Chapter 30 : Only One Can Ascend

One day, while I was residing in my tower deep within the forests of the Eastern Continent, one of the world's five great continents, my communication crystal suddenly lit up.

The familiar magical glow spread across its surface, and a moment later, my teacher's image appeared within it.

Serafina.

She informed me that I was to travel to the Central Continent, home of the Great Empire and, at its very heart, the largest floating Mage Tower in existence. Naturally, that tower belonged to my teacher.

I listened to her instructions, then leaned back in my chair as the implications gradually settled in.

It seemed the day had finally arrived.

My chance to become a Great Ruler.

Everything had begun hundreds of years earlier, when the Will of the World had conveyed a warning to Serafina, the being closest to it and the former Chosen One. A catastrophe was approaching, and the world had fallen under the gaze of powerful, terrifying entities whose purpose was nothing less than its destruction.

The world needed something capable of standing against them.

An existence beyond the Origin Realm.

A being who could cross the boundary that no one had ever surpassed and rise to a level that transcended the established limits of existence. Such a being would be known as a Great Ruler, and the world needed one if it hoped to survive the impending catastrophe.

Thus began a search that lasted for centuries.

Serafina worked alongside various masters and mages, devoting herself to the problem of opening an entirely new horizon beyond the Origin Realm. The challenge was unprecedented. The Origin Realm represented the final step along the established path of cultivation, and if one imagined the seven realms as a staircase, there was no eighth step waiting above them. Beyond the seventh lay only emptiness.

The Origin was the end.

Yet after centuries of research, drawing upon Serafina's extraordinary talent and the time available to her, a method was finally discovered.

Its foundation rested upon two essential elements. Everything else was merely a matter of logistics, preparation, and execution.

The first was the Will of the World itself.

The second was Serafina's distinctive magic and her relationship with the world.

Together, they offered a single opportunity to cross the boundary separating the Origin from whatever lay beyond it.

There was only one opportunity, however, and far too many beings who wished to claim it.

Eventually, the Origin-level existences reached an agreement. Rather than allow their ambitions to tear the world apart before the actual catastrophe even arrived, they would hold a competition—the first of its kind—to determine who was most worthy of receiving that opportunity.

Four Dragon Sovereigns.

Seven humans.

Two Beastmen.

One Fishman.

Fourteen beings who had reached the Origin Realm, each standing at the pinnacle of their respective races.

It was an impressive gathering, to put it mildly. The kind of assembly that would have made any ordinary mage reconsider every life decision that had led them into the same room as its participants.

Fourteen monsters, each with the power to reshape the fate of nations, had agreed to fight one another for the honor of taking a single step beyond the limits of existence.

And I was one of them.

So was Elden Morven.

Of all the people in the world who could have become my rival for this opportunity, it had to be that bastard.

Naturally.

The competition was held in a separate spatial arena constructed high above the Central Continent. It was designed to accommodate battles between Origin-level beings without allowing their clashes to devastate the land beneath them. Even so, the very existence of such a place was a testament to the resources and effort invested in the event.

After all, when fourteen beings of that caliber began fighting seriously, an ordinary battlefield would hardly remain a battlefield for long.

We drew lots to determine the matchups.

There were no weak participants. Every one of us possessed hidden trump cards, secret techniques, and powers we had carefully concealed from the rest of the world. None had reached the Origin Realm by relying on luck alone, and none would surrender such a precious opportunity without revealing everything they had.

The four Dragon Sovereigns were particularly troublesome opponents. Their bodies were naturally powerful, their scales exceptionally durable, and their innate magic gave them advantages that most other races could only dream of possessing.

Their physical strength alone made them formidable, even before considering the terrifying spells they could unleash.

The first round passed, and I advanced.

Elden advanced as well.

The other participants fought their own battles, and when the initial matches were concluded, the losers were given another chance to compete among themselves. The winner of that additional contest would return to the main competition, filling the vacant position and completing the next stage of the tournament.

Eventually, we moved into the second round.

As fate would have it, two of the Dragon Sovereigns were matched against one another.

It was an unfortunate draw for the dragons, who had entered the competition with considerable confidence in their collective strength. Two of their number were eliminated, leaving only the Red Dragon and the Black Dragon to continue.

Elden and I won our respective matches as well.

And so, the field narrowed.

The Red Dragon.

The Black Dragon.

Elden Morven.

And me, Rowan Calder.

Four Origin-level existences remained, each standing only two victories away from claiming the opportunity to transcend the Origin Realm.

My next opponent was the Red Dragon.

Calling it a dragon was almost an understatement. Its enormous body stretched across several kilometers, its scales forming layers of natural armor so dense that they seemed practically indestructible. Every movement displaced vast quantities of air, and the sheer size of its wings cast shadows over the arena below.

Facing such a creature was rather like standing before a moving mountain that had decided to breathe fire.

We rose into the sky, and the battle began.

