The raw brutality of the Duel Exam had left the arena floors virtually painted in brutal violence, yet not a single applicant had sustained a permanent injury, let alone a casualty. This absolute safety was entirely due to the Empire's marvellous technology, and it was the Mirror World.
The mechanics of the Mirror World were elegantly absolute. The system constructed a completely isolated, secondary fabric of space that flawlessly mirrored the physical layout of actual reality. Within this localised pocket dimension, combatants could unleash catastrophic, lethal force without the slightest risk of affecting the true world.
It was an invaluable asset for the academy and for the Empire, serving not only as a failsafe training ground for live combat but also as a secure sandbox for testing experimental weapons of mass destruction and high-tier, forbidden arcana.
Now, the remaining one hundred and sixty survivors stood back in the physical courtyard, poised on the precipice of the third and final phase of the Entrance Exam.
The air was thick with tension and the frantic, hushed whispers of applicants speculating on the "secret benefits" the Headmistress had promised. Jeanne stood with her arms crossed, her sharp gaze analytical, while Seraphina subtly shifted closer to Amon, still trying to parse his lingering silence.
"The third phase of the Entrance Exam..." Victoria paused, raising her right hand.
With a sharp, resounding snap of her fingers, the laws of the courtyard warped.
Instantly, a strange, profound phenomenon swept through the courtyard. Every single remaining applicant began to glow with a faint, ethereal light. The ambient magium in the air vibrated violently, causing a wave of confusion and localised panic as students stared down at their own luminescent hands.
"...will be a tailored crucible designed to challenge the absolute best aspects of each of you." A distinctly mischievous smile tugged at the corners of Victoria's lips as her eyes danced across the glowing crowd.
"In this trial, you will not be competing on a universal metric. Each of you will be isolated in a bespoke environment engineered to push your peak attribute to its absolute structural limit. If you are a genius mage, your magical threshold will be pushed to the brink. If you are a tactical mastermind, your intellect will face an impossible puzzle. Let the final phase begin!"
Before anyone could voice a protest, the light flared into a blinding flash. Space warped, and the courtyard vanished.
. . .
Amon found himself standing in the middle of a vast expanse of greenery. Stretching out as far as his vision could reach, the land was covered in vibrant, lush grass that swayed gently in the breeze. He looked around and realised he was standing on a high plateau, overlooking the endless fields below.
"This place looks... not-so threatening..." He thought, his analytical mind already dissecting the serene landscape. He slipped his hand into his jacket and drew his wand.
To deduce his exact coordinates and the nature of this environment, he quietly activated his Special Skill, [No Longer Human].
"So, where exactly am I?" he asked himself internally, strolling forward with his wand held loosely in his grip, prepared for any sudden ambush.
The cold, absolute voice of his skill resonated within his consciousness.
<< "A Black Chasm. You have been transported into a Black Chasm. It has a threat rating of SS-Rank." >>
"...Does the Headmistress want me dead?"
Amon stopped dead in his tracks. For the first time in a long time, a look of genuine, unscripted bewilderment broke through his calm exterior.
Chasms are entire worlds that have been utterly corrupted by Dark Magium. They are formed when this malevolent force completely infects every microscopic layer of a reality, restructuring it into a hyper-hostile ecosystem designed to annihilate anything that doesn't bear the mark of corruption.
To understand a Chasm is to understand Dark Magium itself. It is a corrupted primordial energy born from the degradation of true Magium.
Much like its pure counterpart, Dark Magium is a fundamental cosmic constant—an energy that predates the dawn of existence and will continue to exist even after the complete annihilation of creation and nothingness. It acts as a cosmic infection. The moment it touches any living creature or inanimate object, it rewrites their essence, transforming them into entities known as Revenants.
Revenants are creatures, anomalies, or environments of absolute, unbridled hostility. Because their cores are saturated with Dark Magium, they possess an instinctual, violent hatred toward anything emitting a standard magium signature. In short, they are hostile to everything in creation, and their sole, hardcoded purpose is absolute eradication.
