Tunde had immediately stored the box away, slipping it into the hidden recesses of his void ring, his hands trembling despite himself. He moved quickly, eyes darting around, heart racing, every instinct sharpened. He knew better than to leave such a treasure in plain sight, especially in a place like this.

  His mind spun in a flurry of questions, each more impossible than the last. Different scenarios, endless possibilities. What could this mean? Could the Saint truly have been that grateful? Was this a pure reward, or did it come with hidden strings, a veiled threat hidden in the guise of a gift? He had no answers. None that felt solid enough to hold onto.

  But there was no time to dwell. Sera had been called up for her fight, and as he glanced her way, concern creased his features, his brows furrowing deeply. He knew exactly what monster she was about to face. Shui. The Asura. A nightmare in the flesh, born of blood and rage.

  Then he’d watched, slack-jawed, as Sera held her own against the Asura’s fury—blood against blood, ferocity against ferocity. She advanced, her power rising before his eyes, her aura twisting into something more, something new. Had she gained another affinity? Or was it an aspect of her blood path? He didn’t know. Not yet. He would have to ask her later, when the dust settled.

  Sera had won. Against Shui.

  When she stepped back into the waiting room, bloodstained but standing tall, Tunde couldn’t stop himself. He surged forward, wrapping her in a tight, almost desperate hug, feeling the thrum of her new power through her skin. Sera stiffened in surprise, awkward as ever, but she didn’t pull away.

  Zhu, ever the celebrant, produced a bottle of wine from his void ring with a flourish, grinning wide. The air buzzed with an unspoken acknowledgment: Sera was no longer just a contender. She was a master. Tunde could feel it in every breath she took, in the heavy, almost metallic scent of blood and power that clung to her like a second skin. She smiled at him—feral, radiant—and for a moment, Tunde couldn’t help but grin back.

  “Honoured Master Sera,” Zhu said, bowing low in exaggerated formality.

  Sera rolled her glowing red eyes, a smirk tugging at her lips.

  “Please. In the blink of an eye, you both will catch up.” Her gaze flicked between them, lingering on Tunde.

  “Won’t you?” she added with a pointed arch of her brow.

  Tunde shrugged, though his mind was already racing.

  Zhu, of course, could; the Ethralite was already pushing into the early tiers of a master’s strength, his aura crackling like a coiled beast despite how well he tried to mask it. Tunde, though? That was a different matter entirely.

  “I can,” he said after a pause, voice calm and even, “but it depends.”

  Sera tilted her head, sharp and curious. “On what?”

  Tunde smiled—slow, thoughtful, and perhaps a little enigmatic.

  It was always so simple for Sera. Either you could, or you couldn’t. A straight line, no curves, no detours. Part of him wished it could be that way for him too. But it wasn’t.

  Right now, he could feel it—the heaven’s crucible lingering at the edges of his soul, like a massive storm cloud waiting to descend. His very essence strained against it, the pressure immense, the temptation just as fierce.

  His soulspace burned bright, his essence flame now a literal sun at the heart of his being, radiating with heat and intensity. His aura had sharpened, refined, honed into something more—but there was still something missing. A piece not yet unlocked.

  Understanding flickered in him like a distant star. Tunde always did learn best when he spoke things aloud.

  “It depends,” he said again, softer this time, “on if I understand what I want.”

  He left it at that, sinking into a seated position as the viewing construct flared to life, calling out Elyria’s name.

  “It’s your friend’s turn,” Sera said, letting the question drop as she folded her arms and leaned back.

  Tunde nodded, closing his eyes and letting his breath steady. He drew in Ethra from the air, feeling the way it thrummed through his meridians—but his core, already expanded and improved, felt full, like a vessel brimming over. He smiled faintly. The bounty he’d reaped from Harumi was beyond words. He would have to thank the master when they crossed paths again.

  “You’re not watching?” Sera asked, her surprise cutting through the haze.

