CHAPTER 31 — Cerimona's Curse
His mother would woe him with legends.
Not the clean kind.
Not the bedtime myths polished smooth for children.
No—hers were whispered in dim rooms with shutters closed, voice low, as if the walls themselves had ears loyal to his father.
She spoke of a shardless warrior.
A mage who carried no mana disks.
No fragments.
No crutches.
A man whose power devoured entire battlefields without borrowing from constructed sorcery.
Adam had listened with wide eyes and clenched fists, the candlelight flickering across his young face while shadows trembled along the walls.
Deep within himself, even now, standing on the blood-streaked Stone Fields, Adam wished he had such unimaginable power.
Cleon Cerimona the Grey.
Lord Cerimona the Grey.
The name alone carried weight—like iron wrapped in silk.
They said he was shardless.
No disks.
No stored fractures.
No externalized constructs.
Just him.
Just ether.
Just will.
During the reign of the 8th God Emperor, when the twin galaxies burned beneath the ancient demon known as the Lear, when star systems were swallowed whole and civilizations ground into obedient dust, Cleon walked alone into the abyss.
The Lear had subjugated more than half the twin galaxies for over forty thousand years.
Forty thousand.
An empire of terror older than recorded history.
And yet—
Cleon Cerimona, elite-class mage by title, had power equal to an absolute-class mage.
Some said greater.
Some said he surpassed even the God Emperor himself.
Adam's mother had smiled softly when she said that part.
"Titles," she whispered, "are political. Power is not."
The stories claimed Cleon fought the Lear in a void between systems, where no planet could survive the backlash. They said the sky turned grey. Not black. Not white.
Grey.
A colorless annihilation that swallowed demon armies whole.
When it ended, the Lear was gone.
Not sealed.
Not banished.
Gone.
And Cleon returned alone.
Alive.
Unscarred.
Shardless.
Some scholars insisted it was exaggerated. That no single mage could defeat a being that had ruled for millennia. That Cleon must have had hidden allies. Secret weapons.
But the result remained.
The Lear never returned.
And the Cerimona name rose like a comet among the Old Earth houses.
Prestige.
Rank.
Fear.
Respect.
All because one man decided the universe had endured enough.
But that was centuries ago.
Now—
The Cerimona name trembled.
Ever since Father's terrible decision.
Adam's jaw tightened.
For twenty-two years, his father had barred the entire family from practicing sorcery. No ether training. No disks. No experiments. No ambition.
Only obedience.
Only tradition.
Only stagnation.
The sole exception: the house's God King.
Their chosen weapon of war.
Not Adam.
Never Adam.
Their standing among the Old Earth houses had weakened. Questions whispered behind polished doors. Invitations withdrawn. Alliances reconsidered.
Cerimona.
The house of the Grey.
Reduced to political nostalgia.
Adam's fists clenched.
But if I survive.
If I win this war—
I could prove him wrong.
I could restore our name.
I could change everything.
Maybe even take the title of House Lord from my father.
The thought did not frighten him.
It ignited him.
The mana drive in his chest pulsed in response, as if approving the ambition.
I know the potential I carry.
It's in my blood.
In my bones.
In the marrow of my spine.
I just have to improve.
Push beyond my limits.
Become something more than the son Father tried to cage.
Adam turned, looking back toward the shore.
Far across the sea, beyond the shimmering horizon, he could see them—
The Falling Mountains.
Faint.
Thunderous.
Impossible.
Massive peaks suspended in the sky, drifting slowly northward like fragments of a shattered god. Lightning flickered constantly between them.
That was where this war would climax.
That was where destinies would collide.
Adam clenched his fists tight and turned away.
The Stone Fields awaited.
He walked into jagged landscapes where stone pillars rose like grave markers for forgotten titans. The air felt charged—too many active players still alive on the second day.
Though numbers had dropped slightly from the first day's unexpected slaughter, the island was still overcrowded.
And that meant—
Adam's duck flickered into existence without being summoned.
"Notice," it chirped pleasantly. "The third rule is activating."
Adam exhaled slowly.
Area Saturation.
In regions where mage density exceeded the acceptable threshold, the environment would intervene.
Ether would destabilize.
Phenomena would manifest.
And indiscriminately kill.
The sand beneath Adam's boots stirred.
Wind rose without warning, slicing between the stone structures with increasing aggression. The sky darkened—not with night, but with gathering force.
Light droplets of rain began to fall.
At first gentle.
Then heavier.
The wind howled.
The air thickened.
Adam's instincts screamed.
Through the growing drizzle, he noticed someone ahead.
A figure.
"Hey!" he called out instinctively.
The girl didn't look up immediately.
She was slumped over another body.
The corpse beneath her appeared lifeless, unmoving, blood pooled thick around it.
She looked young—around nineteen. Long black hair cascaded down her back, the ends dyed a muted green. Her clothes were simple—black and white, practical, unadorned.
Her expression—
Empty.
Sad.
Depressed.
