Voices drifted into his consciousness, distorted and echoing like sounds heard from the bottom of a deep ocean, piercing the haze of his coma. "It appears this brat has a fetish for courting catastrophe from the very moment he stepped foot on these grounds," a rough, gravelly voice sneered, dripping with undisguised malice and vibrating with the weight of a heavy cultivation base. "I am warning you now: if he does not yield the miraculous results you prophesied, I will personally sever his head from his shoulders and be done with it."
He lay motionless in the narrow bed of his dormitory, his new, god-forged body swathed in heavy linens. The room, usually a place of quiet rest, felt claustrophobic, packed tight with the suffocating pressure of four distinct and powerful auras. Standing over his prone form were four of the Academy's Masters, their expressions a mix of curiosity, fear, and hostility. Among them, huddled in the corner like a frightened rabbit, was Ava, her eyes wide with terror as she watched the titans of the academy argue over the fate of the boy she had dragged from the crater. The air was thick with tension; the smell of burnt ozone from Aldo's tribulation still lingered faintly on his skin, a silent testament to the monster sleeping beneath the sheets.
While "He" lay comatose and vulnerable in the dim confines of the dormitory, four imposing figures stood around his bed like silent judges waiting to deliver a verdict on his soul. Mr. Jinhu, the academy's most renowned physician, stepped forward to begin his meticulous medical examination, his expression a mask of professional detachment. Clad in pristine white robes that contrasted sharply with the gloomy atmosphere, Mr. Jinhu was a handsome man whose youthful visage was tempered by a carefully groomed beard, lending him an air of scholarly wisdom and trustworthiness. "He appears to be in an extremely fragile state," Jinhu muttered initially, his brow furrowing as he placed his fingers on the boy's wrist. "I fear that the backlash from the anomaly has stripped him of his cultivation, rendering him nothing more than a common mortal." The leader of the group, an impatient elder with eyes like flint, barked a sharp command. "Mr. Jinhu, inspect his body thoroughly and do not miss a single detail; if you sense even the slightest fluctuation of power, report it immediately." The physician nodded and retrieved a set of intricate, arcane instruments from his medical satchel to probe the depths of the boy's internal structure. Although the diagnostic process was agonizingly slow, consuming two full hours of tense silence, the physician utilized every tool at his disposal to seek even the faintest pulse of spiritual vitality within the patient's meridians. Finally, he straightened his back and sighed heavily, wiping a bead of sweat from his forehead. "What is the diagnosis?" the elder demanded, his patience wearing thin. "I am afraid the situation is dire, for he is likely to remain a cripple for the rest of his life," Jinhu announced with a grim shake of his head. "His body is completely devoid of energy, and his life force is hanging by the thinnest of threads. I have exhausted my knowledge, but I fear there is absolutely nothing more I can do for him." The elder's expression hardened into one of cold, pragmatic disdain. "Hmm, then he is of no use to us," he decided instantly, viewing the boy now only as a liability. "Ava, you will remain here by his side until he regains consciousness. Once he wakes, give him ten gold coins as compensation and then immediately expel him from the academy grounds." "As you command," Ava replied quietly, bowing her head in submission. The masters exchanged a few final words of disappointment before turning on their heels and sweeping out of the room, leaving the terrified girl alone with the unconscious, broken boy.
While the academy debated the fate of a single student, a cataclysm of a different magnitude had erupted on the far side of the continent, plunging the world into the fires of war. The battlefield was a slaughterhouse where the stench of blood overwhelmed the smell of ozone. The beast horde, a relentless tide of claws and fangs, had ruthlessly shattered the final defensive perimeter, advancing until they were merely four kilometers from the gates of Astro Hildo. The city, once a beacon of safety, was now trembling in the shadow of annihilation. Inside the city walls, the atmosphere was chaotic as the leaders of the four great academies gathered for a desperate emergency summit, their faces pale with the realization that the last line of defense had fallen. The only thing standing between the annihilation of the southern Kurtojildo continent and absolute survival was the legendary figure known as the Great Summoner, a being who held the terrifying rank of Order One.
However, the opposition was equally godlike. The enemy forces were not a mindless rabble but a disciplined army commanded by the Dragon Prince himself, flanked by his four Dragon Generals. Each of these generals possessed power equivalent to an Order One entity, creating a disparity in strength that made hope seem like a cruel joke. The true objective of this carnage was not merely land, but the acquisition of the strategic choke point that connected the two worlds. The dimensional rift, a gaping maw spanning a staggering 8,220 kilometers, was anchored by an ancient and mysterious object known as the Million Artifact Sword. No living soul had ever managed to claim or control this weapon. It stood as a silent sentinel in the chaos, its blade encased in a glacier of eternal, impenetrable ice, while its hilt and base were licked by the tongues of a dense, abyssal fire that rose from the earth's core, creating a paradox of elements that defied the laws of nature.
