Chapter 28—Event Horizon.
Chapter 28—Event Horizon.
The glass trigger yielded beneath Malakor’s thumb with a sickening, audible click.
For a microsecond, time itself seemed to fracture. The microscopic cracks across the surface of the Blood-Core Detonator burst open, releasing a blinding, violent wave of crimson light. The fifty thousand high-grade mana crystals inside the heavy brass chests reacted instantly, humming at a deafening frequency as unstable energy cascaded through the carriage.
Malakor’s face was frozen in a grotesque, hysterical sneer. He wanted to see terror in Kaelen’s eyes. He wanted to hear them beg.
He got neither.
Kaelen’s eyes didn’t widen in fear; they ignited with a cold, terrifying violet radiance. His mind, overclocked by the Void Core’s computational subroutines, calculated the impending shockwave in microscopic detail.
Gling!
[CRITICAL EMERGENCY DETECTED ]
[ EVASION PROBABILITY: 0%]
[ CHAIN REACTION THRESHOLD: 0.2 seconds]
[ FORCED ACTIVATION: VOID ASSIMILATION/EVENT HORIZON]
"Tsubaki, brace!" Kaelen barked, his voice carrying an eerie, dual-toned resistance.
Instead of throwing himself backward, Kaelen took a violent step forward. He thrust both hands directly into the expanding crimson fireball, plunging his bare palms right toward the heart of the detonation.
He didn’t cast a protective barrier.
He didn’t try to block it. He forced his Void Core into a state of absolute implosion, converting his remaining eighteen percent mana reserves into a localized gravitational singularity.
SCHWWWW!
A sound like tearing space echoed through the narrow alleyway.
The roaring, blood-red flames and the devastating shockwave—capable of vaporizing the entire stone plaza—were violently dragged backward.
A swirling, pitch-black vortex sprouted directly between Kaelen’s outstretched hands, twisting space-time around it like a whirlpool. The sheer atmospheric pressure ripped the cobblestones clean off the alley floor and crushed the carriage’s heavy iron axles into distorted scrap metal.
"What... what are you doing?" Malakor shrieked, his voice instantly swallowed by the deafening vacuum.
The unstable blood mana, along with the raw energy bleeding from the crystals, was sucked continuously into the void sphere between Kaelen’s palms.
Kaelen’s teeth ground together so hard he tasted metallic copper. Blood welled up in his eyes and poured from his nostrils as the overwhelming, volatile mana forced its way through his human pathways.
The system screen in his vision flashed in alarming shades of flickering crimson.
Gling! Gling! Gling!
[WARNING: VOLATILE MANA OVERLOAD ]
[ MERIDIAN CAPACITY AT 210%]
[ CRITICAL INTERNAL DAMAGE IMMINENT]
Hold it together... just three more seconds!
Kaelen roared inwardly, his muscles tearing under the immense physical strain.
He knew if his focus slipped for a single millisecond, the contained blast would rupture and tear his body to microscopic dust. He drew up every ounce of willpower forged through his coma, his hospital isolation, and the brutal trials of this world.
With a final, guttural shout, Kaelen slammed his palms together, crushing the gravitational singularity into an infinitesimal point.
BANG!
A muffled, dull thud vibrated deep beneath the earth. The violent red light vanished. The heat dissipated into the icy midnight air.
The explosion was simply gone—consumed entirely by the Void.
Silence fell over the alleyway, heavy, and suffocating.
Malakor collapsed onto his knees in the dirt, staring at his empty, scorched hands in utter, uncomprehending horror. The detonator had vanished. The chests were intact, reduced to harmless insert stones.
"No... no, no," Malakor babbled, clawing at his face.
"You’re a monster! You’re not human!"
Kaelen swayed dangerously on his feet.
The world spun in violent circles around him as his vision darkened at the edges.
Gling!
[SKILL EXECUTION: SUCCESSFUL]
[ HEALTH: 08%]
[MANA RESERVE: 0.0%]
[ CRITICAL CONDITION: MERIDIAN COLLAPSE PREVENTED ]
[ SYSTEM LOCKDOWN: ALL MANA SKILLS SEALED FOR 03 HOURS 59 MINUTES ]
His knees buckled, but before his body hit the cold cobblestones, a firm hand caught him by the back of his coat.
Tsubaki supported his weight, his katana already sheathed, his usually stoic face fixed in rare, wide-eyed disbelief.
"You actually ate a high-tier blood core explosion..." Tsubaki murmured, shaking his head.
"You’re completely out of your mind, Kaelen."
"Barely survived..." Kaelen rasped, his voice a dry, ragged whisper as he coughed up a speck of dark blood onto the stone.
"Don’t let Malakor... escape."
"He isn’t going anywhere," a sharp, melodic voice echoed from the alley entrance.
