The trial had already lasted for two months.
Two months of blood.
Two months of exhaustion.
Two months of fighting without rest.
And yet...
Aviana was still standing.
The young woman stood upon the surface of an enormous battlefield, her clothes torn in several places and dried blood staining her arms.
Her expression remained cold.
Calm.
Almost emotionless.
But beneath that expression...
She was exhausted.
Her breathing was slightly heavier than usual.
Her muscles ached.
Her essence reserves had been drained countless times.
And still...
She raised her hand.
A faint golden light gathered around her fingers.
Across from her stood a strange humanoid figure.
Its body looked almost transparent.
Light flowed through its flesh as though it were made from condensed air.
Its eyes were completely white.
It was an Elite Human.
A creature born from the strange laws of this trial.
The moment Aviana moved—
The Elite Human moved as well.
WHOOSH!
The air exploded.
Both figures disappeared.
Then—
BOOM!
A collision erupted several hundred meters away.
Aviana's fist collided with the creature's palm.
The impact sent a shockwave across the battlefield.
Dust rose.
Broken rocks were launched into the air.
Aviana slid backward several meters.
Her feet carved two deep lines across the ground.
The Elite Human remained completely still.
Aviana narrowed her eyes.
"Again."
The creature attacked.
She met it head-on.
Their movements became increasingly difficult to follow.
One second they were on the ground.
The next they were in the air.
Then they disappeared into the clouds before crashing back down.
Every exchange lasted only a few seconds.
Yet every second contained enough power to kill an ordinary Initiate.
Aviana's body moved almost instinctively now.
After two months of constant combat...
She had learned something.
She was no longer simply surviving this trial.
She was learning.
Growing.
Adapting.
And most importantly—
She had inherited something far greater than simple combat experience.
The fighting technique of the Ocean King.
The technique was strange.
Unlike ordinary martial arts, it did not rely solely on strength.
It relied on movement.
Flow.
Adaptation.
Every attack could become a defense.
Every defense could become an attack.
The Ocean King's fighting style resembled the ocean itself.
Impossible to grasp.
Impossible to predict.
A wave could appear gentle...
Then suddenly become powerful enough to destroy mountains.
Aviana had spent two months learning it.
Two months of being beaten.
Two months of nearly dying.
Two months of repeatedly standing back up.
And slowly...
She had begun to understand it.
Her movements had become smoother.
Her attacks no longer contained unnecessary motion.
She no longer fought against the enemy's strength.
She redirected it.
Just like water.
The Ocean king charged again.
Aviana stepped sideways.
Its fist passed beside her face.
She grabbed its arm.
Then twisted.
The creature's body rotated violently.
BOOM!
It crashed into the ground.
Before it could recover, Aviana appeared above it.
Her palm descended.
The surrounding air compressed.
A powerful wave of energy exploded downward.
BOOM!
The earth cracked.
The Ocean king disappeared beneath the dust.
Aviana landed.
She stared at the crater.
Then slowly exhaled.
"Still alive."
The dust cleared.
The creature rose again.
Aviana sighed.
"Of course."
She had expected nothing less.
During these two months, she had also learned something else.
The trial wasn't simply a test of strength.
It was a test of history.
Every battle had revealed fragments of an ancient story.
A story involving the gods.
The Ocean God.
The Earth God.
The Sky God.
And the forgotten conflict that had shaped entire civilizations.
Aviana had learned about it from ancient remnants scattered throughout the trial.
At first, she hadn't cared.
But after seeing the consequences of that ancient war...
She began to understand.
The story had started with the Earth God.
The God of land.
The God who governed everything that existed upon the earth.
Mountains.
Plains.
Forests.
Deserts.
The very ground beneath every living creature.
The Earth God had once created an enormous world.
A world of land.
A world where life could flourish.
Then came the Ocean God.
And the Ocean God began creating.
Rivers.
Lakes.
Springs.
Streams.
Oceans.
Great bodies of water appeared throughout the world.
At first, the changes seemed beautiful.
Water gave life.
It nourished forests.
It allowed civilizations to grow.
It created countless ecosystems.
But the Earth God did not see it that way.
The Ocean God was constantly reshaping the world.
Water spread across the land.
Rivers carved through mountains.
Lakes appeared where there had once been forests.
Entire regions were transformed.
The Earth God became furious.
The disagreement eventually became a war.