When an entire world falls to this cosmic blight, it is classified as a Chasm. The academy and the Empire categorise these fallen worlds into three distinct, terrifying tiers based on their colour and threat level:
Blue Chasms represent the entry tier, possessing an established threat rating of A-Rank.
Red Chasms mark a catastrophic escalation, holding a lethal threat rating of S-Rank.
Black Chasms are the absolute apex of planetary corruption, harbouring a localised reality so volatile and deadly that it commands a threat rating of SS-Rank.
And Amon was currently standing right in the heart of one. The vibrant, peaceful green grass swaying beneath his boots wasn't a paradise—it was a beautifully painted slaughterhouse.
<< "Negative. The purpose of sending you into such a hostile environment is a rescue mission. You have been deployed here to locate and retrieve a close friend of the Headmistress." >>
"A rescue mission?" Amon's thoughts echoed with profound bewilderment. "In an SS-Rank zone? For an entrance exam?"
<< "Correct. Victoria Jackson's closest confidante and sister-figure, Jacqueline, was dispatched on a high-priority mission to investigate a newly formed Blue Chasm a few days ago. She never returned. Headmistress Victoria was highly anxious and intended to launch a personal recovery operation, but the Empress explicitly forbade her from entering." >>
"What is Jacqueline's individual threat rating?" Amon inquired internally, his tactical mind shifting gears instantly.
<< "On the very precipice of becoming SSS-Rank." >>
"Ah... I see the board clearly now."
Amon's internal voice crystallised, stripping away the shock and replacing it with absolute clarity and cold confidence. He resumed his casual stroll across the vibrant green plateau, his wand resting easily in his hand.
"Empress Riversong ordered Victoria to stand down because she calculated the chessboard. She understood that whatever entity or anomaly managed to swallow a powerhouse of Jacqueline's calibre completely would pose a lethal threat to Victoria as well. The Empire couldn't risk losing an invaluable, high-tier asset to the corruption."
<< "Correct." >>
"Which explains exactly why I'm standing here," Amon continued, a sharp, knowing smile returning to his face as he pieced together the Headmistress's grand design. "Victoria is intimately aware of my unrecorded feats. She knew I could survive this place and fetch Jacqueline back. But my mother—and certainly the Empress—would never willingly permit me to dive into an SS-Rank death zone. So, Victoria rigged the academy's third phase to bypass them entirely."
He paused, tapping his wand against his palm.
"Furthermore, that entire performance with the Recommendation Letter was a calculated setup. She knew my pride; she knew I would view a free pass as an insult and refuse it just to dominate the live Entrance Exam instead. It was the perfect bait to lure me exactly where she needed me."
<< "Your deduction is entirely correct." >>
"She needed to create a flawless alibi," Amon chuckled softly to himself, his admiration for the Headmistress's political cunning growing. "To avoid drawing any suspicion from the imperial spies or my family, she handed an identical letter to Jeanne Nova. After all, Jeanne is undeniably talented enough to warrant one. It made the entire gesture look like a standard, eccentric display of talent scouting, rather than a desperate, illegal deployment of an entrant into a cosmic death zone."
<< "The individual, Jacqueline, is a Succubus Queen of the Solathian Empire—the demonic allies of the Riversong Empire. Empress Riversong advised Victoria that the Demon Throne would handle Jacqueline's recovery internally, since she holds a pivotal position in their hierarchy. However, Victoria's desperation completely overrode her logic, driving her to utilise you as a proxy to retrieve her sister-figure." >>
"Desperation truly is a frightening emotion," Amon murmured, a knowing, almost sympathetic smile touching his lips. He raised his wand toward the flawless blue sky. "It can drive even the sanest minds to lengths that would terrify the truly insane. But enough of this playground. I know it's all an illusion, so let us strip away the facade."
"Delusion Severance."
A sharp, microscopic fracture appeared in the air at the tip of his wand, and then reality violently shattered like glass.
