Chapter 100- The Awakening.

Chapter 100: Chapter 100- The Awakening.

The sound of steel meeting steel rang out through the whole night.

Thankfully, the area was still under reconstruction—otherwise, someone would have filed a noise complaint by now.

Leo lunged, trying to land a single clean hit on Caelum. His whole body committed to the strike. No hesitation. No second-guessing.

Caelum’s eyes narrowed, just slightly. He deflected the blade with almost lazy ease, and in the same unbroken motion, brought the tip of his sword to rest against Leo’s throat.

Leo had lost. Again.

Zero to four.

The duel was over.

Leo let the sword slip from his fingers. It clattered against the stone floor.

He was drenched in sweat, chest heaving. Caelum, meanwhile, stood there looking almost bored—not a hair out of place, not a speck of dust on him. Leo caught sight of that infuriatingly clean face and just let himself sink to the ground.

He had nothing left to say.

And the worst part? Neither of them had even used a skill.

Caelum was leagues above him in level, and yet he’d fought the entire duel matching Leo’s pace, move for move. That kind of restraint—that kind of control—was almost inhuman.

Leo had lost plenty of times before, and he’d always hated it. This time was different, though. There was no hate in it. Just the quiet acceptance of the truth.

Caelum sheathed his sword. "You need to work on your foundations."

"Build the self first. Everything else follows from that."

Leo didn’t answer. He just stared at him, face blank.

"So where are you headed next?"

Caelum shook his head. "Just wandering. I’ve got a stack of quests to clear. And thanks to a certain someone, I might drop to second place on the leaderboard."

Leo managed a wry laugh at that.

Hugh, who’d been watching the whole fight, let out a low whistle and strolled over.

"Heh, kid. Last I saw, you were taking on ten, twelve guys at once. Today you got wrecked four times straight and never even touched him. How’s that feel?" He laughed, clapping Leo on the shoulder. "Good work, though. That’s what growing looks like."

Leo almost laughed at the old man’s shameless pep talk.

By then Caelum was already walking off. He paused a little ways out and turned back. "When this wakes up, I’ll come find you," he said, tapping his sword.

"Oh—and I’ve decided on a name for it....The Sword That Shall Split the Heavens - Sky Cleaver"

And then he vanished into the night.

Hugh watched him go, muttering, "Weird guy. Weirder than you, brat."

"Yeah," Leo said.

Then, a beat later: "Wait—I’m not weird."

"Let’s head back to the forge," Hugh said, already walking.

"Go on ahead. I’ll catch up."

The square emptied out, quiet settling in. Leo was alone now.

He sat down against the low wall at the square’s edge, and that’s when the soreness finally caught up to him.

I shouldn’t have thrown around holy power so recklessly. God, why do I have so many self-destructive skills.

Holy Power. Devilization. Hyperfocus.

"Am I a blacksmith or a suicide warrior?" he muttered to no one.

Leo sat there a long while, staring up at the sky, watching the night bleed slowly into dawn.

Overhead, the purple sky gave way to a pale, pearl-colored light. It touched the dragon skull monument first—that great curve of ancient bone standing over the empty square—tracing along its fractures, turning the pale surface to gold.

For a moment, the old split skull looked almost alive, like it might shift at any second.

Then the city woke up around him. Merchants started setting up their stalls. NPCs and players trickled in. Down at the crater’s construction site, laborers and engineers were already hard at work.

The square smelled like fresh-cut timber and cold stone, with that faint, clean bite of early morning air. Leo breathed it in and watched the light spill over the town.

Dawn had arrived.

And then, out of nowhere, a wave of dread washed over him.

[Ding~]

The sound rang out loud—not his personal notification chime, but something coming from everywhere at once. He looked up as another ding sounded.

[Ding~]

[WORLD ANNOUNCEMENT]

[A Player—Samuel—has unlocked the Quest of the Inverse.]

[The World has detected interference that is not its own making.]

[A NEW SYSTEM UPDATE WILL BEGIN.]

[All players will enter a frozen state for fine-tuning.]

[Fine-tuning duration: 30 minutes.]

[All players will then be forced to log out.]

