Chapter 324: Shadow trials[7]

The air inside the null-field dome was thick, cold, and dead.

High up above the action, Jax Sterling screamed through his mic.

"Folks, I am losing my mind!" Jax’s voice blew out the frequencies of the stadium’s spatial arrays, echoing over the thunderous hum of the arena.

"The null-field is active! Zero abilities, zero umbralis, zero shortcuts! Four of our top-tier prospects are pinned down like sitting ducks behind those basalt columns."

?"Because they’re smart enough to know when they’re outgunned, Jax," Nadia Varas interjected, her voice laced with intense focus.

She leaned into her comm-array, her fingers tapping rapidly against the live tracking feeds. "Those automated sentinels are firing heavy armor-piercing kinetic rounds at close range. Without defensive abilities or physical reinforcement, standing in that open corridor is suicide."

"Except someone didn’t get the memo!" Jax roared, pointing wildly at the central projection deck.

"Look at the center lane! Samantha Drake isn’t hiding! She’s marching right down the middle of the kill zone!"

****

?Without access to their Talents or Umbralis techniques, Xander, Lucian, Warren, and Cassius were pinned behind the pillars, forced to rely purely on physical reflexes to dodge the incoming kinetic rounds from the four automated sentinels.

?Samantha moved across the obsidian floor like a phantom, her silhouette blurring as she channeled the absorbed null-energy through the dark spear.

?The first Sentinel targeted her, its dual kinetic cannons firing a stream of heavy armor-piercing slugs.

?Without missing a beat, she instinctively spun the spear in a tight, vertical arc before her.

For a brief moment, the slugs seemed to move in slow motion.

The broad leaf-shaped blade struck the heavy kinetic rounds mid-air, deflecting them harmlessly into the stone floor.

With every deflected impact, the dark mineral metal hummed louder, feeding off the kinetic momentum.

"ARE YOU SEEING THIS?!" Jax screamed, slapping both hands onto the control desk, nearly knocking over his headset.

"She just parried a multi-round kinetic salvo! With a piece of metal! No Talent, no kinetic field—JUST PURE UNREAL HAND-EYE. COORDINATION!"

Down in the null-zone, the commentary feed echoed faintly through the small speakers

?"She’s parrying heavy artillery rounds..." Cassius grunted from behind a pillar, slack-jawed.

"Without a Talent? That’s impossible!"

?"It’s not brute force," Lucian said tightly, his sharp eyes analyzing Samantha’s footwork.

"She’s using the spear’s weight to redirect the rounds before they fully detonate."

Samantha closed the distance to the first sentinel. She drove the butt of the spear into the machine’s primary optical sensor, shattering the armored glass, then swept the blade downward, severing the primary supports in its left leg.

The heavy machine collapsed onto one knee with a metallic screech.

?Without stopping, she leaped off the falling sentinel’s shoulder, throwing her weight across the cavern toward the second control pedestal.

"Node Two..."

?[NODE 2 OVERRIDE INITIATED: SAMANTHA DRAKE]

?The moment her palm hit the plate, the final layer of the spherical barrier around the Abyssal Prime Seal shattered like glass.

[BARRIER STATUS: FULLY DISSOLVED]

[ABYSSAL PRIME SEAL: ACCESSIBLE]

[OVERRIDE HOLD REQUIRED: 15 SECONDS]

The remaining three sentinels immediately turned their full firepower toward the central pedestal.

?"Samantha!" Warren yelled from the edge of the null-zone. "You can’t hold that pedestal for fifteen seconds while three units are firing on you!"

Up in the booth, Jax gripped the edge of his seat.

"The barrier is down, but the trap is sprung! Three sentinels are locking onto the central altar! She’s got a fifteen-second verification hold with no cover, and three barrels primed for a synchronized execution salvo! Nadia, she has to back off, right? There’s no way she holds!"

?"She’s not backing off," Nadia breathed, leaning so close to the viewport her breath fogged the reinforced glass.

"Look at her stance... she’s going for the Prime."

?Samantha looked at the float token—the brilliant, burning crimson-and-gold sphere hovering over the liquid obsidian pool.

?Then she looked at the three incoming sentinels.

?She didn’t stay at Node Two. Instead, she grabbed the Tenebris spear with a reverse grip, drove her boots into the stone, and jumped directly into the center of the liquid obsidian pool.

?"Is she crazy?!" Xander shouted. "That pool is high-density magnetic fluid!"

Samantha landed on the central pedestal submerged in the liquid.

The viscous dark fluid swirled around her boots, but it didn’t swallow her. The Tenebris spear’s passive field repelled the liquid obsidian, creating a small, stable footplate of clear stone around her feet.

