Every morning, Raiden pressed his palm flat against the cold inner wall of Dome Vantris and watched the shapes move outside.
They were distant — always distant, kept at bay by the city's barrier enchantment — but on clear days, when the mist beyond the glass thinned, he could make them out. A lumbering mass of hardened hide. A streak of cold blue that meant Ice-breed. Occasionally, the silhouette of something so enormous it blotted out the grey horizon entirely, and the entire city would collectively hold its breath.
"You're doing it again."
He turned. Jester was leaning against a market stall three metres back, arms crossed, eating something skewered and fried, one eyebrow raised in the exact expression of theatrical disapproval he'd been perfecting since they were seven years old.
"The glass isn't going to crack just because you stare at it," Jester said.
"Eleven," said Raiden.
"What?"
"Eleven Demetrons in the valley this morning. Yesterday there were four."
Jester stepped forward and looked. He was quiet for a moment — a rare occurrence — then took another bite of his skewer.
"Could be a migration path," he offered.
"It's not."
Neither of them said the other thing. The thing that the swordsmen in the garrison whispered about: that the Demetron populations had been growing steadily for three years. That the Emperor-breed had been sighted twice in the last month. That the glass had new hairline fractures near the eastern ward that the city engineers kept repairing in the middle of the night, hoping no one would notice.
Raiden noticed everything.
World Record · Demetron Breeds
Known high-tier breeds documented by the Swordsmen Guild of Vantris:
Emperor — Apex predator class. Drops tier-1 Cores on death. Last confirmed kill: 14 years ago.
Enraged — Unpredictable. Stat modifiers spike violently when below 50% HP.
Abyss — Believed to originate from sub-dimensional rifts. Incorporeal at will.
Dark Nightmare — Demonic category. Feeds on light-element magic. Extremely dangerous to Light-attribute swordsmen.
Icy — Ice category. Capable of freezing air currents inside dome seals.
The city's magic registration office opened at the third bell. Raiden and Jester had been waiting outside since the second.
The system — a luminous panel of floating glyphs that materialized above every person who stood beneath the assessment crystal — was not guaranteed to appear. Four out of ten people had it. Everyone else went about their lives as merchants, craftsmen, farmers, enchanters. Useful lives. Normal lives.
Raiden had turned eighteen three days ago. Jester had turned eighteen the week before.
They had been waiting their whole lives for this moment.
The examiner, a tired-eyed woman with ink-stained sleeves and a blade resting across her lap, gestured Jester forward first.
The crystal hummed. Glyphs bloomed in the air.
System Manifest · Jester Vael
Class: Sword Magic
Element: Fire
Attribute: God Style · Unlocked at threshold level
Level: 1
Strength 41
Agility 38
Magic 55
The examiner nodded, made a note. Jester exhaled, a massive grin breaking across his face. He turned to Raiden with both thumbs up.
Then Raiden stepped under the crystal.
Nothing happened for three full seconds. Then four. The examiner's pen paused. One of the other registrants in line shifted uncomfortably.
Then the crystal cracked.
Not the whole thing — just a single fracture, hairline, running from base to tip. The glyphs that erupted from it were not the usual pale blue of a standard system manifestation. They were white, almost blinding, with a deep violet core, cascading upward in a column that hit the ceiling of the registration hall and kept going, punching through it as though it weren't there, piercing the dome ceiling above —
Someone in the hall screamed.
The examiner was on her feet, sword drawn, eyes wide.
Raiden stood completely still in the light, reading the words that only he could see:
Super System · Manifest — Raiden Kael
One of five recipients across the known universe.
Class: Sword Magic
Element: Dark / Light
Attribute: God Style · Active
Level: 1 → ∞ (Infinite progression unlocked)
Strength 88
Agility 91
Magic 120
Warning: Super System capacities exceed assessment parameters. Full feature list loading...
The column of light slowly faded. The hall was absolutely silent.
Jester lowered his thumbs. His mouth was open.
"...Raiden."
"Yeah."
"That was — the ceiling. You went through the ceiling."
"I noticed."
Raiden stared at the words still hovering before his eyes. Infinite progression. No level cap. And the God Style attribute, which every swordsman received but which most considered a passive enhancement — in his case, it pulsed with something that felt less like a bonus and more like a warning.
Outside, far beyond the glass, something enormous raised its head toward the dome.
As though it had sensed him.