  Tunde shrugged, not bothering to open his eyes.

  “No need,” he replied simply. “The winner’s already been decided.”

  Besides, he had bigger things to deal with.

  True to his prediction, Elyria did win. Her mastery of the Rust Tyrant path, as she called it, was flawless, ruthless, unyielding. Her metal arm gleamed as she tore through Reya’s defenses, breaking the poisonous vines of the Wild Warden with precision and brute force alike.

  Both cultivators stood at the peak of the Highlady realm, but there was no contest. Elyria held Reya by the neck, her metal fingers crushing as the other woman’s body dissolved into motes of light.

  Elyria turned and walked out of the ring victorious, her steps calm, controlled, unstoppable.

  Tunde opened his eyes, reminding himself to congratulate her later. The construct buzzed again, this time calling his name.

  He rose smoothly, exhaling as the tension melted from his body.

  Sera and Zhu said nothing, but as Tunde glanced at them, they each nodded once, silent and sure in their understanding of what came next.

  Without another word, Tunde strode toward the stage.

  The arena erupted in a flood of destruction Ethra, flames roaring across the platform, searing heat distorting the air. Above, a thick cloud of hazy, shifting Ethra and aura loomed, crackling like a storm about to break.

  “The representative of the Talahan clan,” the announcer boomed, voice cutting through the chaos, “you know him as The Wastelander, unbeaten in all his rounds so far, Tunde!”

  The crowd roared, a wave of voices crashing over the stage.

  “And facing him... all the way from Crystalreach, the unopposed rulers of the entire continent—acolyte to the Master of the Mistwalkers: Gue of the Gruesome Blade!”

  The air shifted, thickened. From the swirling clouds above, a figure descended slowly, tendrils of smoke curling around him like a crown. His butcher’s blade, massive and cruel, gleamed with serrated edges lined in gold, dripping with Ethra, aura, essence flame, and—most dangerously—the unmistakable authority of a Master. The blade crackled with latent power, each spark splitting the air as Gue’s form flickered in and out of sight, appearing and vanishing all around the stage.

  Tunde’s gaze flicked once to the announcer, who grinned wide, the flames licking at his feet, eager and hungry.

  “Begin!” the announcer roared.

  And so it began.

  Tunde snapped his fingers.

  A pulse of essence flame erupted from him, an inferno. It swept across the stage like a tidal wave of violet fire, devouring the lingering flames of destruction and replacing them with the searing, violent purity of his own path. The ground hissed beneath the heat, and the air crackled with raw power, shimmering in violet and black.

  Gue floated above, momentarily frozen as he took in the transformation of the arena. The mist coiled around him, but the violet flames burned brighter, a silent defiance that clawed against the fog’s insidious hunger.

  Then Gue laughed a low, cruel sound that slithered across the air like a blade on bone.

  “Little seeker...” he crooned, voice oily with mockery. His butcher’s blade swung lazily, and mist gathered into the shapes of coiling serpents, their eyes gleaming with malevolence.

  “Little walker, all alone now... do you ever think of those people you once called family?” His smile widened, sharp and gleaming like a predator’s.

  “Would you like me to send you to them, hmm?” Gue’s laugh was sharp and cutting, a sound that echoed across the arena, drawing murmurs from the crowd.

  But Tunde said nothing. He stood silent within the heart of the flames, eyes steady, unreadable. Gue’s smirk faltered, irritation flaring as his taunts landed on stone.

  With a snarl, Gue sent the serpents slithering forward. They streaked through the air, jaws open wide, spitting clouds of choking mist that began to swallow even Tunde’s void flames, thinning and eating away at the edges.

  Tunde’s eyes sharpened. Ethra sight flared to life, the world peeling open to reveal the flows of energy beneath. He watched as Gue split into a dozen illusory figures, each one attacking from a different angle—poison laced into some strikes, elemental fire in others, each blow a precise, lethal intent.

