“The formations in this stadium can absorb a ninth-tier attack without damage,” Kessel said, answering Mira’s unspoken question about the density of elemental energy in the air. “Of course it feels different.”
Staff members directed them to the competitors’ seating area. The space was already filling — fighters from every corner of the Alliance, each one in full battle gear, the combined weight of their readiness pressing against the air. No one here was careless. No one here was untested.
Leo sat and watched the dome.
The massive magical formations covering the ceiling hadn’t seemed so significant from the outside. From inside, with the dome’s energy pressing down into the space, they were unmistakable — a structured suppression of elemental activity designed to ensure that whatever happened in this arena stayed in this arena, and whatever power someone brought in was all they got.
Fair ground. Nowhere to hide.
A voice rang from the podium.
“Registration is complete. The preliminary rounds of the Demon Hunt Selection now begin. All participants: deliberate disabling of opponents is prohibited. Any competitor who delivers a lethal wound will be automatically disqualified, and further investigation will fall to the city of origin. Preliminary matches are knockout format. Today we advance the first round. One hundred and thirty-eight competitors have registered, including four at the fifth tier. Those four are exempt from the first two rounds.”
Four. Leo noted the number. He had counted more than that from the presences in the room. Which meant some were contained enough that even his perception hadn’t caught them clearly.
He filed that away.
Above the arena floor, a sphere of golden light materialized in the air — large enough to be visible from anywhere in the stands, rotating slowly as numbers flickered across its surface.
Mira watched it with narrow eyes. “No opening ceremony,” she said quietly.
“This isn’t a ceremony,” Kessel said. “It’s a selection. One hundred and thirty-eight people. More than sixty matches today alone. If you waste time on ceremony, when does it end?”
The golden sphere slowed. Two numbers appeared, large enough to read from the competitors’ section, projected into the air above the arena floor.
**#29 versus #97.**
“Both competitors, enter the arena. Failure to enter within ten breaths will result in disqualification.”
Leo’s hand moved to the plate on his coat before his mind had fully caught up with what he’d heard.
*97.*
That was him.
First match.
Kessel and Mira both went still for exactly one second. Then Kessel said, “Steady pace, stable entry, strong first read. Go.”
Leo was already moving.
—
The arena floor was different up close.
The sand was fine and level, the kind of surface that would show exactly where weight shifted and exactly how each foot was placed. No irregularities, no hidden advantage for either side. The dome’s energy pressed down from above like a second sky, and the ambient elemental density that had felt oppressive from the stands felt almost clarifying from inside — as if the formations were a lens rather than a ceiling.
His opponent was already on the floor.
A young man, approximately twenty, in full silver armor — left hand carrying a mid-sized round shield, right hand on a straight sword. Build similar to Leo’s but slightly broader. His posture was the posture of someone who had spent years on defensive footwork.
*Guardian Knight,* Leo noted. *Same specialty.*
A referee in plain white clothing entered the arena behind them. He gestured them to their starting positions — fifty meters apart, facing each other on the center line.
“Match rules,” the referee said, loud and flat. “Deliberate incapacitation is prohibited. First to surrender or lose fighting ability loses. Begin on my signal. Any questions?”
Neither of them spoke.
“Begin.”
Golden light surged upward from the arena’s edge, sealing the space from the spectators above. Inside the barrier, the world narrowed to fifty meters of sand and one opponent.
Leo activated the Lodestar Stove.
Not as a weapon. Not to redirect anything. Just to feel the space — the way the Stove’s field extended outward from him, sensing the spiritual signature of everything in range. His opponent was fourth tier, solid, defensive-primary, and had been in the arena long enough for his footwork to already be engaged.
He’s waiting for me to come to him, Leo thought. Shield specialist. He’ll absorb the first exchange and look for a counter.
Leo moved.
Not a charge. A measured approach, controlled pace, shield raised and light sword trailing back. He closed twenty meters before his opponent shifted weight, which told him something. The silver-armored knight’s first instinct was to hold ground, not advance.
Leo pressed his spiritual energy into the light sword.
The blade’s enchantment responded immediately — a third of a meter of holy light extending from the tip, bright enough that his opponent would have to track it separately from the movement of the blade itself.
The silver knight’s shield came up.
Leo feinted left.
The shield tracked the feint. Leo’s sword came right. The edge met the shield’s outer rim rather than the face — not a disabling hit, just a redirect, using the contact to feel how his opponent absorbed force.
