House of Blood

Outside the swirling, silver gateway of Elysium, the massive limestone amphitheater of the Imperial Academy’s outer plaza bustled with thousands of spectators, high-born sponsors, and disqualified examinees.

Above them, hovering in the sky like a monolithic slab of black obsidian, hung the Tablet of Judgment, its carved golden runes shifting continuously as scores were calculated across the realm.

A sudden, violent flash of silver light erupted on the central extraction platform, drawing gasps from the surrounding crowd.

”Medical clerics! Clear the platform!” a senior proctor’s voice boomed, echoing across the plaza via sound-amplification arrays.

Four white-robed healers rushed forward with a floating levitation stretcher as the silver beam faded.

On the stone floor lay Toby, kneeling in his own dried blood, clutching the unconscious form of Calla. Beside them, Dahlia sat like a porcelain doll with cracked enamel, her hands trembling violently as she held her sister’s pale fingers.

”She’s breathing, but her soul-tether is paper-thin!” the lead cleric barked, casting a golden diagnostic rune over Calla’s chest. ”What hit her?!”

”A Beast King...” Toby choked out, his voice hoarse, bloodshot eyes staring at the stone floor with a mixture of raw grief and venom.

”We were trapped in the Inner Wilds... near the volcanic ridge.”

A murmur rippled through the gathering crowd of examinees and nobility.

A Beast King?

In the entrance exam’s outer perimeter?

”Where is the rest of your unit?” a proctor with a clipboard demanded, stepping through the circle of healers.

”Your slate records show a four-man temporary squad.”

Toby’s jaw clenched so hard his teeth groaned.

”We had a mercenary,” he spat, the word laced with pure revulsion. ”A blind bastard named Valen. When the beast struck, he didn’t raise a finger. He let Calla take the blow... used us as bait to secure his own skin, and then walked away while she was dying on the floor.”

Dahlia didn’t utter a word, but her quiet, shuddering sob confirmed Toby’s words.

Within minutes, the story spread through the crowded plaza like a wildfire in autumn dry-grass.

The name Valen passed from mouth to mouth, attached to whispers of cold-blooded cowardice, betrayal, and merciless abandonment.

Among the high-born onlookers in the velvet-draped spectator boxes, scoffs of disdain were loud and frequent.

”Typical commoner trash,” a young noble lady sniffed, fanning herself with silk. ”No honor. No bloodline. Just a stray dog snapping at scraps.”

High above the roaring plaza, inside the quiet, stone observation spire of the Archmages, three elder proctors stood around a massive, glowing projection orb displaying a topological map of Elysium.

”Forget the mercenary’s conduct for a moment,” a white-bearded Archmage muttered, his eyes fixed on the center of the orb where a deep crimson zone was rapidly fading into black.

”Look at the spatial density in Sector Seven.”

”The Triune Beast... Aurelix,” a second proctor whispered, tapping a floating parchment array.

”Her mana signature hasn’t just receded. It has completely vanished from the monitoring arrays.”

”Did she return to the deep subterranean abyss?”

”No,” the lead proctor replied, his brow furrowed in deep concern.

”There was no spatial shift toward the abyss. Her life-force signature didn’t extinguish like a slain beast, either. It simply... ceased to exist within the boundary matrix. As if she stepped off the edge of the world.”

The Archmages exchanged uneasy glances.

To halt the entrance exam mid-way due to an anomaly would bring immense humiliation to the Academy.

”Keep the surveillance arrays locked on Sector Seven,” the lead proctor commanded softly.

”And track the examinees currently operating in that zone. Especially... that one.”

He pointed a thin finger at the floating slate register.

Down in the mid-tier rankings, a single name was rising with unnatural, mechanical speed, devouring points in steady, terrifying increments.

[Rank 12: Valen — 1,420 Points]

[Rank 9: Valen — 1,890 Points]

[Rank 6: Valen — 2,450 Points]

Deep within the high-tier ravines of the Inner Wilds, the air was thick with the heavy, metallic stench of blood and ozone.

