In the year **77 After the Second Millennium**, history itself had turned against humankind. From the ruptures of sky and earth, **strange gates** began to erupt. And from their depths emerged creatures known to mortals by only one name: **the Nizarc**. Beings with no purpose but to feast upon the **hearts of men**, as though in their pulses lay an eternal nourishment.
The greatest armies crumbled. Nations fell. The continent of Arkanos became an open grave, where over a billion souls were crushed beneath a merciless tide. Hope fled humanity—until the survivors discovered the power of **Vitas**: the raw spiritual essence that transformed a chosen few into **Kaijin warriors**. They became the sole blades that stood between mankind and the abyss of the Nizarc.
And now—six decades later, in the year **139 After the Second Millennium**—the tale begins, from the very heart of Arkanos.
---
The **Vitas Academy**—the highest bastion for training Kaijin warriors—stood upon the edge of dread, awaiting its most harrowing event: **The Final Competency Trial**. A trial that would decide which student's name would be etched among the ranks of the elite… and which would be cast aside, forgotten forever.
Inside the **Great Circular Arena**, an enclosed fortress of steel and living architecture, the masses gathered in a silence so heavy it seemed carved from stone. Tier upon tier of the coliseum rose, as though the crowd itself had been summoned to witness a sacred rite. Yet the sky above, choked with storm-laden clouds, stripped the scene of all festivity, leaving it more like a tribunal of death than a graduation.
Below, upon the **central ground**, the participating teams stood aligned. Five students, their faces taut with resolve, confronted the destiny that awaited them. Before them loomed three **colossal gates**, each sealed with energy sigils, from which seeped a muffled hiss—like the groaning of tortured iron.
---
In the stands:
* **The third tier** housed the families and spectators. Their faces were a mixture of pride and terror, staring down at the arena as though surrendering their children to the jaws of fate. Among them, a hard-featured man rose to his feet and cried out with a hoarse voice:
> "Rendai! Never forget who you are!"
> It was Rendai's father—masking the tremor in his tone behind a stern façade.
* **The second tier** held the teachers, beside them a Kaijin warrior of the **Zero Wave rank**—those who rarely revealed themselves except in decisive moments. Their eyes followed the field with a tension that betrayed knowledge: what would open today might go far beyond the bounds of a mere test.
* **The first tier** enclosed the students, hemmed in by luminous pillars of energy, glowing like the walls of a sacred prison. Every breath in the air whispered that there would be no turning back.
---
One of the instructors strode to the front of the arena. His black academy robe trailed behind him, a crimson sash upon his chest bearing the symbol of the "Second Wave." Raising his hand, he pointed toward the three gates. His voice thundered through the iron-bound air:
> "We now commence the **Final Competency Trial – Class of the Second Wave**."
The ground shook beneath their feet. From the first gate leaked a **dismal radiance**, bleeding through its cracks, followed by a **thick violet fog** that crept outward like venom.
The instructor's voice grew harsher:
> "Gate One: Nizarc of the First Tier—hordes of lesser spawn, led by a minor commander."
He turned sharply toward the second gate, which had begun to shudder.
> "Gate Two: Nizarc of the Intermediate Tier—more cunning, more insidious."
Then his eyes fell upon the third. A silence, leaden and suffocating, gripped every heart. The instructor swallowed hard, and when he spoke again, his voice was barely more than a curse:
> "And Gate Three… for the Nizarc Commanders of the **Fourth Tier**."
The air collapsed in the arena. Even the breath of the crowd faltered, as though the walls themselves pressed inward upon their lungs.
And in that instant… a faint gleam flickered in **Rendai's left eye**. A thin thread of Vitas shimmered within, like a spark of inexorable fate—quivering as if it were a **harbinger of the catastrophe to come**.
**Instructor Soran Edo**, one of the bearers of the Blue Seal, stood before the first gate. A massive man, his body bore the scars of countless wars, his face etched with the deep lines of battles long past. His right eye was hidden beneath a metallic augury device, gleaming faintly whenever energy pulsed through it.
He raised his hand, and his arm ignited with **Vitas runes**, coiling around his flesh like living tattoos.
His voice thundered through the arena:
> "Remember well… this is a competency trial. But it is not safe. Any death here… is real."
Then, in a voice scarcely more than a murmur, as though speaking to himself:
> "Let us see… are you the generation that will save us?"
