Chapter 136: Awakened Tournament Crisis (42)

Sonne saw the incoming shockwave a fraction of a second before it reached her.

Her amber eyes widened.

"Everyone, behind me!"

She slammed the base of her ice lance into the ground.

Essence erupted from her body, spreading outward in a massive wave of frost. Ice formations rose one after another, forming a series of thick walls around herself, Lucy, Alexis, and Luvian. The barriers overlapped, creating a layered defensive structure designed to absorb the incoming impact.

For one brief moment, Sonne believed it might actually work.

Then the shockwave struck the first wall.

It shattered instantly.

The second wall followed.

Then the third.

The remaining ice barriers collapsed in rapid succession, scattering into countless fragments that were swept away by the blast. Sonne barely had time to raise her arms before the force hit her directly.

Her feet left the ground.

Lucy grabbed her arm.

Alexis grabbed Lucy.

Luvian grabbed absolutely nothing, mostly because he had spent the last several minutes telling everyone to stop relying on him.

"YOU FUCKI—"

All four were launched backward.

They tumbled through the air, crashed into broken earth, and continued sliding until the force finally dissipated. Alexis struck a half-buried concrete slab and rolled over it, while Luvian smashed through a pile of debris before coming to a stop several dozen meters away.

Lucy landed hard on her side.

The breath left her lungs.

For a few seconds, she couldn’t even remember how to inhale.

Her ears rang violently, and the world around her seemed to have lost all sound. She could see dust rising in enormous clouds, could see pieces of the stadium sailing through the air, but everything felt distant and unreal.

Then she heard a faint groan beside her.

Sonne.

Lucy forced herself to turn her head.

"Son... Sonne?"

The blonde Awakened was lying face-down in a shallow crater, her ice lance several meters away. She slowly raised one trembling hand.

"I’m... alive."

Alexis’s voice came from somewhere beneath a pile of broken concrete.

"Can someone get me out of here?"

Luvian coughed.

"Fucking hell..."

Five minutes passed.

Five entire minutes in which the battlefield remained buried beneath a suffocating blanket of dust.

Far beyond the stadium, a vast scar stretched toward the horizon.

The destruction was so immense that someone arriving at the scene without prior knowledge might never have guessed that a stadium had stood there at all.

Lucy slowly raised her head.

The colossal skull was no longer there.

Where the monster had stood, only a gigantic trench remained, its edges scorched and shattered. The last remnants of its enormous body were scattered across the ruined ground.

And those remnants were disappearing.

Thin crimson tendrils crawled across the broken flesh, consuming the remaining pieces of the monster one after another. Even now, Devour continued its work, swallowing the creature’s last tentacles until nothing remained but empty ground.

Lucy’s lips parted.

"We actually did it."

"Wait..."

’Where’s Eden?’

She looked around, unfortunately to no avail.

"Eden!"

Her voice came out weak.

She swallowed, forcing herself to stand.

"Eden?!"

Her heart began to race.

She turned toward the enormous trench, searching the surrounding rubble for any sign of him.

"Eden! Where are you?!"

The fear that had been buried beneath her exhaustion began to rise.

’No. Don’t tell me...’

What if that attack had consumed everything he had?

What if he had pushed himself too far?

What if...

"EDEN!"

This time, her voice cracked.

She stumbled over broken concrete, ignoring the pain shooting through her legs as she searched through the debris.

A considerable distance away, Eden was having a very different experience.

He was sitting against a pile of broken debris, his head tilted backward and his eyes half-closed.

He wanted to move.

He really did.

Unfortunately, his body had apparently decided that moving was an optional activity, and one it had no intention of participating in.

Every muscle felt as though it had been torn apart and hastily stitched back together. His arms trembled whenever he tried to lift them, and even breathing required more effort than he considered reasonable.

His Dark Matter blade had dissolved.

The crimson Essence that had coated him was gone.

And his remaining reserves were so low that he could barely feel the familiar flow of power through his body.

"...God."

He stared at the nights sky.

"My body is hurting all over."

A soft, worried voice sounded inside his mind.

[Master?]

Eden’s expression softened slightly.

[Master, are you injured? Can you hear me? Please answer me!]

The usually mischievous Woman sounded genuinely distressed. Her voice echoed through the connection established by their shared Dark Matter, and Eden could almost imagine her pacing frantically somewhere within his inner world.

He took a slow breath.

"I’m fine."

[You are clearly not fine! I can barely feel your Essence! Your Dark Matter is nearly depleted, and your body—]

"Sylvia."

[Yes, Master?]

"I’m exhausted."

A pause followed.

"That’s all."

[But—]

"Would you prefer it if I told you I was dying? Because I’m pretty sure that would make you panic even more."

[Master!]

"See? You’re already panicking."