[Forced logout duration: 12 hours.]

[The frozen state begins in 10 minutes.]

[Please stop whatever you are doing. Be ready.]

The whole square went still.

Leo read it over and over. The words just hung there in the sky, refusing to make sense.

A system update? He’d heard nothing about this the entire time he’d been in Asgard.

He stood frozen on the spot. Across the square, a merchant hung mid-bite into an apple, arm locked in place. The actual freeze hadn’t even started yet—everyone had just stopped on their own, stunned. NPCs and players alike.

Hugh was staring up at the same glowing text. "Well. That’s new."

Leo’s thoughts were racing.

The word Inverse alone was enough to put him on edge—he knew exactly how dangerous it would be if those things ever got loose again. He’d faced its avatar once, briefly, and that had been more than enough.

And this Samuel person—who even was he? Was he trying to help it?

Please don’t let this be about freeing the Inverse, Leo thought, and sighed.

The NPCs looked shaken. The players, on the other hand, just seemed mildly annoyed.

He could hear them muttering around him.

"Man, this Samuel guy’s out of his mind."

"Yeah, but I’m way more curious what the update’s gonna bring," an archer said, rubbing his hands together.

"Tch. There goes twelve hours of game time. Not a fan," a female assassin grumbled.

Still just a game to them.

Leo sighed and shook his head.

The square kept filling up as more players wandered in for the morning market rush—except now, instead of shopping, everyone was clustered in groups, talking over the announcement.

Nobody moved.

The minutes crawled by.

Then it started.

Leo felt it before he understood it—a wave of energy rolling out from the ground, spreading until it reached him and everyone else.

It began at his fingertips. A cold, creeping sensation climbing up through his knuckles, his wrists, like something reaching straight for his soul.

Everyone around him had gone rigid.

Fine-tuning. Fine-tuning what, exactly?

The thought worried at him.

The cold kept climbing, and somewhere in it, he felt his mind and body syncing up—like he was somehow becoming more himself than before.

He tried to move, tried to speak. Nothing worked.

Then the pain hit—tearing through every muscle, every fiber of him, like his cells were being torn apart and rebuilt from scratch.

Every player in the world felt it, though the intensity varied. What none of them knew yet was that the ones with higher spiritual integrity were suffering the worst of it, while those with lower integrity barely felt a thing.

Nobody could scream. Nobody could move.

It felt like being tortured from the inside out.

Then, just as suddenly, it stopped.

Thirty minutes, gone.

And every player screamed at once, collapsing to their knees, some falling over entirely.

The NPCs just stood there, stunned, watching players scream in agony they clearly couldn’t feel themselves.

Before anyone could react, every player vanished.

[All players will be forced to log out. Estimated downtime: 12 hours.]

Leo woke up back in the real world.

The situation felt uncomfortably familiar—he was covered in grime and some sticky substance again, head to toe. He bolted for the bathroom and scrubbed himself raw, the smell refusing to budge for several rounds.

The same chaos was playing out everywhere. Some people had discovered their real bodies , buried under someone else’s mess and thought it was a prank someone had pulled off. Others were in the middle of screaming matches with siblings, convinced it was some elaborate joke.

But Leo knew exactly what this was.

So all that pain—that was for the cleansing?

Last time he’d gone through this, he’d come out stronger. This time felt the same. Maybe even more so.

Stat synchronization had begun.

And Leo understood, with sudden clarity, what that meant: the world was on the verge of waking up.

Players with higher spiritual integrity would sync faster—nobody had figured that out yet, but they would soon enough.

He tested his new strength almost on instinct, throwing a casual punch at the wall. His fist went straight through the concrete like it was cardboard.

He sat back down, trying to steady himself and think through his next move.

Then he remembered—Surtr had said he could see everything happening in the real world.

He tried reaching out, but got nothing back.

Right. Surtr was cultivating, or something like that. Unreachable for now.

He closed his eyes and turned inward, searching—and there it was. A fire burning quietly in the dark.

He reached for it.

When he opened his eyes again, a golden flame was dancing in his palm.

The eternal flame.

He could summon it now. Even here, in the real world.

. . .