Chapter 258: The Brink of the Void (2)

Beneath the cold glare of the celestial chandeliers, the air between the two prodigies had turned razor-thin.

For a fleeting heartbeat, the grand architecture of the Astral Grand Palace, the murmurs of high-born scions, and the distant hum of the rift seemed to fade into white noise.

"I like the way you think, Grey," Creed murmured, his fingers twitching inside his coat pockets.

"Find out his drop coordinates. The moment our boots hit the dirt, Marcus becomes our primary regional harvest."

"Already done," Nicholas replied with a suave chuckle, draining the last of his wine. "He’s dropping into the Western Obsidian Shallows with a four-man escort. I have a directional tracking flare keyed to his squad’s communication beacon. When you’re ready to collect... we move."

"ELDER BROTHER! SAVE ME FROM THE CRUELTY OF FATE!"

A shrill, tragic wail shattered the conspiratorial atmosphere like a brick through a stained-glass window.

Creed didn’t even have to look. He closed his eyes, let out a deep, pained sigh, and slowly turned around.

Waddling across the marble floor at maximum speed was Pascal.

The round, potato-shaped youth was clutching a colossal, embroidered velvet satchel that was practically dragging on the floor behind him.

The blinding, floor-length golden dragon robe fluttered wildly around his ankles, and draped over his shoulders was a brand-new, bright crimson sash bearing the heart-shaped insignia of the House of Hearts.

Flanking Pascal—or more accurately, herding him like a prized golden pig—were three second-year girls from the Hearts alchemical division, their arms loaded with crates of glowing potion vials and medical bandages, giggling uncontrollably as they followed his frantic dash.

"Look at this, Creed! LOOK AT IT!" Pascal sobbed theatrically, shoving a massive, glowing glass jar filled with green, pulsating slime directly into Creed’s face.

"They made me the Quartermaster’s Apprentice! They told me my bald head was ’an auspicious vessel of therapeutic tranquility’! They gave me a sack of medicinal leeches and told me to carry the burn salve! Me! The Golden Sovereign of the Nine Heavens! Relegated to an ointment mule!"

Creed gently pushed the jar of leeches away with the tip of his finger.

"Pascal, you’re wearing five yards of reflective gold silk. If you walked into the Starlight Realm as a frontline fighter, a Stage 5 Drake would spot your scalp from forty miles away and use you as a tooth-cleaning toy."

"Slander! Mere envy of my radiant vascular vitality!" Pascal sniffled, wiping his nose with the wide sleeve of his golden robe, though his eyes suddenly darted toward Creed’s spatial ring with sudden, manic cunning.

"Listen to me, Brother! Hearts may be the sanctuary of the gentle, but we control the medical dispensaries! While the seniors were cooing over my cheeks, I ’tactically liberated’ three crates of concentrated high-grade Beast Blood Serums and six Tier 2 Antidote Pellets! If you run into trouble out there... come find the Golden Dragon’s tent! My prices are fair: twenty percent off for family!"

Amara, standing beside Creed, couldn’t hold it in any longer. She burst into a soft, bell-like laugh, her sky-blue eyes dancing with delight as she looked down at the chubby boy.

"You’re already running an illegal field clinic before the gates are even open, Pascal?"

"It is not an illegal clinic, Lady Amara! It is an emergency mobile enterprise of divine salvation!" Pascal declared with utter seriousness, crossing his stubby arms.

He looked between Creed and Amara, taking in their matching midnight-navy and frost-silk attire, and clicked his tongue with the theatrical disappointment of an ancient emperor.

"A shame. Truly a shame. Two peerless prodigies standing together, yet spiritually blind to the majesty of the single life. Try not to get distracted by romance out there, Brother. The beasts of the realm do not pause for poetic declarations!"

Creed’s hand moved in a blur.

SMACK!

A clean, resonant slap echoed across Pascal’s polished bald scalp.

"Ow!" Pascal yelped, clutching his shining head with both hands.

"Go back to your leeches, potato," Creed deadpanned, shaking his stinging palm. "If you get eaten by a carnivorous plant in the first five minutes, I am not diving into its stomach to fish your golden robe back out."

"You would weep for a thousand years and you know it!"

Pascal shouted back, though he quickly scurried away toward the southern tier as the three senior alchemical maidens called his name, offering him candied lotus buns to carry their extra ingredient trunks.

Creed shook his head, watching the golden-robed boy vanish into the crowd, a faint, genuine warmth settling behind his ribs.

Even with the looming threat of the mark, the ancient Accord mysteries, and the brutal competition waiting beyond the threshold, having a complete idiot around kept reality from turning entirely grey.

GONG.

A sudden, thunderous tone tore through the Astral Grand Palace, vibrating not just through the air, but directly through the bones of every living soul in the room.

GONG. GONG.

Three massive tolls.

The ambient symphonies of the orchestra died instantly.

The floating golden constellation drones snapped into rigid military formations, their light shifting from celebratory gold to cold, glaring white.

Above the high dais, the colossal holographic banners of the Four Houses rolled upward, retracting into the vaulted ceiling.

Director Kaien rose from his floating silver petal, his long, star-traced robes billowing in a sudden, howling wind that blew inward from the celestial terrace.

The old man’s presence—vast, ancient, and immovable as a mountain range—descended over the two thousand students with suffocating clarity.

"The eleventh hour has passed," Kaien’s voice boomed across the silence, stripped of all warmth, carrying the cold finality of an iron gavel striking granite.

"The celestial alignment is complete. The Seventh Ring of the Starlight Realm has unsealed."

CRRRRRRRAAAAAAACK!

Beyond the five-mile void, the colossal bronze rings surrounding the ten-mile vertical rift accelerated their rotation!

Sparks of incandescent, burning starlight the size of city blocks sheared off the edges of the bronze, raining down into the endless sea of clouds below!

The swirling vortex inside the rift shifted from deep violet to a brilliant, eye-searing expanse of liquid silver and sapphire blue.

The sheer volume of primeval essence rushing outward created a visible, high-pressure storm front that slammed against the palace’s glass wall, sending deep, shuddering groans through the building’s structural supports.

Director Kaien raised his right arm, his fingers pointing directly downward.

"Drop the floor."

CLANK-HISS.

Before a single freshman could even process the command, a sound like a thousand mechanical locks snapping open echoed beneath their boots.

The entire three-kilometer polished obsidian floor of the Astral Grand Palace... vanished.

It did not slide. It did not open like elevator doors.

The massive slabs of enchanted stone simply dissolved into pure, translucent force-fields, revealing the terrifying, dizzying drop below!

Five miles of empty, howling night air.

Beneath their bare feet—separated only by a fragile, humming layer of transparent defensive energy—stretched the endless, turbulent sea of glowing clouds, broken only by the colossal, swirling maw of the Starlight Realm burning in the void below!

Dozens of freshmen shrieked in involuntary terror, lunging for pillars or dropping to their knees as their equilibrium completely short-circuited.

Several basic-class students went as white as chalk, their fingernails scraping uselessly against the glass-smooth barrier.

Creed didn’t flinch.

He stood firmly on the edge of the transparent floor, looking down into the five-mile abyss with calm, half-lidded dark blue eyes.

His weight was perfectly centered, his knees loose, his breath steady and slow. He had spent months dancing with gravity, stepping outside the bounds of physical inertia under the Path of Freedom.

To a man who understood the concept of flight, an open sky wasn’t a death trap; it was a highway.