The moment the gale rose, panic surged through the livestream.
Because everyone recognized it instantly—
That same blue-green–tinted windstorm Adrian Vale and Raven Shaw had faced before.
"Wait—what the hell?! It's this again?! That blue-green wind!"
"So it is that thing?! Does that mean Eat-Stream Adrian Vale finally found where it's hiding?"
"Told you—tracking and pathing depends on Adrian! Boss Raven's navigation is tragic, hahaha!"
"Now's not the time for jokes! This is obviously a boss fight!"
"Boss fight? What's there to be nervous about? With Adrian's strength, anything that shows up is just delivery."
"…When you put it that way, yeah."
After witnessing Adrian's strength again and again, the chat had developed absolute faith.
In their eyes, nothing in the Divine Domain: Forbidden Zone could threaten him anymore.
The blue-green wind swept in.
It dragged everything with it—shattered rocks, uprooted trees, even chunks of earth—swallowing the landscape into a single raging torrent as it roared toward Adrian and Raven.
The wind screamed like a living thing.
Under its pull, boulders and trunks didn't just fly—
they seemed to merge into the storm, becoming part of its body.
It carried the momentum of a natural disaster.
A moving apocalypse.
Yet Adrian and Raven didn't retreat even half a step.
Their expressions didn't change.
Their posture didn't break.
Seeing that, the livestream calmed down almost instantly.
"This is Dragon Nation's competitor right here—love it!"
"Look at that composure. That's Eat-Stream Adrian Vale for you."
"Heh. This kind of attack? Easy mode."
"But we still haven't seen the owner of that wind…"
"Obviously it's scared to show its face. Who wouldn't be?"
The blue-green wind slammed closer and closer—
and still, the pair stayed silent.
Then, at the last possible moment—
Adrian finally moved.
Crack. Crack. Crack.
A strange sound rippled behind him—
the unmistakable noise of a kagune unfolding.
Adrian's gaze remained flat and cold as the storm rushed him.
Behind him, dark red tendrils expanded—layer by layer—until the full form of his Rinkaku spread like a living canopy.
The wind arrived.
Adrian's kagune struck.
This time, he didn't use the Holy Sword Kagune form from earlier.
He used the most basic shape—
raw, brutal Rinkaku.
The tendrils shone with deep crimson, their tips sharpened into blade-points that glittered with lethal frost.
And compared to before…
this Rinkaku was clearly stronger.
Faster.
Denser.
More vicious.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
The Rinkaku spears shot forward under Adrian's control, drilling into the storm like harpoons.
Crack—crack—crack!
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Trees and rocks caught in the wind were pulverized mid-flight, reduced to splinters and dust.
The storm's "body" began to collapse.
But Adrian didn't stop.
His Rinkaku didn't merely pierce—
it carved.
It whipped through the blue-green gale again and again, the shockwaves from its movement shredding the storm's structure.
The wind weakened.
The roar faltered.
The blue-green tint faded.
And at last—
the storm dispersed completely.
The livestream erupted in cheers.
"Hahahaha—holy crap! That was clean!"
"That wind would instantly kill anyone else! Adrian is insane!"
"He barely even moved! What are those tendrils?!"
"Honestly, even if the Blue Star Deathmatch picks the final fifty… in front of Adrian they'd still look like free exp."
"Real talk—if Adrian entered the Deathmatch, even if everyone teamed up, they'd get wiped."
"Dragon Nation having him is basically cheating."
"Also… notice how foreign trolls stopped coming into our stream lately?"
"Yeah, because their nations are busy trying not to collapse."
"They're all watching the Deathmatch now. If their competitors make the final fifty, they still have hope. If not… they're finished."
Adrian drew his kagune back, the red tendrils folding into nothing as if they'd never existed.
He and Raven didn't react to the chat.
They didn't need to.
And the viewers weren't wrong:
With that storm's destructive power, anyone else would've been crippled or killed.
Even the S-rank and SS-rank creatures Adrian had fought earlier wouldn't have "solved" that wind so cleanly.
Adrian could only do it because he was simply… stronger.
But before anyone could breathe—
that same voice returned.
The same tone.
The same pressure.
"Human. I warned you."
Adrian and Raven showed no surprise at all—like they'd expected it.
The voice continued, cold and final.
"I gave you a chance. Since you refuse to take it… then remain here forever."
It was wrong.
Not wrong in grammar—
wrong in existence.
The sound didn't come from any direction.
It didn't echo through the trees.
It didn't travel through air.
It bloomed directly inside the mind.
Even through the livestream, viewers felt it crawl across their thoughts.
The chat trembled.
"What—what is that?!"
"Why does it feel like it spoke inside my head?!"
"This feeling… it's like Will of Blue Star!"
"You felt it too?! I thought I was tripping!"
"Back in the illusion zone, it didn't feel THIS oppressive…"
"Does that mean in this forest it can finally use its full power?"
"Dude… this pressure is worse than that SS-rank Mountainrock Titan."
"Don't tell me… SSS-rank?"
The deeper they thought, the more fear spread.
Because everyone knew the rule:
Every rank gap was a chasm.
And the higher the rank, the wider the chasm became.
They'd already seen it with S vs SS.
So if this really was SS vs SSS…
that wasn't "harder."
That was a different world.
"Can Adrian actually handle it…?"
Unlike the chat, Adrian and Raven weren't rattled.
If anything, their expressions sharpened—interest replacing caution.
"SS-rank… or SSS-rank?" Raven murmured, eyes narrowing slightly.
Adrian only smiled and shook his head.
He didn't answer.
Because to him, it didn't matter.
He hadn't fought a true SSS-rank creature yet—
but from the fights he'd already had, he could estimate the scale.
SSS sounded terrifying.
But "terrifying" didn't equal "unbeatable."
And this time, something else was strange.
There was no official announcement.
No system-style description.
No identification.
No "creature data."
Will of Blue Star stayed silent.
Yet the voice made one thing clear—
it had been watching them ever since they stepped into this dreamlike forest.
So why wait until now to strike?
Adrian and Raven's gazes moved at the same time.
Not to the storm.
Not to the invisible speaker.
But to the enormous ancient tree ahead—
the one radiating seven-colored divine light.
The livestream finally caught up too.
"That tree… doesn't feel normal."
"What if that's the real treasure?"
"If it's the treasure, then the owner should be right here."
"Unless… the tree is something important to it, but it can't approach freely."
"Either way—this tree is absolutely valuable."
Under the weight of countless eyes, Adrian and Raven finally walked forward—
closing in on the divine tree.
Meanwhile, back on Blue Star…
the Blue Star Deathmatch had already entered Round Two.
In Round One, as expected, most of the big-nation stars advanced cleanly.
Only a handful collided with other major contenders early, leading to brutal matches—some scraping through, some falling hard.
For Dragon Nation, the result was as clean as it could be:
all ten competitors won.
And among those victories, the most memorable—by far—was Wang Ye.
It wasn't just that he "one-shot" his opponent.
It was the method.
That calm, rooted, effortless control—
the kind of technique Dragon Nation's people revered most.
Taiji.
But before the hype could even cool—
Round Two arrived, and it promised something even more explosive.
And the match drawing the most attention…
was finally about to begin.
Infinite's fight.
◇ BONUS & SUPPORT ◇
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