BOOM!

A massive, armored Iron-Hide Behemoth—a Tier-4 beast with scales as thick as castle walls and horns dripping with corrosive acid—staggered backward.

Its massive skull groaned as a concentrated, translucent wedge of spatial pressure slammed directly into its forehead, cracking its crystalline hide like brittle glass.

Princess Solene von Sol lowered her slender hand, her white-and-gold battle robes pristine, untouched by a single speck of mud or blood.

Her long blonde hair swayed gently in the mountain wind as the fifteen-foot beast crashed to the earth with a thunderous thud, its glowing core shattering inside its chest.

Beside her, Lyra flicked her silver rapier with casual grace, wiping a single drop of black blood off the tip before sheathing it with a crisp clack.

”Clear,” Lyra reported calmly, her sharp eyes scanning the surrounding jagged cliffs.

”That makes the eighth Tier-4 beast in this sector, Your Highness. Your spatial compression technique is growing more refined by the hour.”

Behind them, a loud, theatrical burst of applause broke the silence.

”Brilliant! Absolutely divine, Your Highness!” Julian of House Vane stepped forward, adjusting his polished, silver-plated breastplate.

He carried a ornate spear inlaid with wind-element mana stones that hadn’t seen a second of real combat.

”The way you twisted the spatial vectors to bypass its frontal armor... truly, only the Imperial bloodline could command such elegance! Had my wind-burst spear taken its flank, it would have collapsed three seconds sooner!”

Beside Julian, Marcus of House Valerius scoffed, crossing his heavy, gauntleted arms over a broad chest.

”Please, Julian, spare us the poetry. The beast was already off-balance because I held the perimeter against those two shadow-wolves! If anyone assisted Her Highness’s flank, it was the vanguard of House Valerius!”

Lyra turned her head, her cold gaze falling upon the two noble youths like a splash of ice water.

”If House Valerius’s vanguard had spent less time admiring their reflection in the river, we would have cleared this ravine twenty minutes ago. Keep your mouth shut, Marcus. Your loud breathing is drawing scavengers.”

Marcus flushed bright red, biting back a curse, while Julian offered a slick, practiced smile to hide his irritation.

Solene paid neither of them any attention.

She pulled her slate from her belt, tapping the glowing surface to check the leaderboard.

[Rank 1: Solene von Sol — 4,100 Points]

[Rank 2: Mirain Sec Sangius — 3,850 Points]

[Rank 3: Julian von Vane — 2,900 Points]

Julian leaned over slightly, eyeing the numbers with a self-satisfied grin.

”Ah, look at that. Third place. The Vane legacy remains firmly near the top, right beside your glorious light, Princess.”

”Look lower,” Solene said flatly.

Her voice was cool, smooth, and entirely devoid of emotion.

Julian blinked, scrolling down the slate’s glowing surface.

His smile faltered slightly, then turned into a sneer of utter disgust.

[Rank 6: Valen — 2,600 Points]

”Valen?” Marcus spat, leaning over Julian’s shoulder.

”Isn’t that the commoner mercenary the slate network was gossiping about ten minutes ago? The coward who let his own teammate get mauled to save his skin?”

”It is,” Julian said, curling his lip.

”A bottom-feeding rat. He must be wandering through the scorched zones left behind by that dragon-beast’s rampage, stealing the cores of dead beasts that were already half-fried! How else could a nameless sellsword jump three thousand points in less than an hour? It’s disgraceful that the Academy allows such parasitic behavior.”

”He isn’t scavenging,” Solene spoke, her voice cutting through Julian’s boasting with effortless authority.

Julian paused.

”Your Highness?”

Solene raised a pale finger, pointing to the point log attached to the name Valen.

”A scavenger picks up low-tier cores in clusters,” Solene analyzed softly, her sharp blue eyes narrowing as she read the live feed.

”Three points here. Five points there. But look at his timestamp. Every four minutes, his score jumps by precisely two hundred to three hundred points. That isn’t scavenging dead meat, Julian. That is the point output of someone methodically hunting Tier-3 and Tier-4 alpha beasts in single-strike engagements.”