A blinding beam of holy gold light illuminated the dark passage. Lyra stepped through the fog, her divine longsword unsheathed and radiating a soft, purifying aura.
Behind her, dozens of heavily armored Academy Guardians poured into the alley, their halberds leveled and spell-arcs drawn.
At the head of the formation, Captain Vane of the High Council Security took one look at the wrecked carriage, the growling Void residue, and the shivering wreck that was Delegate Malakor.
"Delegate Malakor!" Captain Vane declared, his voice amplified by wind magic.
"By authority of the High Council and of the King, and the evidence provided by the Academy Registries, you are arrested for treason, embezzlement of municipal mana reserves, and attempted murder of Academy Students."
Two high-ranking guards rushed forward, slamming heavy, anti-mana nullification shackles onto Malakor’s wrists.
"It wasn’t me!" Malakor screamed as he was dragged to his feet, his mind completely broken.
"It was a red-eyed player! He promised me immunity! He told me the clock tower would kill them all! You can’t execute me; I know the secrets of the vault."
"Save it for the magistrate." Captain Vane snapped coldly, signaling his men to haul the screaming delegate away toward the waiting prison transport.
As the guards secured the area and seized the chest of mana crystals. Lyra quickly hurried over to Kaelen’s side. Her golden eyes, his ragged breathing.
"Kaelen !" She is beside him, placing her glowing palm gently against his chest. Her holy mana washed over his burning meridians like a soothing, cool spring, stabilizing his erratic pulse.
" You idiot... You forced your Void Core again, didn’t you? Your internal channels are completely locked! Am I wrong?"
"It worked, didn’t it?" Kaelen offered a faint, exhausted smirk, though even speaking took immense effort.
"The registry is safe. Malakor’s network is exposed."
"You almost died to prove a point," Lyra huffed, though her voice softened as her healing magic cauterized his internal micro-tears.
"The ledger you delivered to Dean was more than enough. Malakor’s faction in the Administration is being rounded up as we speak. The whole academy is in an uproar."
"Then the first phase is complete," Tsubaki noted, keeping a watchful eye on the surrounding rooftops while Lyra tended to Kaelen.
"Not quite," Kaelen murmured, his gaze drifting upward, past the stone arches and into the thick fog clinging to the high roofs of the Central Vault.
High above the chaotic alleyway, standing silently atop a stone gargoyle, a tall figure clad in a dark, high-collared trench coat watched the entire scene unfold. Beneath the brim of his hood, two faint, crimson lights burned with cold, calculating intelligence.
A massive, serrated war scythe rested casually over the stranger’s shoulder.
[WARNING: HIGH-VALUE TARGET DETECTED IN PROXIMITY]
[NAME: UNKNOWN (RED-EYED PLAYER)]
[RANK: UNIDENTIFIED]
[THREAT LEVEL: EXTREME]
The stranger didn’t make a move to assist Malakor. To him, the corrupt delegate was nothing more than an expired piece on a chessboard. Instead, his crimson eyes locked directly onto Kaelen’s pale face.
Slowly, the stranger raised two fingers to his temple in a mock salute, a faint, dark smile visible beneath his hood.
He tapped his interface screen, and a private, system-encrypted ping flashed directly onto Kaelen’s floating UI:
"Not bad for an E-Rank glitch, Kaelen. Enjoy your little victory. The Real Game begins at the Academy Selection Tournament."
Before Tsubaki or the guard captain could notice the energy fluctuation, the red-eyed figure stepped backward into the shadows of the roof. His form dissolved into a flock of spectral crimson embers, vanishing completely into the night air without leaving a trace of mana behind.
"Kaelen? What are you looking at?" Lyra asked, noticing his fixed gaze on the empty roof.
"Nothing," Kaelen lied smoothly, closing his eyes as the healing light finally eased his pain. "Just looking at the next target."
Tsubaki offered Kaelen a hand, pulling him up to stand. Though his body was running on pure grit and his mana was completely depleted for the next four hours, a cold, sharp determination settled deep within Kaelen’s chest.
Malakor was just the pawn. The clock tower collapse, the corrupt registry, and the traps—it was all part of a larger, deadly game orchestrated by the players lurking in the shadows of the High Council.
Kaelen wiped the blood from his lip and looked at his system interface as a new golden notification expanded across his screen:
[MAIN QUEST: ’THE CORRUPT DELEGATE’—COMPLETED]
[REWARDS ISSUED:]
[- EXP: +150,000]
[- ACADEMY MERIT POINTS: +5,000]
[- UNLOCKED TITLE: ’VOID ARCHITECT’]
[- SPECIAL ITEM: HIGH COUNCIL VAULT PASS (KEYCARD)]
[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: LEVEL UP!]
[LEVEL UP.]
Kaelen took a deep breath, the cold night air filling his lungs as the sirens of the Guard echoed across the plaza.
The ambush at midnight was over. But the war for the Academy had just begun...