Late at night, Taka and Nezru sit beneath the open sky, wine cups in hand. The air is still, quiet—an unusual peace after weeks of chaos.
Nezru lifts his cup and takes a sip. "After five years… I'm finally drinking wine again."
Taka chuckles. "Perks of being born into a prominent family."
Nezru nods but his gaze turns distant. He knows most farmers can no longer grow anything. With war raging across the world, fields are abandoned or destroyed. Only a few scattered regions remain untouched—places the Greyrose Circus avoids, mostly because there are no nodes nearby these region. Ordinary people without talent for cultivation have been relocated to those zones. The crops grown there are barely enough to feed them.
Wine and luxuries like it? Practically extinct.
Only the wood elemental warlocks from the Five Elemental Continent can still grow food in abundance. Their spells force crops to flourish in unnatural conditions. Some of that harvest is used to make things like wine—but even that's rare now.
Just then, Riku steps into the room, her robes still damp from the golden rain earlier.
"This wine," she says, pouring herself a cup, "didn't come from my family. I made it myself."
Taka raises an eyebrow. "How?"
Nezru sniffs the cup and smiles. "It's made from Violet Grapes. But where would you even find those? No one but the wood warlocks can grow them now."
Taka nods. "You must have wood elemental warlocks under your command."
Riku sits on a chair beside them. "You're forgetting my golden rain spell."
Both men glance at her.
"I discovered it not only heals people," she continues, "but also accelerates plant growth. In my spare time, I use it to grow crops for my army. That way, they don't have to live on fish and dried meat every day."
Taka stares into his cup, thoughts swirling. "When do you think the war will end?"
Riku's gaze drifts toward the dark horizon, her voice soft but certain. "A few more years… maybe. The tide is shifting."
Nezru and Taka glance at each other, puzzled. Her words linger in the air, heavy with meaning. How could she speak of an end so confidently? This war has dragged on for over fifty years with no clear sign of stopping. Now that she's stepped into the Spirit King realm, perhaps she's learned something they haven't. But even more baffling is how she ascended so quickly.
They remember meeting Riku just a few years ago. Back then, she wasn't in charge—just another soldier in their unit, fighting beside them. At that time, she had only forty water elemental runes in her spiritual space. And now?
Sixty-one runes. A full breakthrough.
Almost as if reading their minds, Riku smiles faintly. "You're both wondering how I broke through to Spirit King so fast, aren't you?"
They nod, silent.
"I connected my water elemental runes with lightning and light elemental runes," she says.
Taka frowns. "Isn't that one of the abandoned methods from ancient times? Didn't all records say no one ever reached the Spirit Saint realm that way?"
Nezru adds, "Our continent's last known Spirit Saint—Great Fallon—completely comprehended the water element. Before he died, he created the Eternal Lake in the heart of the desert. Even now, after fifty thousand years, with no underground spring or rainfall, that lake remains full."
He continues, "Every Spirit King who ever broke through did so with mastery over a single element. That's the foundation of everything we know."
Riku leans back, calm in the face of their doubt. "But none of those Spirit Kings ever truly stepped into the Spirit Saint realm, did they?"
Their expressions shift—uneasy, but listening.
"Taka, did you forget my lineage? One of my ancestors was considered a Spirit Saint. He left behind personal records. In his writings, he claimed that even after reaching what people called the Saint Realm, his cultivation was still limited to Spirit King. What allowed him to change the world around him wasn't power—it was his understanding of elemental law."
Their skepticism lingers, so Riku's tone sharpens slightly, her eyes narrowing.
"And for the record, the last true Spirit Saint of our world wasn't the First Blood Knight. It was Michael Sacer."
The name drops like a blade into the silence.
Taka breaks it first. "Didn't he sacrifice his life to injure the Bone Clown?"
Riku nods. "He did. But I heard from an elder—at the very last moment, when he self-destructed, his spirit broke through to the next realm. He couldn't stabilize it, but before he died, he revealed how to advance beyond the Spirit King realm."
