Landen braced for death—but nothing came.
Instead, he noticed the crowd. Faces fill with confusion.
They glanced at one another, uncertain at first—until, all at once, they erupted into laughter.
Landen frowned. "What the hell are they laughing at? Is this some kind of sick joke?"
To the crowd, it had to be staged. The teachers must have arranged it—a lesson dressed as a spectacle. Frighten them first, then pull back the curtain: don't judge strength by appearance, don't assign labels before you understand what lies beneath. Landen, they assumed, was in on it.
He wasn't.
Landen turned toward the display. If he could read it, he would have seen:
Name: Mifaso Latido
Essence Grade: Civilian
Total Energy: 0
Landen was the weakest person in the room. Now everyone knew it.
Chief Marshal Vanderbilt struck his wooden staff against the ground. The crack echoed through the arena, and the laughter died.
"Although his power appears nonexistent, he was brought here for a reason. Do not count him out just yet. There is always the possibility to break through and grow. One day, he may even be the one giving you orders."
He nodded toward Celestine. "Let us proceed to the next test."
Celestine tapped a button. The display shifted, filling with a large color wheel divided into twelve wedge-shaped segments, each representing a different hue. Five concentric rings layered each segment—the outermost a pure, saturated color, the inner rings growing lighter with each step until they faded into a white center.
THE 12 SOUL COLORS
Primary: Red, Yellow, Blue
Secondary: Orange, Green, Violet
Tertiary: Red-orange, Yellow-orange, Yellow-green, Blue-green, Blue-violet, Red-violet
"The second core element of the dantian is Soul Energy," Celestine said. "It governs your abilities and attributes—strength, agility, intelligence. Every person's Soul Energy is unique, but it can be categorized into a Soul Color. Abilities and weapons share these same categories, so identifying your color allows you to choose what best suits you and reach your full potential." She smiled. "For a deeper dive, attend my Dantian Energy class."
She pressed another button. The display sank into the stage, and in its place rose a large glass bowl—like a fish tank, fitted with a platform and stairs. Inside it, a thick black liquid sat completely still, absorbing the light around it.
"This is how we determine your Soul Color. A single drop of blood, and the liquid transforms." Celestine gestured toward Landen. "To demonstrate, our volunteer Mifaso will go first."
The crowd laughed at the name. Their perception of him had already shifted. None of them had been tested yet, but they knew—everyone knew—they were stronger than him.
"With his luck, the liquid won't change at all."
"Who wants to bet it stays black?"
Landen couldn't understand the words, but he wasn't oblivious. He could read the pointing, the smirks, the laughter directed at him. He didn't know why—just that it was happening. He went along anyway. It all seemed like some kind of performance.
At the top of the platform, a woman waited with a needle. She pricked his finger. A single drop of blood fell into the bowl.
At first, nothing.
Nothing happened.
A minute passed. Still nothing.
The crowd started laughing again. Landen stood there, watching their faces, reading what he couldn't hear. The cruelty of it settled over him—familiar, somehow. The world had always been like this. Maybe that was why he never went out much. Behind a screen, though, it had always been different. There, he was safe. There, he was untouchable.
"Thank you, Mr. Latido," Vanderbilt said from the side of the stage.
The woman gestured toward the stairs. Landen began to move—
Then the liquid stirred.
It started spinning slowly, the black surface shifting to gray, then white. But it didn't stop. The white faded, thinning and thinning until completely disappearing. The liquid turned crystal clear—not pale, not translucent, but clear, as if nothing was there at all.
The crowd fell quiet.
Of everyone present, Vanderbilt was the most shaken. In all his years overseeing these assessments, he had never seen this. He stood motionless. He didn't know what it meant, but the most logical conclusion was that the boy's soul energy was a blank slate.
Which meant one of two things: either he had the potential to wield all elements and weapons at their highest level, or he had none at all. Either way, Vanderbilt knew one thing for certain—This boy needed to be watched.
A few seconds later, the liquid returned to black.
Vanderbilt still hadn't spoken. Murmurs moved through the crowd.
"Chief?" Celestine's voice pulled him out of his thoughts. "What would you like to do?"
He blinked.
"Conclude the presentation. Then begin their assessments."
"Right away."
As Celestine turned to address the students, Vanderbilt looked to Doe and Ray. "Release him, and you two may go."
Landen and Vanderbilt held each other's gaze across the stage. Landen waited, certain something was coming—punishment, an order, anything.
"Don't disappoint me," Vanderbilt said.
Then he turned and walked away.
The presentation concluded, and Landen was finally free. Without wasting a second, he took the opportunity and rushed for the exit.
Outside, he expected a city. Instead, a gigantic dome loomed before him, its sheer scale swallowing the sky. From somewhere inside, a thunderous roar surged and crashed like a breaking wave. It had the unmistakable energy of a high-stakes event.
He spotted a door left slightly ajar. He went in.
One hallway led to another, and before he'd made any deliberate choice, he was standing before a pair of massive doors, the roar vibrating through them. He pushed them open and stepped through.
He stopped cold.
He stood in the middle section of a packed arena—egg-shaped, enormous, every seat filled from the floor to the highest rows. The people on the far side were so distant they looked like scattered pixels. Suspended above the field, massive screens displayed participant profiles, stats, team compositions—everything from a professional tournament broadcast.
It reminded him instantly of the Legends of Heroes International Championship. Five players to a side, a central screen dominating the arena. But something was wrong.
There were no booths.
No players seated behind screens. No controllers, no headsets, no glass barriers. At the center of the arena wasn't a stage—it was terrain. Dense clusters of trees, jagged rock formations, uneven ground. A river cut diagonally across the floor, dividing the field in two.
"This can't be…" Landen stepped toward the edge of the bleachers. "A MOBA event?"
On the screen above, a woman in a shimmering white outfit clashed with a towering warrior in heavy red armor. Their movements were fluid, precise—real.
He leaned forward—and bumped against something invisible. A barrier. He caught himself and looked down at the battlefield. It stretched across an area the size of four football fields. His eyes moved across the terrain until they found them.
People.
The figures on the screen were down there, moving. A mage unleashed a torrent of energy that detonated across the field. A warrior slammed into the ground, the shockwave staggering multiple opponents at once. An assassin blinked out of existence and reappeared somewhere else entirely, blade already swinging.
The crowd erupted. Landen could feel it in his chest.
He couldn't look away. A slow chill ran down his spine.
They're not characters, he thought. These are real people.
"Hey!" A voice from behind him. "What are you doing down there?"
Landen ran.
He burst back through the massive doors and sprinted down the hallway, footsteps hammering the floor. Ahead, something caught his eye—a door, faintly glowing, set into the corridor wall.
He made the decision without thinking and ran straight through it.
The hallway disappeared.
The world dissolved. What replaced it was vast and formless—a space that seemed to exist outside of time and place entirely. No ground, no sky, no walls. Just an endless, hovering expanse.
"Landen Thorne." The voice came from everywhere at once, deep and unhurried, as if it had all the time in existence.
Landen turned in every direction. "Who's there?"
"I am the son of the Creator."
He went still.
Everything rushed back at once—the arena, the tests, the impossible world he'd been dropped into without warning or explanation. It assembled itself in his mind with sudden, terrible clarity.
His eyes went wide.
"It was YOU," he shouted, pointing upward. "YOU brought me here."