He pressed the activation switch.
---
**The first gate opened.**
The sound was like iron devouring itself, a cacophony of breaking bones. A torrent of violet mist surged outward, followed by a **suppressed roar**. The ground convulsed with a dark pulse, as though a colossal heart had begun to beat again after a thousand years.
From within the haze, they emerged…
Fifty creatures. Their bodies grotesque, their bones jutting like charred armor, their slit-pupil eyes glowing with black sparks. Their forms were twisted, as if the world itself had vomited them out. They surged forward like a flood, their howls echoing the collapse of an ancient age.
---
At the front of the team stood **Linari Ianami**. Her hair whipped in the current, her eyes blazing with resolve.
She lifted her hand with unshakable steadiness.
> "Formation system… activate."
A golden vortex of light erupted from the ground, encircling the five students, binding their breaths into a single rhythm. Gasps rippled through the crowd.
> "She merged the classes without preparation…!"
The first wave of energy arrows burst from beneath her feet, tearing through more than ten Nizarc in a single volley.
---
**Regorot Okabe**, true to his nature, did not wait.
His voice roared with fire:
> "Let's show them who we are!!!"
He shot forward like a blazing cannonball, his aura erupting in flames. His fist pierced the chest of the first Nizarc, its body dissolving into an infernal vortex. Three more fell in explosions of fire. Regorot laughed amidst the carnage, fighting with the ferocity of a human beast unchained.
---
**Syrin Ashford** wasted no movement.
With deadly calm, she lifted her hand.
An ice wall rose, sealing the left corridor. Across its surface ran streaks of crimson flame, incinerating the creatures that dared approach. Then, wordless, she cast a flash of healing light toward **Genrai**, sealing the shallow wound on his shoulder.
Her composure never wavered—even as she unleashed **spears of fire and frost**, rending through the enemy ranks.
---
**Genrai Everhard** announced nothing.
Suddenly… he was behind one of the beasts.
His right arm, blackened to the bone and veined with shifting Vitas sigils, plunged into its chest. The creature shriveled into itself before vanishing. Another. Then another. His whisper was colder than the grave:
> "Your fall… is silent."
And then he faded into shadow.
---
Linari raised her hand again.
This time her voice was almost a hymn:
> "Rise… in harmony."
A wave of luminous resonance burst forth. The sound was not heard—it was felt. The team's breaths rose in unison, their defenses strengthening, their strikes striking deeper. For an instant, each of them shone, their souls fused into a single rhythm, and the darkness faltered before them.
---
But then the earth trembled.
From the rear gate, **something emerged that was not meant to appear yet**.
Heavy footsteps. The creak of bones splintering.
A towering monstrosity, over 150 meters tall, armored in interlocking plates of darkened bone. Three heads, each whispering in a tongue no human could comprehend.
> "First-tier commander… the Mutated Nizarc."
The audience froze in terror.
For the first time, Instructor Soran's eyes widened.
The creature unleashed a **wave of energy** that tore the ground asunder, driving the students back. For the first time, Linari herself staggered half a step.
---
Then, a voice—quiet, cold—cut through the chaos like a blade:
> "Fall back."
All turned toward it.
It was **Rendai Yagamiri**, standing without emotion, his half-lidded eyes as indifferent as ever.
– He had always been dismissed as unfit for direct combat.
But this time… he raised his hand.
---
**Three classes awakened as one.**
The Distorters – The Abstractors – The Pulsars.
A translucent gray aura expanded.
And then… **he vanished.**
In an instant, he was behind the colossus.
His palm twisted in the air, shattering the laws of gravity.
The titan's body lifted violently, its bones fracturing, its three heads imploding under the crush of reversed time. Its black energy evaporated into ashen dust.
And only the falling haze remained…
---
Silence.
Utter and suffocating.
Thousands stared into the arena, their disbelief swallowing every breath.
> "It's… over. With a single strike."
> – The announcer's voice broke with shock.
Linari did not blink. She gazed at him, whispering under her breath:
> "I thought you were weak… but you've always been at the top."
And high above, in the stands, where the **Zero-Wave Harmonizer** sat, he closed his notebook quietly.
He muttered:
> "This was never a trial… but a warning."
