Chapter 161 Eleanor Von Bastet

Azriel merely offered a faint, enigmatic smile, leaning lightly against the gilded balustrade as he kept his dark violet eyes glued to the shifting arena sands below.

Beneath his composed demeanor, his mind was operating at an electric pace.

He was thoroughly captivated.

Across the eight segregated rings, a kaleidoscope of deadly combat arts was on display, but what truly held his fascination was the tangible application of aether.

As an Awakener, he was still biologically locked out of actively circulating external aether.

That gate only swung open once one breached the threshold into the Adept realm.

Watching these young scions wield it with such casual fluency gave him an invaluable masterclass.

A simple, straightforward jab from a bare-knuckled feline became an explosive shockwave when coated in condensed flame aether, an ordinary horizontal slash from a rapier could cleanly carve through stone when wrapped in high-frequency wind-aether.

The destructive force behind their base physical strength wasn’t just supplemented, it was multiplied tenfold, warping the air and shattering the arena’s reinforced granite.

It was a display of raw, distilled power that Azriel intended to bridge and master the moment his foundation solidified.

Time blurred as the brutal preliminary cycle ground onward.

Dozens of bouts concluded in swift, unyielding carnage.

Bloodline after bloodline was tested, filtered, and discarded, defeated girls were hauled off the blood-slicked sand by stone-faced medical golems, while the victors ascended back to their clan terraces to recover mana.

Then, the massive, skyward crystal display chimed with a deep runic pulse, cycling past the eighth rotation to initiate the Ninth Block.

Sixteen fresh portraits snapped into focus across the eight glowing sectors.

In Sector Four, an image materialized that immediately drew an electric murmur through the aristocratic pavilions.

Down in the competitor’s corridor, a figure strode out onto the fourth dueling platform.

She was a slender, breathtaking young woman with neck-length, glossy raven hair that framed a sharp, porcelain jawline.

Twin black cat ears twitched lazily atop her head, matching the slow, indifferent sway of a slender feline tail behind her hips.

She wore a skin-tight, scandalously cut black battle-dress accented with crimson trim that clung possessively to every curve of her waist and thighs.

Slung diagonally across her back was a massive, oversized nodachi, an imposing curved blade encased in a lacquered sheath of crimson and obsidian.

Her golden slit-pupils were utterly frigid.

It wasn’t just coldness, it was pure, unadulterated apathy.

Her calculating gaze swept across the roaring Colosseum as if the half-million spectators were nothing more than insects, her entire demeanor practically screaming that this entire spectacle was a tedious waste of her time.

She didn’t offer a traditional imperial bow, nor did she salute her opponent or the overseeing judge

She simply stood with her weight shifted casually onto one hip, looking completely and utterly bored.

Up in the private skybox, Azriel looked down, recognizing her instantly. He had seen that exact face on Rosalind’s runepad.

Eleanor Van Bastet.

The private interface in Azriel’s vision sparked with excited chatter

[LIVE CHAT]

[Sadistic69] (Red): SHE’S HERE! Look at that absolute resting-bitch face! She doesn’t give a single damn about anyone down there!

[Nine_Tailed_Vixen] (Cyan): The black ears… the tight little red-trimmed leather… she carries herself just like her mother, but twice as unhinged!

[Lusty_Sera] (Golden): Look at her opponent shaking in her boots! Poor snake girl knows she drew the executioner!

[God_Slayer_Klara] (Red): A giant katana on a petite feline body. The balance of that weapon means her burst-aether is monstrous.

Opposite Eleanor, the girl standing across the white sand was from the Naga Clan.

The serpent-kin was tall, with shimmering cobalt-blue scales dusting her forearms and cheeks, wielding a pair of heavy, wave-bladed scimitars.

But despite her imposing reach and venomous reputation, she was visibly sweating bullets.

Her serpent tongue darted out in rapid, terrified flickers, her pupils dilated until they swallowed the amber of her eyes.

Every highborn family on the continent knew Eleanor’s terrifying pedigree.

She wasn’t just a candidate for the top two hundred, she was widely considered one of the undisputed apex monsters of this entire tournament.

Worse than her overwhelming realm was her reputation, Eleanor had zero patience for weakness, and she never left her prey intact.

The black-haired girl slowly tilted her head toward the trembling naga, her golden eyes dead and hollow.

She didn’t draw her blade.

She didn’t even shift her stance.

She simply exhaled a quiet, contemptuous sigh, waiting for the judge to drop the ward so she could end the farce and go back to sleep.

The obsidian-clad judge in Ring Four raised his hand, looking between the two contenders.

