The voice receded, leaving behind an echo of ancient power that pressed against every mind in the plaza. The colossal figure, coalescing from the screaming rift, fixed its hollow gaze downward. Cobblestones grayed beneath its boots, and leaden exhaustion clamped onto the units below, their skill signatures sputtering like pinched wicks.
Leena Solara, her chest heaving, didn't spare a glance for the emerging titan. Her focus was entirely on Juhan. Her personal sidearm, a sleek, rune-etched blast-pistol, snapped up, its muzzle aimed directly at his forehead. The cold click of its safety disengaging cut through the din of distant screams and crackling energy.
“It named you,” Leena’s voice was a low growl, strained with a fury that bordered on terror. Her amber irises fixed on his collar. “The rift, the entity… it spoke to *you*. Stop lying. Who are you?”
Around them, scattered cadets from her own S-rank unit, some still fighting off lingering specters, paused. The spearman, bruised but upright, glared with sour triumph. This was it. The rogue instructor, caught red-handed. Exposed.
Juhan didn't flinch. His gaze, devoid of panic, shifted from Leena’s weapon to the gargantuan behemoth clawing its way from the rift, then back to her. “We can discuss my past,” he said, his tone unnervingly calm, “after you survive the present.” He gestured with a slight tilt of his head towards the towering monstrosity, now fully emerged, its form blotting out the midday sun.
“It’s not attacking,” one of Leena’s lieutenants, a S-rank Barrier-Weaver named Kylen, noted, his voice laced with confusion. The Void-Wraiths had been relentless, but this new apparition simply… existed. Yet the draining sensation intensified, a gnawing hunger that seemed to pull at the very essence of their stored mana.
“It doesn’t need to,” Juhan replied, his eyes scanning the cadets, calculating, analyzing. “This entity, a ‘Veil-Stalker’ by its original designation, feeds on innate reserves. Specifically, active spiritual emanations. It fattens on every surge, every flared art.”
Leena’s finger tightened on the trigger. “That’s impossible. Our gifts are our defense. Our very lifeblood.”
“Exactly,” Juhan said, a grim line forming on his lips. “Your greatest strength is its sustenance. Every elite officer, every active channeling combatant in this plaza right now is fodder. Its weakness isn’t physical. It’s conceptual.”
Leena’s mind raced, recalling the sudden fatigue, her temporal slip stalling like thick grease. The mechanics locked together with ugly precision: exertion fed the trespasser.
“So what’s the plan, Juhan?” the spearman sneered, stepping forward, his concussive aura rattling the pavers beneath his boots. “Sit down and wait for it to starve? You’re unhinged.” Shockwaves distorted the air around his fists, daring the monolith to strike.
Juhan ignored Valerius. His voice, now raised to cut through the growing unease, carried across the plaza. “All ranks, seal your cores! Snuff every channel, every field, every trace of ambient discharge! Now!”
Confusion swept through the ranks. Elite cadets looked at each other, disbelieving. Power down? In the face of a cosmic threat? It was suicide.
“He’s bluffing!” the spearman roared, his perimeter shockwave detonating across the stone. He vaulted forward in a reckless dash, fist cocked to loose a concussive shockwave. “Watch and learn, dregs! This is how an officer breaks an invader!”
As he lunged, twin green sparks flared within the entity's cavernous eye sockets. A black filament lanced out from its chest. It slipped straight through his ribcage without drawing blood.
The roar died in his throat. The shockwave snapped inward, erased like a blown candle. His knees buckled, jaw unhinging in a soundless convulsion as the core within him went hollow, scraped clean of the gift he had borne since youth. He dropped forward like an empty uniform.
Before he hit the ground, a blur of raw power intercepted him. Kaius, his smoldering bloodline art clamped down to a faint pulse, slammed low across the stone, knocking the limp duelist clear of the dark filament. Kaius grunted with the effort, his own massive frame nearly overwhelmed by the contact, but he dragged the inert body clear, teeth bared. The filament, starved of resonance, snapped back into the colossal torso.
[Aspect Drain: Valerius (Kinetic-Surge) – 100% Depleted]
Frost formed along the courtyard pavers. The sight paralyzed the upper echelon: an decorated duelist drained dry, hollowed into an invalid in half a second. Juhan’s insane command was no longer a suggestion. It was a terrifying, absolute truth.
One by one, the elite trainees severed their conduits. The plaza, moments before alive with the hum and crackle of active abilities, grew eerily quiet. The draining sensation lessened, but the fear intensified, a cold dread replacing the visceral exhaustion.
Juhan watched, then turned to his own unit. Kaius, breathing heavily after dragging the casualty back, stood ready. Eevi, a faint tremor in her hands, her cloaking gift shut down entirely, gripped the hilt of her dagger. Ott, pale but resolute, held the rune-etched focus stone Juhan had given him, his unstable restoration field suppressed inside the mineral.
“It’s time,” Juhan said, his voice dropping to a low, chilling command that cut through the silence. “Show it what true powerlessness looks like.”
The dregs of the Umbral Ward, the academy's supposed deadweight, were the only bodies that could draw near. Their cores yielded so faint a trace that the looming monstrosity could not register them as prey.
Leena, her blast-pistol still aimed, but now wavering, watched as Juhan’s unit, her despised 'rogue' unit, moved forward. She glanced at the limp duelist, then up at the dimensional devourer turning the academy's pride into bait. She looked at Juhan, who had known this, who had prepared for this, who had just saved them from their own strength.
Her barrel drifted downward, metal heavy as pig iron against her palm. A terrible, crushing realization settled over her. Her pride, her training, her very identity as an S-rank prodigy, all had been useless, worse than useless. Now, stripped of everything, she saw it with terrifying clarity. Her only hope.
“To win… I have to trust you completely, don’t I?”