The opulent guest chambers of the Solis Kingdom were a gilded lie. Princess Isabella had ushered me inside for 'rest,' but the atmosphere was thick with the stench of ancient corruption. Every corner of this palace whispered of fear—a fear so primal it had even reached Hina and Yumi, who were clearly masking their unease. My memory of the journey was a fractured blur; I only remembered the explosion in the forest and the ethereal voice from the stars that had steadied my heart.
"Night," I called out internally. "Have you ever been to this kingdom before?"
Kiran's voice resonated with a hollow, century-old echo. "Roughly a hundred years ago."
His answer confirmed my suspicions: I was being positioned as a pawn. I summoned the palace maids and demanded a private audience with the King and the Princess. I was done being a puppet.
The Omen of the Three Generals
In the grand audience hall, I stood before Princess Isabella and a terrifying warrior named Kaelen, whose dark aura felt like a physical weight against my skin. Isabella's words were a cold blade.
"The three Demon Generals who destroyed your home... they have just laid waste to another village nearby." 😱
Night roared in disbelief. The Princess claimed their Rank 1 Night had repelled them but was now critically wounded and silent. I smelled a trap. A human defeating three Generals? It defied logic. I agreed to help, but only if I saw the truth for myself.
The Arena: High IQ vs. Primal Force
At the training grounds, thousands of soldiers gathered to witness the power of the one they called a Hero. Kaelen challenged me, his eyes burning with a need to test my worth.
"Night, stay back," I commanded as Kiran offered to take over.
I didn't reach for a sword. I knelt and picked up two small pebbles from the dirt. My brain, forced into hyper-evolution by Night's presence, had unlocked Millisecond Perception. Kaelen charged, his blade glowing with lethal magic, putting his entire soul into a strike meant to end me.
To me, he was moving through slow-motion liquid. I flicked the first pebble at his lead foot. His balance shattered instantly. His own momentum turned him into a projectile, hurtling toward the stone wall behind me. 😱
In the fraction of a second before impact, I stepped aside and caught him by the collar, halting his lethal speed just an inch from the marble. The arena fell into a deathly silence.
The Neural Crash
The moment I released his collar, my world fractured.
A sudden, excruciating pressure exploded inside my skull—it didn't feel like magic; it felt as if a massive, invisible sledgehammer had just slammed directly into my brain. THUD!
My vision blurred into a chaotic mess of static and shadows. A deafening, high-pitched ringing drowned out the gasps of the soldiers. I had forced my human brain to process data at a speed it wasn't built to handle. Every neural pathway was screaming under the shock. My cognitive functions were crashing, one by one.
I felt my legs give way. The world was spinning, and the "Millisecond Perception" had just demanded its pound of flesh.
Suddenly, a hand gripped mine, steadying my trembling frame. It was Night (Kiran), his voice filled with a panic I had never heard before.
"Sir! Are you alright?!"
I couldn't answer. The world went dark as the sledgehammer hit again, leaving the Sovereign of Agony broken on the very floor where he had just displayed god-like power.