While Solstice had been taken away for closed door training, many events were taking place in Aevis.

Currently Luna was throwing a temper tantrum to her father and Ariel who had just come to visit.

“You planned this didn’t you dad? You want to keep me to yourself the rest of my life don’t you?” Said Luna very dramatically. Ever since she was able to spend almost as much time as she wanted with Solstice, she had devolved to being a somewhat spoiled brat.

“Of course not honey, but you do know that you need to focus on training instead of being a lovestruck fool.” Irian’s patience was slowly dwindling with his daughter, what was once a mere spark of interest had turned into a full-fledged obsession.

“Nobody had any power to stop Solstice from going, my future daughter in law.” Ariel had also grown attached to Luna but could see how this obsession was clouding her level headedness. Luna used to be a somewhat tactful person but now she had become incredibly crass and disrespectful to almost everyone besides Ariel, Solstice and her father.

“Is he also participating in the exam? If so, then I’m joining too.”

“If you don’t train at all then you're going to kiss those chances goodbye.” Irian said with a mocking tone. His daughter over the years had never given him any reasons to scold her but this was finally his time to step in and truly father his daughter.

“Then what the hell are we doing here? Let’s go!” Luna raced to her private garden to prepare for her fateful encounter with her love.

“Are you really going to let her? You know that the trap may not even fully work right?” Ariel had helped in the planning of the trap at the exam, but nobody was 100% sure it would work. They had seen too little of the capabilities of the invaders and that left many uncertainties for everyone involved in the plan.

“I’ll hold true to my word, as long as she’s strong enough to hold her own until I arrive then I have no qualms.” Irian loved his daughter more than life itself, but he didn’t have the heart to repeat his mistake in the past of keeping her in a cage her entire life.

“It’s your daughter so do what you want, just don’t regret it.” Ariel said as she began to walk away to go back home.

“Wait, before you go, can you answer one thing for me?” Irian said seriously, he had suspicions he wished to confirm.

“Go ahead.”

“Do we really need to use him as bait?” Irian asked with a gaze full of sorrow.

“It must be done. If I hear that you said anything about it, there will be a price to pay.” After saying this Ariel departed.

“Fucking heartless primordials.” Irian muttered before heading to his daughter's garden. The only thing Irian had in his life was his daughter and he intended to cherish her for as long as he could. Servants looked at the king like some buffoon seeing him practically skip on his way to see Luna.

——Undisclosed location

“It’s been many years since I’ve had visitors, enlighten me as to how you found me, invader.” A figure covered in pitch black robes said, you couldn’t see his head at all because of the dark aura that permeated from his body. He sat upon a hill of skeletons, made up of thousands of bodies varying from humans, demons, beast kin, and the ever so rare angel.

“I wish to form a temporary alliance with you, Death Sovereign, as to how I found you. Let’s chalk it up to personal experiences?” This man was none other than Alpha 2, after Cinder outlived his usefulness, he ran away with his few comrades he managed to also set free from Purgatory and launch the next step of his plan.

“What’s in it for me? Sounds like you just need someone who wants to watch the world burn.” The more the man talked, the more the ground began to shake. Slowly magic circles in the air began to form and skeletons draped in heavy black armor began to appear along with some bones on the mountain rising up.

“Hear me out, and if you don’t like the plan then feel free to kill us, we won’t even fight back.” Alpha 2 had complete confidence in his planning skills, so he was willing to take a gamble.

The undead slowly stopped and awaited orders from their sovereign.

“Hahahahaha! I like you, fine I’ll hear you out. But it better be one hell of a plan.” The Death Sovereign bellowed with laughter, it had been hundreds of years since he had an actual talk with someone, and this man proved to be incredibly interesting to him.

“Alright here’s what I’ve got in mind.” Alpha 2 began to lay out his plan and carefully went over every possible backup plan and possible variable. After around 30 minutes he finally stopped and waited for an answer.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Minutes passed before finally the undead began to decompose and disappear.

“You had me at killing the guardian.” The Death Sovereign said this, and his voice was laced with almost tangible killing intent. The men behind Alpha 2 began to shake, and Alpha 2 wasn’t doing much better, but he had to seal this deal.

“It’s a pleasure doing business with you, I’ll see myself off to prepare for the main variable.” With that a plan was made that would once again shake Aevis.

——Beast kin Capital

“Father, you have to let me go. I have to see him!” Yelled a girl who resembled a fox, she had long orange hair with a fairly long fox tail that was also orange.

“I can’t allow you, after the exam is the only time, I’ll permit you to see him.” This voice belonged to her father, Ryota Honda, the king of the Beast kin Alliance.

