Chapter 464: The Heavens Shall Fall (V)

The arena was massive.

The seating rose in broad, sweeping tiers around a central platform that floated at mid-level, suspended without visible support, its surface made of divine-grade stone that had been specifically treated to absorb and redistribute the kind of output that god-level combat produced without transmitting it into the surrounding structure.

This thingy was probably fucking expensive, but well, the academy didn’t do anything cheaply.

I sat in the third tier, arms resting on the seat in front of me, looking down at the platform below where the first match was approximately four minutes from beginning.

Kael sat to my left.

He had calmed down.

Mostly.

He was still doing the thing where he looked at me sideways every ninety seconds or so, opened his mouth, decided against whatever he’d been about to say, and closed it again.

He’d done it six times since we’d sat down.

Tyrian sat to my right with his arms crossed and the expression of a man who had processed the number seventeen and decided to never bring it up again as a matter of survival.

He was handling it better than Kael.

“I’m not going to say anything,” Kael suddenly spoke.

“Good.”

“I just want you to know that I’m not going to say anything.”

“I heard you.”

“And that’s a choice I’m making consciously.”

“Kael.”

“Seventeen,” he repeated.

“You said you weren’t going to say anything.”

“That was the last one. I’m done now.”

Tyrian pinched the bridge of his nose.

Below us, the arena was already filled.

The faction representative sections were already at capacity; the Celestial Dominion bloc sat in a cordoned area on the east side of the first tier, their uniforms a clean silver-white that stood out against the academy’s general color scheme.

The Divine Concord occupied the opposite section, more varied in appearance, with their own casual clothes.

The Primordial Court’s seats were empty, as expected, since they were sending more participants than the other factions, meaning their people were somewhere in the preparation area beneath the arena, waiting for their respective matches rather than sitting in the crowd.

I’d have to be careful about that, not because their participants worried me.

Because the Primordial Court sending anyone at all to an academy competition meant they were watching something, and I preferred to know what they were watching before I gave them anything to see.

“First match is starting,” Tyrian said.

I looked down at the platform.

Two figures were taking their positions on opposite ends of the floating stone, the distance between them measured and marked by thin lines of light embedded in the surface.

Enough room to open with ranged authority before closing distance.

The academy’s side: rank twenty.

A young man whose name I knew from the bracket, but whose face I was seeing for the first time.

He was lean and composed, standing at his mark with the calmness of someone who had prepared thoroughly.

Mhm…

A 6✯ Peak True God.

Across from him, the Celestial Dominion representative.

His uniform was the standard silver-white but worn with less ceremony than the others in the faction seats.

He held his hands loosely at his sides, and his divine energy prompted me to analyze his current rank, which would be a 7✯ Intermediate True God.

Yep…

The student was going to lose, probably because of the difference in ranks.

“What do you think?” Tyrian asked quietly beside me.

“Three minutes.”

“The student loses in three minutes?”

“Give or take.”

“I think five. The kid looks solid,” Kael leaned forward with both elbows on his knees.

I doubt it.

Ring!

The announcement official’s voice filled the arena, introducing both participants’ names and ranks, and faction affiliations.

Both figures adjusted their stances by small degrees.

The signal dropped.

FWOOM!

The Celestial Dominion representative moved on the first beat, crossing half the platform distance before the arena had fully registered that the match had begun.

His right hand came forward in a direct strike wrapped in condensed divine energy that hit the student’s hastily raised guard with enough force to slide him backward three full meters across the platform surface.

KOOM!

The student caught himself, quickly getting back into a fighting stance and raising his guard a little more.

Swish!

However, the representative was already inside his guard range before the read finished. Then, he raised his fist and threw a few consecutive punches.

THUD, THUD!

The student defended well.

Better than well, actually, managing four exchanges in a row that each individually showed genuine capability.

The fifth one, he didn’t manage.

KOOM!

The divine energy that connected with his chest sent him off the platform entirely, the boundary field catching him before he cleared the arena’s safety threshold and depositing him at the edge with a precision that was the only gentle thing about the ending.

The announcement official’s voice filled the arena again.

Match concluded.

