Chapter 181: The Cost of Neglect (3)
After Harlan left Tyron, the advice given by the former Master was not instantly put to use.
An entire year slipped past beneath the shifting skies of Kalpa, and in that time, Tyron made no effort to leave the world or take the warnings to heart.
The divine ring remained on his finger... yet largely ignored, the resources and information inside left untouched while pride and residual defiance kept him rooted.
He didn’t linger in the shadowed streets of the Dark Hold either.
Ever since his conversation with Harlan, curiosity about what the Academy had become had gotten the better of him.
So, he drifted along the fringes of the Southern Continent, keeping a cautious distance, his gaze fixed on the Academy of Veils with a blend of nostalgic familiarity and a growing edge of resentment.
What he saw unsettled him more than he cared to admit.
The Academy’s conquest advanced at a pace that defied ordinary expectation—formations sweeping across territories, clans folding one after another... with a momentum so relentless it felt almost unnatural.
Day after day, the reports and distant sightings confirmed the same truth: the force he had once belonged to was expanding with an efficiency that bordered on the absurd.
On the day the final Dark Human clan of the Southern Continent fell, Tyron stood alone on a high ridge overlooking the last battlefield.
"How... how can they grow so much?" he muttered, his voice low and edged with bitterness as it drifted into the open air.
"Even Amber... even she’s gotten stronger than me. And all of this... this is supposed to be because of that bastard?"
The thought didn’t sit right with him, as the resentment coiled tight around the grudging acknowledgment of the person that had fueled such rapid progress.
He despised the sight, yet he could not look away until the last resistance collapsed, and the Academy’s victory became absolute.
At last, he turned from the ridge, the decision settling into his bones with cold clarity.
He would prove every one of them wrong—Harlan, the Academy... and the "Lord" they all praised.
His pride and determination fused into a single, unyielding resolve as he lifted his hand and summoned the map stored within the divine ring Harlan had left him.
The projection unfolded in the air before him, glowing lines tracing routes and markers across the surface of Kalpa until one location pulsed with quiet significance.
Tyron studied the marked point for a long moment, the wind tugging at his hair and robes while the conquered lands stretched out behind him.
"So... it’s the fourth oldest ruin," he muttered, the destination settling into place like a promise.
"That is where I will begin."
----
The five oldest ruins of Kalpa had long been regarded as forbidden grounds, places spoken of in low voices and carefully marked on the maps of every major faction.
Each of them shared one grim common trait: not many who entered ever returned.
In certain ruins, a handful of survivors had managed to emerge carrying fragments of knowledge... scraps of ancient weapons, strange artifacts, or incomplete records that allowed scholars to piece together a thin understanding of what lay within.
Those rare returns had given the other five sites a measure of studied caution rather than pure dread.
The fourth oldest ruin, though, was in a league of its own, far beyond even the faintest glimmer of optimism.
Its disappearance rate was an unbroken one hundred percent, a flawless record of loss.
Not a single soul who had dared to step across its boundary had ever returned, vanishing without so much as a trace.
Yet the site was not ranked as the most immediately lethal of the five.
It was well known that the lives of beings could still be tracked for a time after entry, and the readings rarely ended in the signature of death.
Instead, the auras faded, drifting beyond the reach of any sensing technique until they vanished completely.
The disappearances had sparked ongoing rumors that the ruin didn’t so much kill its visitors as it simply took them away.
Most believed that its interior somehow carried beings beyond the world of Kalpa itself, into strange realms that no one had ever charted or even named.
After six long years away from the Academy of Veils, Tyron found himself standing before that same ruin, clutching the map he’d received from Harlan’s ring.
The entrance offered no resistance, the weathered stone seeming to swallow both light and sound as he crossed into its shadowed depths.
Like every traveler before him, he wasn’t spared from the ruin’s unbroken record of disappearances.
Yet, unlike those who had vanished into silence, what Tyron encountered within those walls, without question, set his journey apart from all the others.
----
The moment he stepped across the threshold, the familiar stone of Kalpa’s surface fell away behind him, and he found himself standing inside a vast, circular chamber of black rock.
Before him. five other portals ringed the space, each one a tall, shimmering arch of unstable light that pulsed with colors he could not name.
He turned slowly, eyes wide, the shock of the sight locking his feet in place for several heartbeats.
"Are these... actual pathways?" he muttered in disbelief.
During his time in the Dark Hold, he had heard countless rumors about the Oldest ruins, tales repeated so often they had become little more than background noise.
Rumors were just that—stories with no proof. Yet now, seeing with his own eyes that this place held portals, he could hardly accept it as real.
"I guess... Master was looking out for me," he murmured with a faint smile, though it faded away only moments later.
HUMMMMM!!!!!
RUMBBBLLEEEEEE!!!!!
Before the wonder could fully settle, a deep, structural shudder rolled through the entire ruin.
The floor beneath his boots vibrated hard enough to rattle his teeth.
Cracks of pure white light spider-webbed across the black stone walls, and for a terrifying instant the chamber seemed to fold in on itself.
In that moment, timelines... or something that felt like them... all bled together in the corners of his vision,
The flashes of unfamiliar skies, fragments of cities that had never existed on Kalpa, and the brief, overlapping silhouettes of figures who did not belong to any age he knew.
Instantly... reality itself felt thin, as though the fabric of the place was being pulled in too many directions at once.
COUGH!!!!!
Tyron stumbled, a harsh cough ripping from his chest as vivid blood splattered across the back of his hand.
The edges of the chamber began to dissolve into pure void, blackness swallowing the portals one by one.
His vision tunneled, the edges of the world bending and twisting as if gravity itself had gone rogue.
"What the hell is going on?" he spat through gritted teeth, each word rough with anger and confusion, his legs threatening to buckle beneath him. "What is this—?!"
Right before the darkness consumed him, a voice sliced through the chaos—cold, sharp, and so sure of itself it left no space for hesitation.
"Oh, you fools... do you really think this sword can hold me forever? Enjoy your laughter while it lasts. I, Loki, will break free... and when I return, Asgard... Valhalla will bow to me once again!"
HUMMMM!!!!
A surge of vivid green light exploded outward from the center of the ruin, washing over every surface and every remaining fragment of the chamber.
The light carried Tyron with it, tearing him free of Kalpa entirely.
----
When awareness returned, he was lying on his back in a wide, open field of soft green grass.
The sky above him was clear and strange, and across his chest lay a sword unlike any other.
The blade was forged in interwoven shades of deep green and absolute black, the metal seeming to shift between the two colors as though it breathed.
Intricate patterns ran the length of the weapon... laughing faces half-hidden in the steel, mouths curved in perpetual, mocking mirth that somehow felt both playful and dangerous.
Even at rest, the sword carried a presence that made the air around it feel lighter, as if it found the entire situation amusing.
[You Have Formed a Connection with a Divine Cosmic Ranked Weapon.]
[The Laughing Sword (Ranked ????/9,999)]