Chapter 4 – The Ashes of a Prodigy

The night sky trembled.

Jin Ho's heart had been impaled, pierced by the blinding golden sword. Yet, it was not the wound that silenced the battlefield…

It was what came after.

The golden blade, forged from divine-tier celestial ore, known to have cleaved through countless realms, began to melt.

Drop by drop, it dripped down Jin Ho's chest.

The Level 9s froze.

The cloaked figure—the one wreathed in pure mana, the being who had remained unmoved until now—took a single step forward. His voice thundered through the night, amplified by an aura that suppressed even space itself.

"You brat… You destroyed my ancient artifact like it was some piece of paper…"

He raised his hand, summoning remnants of that divine sword back toward himself, but all that returned was ash and molten scrap.

"I'll use your bones and body to refine a new weapon… better than this one."

Jin Ho, blood-soaked and still floating midair, grinned. Even with the sword still stuck in his chest—melting, bubbling—he smiled with the serenity of a madman who had defied gods.

"You won't have the chance."

That's when the pulse hit.

An eerie hum surged outward from his body.

One second.

Two.

Then everything broke.

The world cracked.

The very fabric of mana screamed.

Jin Ho's body began glowing—not with the brilliance of power—but the intensity of a dying star.

"Get back!!" shouted one of the visible L9s.

But it was too late.

Jin Ho's artificial Level 10 core, pushed to the brink of annihilation and then pierced, began to unravel. Not explode—not yet. But collapse, like a black hole devouring all within reach.

And from the ruin of his core, his essence surged.

Memories. Sorrow. Anger. Hatred.

Centuries' worth of magical pressure unleashed in a singular, final breath.

The clouds above disintegrated. The trees below withered into dust. And the massive army of L7s screamed in unison before turning into scattered flakes of ash.

Out of the five hundred-plus attackers…

Not a single Level 7 survived.

Of the Level 8s, only six remained, bodies trembling, bones shattered, lying across the distant forest—breathing, barely. But their magic circuits had been obliterated. They would never cast again.

The cloaked L9s had barely survived, only by erecting divine-grade barriers—and even those cracked.

"W-What in the hell did we just fight…?"

One of the L9s coughed blood.

"That wasn't a boy… that was a curse. A living weapon!"

The golden sword L9 stood firm, but his gaze had changed. Where once was scorn, there now rested… calculated fear.

He watched as Jin Ho's body, broken and glowing from the inside, crumbled into ash. The last trace—his melted core and the mysterious dull ball—disintegrated with him, their essence vanishing into the air.

There was no soul. No artifact. Nothing to recover.

Only devastation.

Only silence.

But then—

A second explosion rippled through the battlefield.

An aftershock? No.

It was… a mark.

A magical glyph had scorched itself into the earth where Jin Ho had died.

A throne sigil.

And atop it—emerged again, the throne.

No longer rusted.

No longer old.

But alive, pulsing with dark crimson veins. Its presence spread like oil through the soil, and for the first time since the battle began—

The L9s stepped back.

The golden sword wielder narrowed his eyes.

"...The throne of Var-Nyx..."

A whisper.

One that even the heavens heard.

Somewhere… far beyond the continent… in temples forgotten by time, bells began to ring.

In dungeons sealed for millennia, ancient monsters stirred.

And across the kingdoms, seers and oracles fell into trances, eyes bleeding, muttering the same name:

"The King of Ashes… will rise again."