Seeing the anticipation in their eyes, she doesn't draw it out. "To break through, you have to combine one hundred runes into a single unified rune. And those one hundred runes don't have to be from just one element."
The room falls into thoughtful silence.
Taka doesn't speak, but his mind begins to race. He currently holds forty-five dark element runes and ten fire element runes. To meet the requirement, he needs six more—either fire or dark. He knows it's easier for him to comprehend fire energy than push deeper into the shadowy core of the dark element. So the decision comes swiftly. From now on, he'll focus on fire elemental comprehension.
Nezru sits quietly, running through his own numbers. Forty-two metal element runes. Fourteen earth element runes. He's missing seven. Like Taka, he weighs his strengths and weaknesses. Earth elemental energy, though not his main affinity, resonates with his core more naturally than metal does. He decides—he'll chase earth runes from here on.
Both understand what they're truly facing now.
In cultivation, the first thirty runes form the outer layer of elemental energy. Almost every Spirit Realm cultivator manages this, as long as they aren't killed prematurely or lack the lifespan. Breaking into the Spirit Lord realm is almost inevitable with time.
The next thirty runes belong to the inner layer. From rune 31 to 60, comprehension becomes much harder. Only about ten out of a hundred Spirit Lords ever reach the Spirit King realm.
Then comes the core.
Runes sixty-one to ninety must be drawn from the very essence of the element, where its nature turns alien and unstable. Few manage to reach that level of clarity.
But the last ten runes—runes ninety-one to one hundred—don't exist within natural elemental energy at all. They are buried within alien energies, sometimes distorted, sometimes hidden beneath unfamiliar patterns. To uncover them, one must master not only the element itself but its echoes within foreign energies. Even when an alien energy shares a rune with a known element, its structure shifts. It becomes something harder to interpret, harder to hold.
That's why among one hundred Spirit Kings, perhaps only one truly touches the edge of ascension.
And now, Riku's words reveal a terrifying truth: even those who mastered a single element completely may never have reached the true Saint realm.
-
----
The next morning, in the Black Hill region of the Five Sacred Continent, yet another node defense war rages—one among hundreds playing out across the world.
Here, the defenders of the node are the Greyrose Circus. The attackers: an army led by Gu Mingzhu.
Floating high in the sky, Gu Mingzhu watches the battle below, her gaze calm and expectant. For seven days, her army has besieged the enemy fort, waiting. The fort's walls are cracking, its formation strained under the relentless barrage of spells. She knows the Greyrose Spirit Lord will emerge soon. They have no choice. The barrier won't hold much longer.
She could have ended it on the first day—unleashing her full power, tearing down the shield herself—but that would've cost her too much. If she drained herself, the Greyrose Spirit Lord could exploit the weakness and turn the tide.
Now, she senses it—the formation's energy fluctuating, fraying. It's about to collapse.
She closes her eyes and prepares.
Wood elemental energy begins to rise from her body, spiraling upward in delicate streams, wrapping around her until she's encased in a cocoon of glowing green. At first, it's no bigger than a person. Then it swells—three times human size—until cracks form along its surface.
From within, crimson-tipped fingers pierce the shell.
A pair of hands tear it open.
A figure emerges—nine meters tall, humanoid, skin glowing light green. She wears a flowing dress of rose petals, her body covered in a fine thorny mesh.
This is Gu Mingzhu's Phantasm.
Among Kanoru's personal army, she alone has fully formed one. The Avatar Spell, used by others, is only a beggar's imitation—lacking the soul-deep power of a true Phantasm. Lou Chen is close, but not yet complete. He's focused on merging his fire elemental runes with wind and metal runes—sixty-two runes in total. If he succeeds in connecting them, he will break through to the Spirit King Realm.
But for now, only Gu Mingzhu stands in this class.
With a sharp snap of her whip, she lashes toward the fort. A green crescent of energy rips through the sky like a blade, crashing into the already-weakened barrier.
