SSS-Ranked Awakening: I Can Only Summon Mythical Beasts - Chapter 367 367: Elias And The Maze
The arena’s spiral gate closed with a hiss, sealing ElderGlow’s Year Five team inside the Maze of Wills.
From the crowd’s perspective, all was quiet—just floating magic circles measuring their vitals, no real show, no magical projections. The average spectator had no idea what was happening beneath the Colosseum floor.
But the Deans, Professors, and certain senior alumni watched more than the rest. Not the battlefield… but the metrics.
Leana stood at the very edge of the upper platform, arms crossed, eyes focused not on the crowd or the Colosseum, but on one particular name:
Elias Verdan.
His readout was too calm.
The other three ElderGlow circles were shifting like storm-tossed ships. Their vital signs dipped erratically. Emotional instability spiked in sudden bursts. One student—Cael—had dropped drastically in stability in just three minutes.
His circle was a darker shade of yellow compared to the others.
But Elias?
Flatline calm.
Damon finally broke the silence beside her. “Alright. I’m curious. What exactly is he doing?”
Leana tilted her head slightly. “Nothing.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“He’s doing nothing in a way that should be impossible.”
Damon raised a brow.
Leana gestured toward the glyph. “Look at his mana fluctuation. No spikes. No defensive flares. No clash signatures.”
“You’re saying the Maze isn’t attacking him?”
“No, it is,” she said. “But he’s walking through it like it can’t find a grip.”
“Then how’s it not detecting that as cheating?”
“Because he’s not fighting it. He’s blending into it.”
“When one’s faced with certain situations or conditions, their instincts flare up, causing them to act in certain predetermined ways. Not him. I don’t think that applies to him.”
Elias stood before a crystal wall that pulsed with fear-aura. Faint images flickered across the mirrored surface—shadows of past trauma, fear-memories stitched together by the Maze’s ancient core.
A smaller boy, beaten down in the dirt. A classroom filled with mocking eyes. A hand gripping a blade trembling against a back alley wall. Echoes of events that weren’t quite real, but weren’t lies either.
Elias didn’t flinch.
He reached toward the image—not to resist it, but to smooth it down with his palm, like wiping fog from a mirror. “I said I remember all of it.”
The wall shimmered.
Accepted him.
And opened.
Not cracked. Not shattered.
Opened.
The Maze was meant to react, to escalate. Yet instead… it let him pass, showing only a faint shimmer of light as he moved forward.
Above, Leana’s eyes narrowed.
“Did you see that?” she asked sharply.
Damon followed her gaze. “No aggression spike. And that corridor should’ve triggered an illusion lock.”
“It didn’t.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning he didn’t suppress the Maze. He convinced it he belonged.”
Damon frowned. “That’s not possible.”
Leana didn’t speak, her eyes fixed now—not on the readout, but the lingering magic circle trace that flickered briefly when the wall opened.
Only those attuned to adaptive magic architectures could see it.
Damon couldn’t.
But Leana could.
And so could the Deans.
High above, four of them sat in their darkened observatory behind a privacy veil along with a few other dignitaries like Lord Terrace—silent, watching Elias’s magic circle. None of them spoke.
But one of them, Dean Dethrein leaned forward just slightly. “What have you created?”
Dean Dethrein turned to another Dean. “Huh, Godsthorn?”
The other three members of ElderGlow’s team weren’t faring nearly as well but they weren’t in bad conditions either
Cael gripped his head as the walls twisted around him—flickering between his greatest fear (abandonment by his older brother) and the death he narrowly escaped two years ago in a field operation.
His essence pulse wavered. His barrier shattered. Sweat rolled down his forehead as his mind screamed at the false-memory projections.
Another student, Renna, faced her illusion twin—a version of herself that accused her of cowardice, manipulation, and betrayal. The projection’s voice was hers, but colder, crueler.
Her magic circle was blinking yellow.
They weren’t failing yet.
But they weren’t far off from it.
Elias, meanwhile, walked in silence.
His black eyes scanned the intersections of the Maze with the quiet focus of a chess player studying the board twelve turns ahead.
In one hall, a trap of illusory fire bloomed.
Instead of dodging it or shielding against it, Elias stepped into the heat, slowed his breathing…
And walked through it.
When he emerged on the other side, the fire vanished. The illusion shimmered out of existence.
He never resisted it.
He simply acknowledged it.
“Leana,” Damon said quietly, “he’s not just avoiding detection. He’s adapting.”
“No,” she replied softly. “The Maze is adapting to him.”
Damon’s stomach shifted slightly. “Should that be possible?”
“It shouldn’t.”
“Then how is it happening?”
She didn’t answer.
Because part of her was starting to wonder the same thing.
Up in the observatory, one of the Deans finally spoke.
The elder woman leaned forward, voice barely above a whisper.
“That student…”
“Elias Verdan,” murmured Dean Godsthorn. “Scholar-track. Essence resonance: neutral. No special affinity recorded.”
“And yet he walks as if he knows the code.”
“Was he trained?” Dean Oryll asked which a subtle frown.
“No. Not by me.” Dean Godsthorn shook his head.
A long silence.
Then Sean Oryll, asked again:
“Should we pull him?”
“No,” Dean Godsthorn replied, shaking his head repeatedly.
“Why not?”
“Because if he’s what I think he is… I want to see how deep he goes.”
Back on the balcony, Damon muttered under his breath, “I don’t like this.”
Leana looked at him.
He clarified. “Not him. Not what he’s doing. I don’t like that we don’t know what he’s doing.”
“He’s passed the surface layer,” she said, glancing at the sigil data.
“He’s barely breathing.”
Damon’s gaze shifted from the circles to the stone below.
“You ever seen someone trick the Maze before?”
“Once.”
“And?”
“She died.”
Damon looked at her.
“Not because she failed,” Leana said. “Because she went too far. She unlocked something the Maze wasn’t meant to show.”
Damon didn’t reply. ‘Technically, that’s failing.’ He thought to himself but didn’t utter a single word about it.
Elias stood before a door—circular, unlike the straight corridors from before. It bore no glyphs. No illusions. Just a single phrase carved into the arch:
“Only what you bring in may walk back out.”
He stood there for several heartbeats.
Then finally… he smiled.
Just faintly.
Then placed his hand on the door. “What I bring in, huh?”
The stone rippled.
And opened.
