The moment the heavy oak door of his Omega-Tier dorm clicked shut and the locking runes engaged, Kaiser's flawless, aristocratic composure shattered.
He didn't collapse, but he immediately bit down hard on the collar of his uniform to muffle a violent, agonizing groan. He ripped his right hand out of his pocket.
It looked horrific.
The skin from his palm to his fingertips was charred a deep, unnatural black, cracked like dry earth. But the truly terrifying part was the blinding, searing white holy light actively bleeding through the cracks. The S-Rank Holy Mana from the Aegis of Truth was a virulent, invasive force. It was actively fighting the localized [Abyssal Devour] cellular structure he had created in his hand.
[System Warning: Severe Holy Contamination Detected.]
[Status: D-Rank Core is attempting to digest S-Rank Holy Mana. The disparity in elemental purity is causing localized tissue necrosis. Estimated time until permanent nerve damage: 14 minutes.]
"Digest it faster, you gluttonous void," Kaiser hissed through his teeth, sinking onto the edge of his mattress. He pushed his [Abyssal Circulation] to its absolute limit, funneling dark, heavy gravity directly into his arm to crush the holy light.
It was a brutal war of attrition inside his own veins.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
The rhythmic, perfectly spaced knocking echoed through the room.
Kaiser's head snapped up. His [Otaku's Insight] flared, immediately identifying the complete lack of footstep vibrations outside his door. Only one person in the Academy moved with that level of absolute, terrifying silence.
"Enter," Kaiser grunted, hastily grabbing a towel from his nightstand and throwing it over his burning hand.
The lock clicked open. Elara Vance, the Half-Dark Elf Head Maid and master assassin, slipped into the room. She wore her immaculate black-and-white uniform, her silver hair pulled back into a severe bun. She carried a small, velvet-lined silver tray.
"Good evening, Young Master Kaiser," Elara said, her voice a perfectly measured, icy alto. "Lady Isolde requested I deliver your weekly stipend of silver pieces, as well as a fresh batch of nutrient—"
She stopped. Her piercing amethyst eyes, hidden behind thin wire-rimmed glasses, instantly locked onto the towel draped over his lap. Her sharp nose twitched microscopically.
"You smell like a burning cathedral," Elara observed flatly.
Kaiser offered a strained, sweaty smile. "I had a sudden urge to find religion, Elara. Turns out, it burns."
Elara didn't laugh. She set the silver tray on his desk and walked toward him with terrifying, silent grace. Without asking permission, she reached out and snatched the towel off his lap.
Even her usually unflappable expression cracked slightly at the sight of his hand. The holy light was actively searing his flesh, fighting a losing, but agonizing, battle against the bruised-purple aura of his Abyss.
"You touched the Aegis of Truth," she deduced instantly, her amethyst eyes narrowing. "The entire Academy watched you pass the Purity Sweep with a flawless white light. Yet, here you are, harboring a localized containment field of concentrated, corrupted holy energy. You devoured it before it could scan your core."
"Please don't tell the Inquisitor," Kaiser chuckled weakly, a bead of sweat rolling down his nose. "She already thinks I'm suspicious. If she finds out I ate a piece of her mirror, she'll chop my head off."
Elara stared at him for a long, calculating moment. She was an assassin. She knew the exact limits of the human body. The pain he was currently enduring should have rendered him unconscious and screaming, yet he was bantering with her.
With a soft, almost imperceptible sigh, Elara reached into a hidden pouch on her apron. She produced a small, obsidian jar.
"The Warborn family does not bow to the Church, Young Master," Elara said, unscrewing the lid. A thick, pungent scent of crushed shadow-root and medicinal moss filled the air. "And as the Head Maid, it is my duty to ensure the estate's property—including its heirs—remains in pristine condition."
"Elara, I don't think standard ointment is going to—"
She didn't let him finish. She grabbed his wrist with shocking, iron-clad strength, her pointed ears twitching slightly as the holy heat singed her own skin. She plunged two fingers into the obsidian jar, scooping out a generous amount of pitch-black, shimmering salve, and smeared it directly over his cracked, glowing palm.
Kaiser let out a sharp hiss, his back arching.
The salve wasn't just medicine; it was condensed, liquid dark mana. It acted as an accelerant for his [Abyssal Devour]. The localized void in his hand instantly flared, consuming the dark salve and using the extra mass to violently crush the remaining holy light.
With a soft, fading hiss, the white light died completely.
The charred, cracked skin on his palm rapidly began to knit back together, leaving only a faint, angry red scar that would likely fade by morning.
Kaiser slumped forward, resting his forehead on his uninjured hand, gasping for air. The relief was instantaneous and profound.
"Thank you," he breathed, looking up at her.