And when the Earth God and Ocean God finally clashed...
The consequences were catastrophic.
Mountains were destroyed.
Rivers changed their courses.
The ground cracked.
Oceans swallowed entire regions.
And an enormous wasteland was created.
A place where neither land nor water could properly exist.
The other gods became angered by the conflict.
But they refused to interfere directly.
The Eight Gods understood something that mortals often forgot.
When gods fought...
the world paid the price.
So the other gods watched.
They waited.
And eventually...
The Earth God and Ocean God stopped fighting.
For a time.
But the conflict was not truly over.
Years passed.
Then one day...
The Ocean God returned to the wasteland.
He stood before the ruined land.
And instead of destroying it...
He created something.
An ocean.
Not an ordinary ocean.
A gigantic world beneath the surface.
An underwater realm.
A place where people could live peacefully.
Entire cities were built beneath the water.
Civilizations flourished.
People learned to breathe beneath the waves.
They learned to manipulate water.
They built homes beneath rivers.
They created roads beneath oceans.
And slowly...
The wasteland became a paradise.
But the most extraordinary thing about that ocean wasn't its size.
It was time.
Time flowed differently within it.
A normal human or Initiate traveling through the river would require nearly a year to cross its enormous distance.
An Awakened or an Elite Human could make the same journey in roughly two months.
And the higher one's rank became...
The faster the journey became.
Time itself seemed to bend around advancement.
The stronger someone became...
The less time the ocean demanded from them.
Aviana had found that fact almost unbelievable.
But it was only one part of the ancient story.
The Earth God saw what the Ocean God had done.
He was angry.
Not because the ocean was beautiful.
But because the Ocean God had once again altered the land.
And the Earth God knew what another war would cause.
The previous conflict had already created a wasteland.
Another battle might destroy the entire world.
So the Earth God sought another solution.
He went to the Sky God.
The Sky God...
The ruler of the heavens.
The one who governed the vast expanse above the world.
The Sky God had four gods associated with her divine circle.
The Star God.
The Ocean God.
The Flame God.
And the Shadow God.
Or rather...
The Shadow God who had eventually taken control over the domains that had once belonged to the Night God and another forgotten divine existence.
The details were complicated.
Ancient.
Almost impossible to understand.
But one thing was clear.
The gods rarely appeared directly within the world.
Their true bodies remained elsewhere.
What appeared in the mortal world were their anchors.
Fragments.
Representations.
Connections between gods and creation.
The Ocean God's anchor...
Was the moon.
But there was a problem.
The Sky God never allowed a moon to exist in her world.
Her heavens were dominated by darkness.
The Shadow God's darkness.
There was no moon illuminating the night.
So the Earth God and Sky God created a plan.
The Sky God gave the Earth God a shard.
A divine shard.
Within it rested a fragment connected to the Ocean God's anchor.
If the shard were planted into the earth...
The moon would rise.
And the Earth God would accept the Ocean God.
It was a symbol.
A gesture.
A declaration that the ancient anger had finally been forgiven.
Aviana had learned this history piece by piece.
And yet...
The story became darker.
The Ocean God's anchor disappeared from the world.
And after that...
The Ocean God created a terrifying sorcery.
A forbidden technique.
A Sealing Sorcery.
It spread across the world like a curse.
The power of the Sky God's people was sealed.
Their divine inheritance became dormant.
Their abilities weakened.
Their civilization began collapsing.
The Sky God fought back.
With the help of the Blood King...
and Blood Sorcery...
she managed to neutralize part of the curse.
But it was too late.
The damage had already been done.
Her people had fallen into dormancy.
Their power remained inside them...
but they could no longer awaken it.
And then...
The Eight Gods disappeared.
All of them.
One after another.
Their civilizations were left behind.
Their servants were abandoned.
Their anchors vanished.
Their legacies became myths.
Yet the Sky God had one final servant.
Before disappearing completely...
She sent a human.
Not an ordinary human .
Her last servant.
A being who had survived within her heavenly realm.
She sent that servant into the world.
Its purpose was simple.
Help her people.
Protect them.
Especially after the war between the Ocean God's people and the Sky God's people began.
Aviana had learned all of this.
And that was why she had entered the trial.
Her first plan had been simple.
Find the Earth God Nation.
Ask for the shard.
Use it to restore what had been lost.
But the Earth God Nation refused.
