The victory in the Inter-Lance Melee made Lance Ashcroft the top-ranked apprentice lance. The rewards were substantial: a vault of high-grade spirit stones, a collective bonus of 5000 merit points, and the right to commission a custom piece of equipment from the Grand Foundry.
Dorian, as lance leader, made the decision. "We're getting Arlan his bracer. A proper one."
The Spatial Stabilization Bracer had been Arlan's pet project for months, a fusion of runic theory, his understanding of Kael's Asymmetrical Bind, and the purifying influence of the Void-Heart Flame. With the lance's funding and a formal commission, Foreman Grise and Archivist Torvin himself oversaw its construction.
It took two weeks. The final product was a masterpiece of Arcanum craftsmanship.
It was a forearm bracer made of layered Astral-Silver and Shadow-Weave Alloy, dark grey with subtle silver tracery. Inlaid into its surface was a complex, three-dimensional runic array that glowed with a soft, pulsing purple light—the stabilized energy of the Void-Heart Flame, used as the array's power source and purifying core. The design was based on his fragment, but perfected—an asymmetrical binding matrix meant not to contain, but to harmonize.
When Arlan put it on, it synced with his core. A wave of profound stability washed through him. The constant, background hum of spatial instability was quieted. The bracer actively monitored the "weather" in his soul, and when it detected a dangerous spike, it emitted a counter-resonance of purifying flame and shadow energy, smoothing the jagged edges before they could tear.
His spatial instability, which had plateaued at 22%, began to drop. 21%... 20%... 19%. For the first time since his Awakening, he felt a sense of control over the vast, frozen lake within him. He could draw on more power, more cleanly.
The bracer also had an offensive function. By focusing his intent, he could channel a spatial slash through the bracer's runes, creating a Rune-Enhanced Dimensional Cut that was faster, sharper, and left a lingering spatial distortion that disrupted other magic.
With the bracer completed and the victory high, Arlan's cultivation, which had been steadily climbing, reached a tipping point. He was at the peak of 2nd Order, Rank 9. The barrier to the 3rd Order—the Captain Realm—loomed before him.
Breaking through required more than just accumulated mana. It required a Qualitative Evolution of the Core: the transition of his liquid mana vortex into a solid, spinning Mana-Crystal.
The resources from the melee victory provided the means. He purchased a Grade-3 Spirit-Convergence Elixir and a Crystal-Seed Pill, rare and expensive aids meant to guide and solidify the breakthrough.
He requested and was granted use of a high-security, private cultivation chamber in the Sanctum. He informed only Dorian and Selene of his attempt.
The chamber was a sphere of white stone, devoid of all sound and external mana. Absolute stillness. Arlan sat in the center, the bracer on his arm, White-Crack across his knees. He consumed the elixir and the pill.
The process was not violent like the ghost-cap, but profound and intense. The elixir flooded him with pure, dense mana, swelling his liquid vortex to its absolute limit. The Crystal-Seed Pill provided a template, a perfect lattice structure for the mana to crystallize around.
He focused inward, guided by Lyra's lessons on understanding his own energy flows. He felt the liquid mana, thick as syrup, spinning faster and faster in his dantian. Pressure built. The bracer on his arm glowed, its runes pulsing in time with his heartbeat, keeping the surrounding spatial energy calm and contained.
Now.
With a thought of absolute will, he compressed.
The liquid vortex collapsed inward. There was a soundless, spiritual CRACK, a moment of terrifying nothingness, and then... light.
A brilliant, multifaceted crystal, about the size of a walnut, now spun where the vortex had been. It was not one solid color. Its core was a clear, diamond-like silver—his spatial affinity. Woven through it were threads of deep black—his umbral affinity. And at its very heart, a tiny, steady flame of pure white burned—the Void-Heart Flame's permanent imprint.
It was a Dual-Affinity Core with a Heavenly Flame Heart. An impossibility by standard cultivation metrics.
Power, raw and clean and immense, flooded his being. His meridians burned as they expanded to accommodate the new, higher-quality energy. His body was reforged in the outpouring mana. Bones grew denser. Muscles fibers realigned. His senses exploded in clarity.
He could feel the space around him, not just see it. He could sense the tiny gravitational pull of the people in the building above, the minute dimensional tension of the chamber's wards. He could feel the shadows in the room as tangible, cool pools he could reach out and touch.
The process took hours. When he opened his eyes, the world was new.
He checked his status.
