Re-Awakening: I Ascend with a Legendary class

Chapter 553: Arena of the Fallen Star: Round 2

Three hours passed by in the blink of an eye.

Almond opened his eyes first, and right then, everything stirred as otherworldly chimes rang.

’Regalons, we are here to take first rank, so we all better break through in this round.’ Almond’s voice entered everyone’s ears. ’We are 6th rank, but with this round, we must reach at least the top 3.’

[ Round 2 will start in five seconds. ]

The island did not collapse.

It unraveled.

The ground beneath them softened into mist. Trees faded into silhouettes, their light draining away until only outlines remained. The nebula-sea below stilled, its endless motion slowing to silence.

Then the space folded.

Flight instincts awakened automatically as gravity vanished.

Reality reasserted itself.

The Regalons found themselves hovering above a massive obsidian platform suspended in a vast void streaked with slow-moving currents of light. These currents were not stars, not quite. They moved with intention, like rivers guided by unseen banks.

Ahead lay the course.

It was not a road.

It was a volume of space shaped into a challenge.

The path stretched forward and upward, branching and folding in ways the eye resisted tracking. Floating landmasses drifted in irregular orbits. Rings of compressed wind rotated with lethal precision. Sheets of lightning flared and vanished, forming barriers that existed only for a heartbeat at a time.

Some hazards were solid.

Others were illusions.

Others still were tests that reacted to the choices made near them.

At the far end of the course burned a pale geometric sigil. The Fallen Star. It was only visible because Grimverse made it visible.

The distance between them and that finish line was out of everyone’s perception from here.

Even Almond couldn’t target it. It was just visible in his eyes like an illusion as his senses failed to grasp it.

All twenty-five remaining clubs materialized on separate starting platforms arranged in a massive arc around the beginning of the course. Two hundred and fifty Grim Students stood ready, pressure bleeding into the void and colliding in invisible waves.

Above them, the sky darkened.

A colossal projection descended, its form abstract and shifting, a manifestation of Grimverse’s authority.

[ ROUND 2 – RELAY TRIAL: PATH OF THE FALLEN STAR ]

The rules burned themselves in everyone’s eyes.

[ Each club will race along the racecourse in parallel space. Visible to each other, but unable to contact. The obstacles will also be different and random for each club. ]

[ One member will be randomly chosen to begin. ]

[ Upon the death of the member, the fallen point becomes the next checkpoint. ]

[ A new random member will continue from that point. ]

[ The goal is to reach the finish point, but if all ten members are eliminated before reaching there, that club will be disqualified. ]

[ Ranking is determined by total completion time. ]

The selection light descended.

For Regalon, it chose Silvester.

He rolled his shoulders, hefted his sword, and smiled, the expression sharp but not careless.

I’ll map the mistakes, he sent.

Then the platform vanished beneath him.

Silvester surged forward, wind screaming around his armor as he entered the course. The first obstacle revealed itself immediately: a lattice of rotating storm rings, each one layered with compressed wind and crackling lightning. The gaps between them shifted unpredictably, some real, some false.

Silvester did not slow.

He did not strike.

Instead, he anchored himself.

Inbound Carnage surged, not outward, but inward.

Technique: Steller Vein, Mass Lock.

He forced his own momentum into absolute coherence. The first ring shattered against him. The second bent, then broke. Lightning tore across his armor, biting deep.

Then a clear corridor opened ahead.

Silvester took it.

Alas, it was a trap.

The pressure wall struck him full-on, invisible and unyielding. Bones snapped, and his body burst. Dead. But not permanently.

The checkpoint formed where he fell.

Silvester respawned moments later, breath ragged, laughter rough. ”There are fucking illusions. Don’t fall for them.”

The next light descended on Hiroshi.

Hiroshi followed.

He flew with measured calm, katana low, eyes tracking motion rather than form. The storm lattice reconfigured, adding razor-thin arcs of vacuum between the rings.

Hiroshi waited until the rhythm revealed itself.

Then he moved.

Technique: Still Flow, Drift Slice.

He did not cut through the obstacles. He cut the transition between their movements. Rings slid past him, missing by fractions of a breath.

After crossing some distance and destroying some obvious obstacles, he encountered something that gave him goosebumps.

The mirror cloud.

Thousands of reflective shards drifted in loose formation, each one showing distorted paths, overlapping realities. Some were solid. Some were traps. Some reacted violently to aggression.

Hiroshi tested one with a careful cut.

It screamed.

The cloud responded.

Shards converged, crushing inward. Hiroshi evaded two, severed another, but a false reflection swallowed him whole.

The checkpoint advanced.

Bianca entered next.

She vanished almost immediately, her presence thinning, absorbing the surroundings, making herself a part of this racecourse, at least, trying to do that.

Technique: Afterimage Null Drift.

She flew while leaving delayed echoes behind her to confuse the racecourse.

