Re-Awakening: I Ascend with a Legendary class

Chapter 777: Post-Tournament Party, Ardous Journey Continues

The party spilled across three full terraces of Reaching Heaven Realm by the time anyone thought to sit down properly, lanterns strung between the white stone spires, music drifting up from somewhere below the fountains.

John found the four of them tucked into a quieter corner with drinks in hand, and dropped into the seat beside Rudra without waiting for an invitation.

”So,” he said, grinning. ”How did it feel? The losing thing.”

”Pretty good,” Rudra said, and chuckled despite himself.

”Indeed,” Almond added, nodding slowly. ”It was delightful.”

”Yep.” Lily smiled into her glass. ”Like knowing there’s still so much more out there that can arm us to become even stronger.”

”Yeah, we get it,” Ainen said, eyeing John over the rim of his own cup. ”But you’re grinning like a man who already knows exactly what that ’more’ looks like.”

John laughed, unbothered by being caught. ”I do, actually.”

”Go on, then,” Almond said. ”You’ve clearly been sitting on this all night.”

”Remember the Exceed Caves? The ones that gave you your Ultimate Cards?” John leaned forward, voice dropping into something more serious under the grin. ”There’s another kind. A series of them, scattered across this layer, built for a different purpose entirely. Powerhouses enter these ones not to gain something new, but to go back in and rebuild what they already have. Modify a deck’s whole shape. Rework what it’s capable of, top to bottom.”

”So you’re saying we should go rebuild,” Rudra said, working it through out loud. ”Right after losing.”

”There’s no better time,” John said. ”You’ve just seen exactly where your limits sit. Better to fix that while the feeling’s still fresh than wait until you’ve forgotten how it stung.”

Rudra chuckled again, warmer this time. ”Perfect timing, as always.”

”So when do we leave?” Almond asked.

”After we finish enjoying this rather boring party.” John raised his glass, grin widening. ”Cheers.”

---

”Boring, is it? I suppose that’s fair, coming from little John.”

The voice carried easy and amused across the terrace, and every head nearby turned before the four of them even finished standing.

King Corvin of Frosthold approached without hurry, pale robes catching lantern-light the same way frost caught morning sun, and the moment he drew close, Almond, Lily, Rudra, and Ainen all felt the same quiet, unmistakable pressure settle over the space around him.

It wasn’t threatening. It was simply depth, the particular weight of someone standing several floors above anything they’d yet learned to measure properly.

”Your Majesty,” John said, sketching a bow that managed to look both respectful and thoroughly unbothered at once.

”Don’t ’Majesty’ me at a party,” Corvin said, waving it off, then turned his attention to the four Regalons with open, genuine interest. ”You’re the kingdom that pushed him to a full Ultimate Card twice in one day. I’ve heard a great deal about you tonight.”

”All exaggerated, I’m sure,” Lily said dryly.

”Somehow I doubt that,” Corvin said, and there was real warmth in it.

John, meanwhile, hadn’t stopped grinning. ”You know I’m coming for one of those six thrones eventually,” he said. ”Might as well get used to the idea now.”

Corvin arched a brow, more entertained than offended. ”Is that so.”

”PeakWicked will take a seat at that table,” John said. ”I don’t plan on waiting politely for an invitation.”

”Bold words for a kingdom still climbing out of the middle of the pack,” Corvin said, though his eyes carried something closer to approval than dismissal. ”You’ll have to work considerably harder than that.”

”Doing it harder than you can imagine,” John said, cheerful and utterly unbothered. ”Give me a year. Maybe less.”

Corvin studied him a long moment, and whatever he found there made him laugh, low and genuine. ”A year,” he said. ”I’ll hold you to that, little John. It would be a shame to let you get comfortable thinking I’ve forgotten.”

”Wouldn’t dream of letting you forget,” John said, and the two of them shared a look that spoke of a much longer history than either bothered explaining to the four still standing there.

---

They left not long after, the party’s noise fading behind them as the pocket world’s border folded open to receive them one final time, and the walk back carried the particular quiet of people who had a great deal to think about and no immediate need to say any of it aloud.

”A year,” Ainen said eventually. ”He really believes that.”

