SSS-Ranked Awakening: I Can Only Summon Mythical Beasts - Chapter 368: Come Back Soon

Chapter 368: Come Back Soon

Woooooong~

The Maze of Wills sealed itself with a deep, echoing hum that vibrated through the Colosseum floor.

One by one, the elite Year Five teams had entered—ElderGlow first, then Thornevale, followed by Wyrmere and Crowgarth. Four schools. Four squads.

And now the stone spiral had vanished beneath a shifting dome of magic-forged crystal.

From above, the audience could only see six floating magic circles hovering midair, each one linked to a participant.

They displayed vital metrics: heart rate, mana pressure, stability, emotional integrity. Green meant stable. Yellow meant wavering. Red meant collapse.

That was all the crowd could see.

And they watched.

Watched like priests before a divine altar, hoping the gods came back from the dark.

Damon leaned against the marble edge of ElderGlow’s upper observation tower. His gaze flicked between the glowing circles and the gradually rising murmur of the restless crowd. His lips twitched at every flicker in the data.

Miss Leana stood next to him, arms folded, her brow knitted.

Three of ElderGlow’s circles flickered between yellow and orange. Their students were struggling, but they were holding.

The fourth, belonging to Elias Verdan, remained still. Unmoving. Flat green.

“That’s unnatural,” Damon muttered. “Even Reiz is spiking. But Elias?”

Leana didn’t answer immediately. She stared at the circle for a long moment.

“He’s further than them.”

Damon looked at her. “You sound certain.”

She nodded once.

And then it happened.

A sharp tone rang out, crisp and high.

Elias’s magic circle blinked once.

Then shimmered.

And then—Vanished.

Gone.

Not blinking red.

Not indicating death.

Just… erased.

Like he’d never entered at all.

“What the hell just happened?”

“What was that?”

“Where’d he go off to?”

Gasps rippled through the upper levels.

In the front row of the observation balcony, Wyrmere’s instructors leaned forward. One of them turned sharply to another.

“That’s not a destabilization or anything similar,” he hissed. “That’s a complete severance.”

Dean of Thornevale frowned. “We’ve lost him.”

More advisors rushed forward. Magical pulses lit the air as instructors triggered locator charms, backup heartbeat tracers, even summoning channel pings—each one meant to track a student in crisis.

All returned blank.

“He’s not showing up in any where inside of the maze or outside,” someone said.

“His contract thread is frayed,” another reported. “We can’t even read where the essence broke.”

Crowgarth’s Dean, Dean Dethrein snarled. “Was he obliterated?!”

“Did the Maze just kill a student!?”

Damon tensed.

He turned to Leana.

She was calm.

Too calm.

He read her silence.

“You knew something like this might happen,” he said quietly.

“No,” she replied, eyes still on the space where the magic circle had been. “But I think I know someone who might’ve anticipated this.”

The soft sound of boots on stone rang behind them. Slow. Steady. Unhurried.

All heads turned.

Dean Godsthorn of ElderGlow approached the balcony’s ledge, hands folded neatly behind his back, his robes trailing like a shadow under the overhead light.

He said nothing for a moment.

He didn’t have to.

Everyone was looking to him.

When he finally spoke, his voice was calm. Measured. Full of weight.

“He’s not gone.”

Murmurs paused. Questions froze.

The female Dean of Thornevale turned toward him, frowning. “You’re certain?”

Godsthorn gave the faintest nod. “Yes.”

“But his magic circle vanished,” someone said.

“It did.”

“Then where is he?”

Godsthorn paused.

Then he turned toward the crystal-sealed spiral in the arena’s center, where the Maze slumbered beneath.

“…Further,” he said.

The word rang out like an echo.

“Further than the rest. To a place none of your students will reach. A place none of us here can just access.”

In the crowd, most remained confused.

But among the inner circles of faculty and senior observers, silence fell like a dropped blade.

Damon stepped forward slowly, keeping his voice quiet.

“Is there something deeper than the Maze’s trial chambers?” Someone’s voice echoed in the Colosseum that was now silent.

It was a question. And everyone demanded answers.

Godsthorn’s gaze flicked toward the speaker.

“I reached it once,” he said simply. “When I was still a student.”

Even Leana shifted slightly now. “There’s no record of that anywhere in the libraries.”

“There was no record,” the Dean said. “Because I was told not to record.”

He turned to face the gathered watchers fully.

“Decades ago, the Maze was still evolving. Less controlled. Less understood. It changed shape frequently. One year, it opened to something… deeper. A chamber that shouldn’t have existed. One carved not by architecture, but by will.”

He paused.

“And it accepted me. Briefly. Then sent me back. I will not explain further.”

Gasps came from the other instructors. Many of them exchanged glances of alarm. A few began whispering about long-forgotten records and vanished appendices from the Maze’s archive logs.

Godsthorn raised his hand.

“The place where Elias has entered… it is not failure. It is not destruction. It is a place beyond our reach. He will return. Slightly changed. But whole.”

“And if he doesn’t?” another high ranking instructor asked.

Godsthorn looked at him with eyes that gleamed faintly silver.

“Then it means he was unworthy of what met him there. But I do not believe that’s the case.”

In the chamber below, deep beyond the maze, Elias stood in total blackness.

There was no floor. No ceiling.

Just endless dark that held its shape like thought itself.

He stood still.

Listening.

Breathing.

His mana did not flare. His essence was still.

But the space around him reacted.

A ripple.

A pulse.

Not hostile. Not aggressive.

Curious.

The Maze was not testing him anymore.

It was… watching him.

He raised one hand.

And the darkness bent toward it like smoke drawn to flame.

Up above, the chaos slowly subsided.

The spectators, referees, Deans and other guests returned to their seats, some muttering, some skeptical, but most respecting the weight behind Dean Godsthorn’s words.

The man himself turned from the ledge and quietly returned to his place.

Damon stayed by the edge of the balcony, arms resting on the railing, eyes focused not on the other glyphs still flickering overhead, but on the one that had vanished.

“Come back soon, mysterious senior,” he murmured.

Then smirked faintly.

“Can’t win my bet if you don’t show up.”