  But Tunde moved with a calm that belied the chaos. He flowed, weaving through the attacks like water through cracks, unbothered by the storm around him.

  Whenever the authority of the master pulsed, that crushing, oppressive weight that seemed to bend the very air—Tunde’s bloodline ability stirred. It devoured, swallowing the pressure whole, feeding it into the ever-hungry gate that loomed in the depths of his mind. His soulspace pulsed with a deep, resonant hunger, drinking in the stolen authority, though it remained just out of reach—not yet.

  The battle raged in silence.

  Tunde’s violet flames flickered, swallowed by the Mistwalker’s domain. The stage was a shifting labyrinth of fog, the kind that twisted minds and turned nightmares into weapons. It shared that insidious touch with the Cult of Thogu, designed to shatter lesser cultivators' sanity, to drown them in terror.

  But Tunde was no lesser cultivator. His mind, his soul—these were his strongest bastions, fortified through hardship and forged in the fires of his own suffering. The Mistwalker’s tricks could not reach him.

  And yet, he indulged Gue. Let the Mistwalker believe he was gaining ground. Let the crowd see.

  The whispers had already started, murmurs of disbelief as they realized Tunde was toying with Gue.

  Gue’s face twisted, rage flaring in his eyes as he retreated, ascending once more into the air. His hands blurred through a rapid sequence of signs, Ethra crackling as a formation began to manifest above him.

  Tunde’s eyes narrowed. Flagless formations?

  Interesting. So the Mistwalkers had access to that as well.

  He folded his hands behind his back, watching impassively as the formation opened—a yawning spatial rift tearing through the air. Gue groaned under the strain, sweat beading on his brow as the summoning took form.

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  Tunde tilted his head slightly, watching with a calm that was almost cold. One technique—one empty silence—and Gue would be reduced to spattered blood and shattered bones. But no. Not yet. Tunde had a point to make.

  He inhaled slowly, planting his stance, his aura coiling like a storm waiting to break.

  From the rift, a monstrous construct emerged—stitched together from mismatched human parts, a grotesque mockery of life. It moved in fits and jerks, a revenant. Tunde’s breath caught, his eyes narrowing.

  They all had black skin. Black, like his own.

  His blood ran cold. His pulse thundered in his ears.

  Gue laughed, sharp and cruel.

  “Ah, you see now... This would be a fitting way to end you.”

  The puppet turned its head, an obscene creak of joints, as if in agony. Tunde’s Ethra sight flared—he saw the chain of Ethra binding it to Gue’s will, the abomination’s form actively resisting, its body fighting against the compulsion.

  His people. This wasn’t just a puppet—it was a mockery, a twisted creation born of the Mistwalkers and the Revenant Cult. Traces of undeath Ethra clung to it like a stench.

  Tunde’s vision blurred with rage.

  The construct lunged.

  They clashed in a blur, lightning-quick strikes shaking the arena. Tunde’s fists met its blows, each impact a thunderclap of restrained power. Pain lanced through him, sharp and bitter, but he held it. He refused to let the grief, the anguish, consume him.

  He could end it all, burn everything to the ground, erase this abomination in a storm of flame and void.

  But no.

  He saw it, the faint glimmer of pleading in the creature’s mismatched eyes, the last shreds of inanimate sentience begging for release.

  Tunde answered.

  Essence flame flared, violet and pure, blazing in his palm. He set the creature alight.

  The abomination fought on, reckless, desperate, but each of its blows grew weaker, its body crumbling into ash. The flames consumed it utterly, the last traces of undeath Ethra burning away as if they had never been.

  Gue lunged, seeking to strike Tunde with the ashes, but Tunde’s hand snapped out, catching the blow in a backhand slap—a contemptuous, aura-infused strike that sent Gue reeling.

  Tunde stared him down, the fury in his gaze a barely leashed inferno.

  Gue bared his teeth and raised his arms, calling upon the mist above. Massive constructs of Highlord power descended, the air vibrating with energy.