He could practically hear her grinding her teeth.

Despite his teasing, Eden was relieved.

Sylvia’s concern reminded him that he was still alive, still conscious, and still capable of annoying the people around him.

That was a good sign.

More importantly, he could feel his strength slowly returning.

His System had been going absolutely insane.

Notifications had flooded his vision during the final moments of the battle, most of them obscured by the sheer amount of information being processed. He had caught glimpses of experience rewards, attribute gains, and skill notifications, but he hadn’t had the time or energy to examine any of them.

Now, with the battle apparently over, he finally had a chance.

And Eden was nothing if not greedy.

A familiar translucent window appeared before his eyes.

He stared at it.

Then his eyebrows rose.

"...Oh."

He sat a little straighter, immediately regretted the decision, and leaned back against the rubble.

[Master?]

"Give me a second, Sylvia."

He was looking at his level.

Level 231.

Eden stared at the number for several seconds.

Then he slowly began to grin.

Twenty-seven levels.

He had gained twenty-seven levels from the battle, with a substantial portion of the experience coming from the death of the S-Rank boss.

And that wasn’t even the most ridiculous part.

His Devour skill had been consuming tentacles throughout the battle, granting him additional attributes in small increments as it devoured the creature’s flesh. The rewards had accumulated gradually, almost imperceptibly, until the combined gains became substantial.

His attributes had skyrocketed.

He was still an A-Rank, but he was rapidly approaching the upper stage of his current rank.

’At this rate, I’ll reach S-Rank sooner than I expected.’

The thought sent a pleasant thrill through him.

Of course, levels alone wouldn’t solve everything. His growth would eventually slow, and reaching the next rank would demand increasingly dangerous opponents.

But that was a problem for another day.

Right now, he had a dead S-Rank boss to thank.

And a new skill to inspect.

Eden opened his status window.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

[STATUS]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Name: Eden

Level: 231 [A-Rank]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Attributes

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Strength: 750

Agility: 700

Vitality: 543

Essence: 547

Perception: 245

Dark Matter: 410

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Skills & Authorities

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Devour [S]

Dark Matter Manipulation [S]

Corrupted Surge [S]

Malicious Spirit [S]

Violent Vitality [A]

Burst Step [B]

Warrior’s Spirit [B]

Stealth [C]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Eden’s eyes moved slowly down the list.

His Perception remained comparatively low, but he wasn’t particularly concerned. His other attributes had received the greatest benefit from his accumulated rewards, and his combat style relied more heavily on his physical abilities and Essence output.

Then he reached his newest skill.

Violent Vitality [A].

A faint smile spread across his face as he opened its description.

[Violent Vitality - A-Rank]

[Convert Essence into an overwhelming regenerative force. Severe wounds can be healed almost instantly, while even severed limbs can be regenerated, provided sufficient Essence is available. The greater the injury, the higher the Essence consumption.]

Eden read the description twice.

"A healing skill."

He leaned his head against the rubble again, staring at the description.

"An A-Rank healing skill."

He had always understood the value of healing abilities. Anyone who had spent enough time fighting dangerous monsters eventually learned that surviving a battle was only half the challenge.

The other half was recovering from it.

And unlike ordinary healing abilities, Violent Vitality could regenerate even severed limbs.

That was an absurd level of utility.

The Essence cost would undoubtedly be enormous, especially for catastrophic injuries, but that was a fair trade-off. He could already imagine the possibilities. Wounds that would cripple other Awakeneds could become temporary inconveniences, provided he had enough Essence to pay for the regeneration.

And even if he couldn’t afford to heal himself completely in the middle of a battle, the ability to restore damaged tissue and close severe wounds would dramatically improve his chances of survival.

’This is excellent.’

He was already looking forward to testing it.

Then another thought occurred to him.

His lips curled upward.

’I wonder if Devour can somehow interact with it.’

The idea was tempting.

But he decided to put it aside for now. He was exhausted, nearly out of Essence, and surrounded by enough destruction to make even the most reckless Awakened reconsider their life choices.

Experimenting with a new skill under those circumstances would be stupid.

He closed the status window, his expression settling into something approaching satisfaction.

"...Not bad."

He closed his eyes for a moment.

He was beginning to think that, once he had recovered enough to walk, he might actually take a few days off.

A nice bed. A hot meal. Maybe a bath.

No monsters. No assassins. No mysterious Rogues trying to destroy the world.

And definitely no more tournaments.

’...Though I probably shouldn’t make promises I can’t keep.’

A faint voice interrupted his thoughts.

"Eden?"

His eyes opened.

He turned his head.

A familiar figure was stumbling toward him across the rubble.

Brown hair.

Bright blue eyes.

A face covered in dust, with a small cut near the forehead and several bruises along the cheek.

’Lucy?’