His heartbeat was a war drum in his ears, a powerful, frantic rhythm that drowned out all other thought.
He really liked this feeling.
The feeling of flesh—even digital flesh—parting under his blade. The raw, unfiltered feedback of a direct hit. It was the feeling of absolute freedom, of action and consequence divorced from the silent, unresponsive prison of his own body.
Here, every victory was his alone. Every move, every parry, every calculated risk was executed by his will and his skill alone. It was intoxicating.
He raised his head high, a sovereign acknowledging a worthy challenger. The crimson in his eyes burned brighter.
The wolf, recovering, gathered its power. The air coalesced around its maw, forming a dozen jagged icicles, each longer than a man and sharper than a surgeon's scalpel.
With another earth-shaking roar, it launched them. They shot forward, not merely physical projectiles but missiles of concentrated freezing energy, homing in on him, destined to impale and flash-freeze him into a permanent statue.
Aelion didn't dodge. He stood his ground. The flames around his sword exploded outwards, no longer a controlled weapon but a raging inferno that encircled him in a whirlwind of fire.
And within the fire, something new was born. Faint, spitting tendrils of blue-white lightning crackled to life, weaving through the flames.
The two forces, fire and lightning, refused to remain separate. They twisted together in a violent, unstable marriage of destruction.
The fire superheated the air, and the lightning charged it. The combination mutated, evolving into something the game's developers had never coded, a spell born from Aelion's own unparalleled stats and will to dominate.
The air screamed. The flames turned a searing, incandescent white, and the lightning within them burned blood-red.
A spear of Red Thunder lanced from the heart of his fiery maelstrom.
It didn't travel; it simply was, connecting his position to the wolf's in an instant. There was no sound of impact, only a deafening, pure tone of annihilation. The bolt struck the Ice Wolf squarely in its chest.
There was no slow melt, no shatter. The creature's body, from the epicenter of the blast, simply ceased to be. Molecular bonds broke, frozen matter sublimated directly into vapor.
The majority of its torso and head were vaporized in a microsecond, leaving only the stunned, twitching hindquarters to collapse onto the glass plane before they too dissolved into motes of blue light.
Silence returned, deeper and more profound than before. The only evidence of the battle was the faint steam rising from Aelion's form and the slow fade of the crimson from his eyes. The first trial was over.
The world dissolved in a reverse cascade of light, the frozen shards of the vaporized wolf and the infinite glass plane pulling back into a single point of brilliance. Aelion's senses snapped back to the present, his boots firmly planted on the first step of the moonlit staircase. The arena, the throne, the battle—all were gone, leaving only the profound, humming silence of the ascension path.
A shimmering, golden script materialized in the air before him, its characters elegant and ancient.
[You have passed the first trial]
The words hung for a moment before dissolving into a shower of sparks that coalesced into a single, physical object. It was a ticket, seemingly crafted from solidified light and starlight. It hovered before him, humming with a power that made the very air around it vibrate.
[Reward: Engraving Ticket]
Aelion's crimson eyes, slowly fading back to their usual amber, narrowed with intense focus. The Engraving Ticket. A divine-tier item so rare it was considered a myth even among the top-ranked players.
It was the ultimate reward, the key to transcending the game's designed limitations. It didn't just enhance a skill; it carved the skill's essence directly into the user's soul, allowing it to break its level cap, ignore cooldowns, and evolve in ways the game's system could no longer quantify or restrict.
He had only ever heard of one other player possessing a single Engraved skill. He already had three.
With a thought, he summoned his status window. Three skills glowed with an ethereal, permanent light, separate from the rest of his list:
Fire Magic - [Engraved]: Its potential was no longer measured in levels, but in the depth of his own will. It was an extension of his fury.
Ice Magic - [Engraved]: It was not just cold, but the concept of absolute zero, his control over it as natural as breathing.
Thunder Magic - [Engraved]: It was not lightning he commanded, but raw voltage and the very concept of storm, its power limited only by his concentration.
These three Engravings were the foundation of his unbeatable status. They were why he could merge them into something new, something like the Red Thunder. And now, he would add a fourth.
The choice was instantaneous. There was no hesitation. His mind, always calculating, always planning several moves ahead, had already decided long ago.
'Life Steal.'
The common, often overlooked skill that drained an opponent's vitality to replenish the user's own. In its base form, it was a minor trick, a slow leeching effect most players ignored for more flashy, immediate damage. But Engraved? It would become something else entirely. It would no longer be a spell. It would be a fundamental law of his existence within this world: to take life and make it his own.
He focused his will on the ticket and then on the Life Steal skill in his inventory. The ticket flared, becoming a miniature sun in the dim stairwell. It shot forward, not striking him, but unraveling. Threads of divine light, intricate and blinding, spun out from it, weaving through the air before lancing into his chest.
Aelion gasped, not in pain, but in shock. It was not an external force; it was an internal rewriting. The patterns of the Engraving spread across his digital body like glowing, celestial tattoos, etching themselves onto his arms, his torso, his face—a map of impossible power searing itself into his very code. He could feel the Life Steal skill being ripped from the system's database, from his status window, and fused directly into the core of his being.
The blinding light subsided. The patterns faded from view, sinking beneath his skin, but their presence was a constant, thrumming hum in his veins. The skill was gone from his menu. It was no longer a tool he used. It was a part of him. An instinct. A hunger.
With a newfound confidence that resonated in his very soul, he raised his foot.
He stepped onto the second step.
The same blinding light erupted, but this time he was ready for the disorientation, the sensation of his consciousness being hurled across dimensions.
When his vision cleared, the staircase was gone. The air was thin, cold, and carried the scent of stone and distant snow.
He stood at the foot of an immense mountain, its peak shrouded in violent, swirling clouds that crackled with untamed energy.
The path before him was not a trail, but a near-vertical cliff face, riddled with jagged outcroppings and howling winds that threatened to pluck him from the rock and dash him against the stones below.
The second trial had begun. Not a battle against a beast, but a conquest against the mountain itself. And within him, the newly Engraved hunger stirred, waiting for sustenance.
The air at the mountain's base was thin and bit at his lungs, each breath a conscious effort. The cliff face before him was a sheer wall of jagged, grey stone, a brutal challenge meant to weed out the merely strong from the truly relentless. Aelion didn't hesitate. With a flick of his wrists, a pair of daggers materialized in his hands—not tools for combat, but pitons of darkest obsidian, their edges humming with reinforcing magic. He drove the first one into a crevice, testing his weight. The stone held.
His climb was a study in brutal efficiency. Each movement was calculated, each dagger placement perfect, leveraging his avatar's maxed-out Strength and Agility stats. He was a dark spider ascending a granite web, the void yawning below him. The wind howled around him, a furious entity trying to pluck him from the face of the rock and send him spiraling down into the misty abyss. He ignored it, his focus absolute, his mind already several moves ahead, mapping the route. 'A test of endurance. A test of patience. They think to bore me. They have no idea.'
Then, a sound cut through the gale—a piercing, predatory cry that echoed off the stone faces. A shadow passed over him, large and fast.
Aelion didn't waste time looking up. His awareness, heightened by thousands of hours of combat, pinpointed the threat's trajectory through sound and the shift in air pressure. His left hand, holding a dagger embedded in the rock, stayed firm. His right hand released its grip and snapped upward.
Blue-white electricity crackled around his fingertips, the air sizzling with ozone. A bolt of raw thunder, no wider than his thumb but concentrated into a lance of pure energy, shot from his index finger. It wasn't a grand, area-of-effect spell; it was a surgical strike.
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