Chapter 90: No Time for Drama, No Time to Aura–Farm

As the massive iron portcullis hit the stone floor with a dull, final thud, three figures were shoved out into the blinding glare of the floodlights.

Aden’s grip didn’t just bend the metal railing this time, it obliterated the velvet padding and steel beneath, reducing it to a fine, grey dust. His chest tightened, a silent storm brewing within him.

They weren’t warriors. They weren’t even adults. They were the children from the slums—the three boys who had once broken into his sewer dwelling, scrappy and desperate, and somehow ended up as his unwitting accomplices in distracting the Princess during her obsessive hunt.

Now, they were thrust into chaos far beyond anything they had faced before: rusted pipes in trembling hands, crooked swords shaking with every heartbeat, and staring down a Tier 3 beast that loomed like a nightmare come to life, a wolf-like terror that could devour them in an instant.

Aden’s fists tightened. They had no right to face this alone. Yet here they were. And if they fell… he would make sure nothing in this world went unaccounted for.

’Master…’ Zero called out through the Sync as he sensed the turbulence.

“What is it, Zero?” Aden replied in annoyance, his eyes never leaving the kids and the beast.

Since Aden had spoken aloud, Zero chose to follow his Master’s lead.

“You’re losing control of your emotions.”

“You don’t say,” Aden replied, sarcasm dripping from every word.

Lorelei had stopped watching the battle the moment the children were brought onto the stage. She held to a simple principle—never watch conflicts between children, especially ones as brutal as this. If it had been up to her, the arena would have been reduced to rubble the instant they were revealed.

But that was a wish she knew would be granted in time.

Feeling the turbulence in Aden’s emotions, her gaze shifted between the children below and her Master. Confusion flickered across her face, slowly twisting into a sharp edge of jealousy before hardening into consuming anger as the truth settled in her mind.

No one needed to tell her those children held a place in Aden’s heart. That alone was reason enough, in her mind, to wipe the arena from existence.

Yet Aden had not moved.

Despite how much he clearly wanted to.

Below, the beast let out a low, vibrating growl that shook the very sand beneath the boys’ feet. Lorelei realized that it was a Tier 3 Shadow-Stalker, its fur matted with dried gore and its eyes glowing with a sickly, artificial yellow light—a sign of heavy alchemic sedation meant to make it more erratic, more cruel.

The oldest of the three boys, the one who had urged the other two to steal Aden’s Hannya mask when they broke into his sewer dwelling, stepped forward. His knees were knocking together so loudly it was audible in the sudden hush of the arena. He raised a rusted iron pipe, his knuckles white, his breath coming in ragged, terrified hitches.

“Stay… stay back!” he shrieked, his voice cracking.

The crowd erupted in a wave of mocking laughter. To the high-born donors in the Platinum Tier, this wasn’t a fight, it was a show staged to satiate their twisted sense of humor.

’Master,’ Zero’s voice resonated with the cold precision of a ticking clock. ’The beast’s adrenal glands are peaking. It will lunge in approximately 1.8 seconds and will aim the smallest child’s throat.’

Aden didn’t blink. His breath once slightly erratic had grown completely even. His blue eyes slowly dimmed by the encroaching darkness within, but they didn’t completely take over.

“Lorelei,” Aden spoke, his voice so low it was almost a vibration in the floorboards.

“Yes, Master?” she responded instantly, her shadow stretching across the balcony like a reaching claw, her jealousy momentarily eclipsed by the sheer gravitational pull of his intent.

“Kill the lights.”

Lorelei didn’t ask how. She didn’t ask why. She simply vanished.

A heartbeat later, a deafening crack echoed through the stadium as the primary Resonance-conductors powering the floodlights were severed in a single, surgical strike. The brilliant white glare vanished, plunged into a suffocating, absolute darkness.

The screams of the crowd shifted from bloodlust to confusion, then to primal fear. In the Pit, the beast froze, its predatory instincts scrambled by the sudden loss of vision. The three boys huddled together, sobbing in the dark.

Then, the silence was broken by a sound that shouldn’t have been possible.

THOOM.

It wasn’t an explosion. It was the sound of a localized atmospheric collapse.

Contrary to expectations, Aden hadn’t jumped, instead, he had simply increased his internal density to the point where the balcony could no longer support his existence. He fell through the floor, a silver-haired comet of emptiness, trailing a wake of shattered glass and pulverized stone.

He hit the sand exactly between the trembling children and the confused beast. The impact left no crater worthy of such velocity. There was barely a displacement of the grains of sand around him, but his presence was unmistakable.

As the emergency dim-lights—pale, flickering orange lanterns—began to hum to life, the crowd looked down.

The beast was gone. Not dead, not mangled. Just… gone, replaced by a silver-haired man in tattered rags who stood with his back to the children, his bulky frame casting a shadow that seemed to swallow the light around it.

Aden eyes didn’t meet the crowd nor the boxes above him, they were fixed down at his own hands, which were stained with the grey dust of the railing he had destroyed.

The silence was deafening. The announcer was nowhere to be found, whether he vanished in the same way as the beast or Lorelei decided to help her Master out, no one could determine.

The kids wiped still remained in their huddled positions. To their traumatized mind, this was merely another bigger beast out for their blood.

“You’re late,” Aden whispered, though whether he was speaking to the boys or himself, even Zero couldn’t tell.

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