Solid. Grounded. Good technique.
Leo stepped back two paces, reassessing.
The silver knight pressed forward on the retreat, trying to close the distance Leo had just created. His footwork was disciplined. His shield stayed high and angled.
He’s good, Leo thought. But he’s waiting for an opening rather than making one.
Leo activated Faith Halo.
The golden ring pulsed outward — not an attack, a Guardian Knight support skill, but the light it produced would temporarily occupy his opponent’s visual field. In the fraction of a second it took to adjust, Leo shifted his sword to his left hand, his right dropping to the Forget-Me-Not ring.
The Daybright Aegis appeared.
Two shields. One on each hand. No sword.
His opponent blinked.
Leo charged.
The collision was hard — Leo’s Aegis meeting the silver shield with full body weight behind it, force transferring through the contact point and into his opponent’s stance. The knight stumbled back, not falling but losing his prepared position. His counter-swing was compromised by the disrupted footing, the sword coming wide.
Leo stepped inside the swing.
Guardian’s Favor activated — the golden mark above his head flaring as his opponent’s disrupted strike still managed to connect with his shoulder, reducing the impact by the skill’s margin.
Leo’s left elbow came up. The Daybright Aegis edge met his opponent’s sword arm near the elbow joint — not a cut, a press, the kind of contact that made continuing the swing mechanically difficult.
The silver knight stepped back.
Leo let him.
He swapped back to the light sword while his opponent reestablished distance, both of them breathing harder than before.
“You’re a Guardian Knight who doesn’t use a sword as primary,” his opponent said. It wasn’t a question.
“Guardian Knight with dual weapon flexibility,” Leo said.
“I see.” The knight settled his stance. “Again.”
The second exchange lasted longer. Leo found what he was looking for around the third minute — a half-second delay in his opponent’s left-foot anchor when receiving force on the right side of the shield. Structural. Trained in, not recently developed. The kind of small flaw that only showed under sustained pressure.
Leo pushed force onto the right side of the shield consistently for two exchanges.
On the third, he went left instead.
The anchor didn’t shift in time. His opponent absorbed the redirect poorly, weight moving the wrong direction, and his sword arm came up to compensate rather than attack.
Leo’s light sword found the gap.
He stopped it two centimeters from his opponent’s throat.
Silence.
The silver knight looked at the blade. At the distance between its tip and his skin. Then his hand opened, and his sword hit the sand.
“I yield,” he said.
The golden light barrier came down.
—
Somewhere else entirely — in a place where the sky was the wrong color and the ground was lava and the air was poison — Veyra was doing something Leo couldn’t see.
The stone sphere had cracked open.
What had been inside it was now visible: a dark green egg, its surface entirely covered in scales, radiating a light that didn’t behave the way ordinary light did. The emerald glow moved outward in slow pulses, and Veyra was breathing it in — both heads working in rhythm, pulling the released energy deep into their bodies, the three purple veins along their spine blazing with each intake.
A Dragon Pill.
A seventh-tier medicine. An unhatched dragon egg that had failed to birth but had spent a millennium absorbing the spiritual energy of heaven and earth until it became something else — something whose effects on human cultivators would add at minimum three hundred units to their spiritual energy and extend their outer limit to five thousand. Something that, for a magical beast of dragon lineage, would trigger an evolution.
The requirements for a magical beast to use a Dragon Pill were specific: dragon bloodline, and cultivation below the sixth rank.
Veyra met both.
Little Light pressed the tip of her horn — purple now, newly formed — against the egg’s surface. A sound like impact, like stone meeting stone, and the shell cracked completely.
Inside, the dark green egg gleamed.
Little Light tilted her head back, opened her jaw wide, and swallowed it whole. The emerald light that had been pulsing outward reversed, flooding inward, and where it entered Little Light’s body, something began to change in ways that didn’t have simple descriptions.
Little Flame watched with calm red eyes.
The purple veins along both their spines burned brighter than they ever had.
And in some wordless, unbounded way that moved through the Blood Contract like a current through still water, both heads sent the same thought toward the world they’d left — toward the bond, toward the person on the other end of it who was standing in an arena fifty meters away from his next opponent and didn’t know any of this yet.
*Wait for us, big brother.*
*We’re not finished becoming what we’re supposed to be.*