That strike breaks the camel's back.
The formation shatters.
From the collapsing fort, a figure emerges—a humanoid wolf, towering and fierce. Blood-colored fog begins to swirl around it, coiling like smoke until a second head grows from its shoulder.
A two-headed wolf beast stands tall—and charges straight at Gu Mingzhu.
As she and the beast clash in the skies above the Black Hill, far away, in another part of the world, a different battlefield unfolds.
A massive city surrounds a powerful node, guarded fiercely by the Greyrose Circus. The city has been under siege for years, yet the world's combined forces have failed to break through its defenses.
Now, high above the city, several Spirit Lords and Spirit Kings hover silently in the air—not looking down at the city, but watching the sky, waiting.
Then, they spot it—a black dot in the distance.
It flashes toward them, vanishing and reappearing as it crosses hundreds of meters in the blink of an eye. The dot grows clearer with each appearance, revealing a man—a single figure cutting through the sky like a blade of wind.
Then, in a blink, he appears directly in front of them.
The Spirit Lords and Kings bow in unison.
"Welcome, Wind Sword Master—Hayate."
Hayate gives them a silent nod, his face calm and sharp as a blade. Without another word, he flies past them and stops in the air, gazing down at the besieged city.
"Tell our forces to halt the attack," he says, voice low and steady. "Have them retreat a short distance."
One of the Spirit Lords bows again. "Yes, sir," he replies, then darts downward to deliver the command.
Within minutes, the attack halts, and the armies retreat to a safe distance from the city. The battlefield falls silent.
Then Hayate raises his voice. "Come."
Wind elemental energy begins to stir, rippling through the air as thunderclouds swirl into existence above the city. Eight massive tornadoes form around the perimeter, slamming into the city's energy shield. Lightning crackles from the clouds, striking both the barrier and the tornadoes, weaving together a cage of wind and thunder around the entire city.
But this is not the true attack—only the preparation.
In his spiritual space, Hayate has formed a unique connection: one hundred elemental runes, combining 94 wind runes and 47 lightning runes, alongside fragments of other elements. Years ago, when his comprehension of wind energy stalled at ninety-four, he turned his focus toward lightning, hoping to advance.
He attempted to form the legendary unified rune by linking one lightning rune to the already connected hundred. For two years, he failed. Though he couldn't complete the merge, he noticed something: by rearranging the elemental ratio—reducing wind runes, increasing lightning—his control over both elements deepened.
And through repeated experimentation, he did the impossible.
He created a new kind of energy, neither sacred nor evil. A fusion. Seventy wind runes, thirty lightning runes—a unique hybrid born from his will. When this new rune formed in his soul, the rest of the hundred responded, resonating and shifting, growing more harmonious.
Now, above the city, that energy churns around him.
He looks down at the shielded city, nearly invisible under the dome of spiraling wind and thunder. His eyes narrow.
"Formed."
The elemental cage begins to compress. Wind and lightning blend seamlessly, no longer distinct. The city flickers into view, its energy barrier trembling.
The storm coalesces into a single colossal shape—a glowing egg of fused elements.
Cracks spread across its shell. A lizard's head pushes through, and it roars—a thunderous sound wave that tears through the land, uprooting trees, ripping soil, and shaking the city's barrier to its core.
The egg shatters.
Out bursts a humongous winged lizard, radiating power. It spreads its vast wings and rises into the sky, lightning crawling across its scales. With another roar, it dives.
The energy shield shatters like glass.
And then comes the slaughter.
Alone, the elemental lizard lays waste to the defenders of the Greyrose Circus—burning, crushing, electrocuting. No one survives.
Once the destruction ends, the lizard shrinks midair and flutters to Hayate's side. It lands gently on his head, coils around like a cat, and closes its eyes—falling asleep.
The Spirit Lords and Kings stare, stunned. They sense vitality from the creature—real life, not just a spell.
They turn wide-eyed to Hayate, silently questioning.
He simply smiles—and flies away.