Chapter 96: An Old Man

The silence of the arena was heavy, broken only by the crackle of cooling glass and the distant, rumbles from the falling pieces of block outside the Arena. Aden stood up, slowly and crookedly, his bare torso glowing with the fading heat of the Thermal Shock lines.

His eyes darted around as his left arm slowly rubbed his shoulder and quickly snapped it back into place. Giving a small hum of praise to the architectural strength of the Arena, he exhaled and stepped forward.

He looked toward the Platinum Tier. Shattered glass clung to the frames like jagged teeth. From behind the wreckage of the central suite, a figure stepped forward—not Kaelen, but a man in white ceremonial robes, holding a staff that hummed with a light that felt older even than the Tetrarchy’s suicide.

Aden’s eyebrows furrowed. “What’s an old man like you doing here?”

During his brief scan of the Platinum Tier earlier, Aden had only noted ten nobles, each with what he assumed was a butler or servant standing dutifully behind them.

He had never seen this man.

And the implications of this revelation were more devastating than the effects of the blast he tanked mere seconds ago.

But obviously, he was not allowed to show any of his shock outwardly. Instead, he remained in his staring contest with the strange, old man.

The silence between them was so heavy that even the breaths and chattering teeth of the ten nobles who stood behind him for protection echoed through the ruined arena.

After what felt like an eternity, the old man’s lips parted, and a voice deep and echoing slipped out, low yet resonant.

“What are you?”

Aden stared blankly at the man. He had already braced himself for another battle to the death with this being—and, if possible, to take out the nobles first. But the question directly inversed all of his preparations.

Aden tilted his head, his bare, scarred chest still radiating a faint, sickly heat. The question somehow hung in the toxic air between them, more suffocating than the smoke.

“What are you?”

He redirected the question back at him.

The old man didn’t flinch. He tightened his grip on the staff, and the ancient light within it pulsed once, a heartbeat of pure, golden authority that momentarily pushed back the Absence radiating from the crater.

Aden took a step backward. The feeling of being stripped naked caused a wave of nausea to travel through him, but his expression remained impenetrable.

“Do you want to lose your life?” the man asked calmly.

Aden’s obsidian eyes narrowed. “Is that a question or a threat?”

The man’s eyes remained serene and unaffected before he replied, “Do not overestimate yourself.”

’Master,’ Zero’s voice suddenly sounded in his head, but it was thin, like a radio signal from a distant star. ’I cannot… categorize him. My sensors are reporting a Universal Constant. He isn’t using Resonance, he is projecting Fundamental Axioms. Logic dictates immediate withdrawal. The violet energy in your core is… vibrating in fear.’

Aden ignored Zero’s report. His mind raced, calculating countless ways to take down the old man hovering arrogantly above him—but his battle instincts, sharpened by countless life-or-death encounters, warned of failure in every scenario.

And not just any failure. A single, absolute certainty: if he fought this man, he would be dead in an instant.

His expression turned grim at the realization, and for the first time throughout this interaction, his heart skipped a beat.

And the old man noticed this.

“You are not foolish. It seems I was not wrong about you,” the old man muttered. “Leave—and forget this ever happened. I’m sure you understand just how rare an opportunity this is.”

’Master,’ Zero’s voice crackled, struggling against the golden interference. ’The probability of survival in a direct engagement is 0.00001%. The target’s staff is emitting a Stasis Field that has already mapped your molecular weaknesses. He isn’t threatening you, he is describing a mathematical inevitability.’

Aden’s obsidian eyes didn’t flicker. The violet crack in his pupil throbbed, the desperation he had grafted from the Tetrarchy screaming for him to lash out, to bite the hand that was offering him a cage called mercy.

Aden looked at his own hands. They were trembling, not from fear, but from the sheer volume of suppressed Resonance trying to fight the pressure radiating from above. The bubbling glass beneath his feet had solidified, frozen into a perfect, unnatural stillness by the old man’s presence.

“Forget this ever happened?” Aden repeated, his voice raspy and carrying a dangerous, low-frequency hum.

His eyes shot to the nobles huddled behind him, their expressions a mix of vigilance, horror and curiosity. Their lingering cruelty were dispersed by his piercing gazes, but that didn’t satiate his rage any more than a drop of water could fill an ocean.

“If you think that I’ll simply walk away, then it would seem I’m dumber than you thought,” Aden mumbled.

The old man’s eyebrows furrowed subtly at Aden’s words. The nobles hiding behind him drew cold, shallow breaths. The pressure that followed was almost tangible, heavy enough to taste.

Aden’s hand hovered near his chest, the violet tremors in his chest grew extremely rampant and caused the ground beneath him to cave in more than it already did.

The old man’s face had returned back to its emotionless state, his golden eyes bore coldly upon him, each movement of his iris effortlessly conveying the incredible amount of disgust he had towards his actions.

Suddenly, Aden’s hand, which had been hovering near his chest, slowly lowered. The violet tremors in his core didn’t exactly vanish, but they smoothed out, turning from a jagged scream into a low, predatory hum.

“Coincidentally, more pressing matters have arisen.” He lifted his fingers past the old man and towards the nobles. “I don’t know wether or not I’ll have the time to find and kill all of you, but just stay alive long enough till I return.”

His eyes returned to the old man, whose robes remained unruffled despite the nobles’ tight grips. Aden’s body had already adapted to the amount of pressure he exuded, but even he knew that was less than a fraction of his true strength.

“I have a feeling I’ll be seeing you soon.”

With those words, Aden sped out the portcullis so fast it appeared to the watching nobles like he disappeared.

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