Julian’s jaw tightened.

”Single-strike? Against Tier-4 beasts? Alone? That’s impossible for a commoner without an elite crest or an ancient weapon!”

”Then he possesses something far more dangerous than a crest,” Solene replied smoothly, stowing her slate inside her robes.

She turned toward the dark, misty peaks leading deeper into the Core Abyss.

”Move. The Sangius girl is closing the gap, and this ’Valen’ is moving faster than any of us.”

While the elite examinees fought for glory in the high-tier ravines, the outer sectors of Elysium had devolved into complete, chaotic anarchy.

Aurelix’s earlier rampage had shattered the natural territorial boundaries of the forest.

High-tier beasts had been driven out of the core, fleeing down into the lower zones and slaughtering dozens of unprepared commoner squads.

Survival had replaced point-farming as the primary objective for eighty percent of the participants.

In a muddy, rain-drenched clearing near the middle perimeter, a squad of four low-born examinees stood back-to-back, their swords raised, surrounded by a pack of six Gloom-Hounds.

”Break the slates!” one of the boys screamed, his leg bleeding heavily from a claw wound.

”We can’t win this! Break them!”

”No!” the team leader yelled back, his hands shaking as he held a cracked wooden shield.

”If we extract now, we fail! We spent three years’ savings just to pay the entrance fee! We just need to hold out until—”

Before he could finish his sentence, the lead Gloom-Hound lunged, its jaw splitting open to reveal rows of needle-sharp teeth dripping with black saliva.

THWACK.

A dark blur passed through the clearing.

It was so fast the air itself let out a sharp, whipping crack.

The Gloom-Hound’s head vanished from its shoulders before its body even hit the mud, spraying dark blood across the wet grass.

Before the remaining five hounds could even turn toward the intruder, five distinct flashes of plain, un-enchanted iron flickered in the misty rain.

Slice. Slice. Slice. Slice. Slice.

In less than two seconds, all five beasts froze in mid-air, their bodies neatly bisected at the torso.

They collapsed into the mud in a synchronized, sickening splash of blood and bone.

The four examinees fell to their knees in absolute shock, their breath catching in their throats.

Standing in the center of the crimson mess was a lone youth.

He wore a dark, heavy leather coat soaked through with rain, its hem splattered with mud.

His face was half-shrouded by a thick, pitch-black blindfold bound tightly around his head.

In his right hand, he held a plain, unadorned iron sword, its blade completely dry—the blood had been thrown off by the sheer kinetic velocity of his last sheath-draw.

He didn’t look at the saved examinees.

He didn’t check their condition.

He didn’t say a word.

With a smooth, mechanical motion, he reached down, gathered the six glowing beast cores into his palm, and absorbed their energy into his Slate of Marks.

[+300 Points]

The four examinees stared at him in terrified awe.

”Are... are you the mercenary?” the injured boy whispered, his voice trembling.

”The one they’re talking about on the network? ’Valen’?”

Valerian didn’t answer.

Behind his black blindfold, his sharp crimson eyes were fixed entirely on his own inner landscape.

Deep within his spiritual space, comfortably lounging upon a bed of white-gold phoenix flames, Aurelix’s ethereal form giggled softly, her nine tails fanning out in dark amusement as she watched his physical movements through his senses.

”Oh, my scary little master...” her velvety, teasing voice echoed inside his mind, making his temples throb with a faint, burning heat.

”You fight so cleanly when you’re irritated. Are you trying to drown out the sound of my voice with the sound of snapping bones?”

Valerian closed his eyes mentally, forcibly ignoring the god-beast residing in his soul space.

He smoothly sheathed his iron sword with a quiet clack, turned his back on the stunned examinees, and melted back into the dark mist of the forest like a ghost.

Behind him, the survivors could only watch his receding shadow with a mixture of terror and awe, realizing that the rumors on the slate network hadn’t painted a coward at all.