The naga girl hissed nervously, sinking into a coiled, low-slung stance with her dual scimitars crossed defensively before her chest.

Wisps of corrosive purple venom hissed as they dripped from the steel, eating into the white sands.

Eleanor didn’t move an inch. Her slender hand remained resting loosely against the wrapped hilt over her shoulder, her black cat ears flat against her raven hair in sheer, deadpan disinterest.

“Ring Four, commence!” the judge roared, bringing his suppression rod down.

The naga girl didn’t hesitate. Desperation overrode terror as she detonated her aether.

A torrent of watery, toxic aura exploded outward, propelling her forward with serpentine speed.

Her body blurred into three coiling afterimages, kicking up a rooster-tail of sand as she converged on Eleanor from three angles, both blades whistling in a scissor decapitation strike meant to end the bout before the Bastet prodigy could draw her weapon.

Up in the private box, Rosalind took a delicate sip of wine, her golden eyes gleaming with cruel pride.

“Blink, Azriel, and you’ll miss it.”

Down on the sands, Eleanor’s golden slit-pupils didn’t even widen.

She took half a step back.

Clack.

The sound of the oversized nodachi unseating from its lacquered scabbard by a mere three inches was lost beneath the naga’s sonic boom, yet a sudden, razor-thin crescent of pitch black aether detached from the blade’s lip.

There was no sweeping slash.

No dramatic martial roar.

SHINNG!

A concussive shockwave of condensed pressure sheared through the air.

The naga’s three afterimages popped like burst bubbles, and the charging serpent-kin froze dead in her tracks five paces away.

Both of her heavy wave-bladed scimitars cleanly snapped in half, the sheared iron tips tumbling into the sand.

An instant later, the kinetic slipstream caught the girl’s armored chestpiece, shattering the steel plating and tossing her backward like a ragdoll

She skidded fifty yards across the ring, crashing heavily against the containment ward and slumping unconscious into the sand, completely out cold without Eleanor ever fully drawing her blade.

A profound, breathless hush swept over the immediate viewing terraces.

Eleanor casually tapped the hilt with her thumb, clicking the giant nodachi fully back into its scabbard with a dull snick.

She didn’t spare a single glance at the crumpled body across the sand.

“Boring,” she muttered, her lip curling in disgust as she turned on her heel toward the exit corridor.

“Winner, Ring Four: Eleanor Van Bastet!” the judge bellowed, quickly checking the naga’s vital pulse with his staff.

Across the Colosseum, a thunderous roar erupted from the Sekhmet spectators, while the stream across Azriel’s vision lost its collective mind:

[LIVE CHAT]

[Sadistic69] (Red): SHE DIDN’T EVEN DRAW THE DAMN SWORD! ONE INCH OF STEEL AND IT SHATTERED TWO WEAPONS AND A CHESTPLATE!

[God_Slayer_Klara] (Red): That wasn’t just physical force. That was compressed aether manipulation at the high Adept tier. Rosalind taught her well.

[Nine_Tailed_Vixen] (Cyan): The daughter is just as arrogant and lethal as the mother! Look at her walking away like she stepped on a beetle! Oh, Azriel, taming this one is going to be magnificent!

[Moon_Priestess] (Cyan): The pride runs deep in the Bastet bloodline. A wild kitten playing with blades… waiting to be disciplined.

Azriel let out a soft, wry chuckle under his breath.

Bringing a creature like that to heel was going to be pure, unadulterated hell.

Her combat prowess was terrifying, and that bored, disdainful apathy, the way she looked past the world as if nothing in it deserved her breath, was an impenetrable fortress.

Cracking that icy composure, shattering her pride, and dragging whatever feral beast she kept locked underneath out into the open would demand calculated patience and an unforgiving hand.

Beside him, Rosalind watched Eleanor vanish into the competitor’s corridor, her golden slit-pupils brimming with vicious, aristocratic pride.

She tilted her chin up toward Azriel, a sultry, razor-sharp smirk curling the corners of her painted lips.

“Well? What do you think?” she purred, leaning into his space until the intoxicating heat of dusk-lotus and heavy blood-wine brushed his neck.

“Isn’t your future mistress an absolute terror?”

Azriel looked down into her glowing eyes, his mouth twisting into a slow, knowing smirk.

“Takes right after her mother.”

Rosalind burst into a rich, melodic laugh, the throaty purr vibrating against Azriel’s chest as she tipped her head back against the velvet cushions.

She didn’t swat him away, instead, her manicured claws lightly trailed the edge of his jawline, thoroughly charmed by the sheer audacity dripping from his voice.

The reaction from the surrounding skyboxes, however, was dead, suffocating silence.