"What are you going to name him?" Silvia asked Olivia as they leisurely walked toward the academy gate.
"I haven't thought of a name yet," Olivia replied, glancing down at the small beast resting against her shoulder.
Sophie fluttered down from Silvia's shoulder, hovering close as she lightly stroked the creature's soft fur. "What about Luna? Do you like it?"
Olivia smiled softly. "Luna doesn't sound bad at all. I like it."
"What about you, Reo?" Olivia called out, turning her attention ahead. "Kyle and Luke have already given theirs names. You should give yours one too."
"Alpha," Reo answered without missing a beat.
"What kind of name is Alpha?"
"Says the one who literally named hers after the moon."
After seeing Olivia and Luke off, Kyle and the rest finally retired to their respective quarters.
Kyle spent the next five uninterrupted hours dissecting every layer of his newly forged bond, trying to map out precisely what he had gained from the pact. The changes were staggering. The mark on his skin had evolved, and with it, the baseline proficiency of his mana control had become utterly immaculate. His spell casting speed had skyrocketed, and his physical prowess had undergone a terrifying metamorphosis.
It was no exaggeration to say his raw physical strength and reflexes were now entirely on par with a seasoned sword master. On top of that, the ritual had violently shoved him across the threshold into the 7th circle, vastly expanding the operational range of his spatial perception.
TWO YEARS LATER...
For two grueling years, Kyle had trained non-stop, operating with a ruthless, relentless obsession in his quest to unlock the secret of creating his own soul world.
The initial months following his contract with Vaygar had been nothing short of infuriating. Vaygar had offered zero assistance, contributing nothing of immediate value while acting as a bottomless sink for Kyle's mana. But as time bled on, mutual friction eroded into reluctant understanding, and Vaygar finally acknowledged Kyle as his true master. From that moment onward, the beast had proven to be an indispensable weapon at his side.
Luke, meanwhile, had reached a major milestone: he was engaged to Diana, with the grand engagement ceremony scheduled precisely a week from now.
In parallel, Olivia and Kyle's relationship had quietly shifted, long passing the ambiguous threshold of mere cousins, though they both danced around the edges of naming what they truly felt for one another. Olivia had steadily risen to become a B-rank emitter after touching the 7th circle, with Silvia coaching her relentlessly to master Luna's unique abilities.
As a newly minted 7th-circle mage, Olivia had unlocked a terrifying utility: sealing magic. Though her understanding of the esoteric art was still evolving, she knew its devastating potential—she could literally wrap a target's core in a heavy metaphysical seal, cutting off their access to magic entirely. The seal sustained itself using the victim's own internal mana until the timer expired. Currently, her limit varied by the target's strength: she could lock down a 6th-circle mage for a full five minutes, a fellow 7th-circle mage for two, while powerful 7th-circle anomalies like Kyle, Luke, Silvia, Reo, and Caesar could only be suppressed for a volatile minute or less. Furthermore, she could weave binding restrictions onto individuals, though the technique demanded a staggering amount of mana to maintain.
Reo and Ceasar had forged an unlikely, begrudging friendship. Their pacts mirrored their dynamic, and the two boys trained together regularly. Since Reo's shadow-masking made him impossible to track traditionally, sparring against Caesar's heavy, unyielding power forced Reo to rely purely on blinding speed, while Caesar's reflexes were sharpened to a razor's edge trying to catch a ghost.
Luke had inherited the prestigious hero's mark upon breaking into the 6th circle, a catalyst that violently shoved him into the 7th circle and elevated him to a rare quadro-elemental mage. His summon, Ignis, had evolved into a full-fledged Terror class, packing enough raw output to rival a higher-circle combatant.
Luke and Kyle still maintained their brutal, private training regimen, frequently tearing through standard facilities until they relocated exclusively to the Patriarch's personal training ground—a subterranean chamber reinforced with heavy, mystical alloys engineered to withstand the unbridled devastation of a Monarch. Here, they held nothing back. They battered each other until their mana reserves bottomed out or their bodies physically gave way. Their respective beasts joined the fray as well; Ignis would hover in the upper reaches of the chamber, raining blistering fire arrows down upon Vaygar, who would dart across the metallic floor and retaliate with concussive blasts of his own.
And then, after two agonizing, unrelenting years of failure and breakthrough, the conceptual wall finally shattered. Kyle finally grasped the absolute truth behind the creation of a soul world. The cryptic warnings and riddles whispered by Cerci and Zayne years ago suddenly clicked into sharp, crystal-clear focus.
He had spent the last three days in absolute, meditative isolation, preparing his core for the final step.
Now, the moment had arrived.
Kyle sat cross-legged in the dead center of the reinforced training room, the air humming with a suffocating, lethal pressure. Luke leaned casually against the far wall, acting as a silent, watchful sentinel in case the volatile ritual began to tear apart at the seams.
Kyle took one deep, measured breath, closing his eyes as he quietly recited the incantation he had meticulously woven for this exact second.
"From the embers of chaos and destruction, a world emerges, risen from ruins. In the mist of the void, a bright star burns."
His eyes snapped wide open, flashing with an absolute, abyssal brilliance.
"Soul world manifestation... Eternal Void."
The moment the words left his lips, reality within the chamber violently inverted.
There was no sound—only a sudden, crushing vacuum as a tidal wave of absolute, starless darkness surged outward from Kyle's core. It swallowed the reinforced walls, devoured the ambient light, and extinguished the air itself, plunging the universe into an endless, suffocating night.
And then, right at the epicenter of the pitch-black infinite, a single, blinding, apocalyptic star ignited—casting long, razor-sharp shadows across the birth of an entirely new reality.