Elara was meticulously wiping the excess salve from her fingers with a silk handkerchief. "Do not thank me, Young Master. I will simply deduct the cost of the Shadow-Root Salve from your weekly stipend. It is quite rare."
Kaiser laughed, a genuine, relieved sound. He looked at the beautiful, clinical maid.
"You're entirely too efficient, Elara. If you keep saving my life, I might just fall for you," Kaiser purred smoothly, the familiar, charismatic swagger returning to his sapphire eyes.
Elara paused, adjusting her glasses. A microscopic, incredibly faint flush dusted the tips of her pointed ears.
"I charge an exorbitant hourly rate for romance, Young Master," she deadpanned perfectly. "And considering your current harem of deeply unstable, highly lethal women, I calculate my mortality rate would spike by three hundred percent if I allowed you to court me."
[Target: Elara Vance. Emotion detected: Amused Fluster, Professional Deflection, Latent Attraction.]
[Affection updated: 14% -> 20%.]
"I like a woman who calculates her risks," Kaiser winked.
"Rest, Kaiser," Elara turned toward the door, her tone dropping its clinical edge for a fraction of a second. "The Inter-Realm Exchange Tournament is in one month. The Church and the Elven Courts do not send their second-best. If you fight them with bare hands and parlor tricks, you will die."
The door clicked shut, leaving Kaiser alone in the dark.
He flexed his right hand. She was absolutely right. He had a D-Rank core and mythic-tier skills, but he had no conduit. His wooden practice swords shattered under the weight of his aura, and standard iron melted.
If he wanted to survive the tournament arc, he needed a weapon.
The Next Morning. The Zenith Grand Armory.
The Academy's armory was a sprawling, subterranean cavern filled with the ringing of enchanted hammers and the intense heat of magma-fueled forges. Racks of gleaming weapons stretched as far as the eye could see, categorized by elemental affinity and rarity.
Kaiser walked through the aisles, his hands in his pockets.
"It needs to be mythril," a voice declared firmly from his right.
Seraphina fell into step beside him. She wore her combat uniform, her crimson hair tied back. Ever since the Blighted Mire and her Affection spike to 80%, she had seamlessly transitioned from 'hostile bully' to 'aggressively dedicated bodyguard'. She practically hovered around him, her golden eyes constantly scanning the crowd for threats.
"Mythril is light and highly conductive," she lectured, picking up a beautifully crafted, silver-bladed longsword. "It handles raw mana transfers perfectly. Here. Hold this."
Kaiser took the hilt. The sword was a masterpiece, perfectly balanced and humming with latent energy.
"It's nice," Kaiser admitted. "But it's too bright."
He didn't activate his [Aura Cloak]. Instead, he let a tiny, microscopic fraction of his D-Rank Abyssal mana leak from his palm into the hilt to test the conductivity.
CRACK.
The pristine mythril blade instantly fractured, spiderweb cracks racing up the silver metal before the top half of the sword simply shattered, turning into dull, grey dust that fell to the stone floor.
Seraphina stared at the hilt in his hand, her jaw dropping. Mythril was incredibly durable.
"Oops," Kaiser smiled sheepishly, placing the ruined hilt back on the rack. "I think my mana is a bit too... heavy for standard metals."
Seraphina swallowed hard, her mind flashing back to the terrifying black hole he had summoned in the swamp. She shook her head, recovering her composure.
"Fine. No mythril," she muttered, grabbing his wrist and pulling him deeper into the armory. The casual physical contact was entirely natural to her now, though she still blushed slightly whenever she initiated it. "We need something denser. Adamantine, perhaps. Or Starmetal."
They spent the next two hours testing weapons. Every single one resulted in catastrophic failure. A C-Rank enchanted broadsword bent under the gravitational weight of his aura. A high-tier elemental spear actively repelled his void, violently flying out of his hand and embedding itself into a stone pillar.
"This is ridiculous," Seraphina sighed in frustration, leaning against an anvil. "You have the physical strength of a vanguard, but your core rejects every known forging material. What are you supposed to fight with? Your bare hands?"
"I managed fine against the spider," Kaiser pointed out.
"You can't punch a Holy Knight in full plate armor, Kaiser!" she scolded, her protective instincts flaring.
"Excuse me."
An ancient, raspy voice broke through the ambient noise of the forge.
From the shadows behind the anvil, a dwarven smith emerged. He was missing an eye, and his beard was singed black, but his remaining eye gleamed with a sharp, calculating intelligence. He wore a heavy leather apron adorned with master-smith runes.
"I've been watching you break my inventory for two hours, boy," the dwarf grunted, chewing on a piece of charcoal. "Your mana... it doesn't flow. It sinks. It eats. Normal metal needs to vibrate with mana to hold an enchantment. You just crush it."
