Chapter 257: The Brink of the Void (1)

The apocalyptic roar of the unsealed rift did not fade; it deepened into a rhythmic, primordial drone that shook the bedrock of the Astral Grand Palace.

Five miles beyond the transparent crystalline wall, the ten-mile-tall vertical tear in the fabric of the universe burned with cold, blinding starlight. The seven celestial bronze rings, each large enough to cradle an orbital battlecruiser, turned with glacial, terrifying momentum, shearing the fabric of local space into shimmering ribbons of violet aurora. The raw, unfiltered ambient essence pouring through the breach was so dense, so intoxicatingly pure, that the condensation pooling along the palace’s glass facade began to crystallize into microscopic, glowing mana-frost.

Inside the grand ballroom, the initial stunned silence collapsed into a deafening roar of over two thousand voices.

"Look at the atmospheric readings! The ambient mana density inside the perimeter is five times higher than the Tier 1 Bastions!"

"Fourteen days... Fourteen whole days of unmonitored harvesting!"

"Did the Director say midnight?! We deploy tonight?!"

The air was electric, charged with the kind of manic, desperate dopamine rush that only awakened prodigies on the edge of a gold rush could produce. Across the floor, formal silk jackets were being unbuttoned, champagne flutes were unceremoniously abandoned on floating trays, and the lingering elegance of the Starlight Banquet dissolved into the cold, sharp focus of a staging ground for war.

"Diamonds! Gather at the crest!"

The voice that cut through the cacophony was not amplified by runic arrays, yet it carried the sheer, cutting weight of an unsheathed broadsword.

At the eastern staircase of the central dais, Victor Vance stood with his arms crossed over a chest encased in fitted dark-ceremonial steel. The third-year House Captain of the House of Diamonds did not smile. His short, ash-grey hair was cut with military severity, and the vertical scar running through his left eyebrow twitched as his cold, predatory gaze swept over the newly sorted freshmen who had just received the white jewel crest.

Behind him stood the senior core of Diamonds—a dozen third- and second-year elites whose auras hummed with the suffocating density of late-stage Silver and early Gold. They looked at the incoming freshmen not like honored juniors, but like wolfhounds evaluating a fresh litter of pups to see which ones would survive the winter.

Creed, Amara, and Nicholas moved toward the dais together, their strides casual yet unmistakably deliberate.

Beside them, Damien Blackthorne and the rest of the elite class freshmen fell in, their chests heaving, their eyes darting toward the colossal starlight rift beyond the glass.

Victor Vance’s gaze locked directly onto Creed.

The third-year captain didn’t waste breath on polite congratulations. He didn’t mention the entrance exams, the Pyramid of Dominion, or the fact that Creed was wearing a tailored suit that cost more than a mid-tier combat vehicle. His eyes simply bored into Creed’s dark-blue pupils, lingering for half a second on the navy headband pulled tight across Creed’s brow.

"You’re the Walden brat," Vance said, his voice flat, gravelly, and entirely stripped of warmth. "The one who made Alan Snow soil his silk trousers and gave Varien an excuse to gamble away his personal training slots."

Creed met the older student’s stare without blinking, his hands resting easily in the pockets of his midnight-navy coat. "I try to keep my tuition well-spent, Senior."

A few second-year Diamonds bristled at the lack of formal honorifics, but Victor Vance merely let out a short, guttural grunt that might have been amusement.

"Listen closely, freshmen," Vance announced, his voice dropping an octave as the entire Diamond contingent leaned in. "The House of Diamonds has held the Academy Championship for three consecutive years. We do not maintain that streak through camaraderie, motivational speeches, or the pathetic politics of the Four Families. We maintain it through overwhelming, unadulterated territorial violence."

Vance stepped down from the marble riser, his heavy iron-shod boots clacking against the stone with the weight of an executioner’s tread.

"The Starlight Realm is divided into concentric territorial rings. The outer ring is a chaotic wasteland of feral Stage 4 and Stage 5 beasts—the playground for the basic class and the cowards of Hearts. The middle ring holds the ancient mineral fonts and elemental veins. The core... belongs to the sovereigns. House Diamonds claims the Northern Quadrant of the second ring: the Frost-Iron Crags and the Sunken Astral Vein."

Vance stopped six inches from Creed’s chest, leaning down slightly so only the front row could hear him.

"We do not babysit freshmen. We do not run escort missions. If you get ambushed by a strike team of Spades in the dark, you either slit their throats or you bleed out in the dirt. If a single one of you gets captured, stripped of your harvest, and sent back through the gate in tears, you bring shame to the white crest. And if you bring shame to our crest... when the fourteen days are up, I will personally break both of your femurs in the sparring hall before Varien can even blow his whistle."

The threat hung in the freezing air like an iron shackle. Damien Blackthorne visibly swallowed, his knuckles tightening at his sides.

Amara, however, didn’t flinch. Her sky-blue eyes flashed with icy, haughty amusement, her fingers lightly brushing the sapphire choker at her throat. "A charming welcome speech, Captain. We’ll be sure to leave a few scraps for you seniors when we reach the fonts."

Vance’s scarred brow raised slightly. He looked at Amara, then back at Creed, whose lips were curved into that same maddening, unshakeable smirk.

"Big words from kids who haven’t smelled primeval blood yet," Vance muttered, stepping back and turning toward the open balcony. "Don your gear. Midnight is ten minutes out. If you jump late, you drop into the void."

As the Diamond seniors turned to assemble their deployment formations, Nicholas Grey smoothly stepped up beside Creed, his gray eyes glinting behind his champagne flute with that cold, razor-sharp intelligence that made him an apex schemer.

"A lovely fellow," Nicholas remarked smoothly, his voice masked beneath a localized spatial muffling ward. "Charming conversationalist. Clearly a product of superior breeding."

"Reminds me of my old landlord in Section 7," Creed replied casually, watching Vance bark orders to a squad of heavy-armored vanguard fighters. "Loud, ugly, and entirely convinced he owns the air you breathe."

Nicholas tilted his head, his smirk sharpening. "More importantly, Class Captain... our little Thursday evening itinerary has just suffered a logistical complication."

Creed glanced at him. "Marcus Delacroix?"

"Precisely," Nicholas murmured, casually tapping the rim of his crystal glass. "Marcus was supposed to have his private training block at eight o’clock tomorrow evening in the Resonator sub-level. But with the Director opening the Starlight Realm tonight, the entire Student Union executive council has been mobilized for realm oversight. Marcus isn’t staying on campus. He’s deploying with the second-year Spades detachment."

Creed’s eyes narrowed slightly beneath the shadow of his headband. "Which means?"

"Which means," Nicholas whispered, stepping closer until their shoulders nearly touched, "our charming little sting operation just got infinitely simpler—and far more profitable. On campus, we were constrained by disciplinary bylaws. We had to bait him, record the assault, and blackmail him through official administrative channels to extort his access badge without alerting his family. But out there? In an unmonitored primeval realm spanning hundreds of thousands of leagues?"

Nicholas raised his glass in a quiet, wicked toast.

"There are no security golems, Creed. There are no surveillance drones. There is no disciplinary board. We don’t just blackmail Marcus for a plastic keycard. We hunt him down in the wild, shatter his escort squad, crack his spatial ring open, and tear his personal diagnostic terminal directly out of his hands."

Creed looked at Nicholas, and for a split second, the two youths shared a dark, predatory smile that would have terrified anyone who knew how dangerous they both were.