Chapter 73: The Hunting Grounds of Elysium

The central square of the Royal Academy’s outer sanctuary hummed with thousands of anxious, hushed voices.

High above the massive plaza, floating suspended in the sky without a single stone pillar, was the Tablet of Judgment—an immense, floating monument of white marble and brass arrays that cast a vast shadow over the ten thousand examinees gathered below.

On its face, thousands of blank slate lines glimmered, waiting to record the blood, merit, and points of those about to enter the trial.

Standing atop the primary stone podium, dressed in silver-and-white high-elf robes, was Archmage Elias.

His youthful, porcelain face looked no older than twenty, yet his ancient, piercing silver eyes scanned the ocean of young applicants with a weight that made the air itself feel cold.

"Examinees of the Solian Empire and beyond," Elias’s voice resonated across the plaza, calm, gentle, yet carrying an unshakeable spatial force that silenced the crowd instantly.

"Before you lies the entrance to the Pinnacle Realm of Elysium—a pocket space forged during the First Era. You have each been issued a Slate of Marks."

Valerian—clad in his rugged leather mercenary coat, his new mithril suppressor fastened securely to his left forearm—reached into his pocket, his gloved fingers brushing the cold, smooth surface of the small slate tablet.

"The rules are absolute," Elias continued, his silver gaze sweeping over the crowd.

"Elysium is divided into three distinct zones: the Outer Rim, the Inner Wilds, and the Core Abyss.

"Monsters slain in the Outer Rim yield one to five points.

"In the Inner Wilds, ten to fifty.

"The Core Abyss houses the Beast Kings—slaying one yields five hundred points, but I strongly advise all applicants to remain within the Outer Rim.

"Survival is the primary metric of a true warrior."

Elias raised his pale hand, his slender fingers weaving a complex, silver spatial seal.

"The slates carry a localized emergency recall array. Break the slate, and you will be extracted instantly—forfeiting your trial.

"You will be randomly dispersed across the Outer Rim.

"Hunt, survive, and claim your place."

BOOM!

A blinding column of brilliant silver light erupted from the sky, engulfing the entire plaza.

Space twisted violently.

The sound of ten thousand voices vanished into an absolute, deafening void.

FLASH.

A thousand leagues away from the real world, the sky above the Pinnacle Realm of Elysium turned a pale, violet hue.

In a dense, ancient clearing within the Outer Rim, space cracked like brittle glass.

Two figures materialized simultaneously, landing soundlessly on the damp, indigo-colored grass.

Castor and Pollux Ter Sangius.

"Calculation complete," Castor murmured softly, adjusting his scholar’s spectacles as he pulled his slate board from his sleeve.

"Spatial distribution variance: 0.004%. The localized transport array utilized a twin-anchor spell vector. By aligning our mana frequencies during the warp, we bypassed the random dispersion rule."

Pollux let out a dark, breathless giggle, her hands already resting on the hilt of her twin silver daggers.

Her eyes gleamed with feral excitement as she looked around the dark, towering forest of glowing purple trees.

"Oh, brother... do you smell that?" Pollux purred, her nose twitching as her long, dark hair blew in the mana-scented wind.

"The air is thick with meat."

Before Castor could reply, the earth beneath them violently shuddered.

ROAR!

The surrounding trees shattered into splinters as a massive, four-eyed Shadow-Horned Drake—a Tier-3 beast measuring thirty feet in length—erupted from the thicket.

Its scales were hard as black iron, dripping with corrosive green saliva as it lunged straight for Castor, its massive jaws opening wide enough to swallow a horse whole.

"A Tier-3 beast in the Outer Rim," Castor noted calmly, drawing a small silver compass from his pocket with his right hand while taking a single, precise step backward.

"Spatial vector: forty-five degrees northeast. Wind resistance: negligible. Pollux, clean it in three seconds."

"Two!" Pollux shrieked with delight.

She didn’t use a step—she vanished.

A streak of blinding silver light split the air.

Pollux reappeared directly above the Drake’s massive head.

Her twin daggers didn’t just strike; they danced.

In a fraction of a second, her blades carved thirty-six identical, interlocking incision lines along the gaps in the beast’s iron scales.

CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!

Castor flicked his fingers, throwing a tiny, chalk-written array slip onto the beast’s snout.