  “DIE, YOU FILTH!” Gue roared, lashing out as lances of Ethra in every affinity, elemental and esoteric alike, screamed toward Tunde, smashing into the stage in a cataclysm of rock, flame, and dust.

  The crowd gasped, a storm of energy engulfing the arena.

  And still, Tunde watched. Ethra sight burning in his eyes, the dominion of the Void Realm folding around him, devouring everything Gue threw. The authority of the Master—burning through Gue’s lifeforce—seeped into him, feeding the gate in his mind.

  Tunde knew Gue felt it. The drain, the bleeding of his own strength into Tunde’s unrelenting core, even if he couldn’t see it.

  This attack, this desperation, was Gue’s last gambit, the power he had gathered to advance.

  It was almost funny. Almost everyone who had fought in this round had advanced to the Master realm.

  The skies cracked with thunder as Heaven’s Crucible descended, the call of the heavens tugging at Tunde’s soul, a pull, a promise, a command.

  Advance. Now.

  But Tunde held still, the storm raging around him, the urge thrumming in his veins.

  Not yet.

  He was close, so close he could taste it, but he wasn’t finished. He had something to prove.

  Gue rose again in a haze of mist, a grey lance of Ethra crashing into the heavens above.

  When the dust settled—

  A Master stood before Tunde, radiating newfound power, resplendent in his freshly advanced glory.

  Tunde’s gaze never wavered.

  Not yet.

  Not yet.

  Rage burned in Tunde’s heart, a searing inferno that pulsed with the promise of retribution. It beat in time with his breath, a storm barely leashed, waiting to break. He watched Gue descend from his newly gained high as a Master, the Mistwalker laughing, exultant, as a pulse of aura—laden with the infant authority of a freshly advanced master—tore through the air like a shockwave, rippling toward Tunde.

  The pressure billowed around him, heavy, suffocating—yet Tunde stood unmoved, a pillar of calm within the storm.

  Refreshed, drunk on his new power, Gue brandished his butcher’s blade with a triumphant sneer and, in a blink, reappeared in front of Tunde, his weapon slashing down in a blur.

  And then—Tunde let loose.

  The inferno in his heart blossomed, igniting the essence flame that was his sun, his core, his ego. Pain fueled it—pain of the past, pain of loss, pain of the countless injustices borne by his people—and it ran rampant.

  His Ethra surged through him—the endless consummation of the void, a black tide that devoured all. His weapon manifested in his hand, shifting seamlessly into its naginata form, the long haft pulsing with violet-black energy.

  Their blows met—a Master’s strike, a strike that could shake mountains and reduce a cultivator below Master to ash and ruin.

  Tunde stopped it cold.

  Gue’s eyes widened in disbelief as his attack was turned aside, the sheer force of his newfound authority crumbling against Tunde’s effortless deflection. He hissed, fury twisting his features, and illusionary images of himself erupted into existence—now layered with the true authority of the Master realm.

  They struck from every angle, illusions so intricately woven that even a Master’s gaze could be deceived. The world around Tunde twisted—one moment he was back on the windswept, icy peaks of Crystalreach, then in the dark, crumbling buildings where he’d grown up, watching as the Mistwalkers reduced his people to vermin.

  Chains rattled. He saw them, his people, bound and beaten, forced to push a massive wooden contraption, their backs lacerated by whips. Their screams echoed in his mind, and then—their voices turned on him, begging, cursing, pleading with him to surrender to the power of the Mistwalkers, to give up, to bend the knee.

  Tunde’s breath slowed. His gaze sharpened.

  With the icy coldness of the void, he shattered through the illusions. The lethal frost of his essence bit through the very fabric of the Mistwalker’s domain, reaching through illusion and twisting into reality itself. Gue faltered—his mist recoiling, the illusionary personas freezing mid-attack before shattering into fragments of light that dissolved into nothing.

  Authority meant nothing.