”He usually means what he says,” Almond said. ”Even the parts that sound impossible.”

Rudra said nothing at all, already turning the promise of a deck-rebuilding cave over in his mind, and Lily walked beside him in the same comfortable silence, both of them still carrying the ache of a fight neither had won and neither regretted losing.

---

Far across the layer, in a forest canopy that let almost no true daylight through at all, Natalia crouched at the edge of a trap she’d very nearly walked straight into.

Three decks. All nine of them carried three decks now, hard-won since the Hollow Warden, and the canopied maze the Bloodroot Wilds had opened up ahead of them seemed determined to test every single one before it let them through.

”Tripwire,” she said quietly, tracing a nearly invisible thread strung between two twisted trunks. ”Silver. That’s new.”

”Everything out here that glows silver wants something dead,” Marcus said, Bastion Line already rising around the group in a low, patient wall while they worked out the safest line forward. ”Careful.”

The canopy above them grew thick enough to swallow the sky whole, vines the color of old bruises hanging in curtains between branches, and threaded through all of it, faint and patient, drifted things that weren’t quite alive and weren’t quite anything else either.

”Spectral hounds,” Kira murmured, spotting the first pale shape slipping between trunks ahead. ”I can see three. There’s probably more we can’t.”

Maya closed her eyes, and Farsight Loom unfolded from her raised palms, ghostly threads of second sight spreading out through the canopy in every direction at once, tracing hidden wire and buried pit and drifting spirit alike into a picture only she could see.

”Six hounds,” she reported. ”Two pits ahead, one more tripwire past that. And something bigger, further in. I can’t get a clean read on it yet.”

”Then we go slow,” Natalia said, Chorus Call already humming faint under her breath, spectral voices rising around her in a low, layered harmony that steadied every nerve within earshot of it. ”Hold formation. Kayla, keep Wrathroot ready in case anything gets close.”

Kayla’s vines coiled dark and thorned at her sides, no longer just the gentle healing green of Bloomheart Ward, sharp now and eager in a way that still felt strange on her. ”Ready,” she said.

The first hound broke from the canopy without warning, pale and silent, jaws unhinging wide enough to swallow a man’s arm whole, and Noah met it head-on, Twinfang flashing in both hands at once, a blade in each grip moving in a rhythm his single Wanderer’s Edge had never allowed him.

”Two’s better than one,” he said, cutting the hound apart in a single crossing strike.

Jian answered the second and third hounds together, Galewrought carrying him across the clearing in a burst of raw wind-speed, lightning long since traded for something faster and lower to the ground, and he was past both hounds and behind them before either finished registering he’d moved.

Julian’s Ashveil bloomed next, a cloud of fine grey smoke pouring off his gauntlets and swallowing the fourth hound whole, blinding it long enough for Emma’s light to finish the job.

Starfall lanced down out of the canopy gaps above, small burning points of light falling like true stars, and where they struck, spectral hide simply couldn’t hold together against something that burned that clean and that bright.

”Two left,” Maya called, threads still spread wide through the dark.

Kira’s Mirrorfrost caught the fifth hound’s own lunging bite and threw it straight back at the beast twice as hard, ice reflecting violence instead of simply blocking it, and the hound yelped and scattered into pale mist before it finished falling.

The sixth never got close at all. Marcus’s Bastion Line simply refused it entry, wall holding firm until the last hound gave up and slunk back into deeper shadow, unwilling to test a defense that hadn’t given an inch all fight.

”Clear,” Natalia said, letting Chorus Call’s hum finally fade. ”For now.”

They stood together in the thinning quiet, nine people and twenty-seven decks between them, deeper into the Wilds than they’d ever been and further from who they used to be than any of them had quite expected to travel.

”Something bigger, you said,” Julian reminded Maya, glancing toward the canopy’s deeper dark.

”Still there,” Maya confirmed. ”Still waiting.”

Natalia looked out at the maze still stretching ahead of them, exotic and patient and utterly unbothered by how far they’d already come, and felt the same steady thing settle into her chest that had settled there every single time this place had tried and failed to turn them back.

”Then let’s not keep it waiting,” she said, and led them deeper in.