"Array activation: Pressure Shock."

BOOM!

The localized shockwave detonated directly inside the incisions Pollux had carved.

The thirty-foot Drake didn’t even have time to scream before its massive skull exploded from the inside out, collapsing into the mud with a heavy, bloody THUD.

Castor’s slate tablet chimed softly:

[+15 Points].

"Sloppy, Pollux," Castor sighed, brushing a speck of blood off his blue robes.

"You wasted twelve degrees of rotational momentum on the third strike."

"Shut up, math-nerd!" Pollux laughed, sitting on the dead Drake’s snout while wiping her blood-stained daggers on her sleeve.

"It was pretty, and you know it!"

While the Terza twins began their systematic slaughter in the Outer Rim, the rest of the Pinnacle Realm was turning into a grand stage for the scions of the continent’s greatest powers.

On a high, jagged cliff overlooking the misty expanse of the Inner Wilds, a tall young man clad in golden plate armor stood alone.

He held a massive, double-headed warhammer that crackled with blinding, gold-and-white lightning.

Leonidas von Sol, third prince of the Solian Imperial side-line.

With a single, effortless swing of his hammer, a horde of twenty armored dire-wolves was instantly incinerated by a cascading wave of divine thunder.

His slate tablet chimed repeatedly, his score soaring past three hundred points in minutes.

He didn’t even bother looking at the ashes, his cold, arrogant eyes fixed entirely on the dark, stormy peaks of the distant Core Abyss.

"Boring," Leonidas spat, resting his thunder-hammer on his shoulder.

"This Outer Rim is for insects."

Several miles to the west, amidst a frozen tundra zone within the trial grounds, a tall, ethereal girl with pale blue skin, long silver hair, and pointed, icy ears glided silently across a frozen lake.

She wore no armor, only flowing frost-silk robes.

Valeria Frost-Weaver, a princess of the High-Northern Ice Elves.

Where she walked, the air froze instantly into shimmering crystal needles.

A thirty-foot Frost-Bear lunged at her from the mist, but before its claws could touch her, Valeria simply flicked her wrist.

The moisture in the beast’s blood instantly froze solid, turning the monster into a delicate, frozen ice statue that shattered into a million sparkling shards beneath her boots.

Her slate tablet chimed:

[+20 Points].

Her eyes remained impassive, completely detached from the chaos around her.

Meanwhile, far to the south, deep within a dense, foggy valley at the edge of the Outer Rim, space rippled once more.

Valerian stepped out of the spatial distortion, his boots sinking into damp, mossy soil.

He didn’t draw a weapon.

He simply stood still, taking a quiet, measured breath behind his black blindfold.

Through the new dark-mithril suppressor wrapped tightly around his left forearm, he could feel his three primordial dragon cores churning beneath heavy, artificial chains.

His vast, abyssal mana was choked down into a tight, manageable stream, making him look—and feel—like nothing more than an experienced, quiet sellsword.

"A strange sensation, little master," Nox’Aethel’s deep, reverberating voice echoed in his mind, carrying a quiet chuckle.

"To walk among sheep with your fangs locked in iron."

"It is called discretion, Nox," Valerian replied internally, stepping smoothly through the mist.

"If I unleash a single drop of dragon-fire, Archmage Elias’s appraisal spell will lock onto this pocket dimension within seconds."

Suddenly, the quiet rustle of the fog was broken by the sharp, metallic CLANG of weapons colliding, accompanied by terrified yells and the heavy, guttural roars of a monster.

"Hold the left flank! Don’t let it circle behind Sister!"

"My barrier is cracking! It’s too fast!"

Valerian paused, stepping behind the wide trunk of an ancient oak tree and peering down into a small, rocky ravine.

A squad of three young examinees had been backed up against a sheer cliff face by a Gloom-Crawler—a massive, six-legged beast covered in razor-sharp bone plates, its tail ending in a heavy, spiked mace.

It was a peak Tier-2 monster, far too powerful for standard applicants to handle alone.

Fighting desperately at the front were two young girls who looked remarkably alike—twins, though their styles were completely different.

The first sister possessed long, fiery red hair tied into a high ponytail, clad in light leather armor and wielding a heavy two-handed broadsword.