Across the sprawling campuses of the four great academies, the emergency sirens pierced the air, their wailing resonance signaling the onset of a calamity that allowed for no neutrality. A magical voice, amplified to deafening volumes by array formations, boomed with the weight of absolute authority, shaking the very glass in the window frames. "This is a supreme command! Every single cultivator, from the lowest student to the highest elder, must immediately deploy to the breached defense line! Alert the neighboring cities! We must stand as a singular wall of flesh and steel to shield our motherland from the vile encroaching darkness! Mobilize immediately!" The response was instantaneous and thunderous; "As you command!" roared thousands of voices in unison. The ground trembled under the stampede of countless boots as students and teachers alike grabbed their weapons, their faces set in grim determination as they flooded out of the gates like a river of war. Ava, torn between her duty and her compassion, cast one last, lingering look at the unconscious boy in the bed. With a heavy heart, she placed the ten gold coins on the bedside table as instructed, whispered a silent apology, and turned to sprint into the fray, her figure quickly swallowed by the sea of departing warriors. Within minutes, the once bustling academy was stripped of life, leaving behind a haunting, echoing silence where only the faint sound of Aldo's breathing remained in the desolation.
The silence of the abandoned academy stood in stark, haunting contrast to the apocalyptic cacophony erupting at the frontline, where the very sky seemed to bleed under the strain of colliding powers. The four legendary guardians of humanity—the Great Summoner, the Miracle Magician, the enigmatic Fortune Teller, and the lethal Sword Master Hyunbo—descended upon the battlefield like avatars of divine judgment, their Order One auras crushing the air with a weight that suffocated lesser beings and caused the ground to fissure beneath their feet. They immediately engaged the four towering Dragon Generals in a cataclysmic clash that shook the tectonic plates of the Kurtojildo continent, creating shockwaves that pulverized the surrounding terrain into dust. "Grade 5 Level Spell: Water Annihilation!" roared the Miracle Magician, his voice booming over the screams of the dying with the authority of a god. Instantly, the moisture in the atmosphere condensed into a colossal, scythe-like tidal wave of highly pressurized water that swept across the enemy vanguard, atomizing rock, steel, and flesh alike, turning the battlefield into a gruesome swamp of churning mud and crimson fluid. The Dragon Generals retaliated with breath attacks that burned with the heat of a supernova, melting the defensive fortifications in seconds and turning the frozen expanse near the Million Artifact Sword into a hellscape of blinding steam and fire. Sword Master Hyunbo moved like a blur of silver light, his blade cutting through the fabric of reality itself to parry the massive, obsidian claws of a draconic warlord, while the Great Summoner chanted ancient, guttural incantations, ripping open violet portals from which eldritch titans emerged to grapple with the snarling beasts. Curses of decay and blindness thrown by the Fortune Teller twisted the fate of the battlefield, causing enemy attacks to miss miraculously or backfire with lethal results. Spells of every conceivable element—fire, ice, lightning, and void—saturated the air, creating a dazzling but deadly light show that illuminated the grim, terrified faces of the thousands of students and soldiers fighting and dying in the mud below. It was no longer a battle; it was a visceral meat grinder where the earth drank its fill of blood, and the heavens wept ash upon the carnage.
The sight of their leaders clashing on equal footing with the terrifying Dragon Generals acted as a divine injection of adrenaline into the weary hearts of the human defenders. Witnessing Sword Master Hyunbo deflect a claw capable of rending mountains and seeing the Miracle Magician turn the sky into a weapon proved one undeniable fact: the enemy was not invincible. A roar, louder and more visceral than the thunder of spells, erupted from the throats of the thousands of students and instructors—a collective war cry that drowned out the shrieks of the dying. The crippling fear that had frozen their limbs evaporated, replaced by a feverish, desperate zealotry.
"Push them back! For the Academy! For humanity!" the captains screamed, their voices cracking with strain.
The battlefield transformed. The disjointed, terrified groups of students suddenly found their rhythm, their training taking over as they coordinated their attacks with lethal precision. Mages from the rear lines synchronized their chanting, combining hundreds of lower-grade fireballs into massive walls of incineration that scoured the earth, while the warriors at the front locked their shields together, forming an impenetrable wall of steel against the beast tide. The sheer ferocity of the counter-attack caught the beast horde off guard. Monsters that had been rampaging with impunity were suddenly skewered by formation spears or blasted apart by concentrated mana. For a brief, glorious window of time, the momentum shifted entirely; the human army surged forward like a crushing wave, stepping over the corpses of their enemies and forcing the monstrous legion to retreat inch by bloody inch away from the breach.