The illusion of the endless plateau didn't just fade—it was aggressively peeled back to reveal the true colours of an SS-Rank cosmic nightmare. Gone was the vibrant greenery, and gone was the gentle, soothing breeze. In their place rushed an immediate, suffocating pressure so immense it would have pulverised a lesser lifeform's core instantly.
The landscape transformed into a jagged, barren hellscape, the earth cracked wide open and bleeding a volatile, pulsing dark-red energy. The serene blue sky evaporated into an ominous, churning canopy of bruised crimson clouds. Overhead, the sun itself hung split completely in half, its dying light being ravenously consumed by the creeping corruption of Dark Magium.
<< "The individual, Jacqueline, is located southwest inside an abandoned research facility. This facility also serves as the anchoring coordinate for the Black Chasm's localised core. The exact structural map has been integrated into your neural memory. Extreme resistance is calculated. It is highly advised that you utilise a baseline of S-Rank spells or higher to ensure survival." >>
"Instant Travel."
Space compressed down to a single point.
In the span of a single heartbeat, Amon vanished from the plateau and materialised directly in front of the target destination. The facility was a sprawling, subterranean research laboratory completely choked by pulsing, organic overgrowths of crystalline Dark Magium.
The atmospheric pressure here was drastically more intense than the hellscape outside, thick enough to make the stone floor groan under its sheer weight. Judging by the pristine condition of the scattered instruments and unpowered magical terminals, the facility had been evacuated in an extreme rush only days prior.
Amon stood before a set of towering, blast-resistant steel security doors that were heavily infected, the metal webbed with glowing, throbbing veins of corrupted dark-red energy.
He didn't waste time looking for a terminal. He casually levelled his wand at the centre of the seal.
"Judgment Arrow."
A dense, blinding spike of concentrated solar light erupted from the tip of his wand. The high-tier spell pierced the atmosphere with a deafening screech, impacting the corrupted steel and instantly obliterating the doors into a shower of molten white-hot slag.
The raw kinetic backshock triggered a localised earthquake, sending violent tremors rippling through the structural foundations of the complex as sections of the concrete ceiling collapsed into rubble around him.
Before advancing into the heart of the corrupted facility, Amon levelled his wand at his own chest. If he was going to tread into a space that had swallowed a Succubus Queen on the verge of SSS-Rank, theatre would have to take a backseat to absolute optimisation.
"Third Order," he commanded.
A ripple of divine, golden energy erupted from his core, enveloping him in a shimmering aura that felt like liquid sunlight.
"[Abnormality Resistance]. [Space-Time Acceleration]. [Absolute Physicality]."
The brilliant flare intensified for a heartbeat, saturating every cell in his body before subsiding into a constant, low-humming golden radiance.
With [Abnormality Resistance], he effectively severed his connection to the vulnerabilities of the flesh. He was now a closed system, utterly immune to any kind of corruption or madness, as well as illusions, toxins, fatigue, and the very corruption that had turned this world into a tomb.
[Space-Time Acceleration] shifted his consciousness into a higher gear. To the outside world, he remained stationary, but internally, his perception of time compressed. The falling dust from the ceiling slowed to a crawl, and the flickering red lights of the lab became static images. His cognitive processing and neural reflexes were now operating ahead of physical reality.
Finally, [Absolute Physicality] reinforced his biological structure to a terrifying degree. His muscle density and skeletal integrity were magically hardened, granting him the raw durability and kinetic force required to trade blows with high-tier forces without flinching.
Fully optimised and radiating a faint, celestial glow that acted as a middle finger to the surrounding dark-red pressure, Amon stepped over the molten slag of the security doors.
He moved deeper into the dark-magium-choked corridors, his senses locked onto the two anomalies at the centre of this facility: the missing Succubus Queen and the pulsating heart of the Black Chasm.
. . .