Celestial Dominion representative, winner.

“…Two minutes forty,” Tyrian said.

“Mhm…” I leaned back in my seat.

“Faster than I thought.”

“You said three minutes.”

“I was being generous.”

Kael sat back slowly.

The competition energy that had been animating him since we’d arrived had changed into something more sober, his eyes still on the platform where the student was being helped to the edge by academy staff.

“…The Celestial Dominion people are strong,” he mumbled.

“Their bottom tier is. That wasn’t one of their elites.”

Kael looked at me.

“That was a standard representative as their elites are in the latter bracket slots.”

“Damn…”

He stretched back, letting out a deep sigh.

“Thankfully, I’m not fighting either of them.”

…

Four matches later, the official’s voice filled the arena again.

“Rank One of the Divine Academy… Thaliel.”

The crowd shifted instantly at those words.

Even I was a little surprised because I thought that she was going to be in one of the latter brackets, but it seems that she might have more than one battle.

Kael sat up straighter.

Even Tyrian uncrossed and recrossed his arms, which for him was the equivalent of leaning forward in his seat.

I looked down at the platform.

Thaliel walked onto it from the academy’s entry point, her dark hair shifting at the edges in that way it always did, the void-quality of it more visible somehow in the open air of the arena than it ever was in a hallway.

She took her position without looking at the crowd, without looking at the faction sections, without looking at anything except the platform in front of her and the opponent she hadn’t acknowledged yet.

Her opponent was from the Divine Concord.

An older woman… sitting at the 8✯ Intermediate True God.

Probably the strongest single opponent the Divine Concord had sent today by a margin that wasn’t close.

“That’s their ace,” Tyrian suddenly added, pointing out to the older woman. “The Divine Concord specifically positioned her against rank one.”

“Smart.”

“They think Thaliel is beatable?”

“They think this is the best chance they have since they can’t exactly send out their officials. There’s a difference.”

Thinking about it… Thaliel is at the 7✯ Peak of the True God Realm. Maybe… she won’t be having more matches after all.

But why this early?

I was quite curious.

Kael was very quiet beside me, which happened so rarely that it was itself a piece of information.

Ring!

The signal dropped.

Thaliel didn’t move.

Fwoosh!

The Divine Concord representative did, opening with a ranged authority strike that crossed the platform distance in under a second, condensed divine energy shaped into a precise forward lance that hit…

Nothing.

The space where Thaliel had been standing was dark.

A shadow that was deeper than shadows had any right to be, pooling across the platform surface in a spreading stain that moved against the light rather than with it, reaching outward from where Thaliel had been standing in every direction like something breathing.

The representative pulled back immediately, quickly creating distance.

The darkness followed, expanding with the patience of something that had all the time available and knew it.

“…The Abyss,” Kael murmured beside me.

“Mmmn…”

The representative threw three consecutive authority strikes downward into the spreading dark, each one landing with the sound and force of genuine divine output.

The darkness absorbed them.

The strikes entering the black and simply ceasing to produce any further effect, their energy going somewhere that wasn’t the platform and wasn’t the arena and wasn’t anywhere with a clean name.

Thaliel surfaced from the dark behind the representative’s left shoulder.

The representative spun.

Too slow by exactly the margin that mattered.

Thaliel’s hand pressed flat against the representative’s back.

BAAAAAAAAAAAAM!

The darkness moved inward, causing the representative to fly across the arena and hit the platform boundary field.

Thud…

She remained still.

Match concluded.

Thaliel stood at the center of the platform as the darkness retracted back into her like a tide finding its way home, her hair settling, her expression exactly where it had been when she walked out.

But… she somehow didn’t forget to glare at me before leaving the arena.

The arena quickly erupted into cheers.

“YEAH! I KNEW THAT OUR ABYSS PRINCESS COULD DO IT!”

“HAH! THEY DIDN’T EVEN LAST A SINGLE MINUTE!”

I ignored those cheers and fixed my gaze on the arena.

The Authority of the Abyss really is problematic, huh… she didn’t even give the older woman time to conjure her domain or do anything more.

I wonder how strong her domain is… that I’m really curious about.

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