They wouldn't hand it over.
They wouldn't even negotiate.
So Aviana changed her plan.
She sent her teenage son.
Her husband.
And several members of her people...
Toward the Blood Nation.
The Blood Nation agreed.
Immediately.
And then...
They went to war against the Earth God.
The conflict became enormous.
Blood against earth.
Divine inheritance against divine inheritance.
And in the middle of it all...
Aviana kept returning.
Again.
And again.
And again.
She went to the Ocean King.
She tried to speak.
She tried to reason with him.
She tried to explain what was happening.
But the Ocean King refused.
Every time Aviana returned...
He chose war.
And every time...
Aviana fought.
She came back bloodied.
Broken.
Sometimes she was barely alive.
Her body would be covered in wounds.
Her essence would be almost completely depleted.
Her regeneration would struggle to keep up.
But she always returned.
Because every day she survived...
she became stronger.
Her abilities improved.
Her Legacy Practice deepened.
Her understanding of the Ocean King's fighting style grew.
And eventually...
Something new awakened within her.
Her voice.
Aviana discovered that she could use her voice to create enchantments.
Not simple commands.
Not ordinary sound.
Her voice could influence the essence surrounding living beings.
She could strengthen her people.
Increase their physical abilities.
Sharpen their senses.
Increase their courage.
Even reinforce their bodies.
Her people couldn't become Initiates.
No matter how hard she tried.
She had once attempted to use her enchantment to force the transformation.
To push them across the boundary.
To awaken them.
The moment she attempted it...
A terrifying soul attack struck her.
Aviana nearly collapsed.
Her soul almost changed.
Almost became something else.
She understood immediately.
There were boundaries even her enchantment could not cross.
So she stopped.
Instead...
She used her voice to strengthen her people without forcing them to become Initiates.
And now...
That same enchantment had become one of her greatest weapons.
The Ocean king charged again.
Aviana inhaled.
Then spoke.
Her voice was quiet.
Almost gentle.
Yet the instant the sound entered the battlefield...
Everything changed.
The air trembled.
The people fighting nearby suddenly felt strength flood through their bodies.
Their movements became sharper.
Their fear disappeared.
Their attacks became stronger.
The enchantment spread across her people like an invisible wave.
Then Aviana turned back toward the Ocean King.
Her expression became cold again.
She raised her hand.
The Ocean King's fighting technique flowed through her body.
Water-like movement.
Perfect balance.
No wasted motion.
The Ocean king struck.
Iviana moved.
She didn't block.
She didn't retreat.
She redirected.
The attack slid past her.
Her palm struck its chest.
BOOM!
The Ocean king staggered.
Aviana immediately followed with another attack.
Then another.
Then another.
The creature's movements became increasingly chaotic.
But the Ocean King possessed an incredibly strong will.
His techniques were not easily overcome.
Even Aviana's enchantment couldn't completely control him.
At best...
She could influence the battlefield for a few seconds.
But those seconds were precious.
A single second could determine life or death.
Aviana understood that better than anyone.
She had survived for two months because of those moments.
Because whenever her enchantment affected the Ocean King...
Even for the briefest instant...
She gained an opening.
And an opening was enough.
But Aviana wasn't fighting only the Ocean King.
That was the secret behind her survival.
Whenever her people were threatened...
She abandoned the duel.
She would rush toward them.
Protect them.
Heal them.
Strengthen them.
Then return.
Again.
And again.
And again.
The Ocean King never gave her enough time to finish him.
But he also never managed to kill her.
Because Aviana refused to fight according to his rules.
Her people came first.
Her survival came second.
The battle came last.
The Ocean King raised his hand.
A massive wave of energy erupted.
Aviana's eyes narrowed.
She immediately moved.
Her body became a blur.
She heard the screams of her people behind her.
Without hesitation...
She turned away from the Ocean King.
She rushed toward them.
Because no matter how powerful her opponent became...
Aviana had already made her choice.
She would not allow her people to die just so she could win a duel.
Even if it meant returning to the battlefield bloodied.
Even if it meant standing at death's door again.
Even if it meant fighting the Ocean King for another two months.
She would continue.
Because somewhere beyond the ancient history...
Beyond the forgotten gods...
Beyond the ruined civilizations...
Her people were still waiting.
And Aviana intended to bring their future back to them.
No matter how many times she had to die trying.