It took roughly twenty minutes of relentless, methodical clearing to breach the deepest sub-levels of the abandoned facility. The narrow corridors were absolutely teeming with grotesque creatures twisted by Dark Magium, and the sheer destructive power they packed was no joke.
It was an inherently bizarre sight. According to fundamental cosmic laws, Revenants—regardless of their tier or individual strength—instinctually avoid the core of a Chasm. The raw, unfiltered density of Dark Magium at the epicentre is usually volatile enough to tear even its own constructs apart. You would never see them crowding the core unless a critical, existential emergency had forced their hand.
Amon immediately deduced the situation: the Chasm core itself was highly vulnerable. Sensing an intruder capable of neutralising an entire world's corruption, it had broken its own laws, emitting a desperate psychic distress signal to pull every surrounding Revenant into a dense, suicidal vanguard to guard its existence.
After his wand pulsed with a final, crushing gravity distortion, the last gargantuan Revenant collapsed into a dissolving heap of black ash. Amon finally let out a soft sigh of relief.
"My skill certainly wasn't joking when it warned me about heavy resistance," he muttered under his breath, casually casting a basic cleaning charm to strip the foul, corrupted gore of the creatures from his pristine uniform. "The sheer volume of anomalies I just tore through would have been fatal enough to completely wipe out a fully equipped raid party of veteran S-Ranks. I suppose I should feel a bit grateful to myself for being this utterly overpowered."
This was the absolute, unbridgeable gulf between an S-Rank and an SS-Rank. What would have been a catastrophic, kingdom-ending tragedy for a team of S-Rank elites was, to an SS-Rank individual like Amon, a mild, twenty-minute inconvenience. It was a terrifying reality of the world's power levels—one that applied just as brutally to the tier above him.
Stepping past the dissolving remnants of the vanguard, Amon approached the central chamber doors, where the pulsing heartbeat of the Chasm core and Jacqueline's containment unit awaited.
"Judgment Arrow."
A dense, blinding spike of concentrated solar light erupted from the tip of his wand, instantly vaporising the central chamber doors into a flash of white-hot dust. Revealed ahead was an enormous, brightly lit passage. Amon walked through the corridor for a full minute, his footsteps echoing in the silence, before finally stepping out into a colossal subterranean chamber.
The space resembled an experimental testing ground for a massive laboratory, but it was filled to the brim with the suffocating corruption of Dark Magium.
At the centre of the room, suspended in mid-air, was a woman, tightly bound by thick, heavy chains forged from pure, pulsing Dark Magium. Directly behind her loomed the source of the chamber's weight: a colossal, unblinking eye that radiated an enormous, oppressive presence, staring down at everything with cosmic malice.
The captive woman possessed a striking, otherworldly beauty. She had a tall, flawless hourglass figure with exceptionally well-endowed proportions, slender arms, and smooth, creamy white skin. Her face was a mesmerising contradiction—a seamless blend of pure innocence and mature charm. Long, flowing light-blue hair cascaded down her back, contrasting beautifully with the black robe and matching white-and-black nun-like dress she wore. On her feet were a pair of pristine white heels.
Yet, it was her inhuman features that commanded attention. Floating above her head was an elegant crown. From that crown rose six magnificent wings that evoked Biblical angels; they were sleek, luminous, and blended seamlessly into her hair rather than being feathered. These wings curved and arched gracefully like a halo, their radiant surfaces studded with multiple glowing, blinking eyes. Lower down, a long, light-blue demonic tail snaked out from beneath her dress, ending in a distinct, heart-shaped tip.
But she was not alone.
Standing right beside the bound Succubus Queen was a male figure, completely unbound. He was dressed casually in a black t-shirt, white jeans, and black sports shoes. Heavy metallic shackles clung to both of his wrists, though the chains connecting them were violently shattered. The metal of the shackles pulsed with a unique, glowing dark-red pattern, indicating they had been utterly corrupted by the surrounding Dark Magium.
"I am finally in the boss room, it seems."
A small, dangerous smile framed Amon's face as the mysterious male figure slowly turned around to face him.