?She slammed her left hand onto the primary Prime Altar.

?[ABYSSAL PRIME VERIFICATION IN PROGRESS]

[1... 2... 3 SECONDS]

?The three sentinels converged on the edge of the pool, raising their weapons for a synchronized, point-blank execution salvo.

?Samantha took a deep breath. She raised the nebulous spear high with her right hand, pointing the broad tip directly at the vaulted ceiling above the pool.

?

A violent pillar of pitch-black, pressurized energy erupted from the tip of the spear, blasting straight into the structural keystone of the cavern ceiling.

?The entire ceiling cracked. Massive, multi-ton stalactites of solid basalt detached, raining down in a devastating avalanche directly onto the three Sentinels surrounding the pool.

?

?The massive stone pillars crushed the sentinels into scrap metal, their kinetic cannons firing harmlessly into the rubble as their power cores shattered.

"HOLY SKITTLES!" Jax howled, the entire stadium trembling as fifty thousand spectators leapt to their feet in a single, unified roar.

"SHE BROUGHT THE CEILING DOWN ON THEM! SHE CRUSHED THE DEFENSIVE GRID WITH THE CAVERN ITSELF!"

?Dust and stone fragments swept across the chamber, masking the central pedestal in a thick gray cloud.

?[8... 9... 10... 11... 12... 13... 14... 15 SECONDS]

[VERIFICATION COMPLETE. ABYSSAL PRIME SEAL CLAIMED!]

[150 POINTS AWARDED TO CONTESTANT: SAMANTHA DRAKE ]

The trial voice boomed through the collapsing cavern, echoing across all tiers.

TRIAL TWO HAS CONCLUDED!

ALL CONTESTANTS INITIATING AUTOMATED EXTRACTION...

A bright beam of blue spatial light enveloped Samantha just as the central ceiling collapsed entirely over the liquid pool.

?Simultaneously, blue extraction beams struck Warren, Lucian, Xander, Edmund, Cassius, and the remaining surviving contestants across the upper tiers.

?The dark canyon disappeared in a flash of blinding white light.

?A second later, Samantha stood on the floor of the Colosseum.

?The roar of the crowd hit her like a physical wave. Thousands of spectators were standing, cheering, and screaming as the massive holographic leaderboard in the sky updated in real time.

"LOOK AT THE SKY, EVERYBODY!" Jax’s voice echoed over the deafening celebration, vibrating through the stadium rafters.

"LOOK AT THE BOARD! WE HAVE A NEW LEADER AT THE TOP"

?Samantha stood in the center of the arena, slightly breathless, her uniform covered in stone dust and damp dark residue.

The spear in her hand had returned to its quiet, lusterless state, resting comfortably against her shoulder.

Beside her, Warren materialized, wiping a trace of dust from his sleeve. He looked up at the floating scoreboard, his expression as calm as ever.

?"Well played," Warren said softly.

?Samantha looked up at the leaderboard as the final scores tallied.

Then the scores materialized.

FESTIVAL OF SHADOWS: CUMULATIVE LEADERBOARD

(POST-TRIAL TWO)

RANK

1.S AMANTHA DRAKE TALENTED 310 PTS

2. LUCIAN ASH ASSASSIN 245 PTS

3. XANDER GRAY ASSASSIN 235 PTS

4. WARREN FROST TALENTED 180 PTS

5. EDMUND BREWER TALENTED 165 PTS

6. CASSIUS WULFRIC TALENTED 155 PTS

QUALIFICATION STATUS FOR VEILREND GAMES:

- TALENTED IN TOP 5: 3 / 3 REQUIRED [MET]

- TALENTED IN TOP 10: 4 / 4 REQUIRED [MET]

UNBELIEVABLE!" Jax yelled into his microphone, leaning out over the commentary balcony to wave at the wildly cheering crowd.

"Samantha Drake takes the crown for Trial Two with a staggering 310 points! She leaps past Lucian Ash, she leaps past Xander Gray, and puts the Talented faction in the driver’s seat!"

The arena hummed with tension.

?Samantha had taken the top spot on the individual leaderboard, pulling ahead of Lucian and Xander with her high-risk acquisition of the Abyssal Prime Seal.

?More importantly, the collective performance of Samantha, Warren, and Edmund had pushed three Talented into the overall Top 5, temporarily securing the fragile qualification threshold for the Veilrend Games.

?Lucian stood a few paces away, his arms crossed over his chest as he stared at the board.

He turned his eyes toward Samantha.

?"You took an unreasonable risk down there," Lucian said, his voice quiet, almost lost beneath the roar of the crowd.