**Vitas Academy** had not yet reclaimed its silence.
The violet fog still crept across the arena, seeping into the ground like the bleeding of the cosmos itself. The sky was no longer a sky—
but a torn wound of blackness, dripping with shadow.
The footsteps of **Soran Ido** echoed in the hush, though each breath weighed heavy in his chest.
*"The second gate… must be opened under my watch alone."*
But malice would not wait.
A black spark split the air, like a dagger thrust from another realm.
The **gate burst apart**—without rite, without seal, without warning.
And from its depths… the nightmare emerged.
A colossal being, its half–melted bones fused together like living clay without reason.
Six eyes flickered like extinguished embers, and its jaw dripped with fragments of petrified flesh, as though time itself hung suspended between its fangs.
The crowd froze.
Then came the first calamity—
A **black beam** ripped through the stands, shattering stone and life alike.
Screams, smoke, and ruin filled the air. Fear was no longer an emotion… it was a second monster, loosed upon the arena.
---
Amidst the chaos, **Kazikawa Valimont** appeared.
His smile was cold, his composure inhuman.
In his hands gleamed a golden spear, shining through the devastation like the faint promise of dawn.
He raised his gaze, fixing it upon the abomination. His voice rang out, sharp and mocking, like cold steel:
> "Another reckless creature… this one is mine alone."
He lunged.
The strike was not wild aggression—it was surgical precision.
His spear cut through the air, driving deep into the **core of energy** within the monster's chest.
A deafening roar tore the sky. The ground quaked. For a moment, it seemed as though the heavens themselves dimmed.
But nothing ended.
The creature did not fall.
Instead, its cavernous body twisted around the spear, and with a grotesque pull… it dragged **Kazikawa** into its depths.
The spear alone clattered to the ground, ringing with a piercing hum—
as though imprisoned souls wept inside its metal.
---
**Reigorot** trembled, his voice barely a whisper:
> "It… swallowed him?!"
**Serin** covered her mouth with a shaking hand, her eyes glassy:
> "This… wasn't supposed to happen."
---
The monster changed.
It grew larger. Heavier. Darker.
The sky above it congealed into a black shroud, and every breath it exhaled stirred the air into storms.
The crowd crumbled into silence. Hope guttered out.
And the team… stood abandoned before an enemy that was no longer a battle,
but the **beginning of an end** no one had foreseen.
---
And deep within that cavernous abyss, the cold voice of **Kazikawa** whispered, steady and unshaken:
> "Let them struggle a while… If things turn dire, I'll find my way out easily."
At the heart of the arena—where the currents of energy twisted like something not born of the human world—
the nightmare reached its full shape.
The skeletal giant's frame tightened with each pulse, as though its bones were rewriting themselves.
Six crimson eyes ignited, piercing not bodies but hearts—probing the fractures within every soul.
And then—without warning—it moved at the speed of light.
**Black tendrils, shadows uncoiled from the mouth of an eternal night, lashed toward the upper stands.**
The energy-born arms wound like serpents through the tiers, seeking the innocent before the fighters.
---
Cries split the air.
Not only fear—but the sound of helplessness.
*Serin's father*, a lean, sharp-featured man, pulled his wife close, whispering with a trembling voice:
> "Our daughter… she's too strong to break before this."
*Linari's mother* pressed a hand to her chest, murmuring:
> "Don't be afraid… I see you. I'm here."
*Reigorot's father*, the retired soldier, roared as if back on the battlefield:
> "Reigo! Hold steady! Don't rush!"
But *Rendai's mother* said nothing.
She only smiled. A clear, knowing smile—like someone who had already accepted the end at the very beginning.
---
From the arena below, **Linari's voice** rose—
strong, blazing, like a bell of fire:
> "Strike formation… move!"
In an instant, the team became one body.
No commands needed.
* **Serin** froze one tendril into crystal, then shattered it with cracking flame.
* **Jenrai** leapt through the shadows, ripping a smoky limb as though it were nothing but ash.
* **Reigorot** bellowed:
> "You'll never touch them!"
> His fist erupted with spiraling force, obliterating a third tendril.
* **Rendai** raised his hand, warping gravity itself, forcing the arms away from the crowd.
For a moment… it seemed they held the fight.
But the monster had not even begun.
---
It clenched its massive grip.
The tendrils darkened, turned blood-red—then snapped tight all at once.
Screams tore from above.