Light tore through the heavens as the dragon accelerated, its enormous wings beating against the air with enough force to send shock waves across the arena. Then came the flames. They poured from its jaws in torrents of searing brilliance, spreading outward until the surrounding atmosphere itself seemed to ignite.

The heat distorted space, and the clouds dissolved beneath the inferno. Waves of fire rolled through the sky, illuminating the arena with a brilliance so overwhelming that it seemed as though the sun had descended from its place in the heavens to burn me alive.

The dragon's natural magic was every bit as terrifying as its body. Its attacks combined raw destructive power with the speed and precision of an experienced combatant, leaving little room for hesitation. Each time I evaded one of its assaults, another followed, forcing me to keep moving as the sky around us became a sea of flames and shattered light.

Unfortunately for the dragon, I was Rowan Calder.

And I had no intention of losing.

Rather than meet its overwhelming strength with strength alone, I manipulated the five elements and combined their interactions with my control over space. The five elements intertwined, their opposing properties forced into a delicate balance before I compressed them into a single, unstable mass of destructive energy.

It was not merely a matter of combining five different kinds of power. The real challenge lay in controlling their interactions while manipulating the space that contained them, forcing the resulting energy into a state where the slightest disturbance could unleash an extraordinary explosion.

Once the structure was complete, I directed it toward the dragon's enormous wing.

The resulting detonation shook the arena.

Space twisted around the explosion as the accumulated energy erupted, swallowing the wing in a violent burst of light. The dragon's immense body lurched, its balance shattered by the sudden loss of one of its most important means of movement. Its roar rolled through the sky, carrying enough fury to make the entire arena tremble.

But the damage had been done.

I pressed my advantage and brought the battle to its conclusion, securing my victory and advancing to the final.

One down.

One more victory, and I would stand at the very threshold of becoming a Great Ruler.

Elden, meanwhile, had faced the Black Dragon.

And, as expected, that bastard had managed to survive another impossible situation.

His battle had been considerably more difficult than mine, largely because the Black Dragon possessed a set of abilities that made it an exceptionally unpleasant opponent.

Its command over earth and vegetation granted it an almost absurd capacity for survival. It could regenerate damaged parts of its body, recover from devastating injuries, and use its surroundings to sustain itself through prolonged exchanges.

Destroying it was one problem.

Preventing it from recovering was another.

And consuming its power only made the situation more complicated.

But Elden was hardly ordinary.

It could devour elemental energy, drain his opponent, and distort space, disrupting the very foundations upon which many magical attacks depended. Against an ordinary mage, such powers would have been devastating enough to determine the outcome before the battle had properly begun.

Even so, the Black Dragon was no less troublesome than its red counterpart.

Their battle became a contest of attrition between two opponents who seemed almost absolute in their ability to endure one another. Elden repeatedly found ways to overcome the dragon's defenses, while the Black Dragon answered his attacks with regeneration and relentless counterattacks. The longer the fight continued, the more apparent it became that neither combatant would fall easily.

Yet, in the end, the dragon was the first to collapse.

Elden remained standing, although his body had been reduced to a miserable state. Blood covered him, his injuries were severe, and he looked as though he had been dragged through the aftermath of a catastrophe.

Nevertheless, the bastard raised his bloodied hand in a gesture of victory.

He had won.

Of course he had.

I would have been more surprised if he had somehow managed to lose.

And now, after all the battles, all the injuries, and all the ridiculous obstacles that had brought us here, only two participants remained.

Elden Morven.

And Rowan Calder.

We were disciples of the same teacher, rivals who had spent years competing against one another, and former enemies whose relationship had developed into a brotherhood neither of us had ever been particularly good at maintaining.

We had fought over a stolen fruit. We had challenged one another countless times. We had alternated between victory and defeat, pushing each other forward even when neither of us was willing to admit that the other had played any part in his growth.

And now we stood in the final of a competition that would determine who received the only opportunity to transcend the Origin Realm.

There would be no shared victory.

No second opportunity.

No compromise that could satisfy us both.

Only one of us would claim the chance to become a Great Ruler.

For the first time in a long while, I found myself looking at Elden without thinking about the trouble he had caused me, the treasures he had stolen, or the number of times I had nearly died because of his unreasonable talent for attracting calamities.

And he was looking at me, too.

Whatever he was thinking, I could guess one thing with absolute certainty.

He would not willingly surrender.

Neither would I.

We had both spent our lives climbing toward the summit, refusing to accept that there might be a limit beyond which we could not go. We had overcome enemies, endured humiliation, and survived battles that should have ended our journeys long before this moment.

Now the final obstacle stood before us in the shape of the person who knew us best.

My junior brother.

My rival.

My former enemy.

Elden Morven.

And in the end, only one of us would obtain that single, precious opportunity.

The opportunity to step beyond the Origin.

The opportunity to become a Great Ruler.