The mirror cloud snapped at her afterimages, missing the real body entirely as she successfully passed this area.

Then came the gravity sinkhole.

A pulsing distortion that dragged everything toward its core, layered with false exits that collapsed when approached.

Bianca resisted the pull just long enough to observe.

She stopped fighting it as she knew she was trapped. Instead of wasting time resisting, she accepted death to save time so that Club Regalon could finish the racecourse fast.

And just as she did that, a real exit manifested for a heartbeat.

She lunged.

Almost made it, but then it snapped shut, tearing her apart.

The checkpoint moved forward.

”Gravity traps reveal truth when you stop resisting,” Bianca said.

The light shone on Arjun next as he vanished and arrived at the checkpoint.

He didn’t resist the pull, and an exit showed up.

Infinite Sunder flared beneath his feet as he defined a straight vector through the chaos.

Technique: Linearity Vector Drift.

Instantly, he passed through the exit.

Continuing, he cut through two drifting islands cleanly, from which monsters suddenly attacked chaotically. The third island detonated and spread thousands of mines ahead of him and around him.

Arjun twisted, severing the chain reaction, but the blast still caught him.

Checkpoint advanced.

Natalia entered, violin humming softly at her side. She released waves matching the frequency of the explosion as she moved, nullifying everything as she pressed ahead.

She passed the area and arrived at the next.

Ahead lay the probability corridor, where overlapping futures spawned hazards based on anticipated decisions. It was a place designed to punish optimal choices.

Natalia smiled faintly.

Technique: Entropic Refrain of Fortune.

She chose the worst possible path.

But that became her smooth-sailing road. Corridor overloaded. Traps contradicted one another, collapsing into chaos.

She was passing through cleanly until the course suddenly adapted.

A certainty spike formed.

One unavoidable outcome.

It struck her dead center, killing her.

Checkpoint near the final stretch.

Kexell roared into the void next, dark hex-flames trailing behind him. Spectral beasts formed ahead, feeding on exhaustion and fear.

Technique: Deathless Hex, Hunger of Infinite Life.

He burned through them, dissolving everything and keeping him fortified, tearing a path wide open as he arrived at a bridge with the finish point of the racecourse at its end.

Alas, it was nothing more than an illusion. Just as Kexell arrived at the finish line, he saw another bridge and another finish line past it, while the one he stood on detonated and devoured Kexell.

”What the fuck?” Kexell respawned as he cursed.

”Chill. I got it.” Big D followed, massive astral force unfurling around him.

Big D successfully arrived at the second finish line, but it was also an illusion.

Fortunately, Bid D had a feeling that was the case.

This whole area was wrong, so he went back quickly and chose another path, where he arrived in a chaotic zone with exotic structures.

Technique: Feaster Sense, Reality Flavor.

He identified a single aspect of everything he sensed and connected a safe path through them, successfully crossing a great distance before he finally saw the real finish point.

The final obstacle emerged.

A judgment wall that tested endurance rather than speed.

Pressure mounted exponentially. So much so that when Big D tried his best, he was instantly crushed.

Only three remained.

Almond.

Lily.

Admiral Rudra.

The final corridor with the judgment wall fought them hard.

And when Admiral Rudra destroyed one wall, another emerged, stopping them as well as trying to destroy them from waves and pinpoint pressures that were utterly grasp to grasp within their perception.

Adaptive storms lashed out from them.

Temporal snares tried to twist Lily’s perception as well.

The walls attacked Grim Students with their own specialities.

Lily wove time delicately, and instead of fighting it, she filled it with weakness before she was eliminated.

Admiral Rudra’s specialty worked best here.

The walls tried to break him, and he broke whatever the walls tried to use to break him.

But he also met his end in the last wall.

There was just one kilometer of distance left.

And one final wall.

Almond moved.

Grim-Fated Cut.

Technique: Grim-Fate Convergence Cut.

This was his new technique, especially for this. What it did was simple.

Almond severed the fate, the possibility that he could be eliminated by the wall with a single cut, and passed through the wall successfully.

The Fallen Star Sigil flared.

They crossed.

[ CLUB REGALON – COMPLETION CONFIRMED ]

The void rippled.

Two clubs had finished the race before them.

So they were 3rd in the leaderboard.

”Dead on third,” Natalia said with a chuckle. ”But there’s just two seconds of difference between us and the second place.”

”Kexell wasted time.” Bianca smiled.

Kexell clicked his tongue. ”It got me. I can’t bring out the full potential of Eyes of Truth, but I am working on it.”

”All is well since we reached our target,” Admiral Rudra said. ”But our final target is the most important one.”

”First rank.” Almond followed up.

Lily’s eyes glinted as she sat down before closing her eyes. ”We’d better start working on our new True Concepts. We have to actualize them before or during the 3rd round, whatever it is.”

”Fill your weakness, enhance your strength.”