People fell—some to the stone, others swallowed by smoke and ruin.
Fragmented images:
* A man reaching for his daughter—his voice vanishing mid-call.
* A woman pulling her husband, only for rubble to claim half her body.
* A child clutching his grandmother, sobbing, as shadows drowned them in merciless dark.
---
In the arena, **Rendai** lifted his gaze.
Every sound in him fell silent.
Every thought shrank to a single, searing vision:
**The monster's tendrils wrapping around his mother, crushing—then carrying her into the abyss.**
And his father, just a step away, collapsing as his energy bled into poisoned smoke.
A scream ripped from Rendai's throat:
> "Enough!!!"
For the first time in his life, he was not silent.
Every spark within him ignited—Distorter, Null, Pulsar—every class at once.
But the monster was faster.
A sphere of black energy coalesced in its jaws—
then burst forward, hurling a wave of corruption straight at **Rendai**.
Before it struck—his father moved.
He intercepted the blast with his body.
The cry died on his lips.
His frame shuddered, his eyes dimmed to grey.
Corrupted Vitas coursed through him, burning from within—a slow, merciless infection.
---
Rendai fell to his knees.
His hands shook. His head bowed.
Only two tears escaped.
They were not weakness—
but regret. The regret of one who was never given the chance, who finally understood the cruelty of the world.
> *"This merciless world… has taken its last piece from me."*
---
Above him, the monster roared like a king of ruin.
Its tendrils still lashed the sky; its victims lay scattered, wounded or gone.
Inside its abyssal gut, **Kazikawa** remained lost.
The team stood shattered.
And in the center of the arena—**Rendai no longer stood as a student.**
He rose as someone who had broken only once…
and whose break had not destroyed him—
but opened a door the world had never seen before.
Everything was still…
Yet it was not the stillness of peace, but the **silence before the collapse of worlds**.
The Nizark beast loomed, breathing like a mountain alive. Its torn arm rebuilt itself from congealed black matter, writhing like living entrails searching for a new host. The tendrils withdrew, leaving behind a ground drowned in ash and groans… broken bodies barely moving, cries muffled beneath the rubble.
**The sky?**
Gray as cold ash. Silent—not bearing witness, but mourning.
---
🎭 **The Silence Before the Cry**
On the ground knelt **Rendai**. Motionless. Wordless.
His glassy eyes fixed on an image he wished never to see:
**His father.**
Half-burned, dragging himself forward, as if death devoured him limb by limb.
And still—his eyes alive, carrying the warmth of a father who had never once regretted.
> **The Father – voice frayed, threadbare:**
> "Ren… dai… don't look at me… look ahead…
> Don't fear your heart… I was born… for this day."
He tried to smile.
But the fire had consumed the muscles of his face, leaving only the shadow of an expression, suspended between agony and departure.
Rendai did not reply.
He saw not only his father… but every failure of his own:
Every time he ran from feeling.
Every time he hid weakness behind cold logic.
---
And then… time stopped.
Ash froze in the air.
The tendrils hung motionless like statues.
Even the Nizark itself stood still.
From the void stepped a **transparent figure**—a regal man, his features resembling Rendai's, but older, calmer… like a reflection of what he might yet become.
> **The Figure – with a serene, inhuman smile:**
> "Heir… your strength was never sealed to shield you… but to make you worthy of it.
> There are six seals… and each demands a price.
> Today… you have broken the first."
Rendai said nothing. He only stared.
> **The Figure – voice deep, tolling like a funeral bell:**
> ✅ *Stage One: The Loss of the Irreplaceable.*
> **Condition:** To watch someone you love fall… while you are powerless.
> **Consequence:** To realize that strength is no salvation… but a cost.
> **Seal Break:**
> Power from **50,000** → to **10,000,000,000 (ten billion).**
---
From Rendai's brow split a line of celestial light.
It was not red, nor blue—neither dark nor pure…
It was a color unknown, as though **the first act of creation** had returned for a fleeting moment.
The air around him ceased to move.
The ground beneath his knees cracked in silence.
**Rendai rose.**
His face did not scream.
His eyes did not weep.
But within him, something was being born from the ashes.
> **Rendai – voice cold, metallic, barely human:**
> "I understand now…
> Knowing the world is not enough…
> I must feel it as well."
He stood like a storm without sound.