"My apologies for the damages, Master Smith," Kaiser offered a polite bow. "I will gladly compensate you."
"Keep your coin," the dwarf waved a thick, calloused hand. "I haven't seen a core like yours since the old wars. If you want a weapon that won't shatter when you breathe on it, standard stock won't do."
The dwarf turned, gesturing for them to follow. He led them away from the glowing forges and the pristine racks, descending a narrow, dusty flight of stone stairs into a sub-basement.
The air here was freezing, smelling of rust and old blood.
"This is the Reject Vault," the dwarf explained, unlocking a heavy iron grate. "Weapons forged with contradictory materials. Cursed blades. Failures that were too dangerous or too heavy to be wielded."
He walked to the very back of the vault, stopping in front of a stone slab. Resting on the slab was a weapon wrapped entirely in heavy, rusted iron chains.
"I forged this eighty years ago," the dwarf murmured, a mix of pride and regret in his raspy voice. "Tried to fold a meteorite core into deep-sea obsidian. I wanted a blade that could sever magic itself."
He pulled a lever. The rusted chains fell away with a heavy clatter.
Kaiser's breath hitched.
It was a nodachi—a massive, two-handed, slightly curved blade nearly five feet in length. But it wasn't shiny. The metal was an impossible, light-consuming matte black. It had no crossguard, just a long hilt wrapped in dark, worn leather.
"It was a failure," the dwarf spat. "The metal is infinitely dense. It weighs roughly four hundred pounds. Worse, the forging process created a vacuum. If a normal mage holds it, it forcefully drains their core until their heart stops. We call it Eclipse."
Seraphina instantly stepped in front of Kaiser, holding her arm out to block him. "Absolutely not. A cursed weapon that drains mana? You'll die just picking it up."
Kaiser didn't listen. His [Otaku's Insight] was screaming with absolute, euphoric validation.
A dense, ultra-heavy, mana-draining cursed blade? This isn't a failure. It's a tailor-made Mythic-tier weapon for an Abyssal anomaly.
"Seraphina," Kaiser said softly, gently moving her arm aside. "Trust me."
He stepped up to the stone slab. He didn't use an elemental enhancement. He simply reached out with his right hand and grabbed the worn leather hilt.
The moment his skin touched the weapon, Eclipse woke up.
A violent, invisible suction gripped Kaiser's D-Rank core. The blade desperately tried to rip the mana from his veins, attempting to drain him dry.
But Kaiser wasn't a normal mage. He was the Void.
You want to eat? Kaiser smirked, his sapphire eyes flashing entirely black for a fraction of a second. Let's see who has the bigger appetite.
Instead of fighting the suction, Kaiser forcefully pushed a massive wave of his bruised-purple Abyssal mana directly into the blade.
The clash was instantaneous. The blade tried to drain him, and his core simply overwhelmed it with sheer, terrifying density. The matte black metal began to hum, a deep, resonating vibration that shook the dust from the ceiling. Faint, purple runic lines illuminated along the edge of the dark blade, glowing with a subdued, lethal light.
Kaiser lifted the weapon.
To the dwarf, it weighed four hundred pounds. To Kaiser, whose Abyssal gravity perfectly synced with the dense metal, it felt as light and perfectly balanced as a bamboo practice sword.
He swung it lazily with one hand.
The sheer kinetic force of the swing didn't just cut the air; it warped the space slightly, leaving a faint, dark afterimage. The wind pressure completely blew Seraphina's crimson hair back, and the dwarf stumbled into a rack of shields.
"It's perfect," Kaiser declared, resting the massive black nodachi over his shoulder. He looked at the dwarven smith, his charismatic smile returning. "How much?"
The dwarf stared at him, his single eye wide with sheer, unadulterated awe. He had just watched a first-year student easily heft a cursed, unliftable blade and tame its mana-drain in five seconds.
"Take it," the dwarf whispered, shaking his head. "If you can wield that monster without dying, you're the only one who can. Just... try not to cleave the Academy in half, boy."
As Kaiser walked back up the stairs, carrying the massive, terrifying blade over his shoulder, Seraphina walked closely beside him. She looked at the weapon, then at Kaiser, a deep flush coloring her cheeks.
"You're a maniac," she muttered, though she was undeniably, thoroughly impressed. "A complete, show-off maniac."
"And you love it," Kaiser teased, bumping his shoulder against hers.
Her face turned violently red, but she didn't deny it.
"Come on," Kaiser smiled, looking out toward the training grounds. "I need to figure out how to swing this thing before the Holy Knights get here. The Seducing... I mean, the Tournament, awaits."