“The prophecy is set in stone, and I cannot disobey orders from Lady Ariel. You’re to stay here and not breathe a word of this Harumi.” As Ryota said this fire began to well up behind him as if it was a living being only meant to follow his command.

“That’s your issue! You always believe prophecies can’t be changed! How come we can’t prevent the dark future? Why is it through his suffering do we prevail? It isn’t fair to him for us to not even try!” With that Harumi stormed off to god knows where.

“King Ryota, Lady Ariel is here to discuss something with you.” Said the messenger.

“Bring her to my study, and make sure nobody is in the same building when we talk.” Ryota stood up and began to walk towards his study. He began to stretch showing off his incredibly large body with bulging muscles all over, his orange hair fell down to his waist it was so long.

“Man being king sucks, sitting in this damn chair all day is so boring.” Ryota used to be a general in the army before he was king, the Beast kin alliance had a different system in place for the hierarchy. It was purely based on merits and strength which Ryota had the most of by a large margin. He was known as the 2nd strongest king in the history of the alliance, only behind the founder of the alliance who mysteriously disappeared a few hundred years ago.

——Purgatory

“Now that I have you all here, let’s get to the point. Which of you is the traitor? I won’t ask again.” Currently Shael had gathered her wardens in order to interrogate them on who had been letting invaders out over time. The wardens consisted of respected people of each race in order to ensure the security of the dimension.

Shael was met with utter silence for multiple minutes.

“Alright well, I’m sure killing you all will make my life easier, since nobody wants to fess up.” Shael began to increase gravity in the room to the point some of the wardens were having to imbue themselves with mana to cope with the pressure.

“Man, all you guys are so stubborn. Who should I kill first? Maybe I’ll close my eyes and point?” After Shael said this many people in the room began to sweat hoping anyone would speak up. Finally, Shael closed her eyes and began to twirl around with her beautiful hair spinning with her.

“I. Choose. You.” Her eyes fell upon an angel. Seeing she picked him he panicked and tried to fly away.

“Tsk, you angels are always the opposite of whatever virtue you follow.” Shael increased the gravity hundred-fold and made the angel plummet down like a comet onto the obsidian floor.

“Now tell me, how was an oh so mighty angel brought so low as to release people who could destroy our world?” Angels were known to be very prideful and narcissistic in this world, but they stood their ground most times of whatever they believed in, even the dumbest things. They were truly the most stubborn race on the planet which is what made them also one of the most hated.

“Kill me bitch! I won’t say a thing.” The angel had blood flowing from his eyes and mouth from the impact of landing on the ground. His death was near so he couldn’t care less anymore, so he decided to do something drastic. Slowly his eyes and mouth began to leak out light which prompted everyone in the room to panic and attempt to run away.

“Man, I hate you guys.” Shael knew he was going to self-destruct and felt that her lack of planning was a slight issue.

“I could’ve planned this better, no? Ha, who am I kidding.” Shael immediately dismissed this notion; she was great at what she did and didn’t need anyone to tell her otherwise.

She began to condense gravity around the angel until a small ball of darkness appeared, when this ball appeared it began to emit an incredibly strong suction force to the point it swallowed the angel whole before he could blow up.

“I wonder what kind of bullshit this leader is spewing to make all his minions so stubborn.” With that the mole had been dealt with and the security on purgatory was restored for the time being. What was incredible was the amount of diversity in the group, the leader had managed to rope in people from races all over and have almost complete control over them all. Shael couldn’t help but be impressed by him, it was sad he was only here to cause panic and terror.

“I guess I’ll go back to my sissy, I bet she misses!” With that Shael began to walk towards her gate to head back home to Ariel.

—- 2 Years Later

“You actually drew blood; I think your ready kid.” Leviathan got up from where he was slashed by Solstice’s war glaive.

Solstice these two years had changed immensely with the influence of the core. Each time his body was hurt or profusely beaten by Leviathan; it came back even stronger. During this time, he got to practice with his custom weapon made by Darius, and he became incredibly proficient with it, he could bring out the best qualities of his lineages with this weapon. He could be in close quarters combat with the dual sided glaive and if people tried to distance themselves from his pressure, he could easily fire off arrows made of pure mana to disrupt them. Leviathan in his whole life had seen a weapon like this and this made it all the more difficult to fight him.

“I wouldn’t use that weapon until the grand entrance, okay? That’s a trump card that’ll put just about anyone on their ass.” Leviathan spoke with hints of caution in his statement. He knew a lot about what was going to happen and how many big players were going to show up.

“Understood.” Having only Leviathan with him had slowly made Solstice a man of few words, they never talked about anything outside of magic theory and combat.

“Good luck making it to your exam, it’s about to start.” Leviathan laughed out loud coming to the realization they both lost track of time fighting nonstop.

“Shit.”