died as quickly as it appeared. Lian tracked it without moving. The fight had already forced her out of clean rhythm.

Time stretched again.

The dead man did not speak. He stood in the same place as before, eyes on the gate, presence still dominating the platform by existing. Lian kept his own breathing controlled under the aura and listened.

Elara’s exchanges came in bursts. Periods of rapid, precise contact broken by heavier collisions when the Colossi managed to pin her angles. She was faster than Ryzek. That much was clear from the sound alone. But speed against one hundred thousand was a different problem than speed against a pack. Numbers erased advantages if they were allowed to stack.

Hours passed by the feel of it.

The sounds continued without full interruption. Sometimes the blade work stayed clean for longer stretches. Sometimes the impacts grew heavier and more frequent, the unmistakable noise of multiple large bodies pressing a single fighter at once. Once, deep into what Lian judged to be the first day, there was a prolonged sequence where the blade sounds nearly vanished under the weight of continuous heavy contact. When the clearer strikes returned, they were less frequent than before.

Lian’s mind worked through the implications in silence.

Ryzek had survived by rising after death, over and over, because of a clan device. Elara had no such link that Lian knew of. If she fell once in a way the test counted as true death, there would be no return. The dead man’s earlier words remained clear. This was not an illusion. If you die inside, you die.

The fighting continued into the second day.

The pattern grew more strained. The gaps between major exchanges lengthened, then collapsed again into sudden violence. Energy discharges appeared less often. The blade sounds became shorter, more economical. She was conserving. Or she was being forced to.

Lian stood under the unbroken pressure of the dead man’s aura and did not look away from the gate.

Somewhere beyond that sealed metal, Elara was still moving. The sounds proved that much. How long she could maintain it against the same flood that had killed Ryzek seventy-two times before his device pulled him back was a different question.

Power Scale / Cultivation Realms (Quick Reminder)

Foundation Realm (Layers 1–9): Body forging, no external Qi.

Circuit Awakening Realm (Early–Peak): First Qi loop, internal bursts.

Core Condensation Realm (Early–Peak): External Qi release, short flight.

Stellar Circuit Realm (1–9 Stars): True flight, Qi armor, energy projection.

Nebula Dominion Realm and higher: Domain control, galaxy-level power, etc

Power Scale Reminder

Lian Yu: Stellar Circuit Star 1.

Elara Voss: Core Condensation Peak

Keep it as reminders