Like someone who had already decided the outcome.
"Who are you?" Adam asked as he approached cautiously.
She lifted her head slowly.
Her eyes were sharp.
Alert.
"You should probably get down," she said calmly.
Adam blinked.
"What—"
A massive stone block hurtled past his head, carried by a violent gust of wind.
It missed him by inches.
Adam dropped instinctively, heart hammering.
"Holy hell!"
The wind intensified.
The sky twisted.
Clouds churned unnaturally fast, violet and black spiraling into a colossal vortex above the Stone Fields.
Rain thickened.
But it wasn't normal rain.
The droplets shimmered faintly.
Purple.
The girl stood slowly, brushing water from her sleeve.
"The name's Lilan," she said.
Thunder cracked.
Violent bolts of golden lightning streaked across the sky, illuminating the world in blinding flashes.
"And that," she continued calmly, "is Purple Rain."
As if summoned by her words, the storm roared.
Ether in the environment—saturated, unstable, excessive—began to spiral violently upward. The sky pulsed with condensed energy.
"Purple Rain is a natural ether phenomenon," Lilan explained over the chaos. "Occurs in regions where environmental ether exceeds stability limits."
A swirling cyclone formed above them, stretching miles wide.
"Violent storm. Massive discharge."
Lightning struck the ground fifty meters away.
The explosion obliterated a stone pillar entirely.
"On most planets," Lilan continued, "it's dangerous but survivable."
Another bolt fell.
This one carved a trench through the earth, vaporizing three distant figures mid-sprint.
"On Wister—"
The sky split.
Beams of destructive energy descended like divine execution.
"—it's catastrophic."
The rain intensified.
But now the droplets burned.
Each drop contained condensed ether, detonating upon impact.
Adam shielded his face as a nearby player screamed—skin blistering, armor melting, body disintegrating under the onslaught.
The Stone Fields became a massacre zone.
Lightning fell in clusters.
Wind lifted entire slabs of rock and hurled them like weapons.
Purple rain carved through flesh indiscriminately.
The level of destruction unfolding was sickening.
Players fled in every direction, but there was nowhere to go.
This wasn't a battle.
It was extermination.
Adam looked up at the sky in horror.
"Shit!!"
Another bolt descended—
Straight toward him.
Time slowed.
His mana drive pulsed violently.
His instincts screamed.
He moved.
Ether surged through his limbs as he dove sideways, barely escaping the blast radius. The ground where he had stood exploded, rock turning to molten debris.
He rolled, coughing, ears ringing.
Lilan grabbed his collar and yanked him behind a thicker stone structure just as another barrage rained down.
"You can't outrun it!" she shouted. "You have to read the pattern!"
"What pattern?!" Adam yelled back.
"The discharge zones!" she snapped. "It targets density clusters and high-output cores first!"
Adam froze.
High-output cores.
Mana drives.
The storm could sense them.
Lightning struck a group of mages huddled together in panic.
Instant vaporization.
Adam's heart pounded violently in his chest.
The mana drive responded to the storm.
The storm responded to the drive.
Cerimona's curse.
His mother's stories.
The Grey that devoured battlefields.
A thought sparked.
If Cleon had been shardless—
Then he hadn't relied on stored constructs.
He had manipulated raw ether directly.
Adam closed his eyes for half a second.
Felt the storm.
Felt the ether.
It wasn't random.
It was excess seeking equilibrium.
It was imbalance correcting itself violently.
Grey.
Balance.
Not domination.
Not suppression.
Balance.
Adam inhaled deeply.
Instead of pushing ether outward—
He pulled.
He compressed his output.
Minimized his signature.
Let the mana drive stabilize instead of amplify.
The pulse in his chest softened.
The lightning that had been angling toward their position veered slightly—redirecting toward a larger cluster further east.
Lilan stared at him.
"…You reduced your ether presence."
Adam opened his eyes.
"I think," he said shakily, "I can feel it."
Another shockwave rippled through the battlefield.
The storm was escalating.
Stone pillars shattered.
Players screamed.
The Purple Rain turned the Stone Fields into a graveyard.
Lilan grabbed Adam's arm.
"We need deeper cover," she said. "Storm center's not fully formed yet."
Adam nodded.
But as they prepared to move—
The sky above them darkened unnaturally.
Not purple.
Not gold.
Grey.
A swirling pocket of muted energy began forming directly overhead.
Different from the others.
Denser.
Heavier.
The duck reappeared briefly, voice uncharacteristically serious.
"Warning. Unidentified anomaly forming."
Adam's stomach dropped.
The grey vortex expanded.
And for the first time since waking—
Adam felt something in the storm.
Recognition.
The mana drive in his chest beat once.
Twice.
Then synchronized with the forming vortex.
Lilan stepped back.
"What did you just do?"
Adam didn't answer.
Because he wasn't sure.
But somewhere deep within his blood—
Something ancient stirred.
Cerimona.
Grey.
And the storm answered.