C138: Before the Tournament, AgainKael stared at the towering structure before him and felt a strange kind of dread, the kind that comes from realizing you are about to step into something that looks like a castle and acts like an administrative nightmare. The building was enormous, and the sheer size made it look less like a place meant for humans and more like a fortress meant to hold secrets.The word Association was carved into the stone walls, but it was not just carved. The letters were highlighted with a faint, glowing white substance that shimmered like a pale moonlight trapped inside the stone. It was not mana, Kael realized, because mana had a certain warmth to it. This glow was cold, artificial, and almost clinical.He guessed that whatever little technology this city possessed was used mostly for aesthetics, because if there was one thing humans loved more than power, it was making power look pretty.Kael stepped inside, expecting a q

C140 — Rooftop JudgmentKael moved with the kind of quiet urgency that made the city itself feel like it was holding its breath. He did not waste time wandering aimlessly through the streets, because he had already read the information and knew exactly where the Evangelist base was located, and that base was not hidden behind shadows or disguised with clever illusions. It was in plain sight, sitting in the center of the city like a rotten tooth that everyone pretended not to notice.He was alone, and he was relieved for it, because there were certain things you did not want witnesses to see. Kael had no intention of showing mercy to those cultists, and he was not in the mood for anyone asking awkward questions about why there were suddenly bodies falling from the sky. He had a mission, and the mission did not include public relations.Still, he ran into a problem almost immediately.The area surrounding the base was crowded with people. Not just a

Healing SystemC142: Black Box BirthMichael’s defenses were not failing, but the way his enemies were fighting felt like they were reading from a playbook he had never seen, and that was the real problem. He was being bombarded by spells, and even though he had a layered fortress of shields surrounding him, along with enough swords of light to rival a small army, the attacks were still managing to get through his guard in a way that felt unnervingly coordinated. The strange part was that this was not the same kind of chaos he had dealt with before, where every opponent seemed to act like they were allergic to teamwork. These cultists moved as if they were connected by a single thought, and that made them far more dangerous than their individual strength suggested.Each time his sword of light descended toward their bodies, the cultists did not simply dodge, or attempt to block it in a normal way. Instead, they used thin layers of dark energy to redirect h

Chapter 144: Mindcore CollapseThe stalemate had lasted longer than Kael wanted to admit, and for the last twenty seconds, it had become painfully obvious that the fight was not moving anywhere, not even a single inch, and that realization sat on his chest like a stone.Every time he tried something flashy, something dramatic, something that would look good in a highlight reel, the results were underwhelming, because the mana he had tried to manipulate around Aurora simply refused to cooperate. Exploding the mana she had gathered in the air did nothing, and even his most complicated techniques barely made her pause for a fraction of a second, which in a fight like this was basically the same as being ignored.Kael had already accepted the truth, even if his ego had not. The skill he was facing was not something that could be beaten with flashy moves and overconfident bravado. It required something more precise, something he had not yet thought of, and the

Chapter 146: Before the Tournament The air above Verdusk trembled like a guilty secret refusing to stay buried. ‘System, did you hear that nonsense?’ Kael asked, though the question was less inquiry and more accusation hurled at the invisible architect who insisted on loving him with the subtlety of a collapsing star. He stood in the fractured underbelly of the Evangelists’ hidden compound, mana humming beneath his skin like a second pulse. In another lifetime, in another spiral of reality where causality behaved and memories obeyed chronology, he had glimpsed Adam. Not met him. Not spoken to him. Simply seen him, like one glimpses a mountain peak between storms and understands instinctively that climbing it would require sacrificing several limbs and perhaps a few philosophies. Back then Kael had been drunk on a sudden power surge, his perception warped by his own ascension, unable to gauge Adam’s true strength. Now, eons later, logic whispered something unpleasant: if Adam had be