  Essence flame burned cold, black ice laced with violet fire, consuming the Mistwalker’s techniques like a predator tearing through prey.

  Gue staggered, his composure breaking as the true wrath of the void fell upon him.

  The audience could only watch—silent, stunned, their disbelief palpable—as a peak Highlord dominated an early-tiered Master, matching him blow for blow until Gue was forced into retreat, his aura faltering, his breath ragged.

  Desperation crept in.

  Gue flung talismans in a frenzy, spilling them from his void ring in waves. They unleashed poisons thick enough to choke the air, elemental techniques in every affinity—blades of fire, spears of ice, lances of wind. Animated constructs burst from the air, each designed to overwhelm and kill.

  Tunde met them all with precision—his movements a blur of ruthless speed, his fighting art of the Boundless Asura manifesting in full glory. He tore through them, each motion a deadly arc of his naginata, his weapon flowing through different forms as if he wielded six arms, each one a weapon of war. The audience gasped—one moment it was a blade, the next a spear, then a staff, then a chain—the air itself seeming to bend to his will.

  This was the challenge Tunde had longed for—to be pushed, to be tested, to be driven to the brink where his fighting art, his breathing style, and his very existence aligned in perfect, ruthless harmony.

  The ice sang with the deadly song of the void, the flames billowed brighter, crackling with essence.

  Gue shot into the air, gasping, trying to escape, trying to put distance between himself and the storm that was Tunde.

  But chains of void-ice lashed out, infused with burning essence flames, catching Gue’s limbs and spreading him open in the air, a prisoner hung for the world to see.

  The Mistwalker struggled, clawing at his authority, trying to break the chains—but he had been a fool. His will had been bled dry, exhausted by his endless barrage. Authority was not limitless—not yet. The ice bit deep into his bones, the void essence flames leeching directly from his body, draining his lifeforce into Tunde’s soulspace like water into an endless abyss.

  Gue’s milky white eyes widened in horror as the truth set in.

  This was no longer a fight.

  This was humiliation.

  A Highlord had reduced a Master to a trembling, blubbering wreck, his body shaking in the air, searching desperately for any trick, any talisman, any hope to end this nightmare.

  The cultivator of the void path floated into the air, silent, his presence dark and inexorable as the skies above roared.

  Day became night in an instant as Heaven’s Crucible shattered the clouds, golden lightning forking across the sky. The very fabric of the world trembled as Ethra converged, the already potent levels swelling to a near-maddening intensity.

  The audience watched in awe—and fear—as the convergence thickened the air, choking them with power.

  Tunde moved forward, closing the distance, as Gue shook like a bird caught in a storm. A dark stain bloomed across the insides of Gue’s clothing.

  Tunde’s hand snapped out, seizing Gue by the neck.

  “You’re just the start,” he said, voice quiet yet cutting, the words hanging in the air like a blade poised over a throat.

  “Filth? End me?”

  Gue shook his head, his eyes wide and wet, tears streaming down his face as sobs choked him.

  Tunde’s gaze was cold, bitter as steel forged in the dark.

  “You were nothing but a lamb sent to the slaughter,” he said, his voice heavy with quiet rage.

  “You thought you were facing some weakling?”

  He let out a low, humorless chuckle that dripped with scorn, his gaze lifting past Gue, toward the towering seats where the Paragons—and no doubt the Regents—watched in grim, calculating silence.

  “No,” Tunde continued, voice rising for all to hear, “they sent you to test me. To see how far I’ve come.”

  His eyes narrowed into slits, power coiling around him like a living thing.

  “Your sacrifice will not be in vain.”

  Two things happened at once.

  The void ice, laced with Tunde’s relentless essence flame, pierced deep into Gue’s very being, coiling around his core—the foundation of his cultivation—and, with a subtle, inexorable twist, shattered it from within.

  The Mistwalker’s scream tore through the windy darkness, raw and primal, an animal wail of absolute annihilation.