Every fragment of his being radiated a power he no longer restrained.
> **Rendai – the same icy tone, but with an uncanny echo:**
> "Good… this strength will carry me to my purpose."
---
In that moment, **Rendai Yagamiri** was no longer a mere student of Vitas.
He had become something else—
Something born only when a **heart shatters… but does not die.**
The arena of **Vitas Academy** looked like a canvas torn from an ancient nightmare.
The air hung heavy with the stench of ash, the ground still bearing scars from the first battle.
The Nizark beast stood towering, half its body fractured, yet its black tendrils slowly regenerated—like wounds that refused to close.
Then a sound rose from the depths…
A roar that did not come from a throat, but from the earth itself—
as though something greater than darkness prepared to rise.
And in that moment… five Vitassian lights gathered, glowing amidst the ruin like stars that had chosen to descend upon the realm of man.
The team stood beside **Rendai**, their eyes steeped in resolve, their chests weighed with words left unspoken.
---
🌸 **Linari**
She was the first to break the silence.
She raised her hand toward the heavens, her fingers blooming with a gentle pink light that swept over the team like a tender halo—restoring what they had nearly lost.
> "We are family… and whoever dares approach us, will fall."
She unleashed a supportive wave that shattered the energy barrier around the beast, then descended with a blade of solid light, severing one of its tendrils.
The monster's scream shook every corner of the arena.
---
⚡ **Rigorot**
He leapt high, his body surging with explosive energy. In his clenched fist gathered a clustered charge, like a miniature sun. His cry was torn between anger and longing:
> "This is for the one who believed in me… and for the one who dreamed I'd stand here!"
He struck the beast's chest, tearing through it, before shattering another tendril from its root.
---
🕶️ **Jenrai**
He appeared from nothing, woven from layers of mist. Phantom blades of shadow embedded themselves into the monster's joints, spreading into tangled dark lines that crippled it from within.
> "I did not choose the light… it chose me, through the ones who never left me. And today… I will not let them be devoured."
The beast shuddered, straining against its unseen bindings.
---
❄️ **Serin**
She extended her palm with calm precision, and a shower of transparent snow fell upon the arena alone. The team's wounds sealed partly, though her expression remained unmoved. Her eyes became frozen mirrors reflecting nothing but cold resolve.
> "Here… your path ends."
With a single phrase, she unleashed a spell of pure frost, encasing the beast's legs in crystalline rings that locked upon it like unbreakable shackles.
---
🔥 **Rendai – The Eye of Verdict**
He advanced with measured steps, his eyes burning with an interwoven blaze of blue fire, stripped of all mercy. Raising his right hand, he summoned a dark energy blade—and from it emerged a spectral figure: **"The Nameless Swordsman."**
It was a fragment of his own will, a shadow fighting on his behalf.
* With a single strike, the swordsman severed three tendrils.
* The beast retaliated with an explosive lash, but the swordsman soared above and cleaved its arm.
* As the creature twisted to shield its core, the swordsman released a colossal slash that pierced straight through its energy heart.
Rendai did not blink. He moved only to step closer, then halted the swordsman with a mere gesture of his finger—allowing the beast to collapse before him.
A heavy silence.
Then the dark body ruptured, as though the end had been sealed.
But Rendai lifted his hand again, forming a radiant energy core.
> "The trial has not yet begun."
He hurled the core, and the beast rose once more—cracked, but fiercer than before.
Rendai extended his hand to the heavens, his voice cold as judgment itself:
> "Formation of Verdict… show them why we exist."
---
* **Linari** unleashed a cry that bolstered every soul.
* **Rigorot** struck the left side with a devastating charge.
* **Jenrai** shattered its inner joints from within.
* **Serin** froze the monster's heart in crystalline bonds.
* **Rendai** ended it—driving a final dual strike through its head.
As the beast collapsed, the arena quaked…
and from within its hollowed shell emerged a human figure—exhausted, smeared with mud and smoke, yet standing tall.
It was **Kazikawa Valimont**.
He smiled wearily, muttering with a faint edge of mockery:
> "Took you long enough… I could've slept longer. But the inside wasn't exactly comfortable."
Then his gaze swept over them, a silent acknowledgment in his eyes:
> "You are… officially… the Formation of Verdict."
---
### 🔥 End of Chapter One.