Arlan Thorne
Cultivation:3rd Order, Captain-rank (Rank 1)
Core:Spatial-Umbral Crystal (Stable)
Instability:15% (Dramatically Reduced)
Mana Pool:50/1500 (Capacity Expanded)
Umbral Pool:50/500
Physique:A (Exceptional)
Title:Captain of Lance Ashcroft
He had done it. He was a 3rd Order Captain. A true power in the Awakened world. No longer an apprentice. A commander.
He stood, his movements fluid and charged with latent power. A thought flexed the space around his hand, causing the air to warp visibly. A whisper of will made the shadows in the corner deepen.
He left the Sanctum. Dorian was waiting outside, leaning against the wall.
"Well?" Dorian asked.
In answer, Arlan let a fraction of his new aura flare—a combined pressure of silent space and hungry dark, edged with purifying white.
Dorian's eyes widened. He was a strong 2nd Order, Rank 8, but he took an involuntary step back. "Stars above... you did it. That's... that's a Captain's aura."
"Report to the lance. We have a new standing," Arlan said, his voice carrying a new, unshakeable authority.
The news spread fast. A 3rd Order breakthrough in the middle of the second year was rare, remarkable. That it was Arlan Thorne, the spatial anomaly, made it a sensation.
He received a formal notice from the Aegis Network, upgrading his access level and his mandatory missions to C-Rank and higher. He was now expected to lead, not follow.
His first test came a week later. A C-Rank mission: investigate missing patrols near a dormant rift scar in the lowlands. His lance was his to command.
They deployed via skiff. The scar was a desolate place of jagged, black glass and twisted rock, where reality had been badly burned long ago.
They found the remains of the patrol—not killed by rift-spawn, but by precise energy weapons and shadow magic. Silent Accord work. And they found something else: a hidden, active dig site. The Accord was excavating something from the heart of the scar.
As they scouted, they were ambushed. Not by Accord operatives, but by a creature released by the excavation—a Spatial Predator, a serpentine horror native to the voids between dimensions, drawn by the disturbed energies. It was a 3rd Order threat, phase-shifting through reality, its maw a mess of jagged spatial teeth.
The fight was brutal. Kaelen's lightning was useless—it phased through the creature. Mira's ice couldn't hold it. Dorian's vines were sliced apart by natural dimensional edges.
The creature zeroed in on Arlan. It could sense his spatial affinity, a kindred but delicious energy.
It lunged, phasing through a rock to appear right in front of him.
Arlan didn't flinch. For the first time, he fully embraced his new power. He didn't just slash with space. He commanded it.
He raised his bracer-clad arm. "Anchor."
A spatial anchor fixed the creature's position in reality, preventing its phase shift for one crucial second.
"Fold."
The space around the creature's elongated neck folded in on itself, like a sheet of paper being crumpled. The predator's neck was violently twisted and compressed from all sides.
"Slash."
Purple-Crack flashed, powered by his 3rd Order mana and the bracer's runes. A crescent of silver and white light, clean and absolute, cut through the crumpled space and the creature's neck within it.
The Spatial Predator's head separated from its body with a sound like shattering crystal. Its form solidified, then dissipated into motes of void energy.
The fight was over. His lance stared at him, shocked by the display of absolute, surgical dominance.
He had just solo-killed a 3rd Order dimensional horror in three moves.
He turned to the hidden dig site. The Accord agents had fled during the fight, leaving their equipment. But they had left something in their central tent. A stone tablet covered in pre-System runes. And a logbook.
Arlan picked up the logbook. One entry caught his eye:
"Project: God-Forged. Subject located: 'The Sundered Shield' fragment confirmed at Scar Gamma-7. Extraction delayed by local fauna. New potential asset identified: Cadet Arlan Thorne. Anomaly has achieved 3rd Order breakthrough. Growth rate exceeds all models. Recommend reclassification from 'Observe & Contain' to 'Acquire or Terminate'. The Silent Accord cannot allow a self-willed god to rise."
He closed the logbook, his blood cold. The Accord's mission was clearer now. They weren't just maintaining order. They were hunting relics of the gods... and they saw him as one of those relics. A thing to be collected or broken.
He was no longer just a student in their game. He was a prize. Or a threat to be erased.
He looked at his group, then at the vast, scarred landscape. The academy felt far away. The real war wasn't in the classrooms or arenas. It was here, in the forgotten places, over the broken pieces of divinity.
He was their leader now. It was time to start acting like one.
"Gather everything," he ordered, his voice cutting through the wind. "We're taking it all back. The game has changed. And we're not playing by their rules anymore."