  And then—the heavens struck.

  A bolt of terrible, golden lightning slammed down from the skies, ripping through the clouds like the wrath of a god, a roaring pillar of destruction that engulfed both Tunde and Gue.

  The storm devoured.

  Tunde’s essence flame, now a voracious storm of violet-black fire, leeched everything—every scrap of vitality, every wisp of authority, every fragment of Ethra, every lingering thread of ego from Gue.

  Nothing was left.

  The Mistwalker was reduced to a husk, a hollowed shell floating limp in the air, his flesh smoking, his body empty.

  Everything—all of it—was scrounged and forced into Tunde’s body as the Heaven’s Crucible tore at him.

  It stripped away his mortal form like layers of rotted cloth, tearing into his flesh, breaking his bones, shattering his limits—only to forge him anew. It swept through his soulspace like a maelstrom, smashing against the walls of his mind, filling it with power—raw, unrelenting, unforgiving.

  The very inheritance he carried rumbled in resonance, pulsing with ancient, forgotten energies. His core expanded, growing vast, an endless chasm of potential. His essence flame deepened, darkening to an ominous violet-black, flickering with hints of devouring void. His aspects—once symbols of his cultivation—swelled, warped, and evolved into something more.

  And in that moment, the Void Devourer was born.

  Tunde stood at the center of the storm, his body a conduit for the abyss, his form a living testament to the path of consumption. The void sang within him, its echoes harmonizing with the thunder that still raged in the heavens. The Crucible roared, golden lightning lashing down again and again, tearing at the fabric of reality itself.

  Tunde drank it in.

  The heavens tried to temper him, to test him, to break him. But he devoured their wrath, absorbing it into the furnace of his being, his body forging itself with every bolt that struck.

  In the blink of an eye, he surged through the thresholds of cultivation—Highlord, early Master, and beyond—mid-tier Master, an ascension so violent, so raw, that it shook the hearts of every cultivator watching.

  Then—suddenly, as if satisfied—the heavens relented. The storm dissolved, the clouds parted, and the skies cleared, leaving a stunned, breathless silence in its wake.

  Tunde inhaled deeply, the breath filling him with a sense of completion. A slow, savage smile curved his lips.

  When he opened his eyes, the world seemed to pause.

  They were a deep, endless violet, swirling with threads of black void, as if galaxies had been caught within his gaze. His hair, once dark, was now pure white, shining like spun silver. His body had changed—bigger, leaner, cut with muscle defined by his new, devastating power. Only the tattered remnants of his undergarments clung to him—his top burned away in the crucible of his rebirth.

  And in his hand—

  Gue.

  A husk. Lifeless. Smoking.

  As the remains of the Mistwalker were torn away by unseen forces, perhaps the last indignity of fate, Tunde stretched his arms wide, lifting his gaze to the sun, his aura erupting in a storm of violet-black fire.

  In that moment, enlightenment struck him like a lightning bolt.

  He had always been a predator. A wolf, yes—but a wolf who had only defended his territory when others dared to trespass.

  That was no longer him.

  His wolf—the symbol of his ego—was gone, burned away by the crucible of his path.

  What remained was something else.

  Something greater.

  A new form coiled into existence around him—serpentine, massive, shimmering with violet scales that pulsed with an otherworldly hunger. Its eyes gleamed with primal intelligence, and its roar tore through the barrier of the arena, shaking the hearts of all who watched.

  It was nameless, this beast.

  But Tunde knew its nature.

  Devourer.

  Eater of all.

  When the storm finally subsided, the stage lay in ruins. The ground was scorched, fractured, the air thick with residual power.

  Tunde stepped forward, barefoot, the ground trembling under each step. His presence filled the arena, the weight of his power crushing. A soft, whistling tune escaped his lips as he walked, calm, assured—victorious.

  The announcer’s voice—small, subdued, as if the weight of the moment crushed even their lungs—declared:

  “Victory… Tunde.”