She swung her blade with wild, desperate fury, her red aura flaring as she deflected the monster’s heavy tail strikes, though her arms were clearly trembling from exhaustion.

"Dahlia, get behind me!" the red-haired girl barked, her voice breathless.

Behind her stood the second sister—Dahlia—who possessed soft, shoulder-length pink hair and wore long, embroidered mage robes.

She clutched a wooden staff with both hands, her pale face drenched in sweat as she desperately maintained a faint, flickering golden barrier around their small party.

"I’m trying, Calla!" Dahlia cried out, her voice trembling.

"My mana is almost completely drained!"

Standing behind them both was a tall, lanky young man with messy brown hair, wearing a slightly rusted breastplate and holding a wooden tower shield.

He was panting heavily, his shield covered in deep dents from the beast’s claws.

"We have to break our slates!" the male friend shouted, his voice laced with panic as the Gloom-Crawler raised its massive, spiked tail for a crushing blow.

"We can’t beat a Gloom-Crawler! If we don’t recall now, we’re going to die!"

"No!" Calla gritted her teeth, her fiery red eyes burning with stubborn determination.

"We spent three years preparing for this exam! I am not giving up in the first hour!"

The Gloom-Crawler let out a high-pitched, terrifying shriek.

Its six legs dug into the earth, and its spiked tail lashed out with blinding speed, aimed directly at Calla’s exposed chest.

Dahlia screamed, her golden barrier shattering into fine dust under the sheer air pressure.

SHING!

A single, plain iron blade cut through the fog.

There was no grand explosion of arcana.

No blinding light.

Just a clean, soundless streak of cold iron that intersected the beast’s tail at the exact structural weak point between its bone plates.

CRACK!

The massive, spiked mace tail was clean severed, flying through the air and crashing into the mud.

The Gloom-Crawler shrieked in agony, stumbling backward.

Before it could recover, a dark figure stepped smoothly into its blind spot.

Valerian seized the beast’s central neck joint with his left hand, his glove covered by his dark mithril suppressor, and drove his iron dagger cleanly upward through the bottom of its skull.

The creature shuddered violently once, then collapsed into a lifeless heap.

Silence descended over the ravine.

Calla, Dahlia, and their male friend stared at the blindfolded youth standing over the dead monster, their eyes wide with absolute shock and disbelief.

Valerian casually wiped the dark blood off his iron blade using a dead leaf, then sheathed it at his waist.

His slate tablet in his pocket chimed softly:

[+8 Points].

"You..." Calla stammered, holding her heavy broadsword with numb fingers as she looked at his plain leather coat and the black cloth over his eyes.

"You killed a Gloom-Crawler in two moves... alone?"

Valerian turned his head toward them, his posture relaxed, his aura completely subdued into that of a quiet, wandering blade.

"It was wide open," Valerian replied smoothly, his voice flat and unbothered.

"You three are lucky. Walking into a Gloom-Crawler’s territory without a scout is a quick way to fail this exam."

The male friend dropped his dented tower shield, letting out a massive sigh of relief as he fell back against the cliff face.

"Praise the gods... I thought we were done for."

Dahlia stepped forward, her soft pink hair swaying as she looked at Valerian with deep curiosity and gratitude.

"Thank you... truly. I am Dahlia, a light mage. This is my twin sister, Calla, a vanguard swords-woman, and our friend, Toby, a shield-bearer."

Calla lowered her broadsword, dusting off her leather armor, though her sharp eyes still scanned Valerian with intense fascination.

"You’re a solo examinee? What’s your name?"

"Valen," Valerian answered simply, keeping his tone perfectly neutral.

"Just a mercenary guard under a merchant guild sponsorship."

"A mercenary?" Calla blinked, a sudden, bright smile breaking across her fiery face.

"Well, ’Valen’, you just saved our lives, and none of us have enough firepower to survive the deeper parts of the Outer Rim alone.

"What do you say we form a temporary party?"

Valerian paused behind his blindfold.

A solo mercenary wandering the trial grounds would eventually draw suspicion from high-level proctors, but blending in with a standard, low-tier three-person party provided the ultimate camouflage.

"A temporary party..." Valerian murmured, a tiny, dark smile twitching at the corner of his lips.

"Very well. But I lead the vanguard."