Chapter 164: Entrance Trial

When Terrence surfaced after a very long time, the first three people who grew genuinely terrified were the three city administrators behind the whole scheme.

Who were they? Well, they obviously weren’t in their right minds for failing to properly investigate Terrence’s true background, specifically his ties to the Lee Family—but they were simply too powerful and influential to care about such details.

When they had first heard about the opportunity for quick cash and the ability to control the surge of power among tamers just by acquiring the Beast God-Tier Supply, they were completely hooked.

And honestly, from a purely greed-driven perspective, they weren’t wrong.

In the very first week after seizing control of the business, they had felt unstoppable. They were able to pick top-tier beasts directly from the supply list and access the mysterious portal leading straight into a secluded Sanctuary.

Even if they couldn’t begin to comprehend the complex, higher-tier technology powering it, who cared? Being capable of using it, harvesting beasts, selling them for exorbitant sums, and commanding them, since the creatures were strangely not restricted to immediate binding contracts before taking orders, proved to them that their ruthless actions yielded massive results.

Not stopping there, they used the shop’s rare inventory to expand their political influence across neighboring cities. They even entertained grand fantasies of fighting back against the Anti-Nustra Legion and becoming the unquestioned rulers of the entire region.

But good things rarely last for long. That was the harsh reality they had ignored, blinded as they were by sudden power. They should have remembered that the richest food spoils the fastest.

In a dimly lit, high-security war room within the city administration office, three glowing holographic screens flared to life, projecting the nervous, irritated faces of the city administrators.

"We shouldn’t have underestimated that manager," barked the administrator from Hibiscus City, his voice ringing with tense agitation through the feed. "Stan Visor was a bloody mountain! If we hadn’t laced the shop’s water filtration with suppression poison and sent a full squad of elite enforcers to overwhelm him while he was weakened, he would have slaughtered our entire assault force on his own!"

"It doesn’t matter how we took him down; what matters is that he’s locked in the deep cells now!" snapped the Hanging City administrator, running a shaky hand over his face. "The real problem is Terrence! He’s back, and he just declared war against us!"

Vane Vance, the newly installed administrator of Suran City and a long-time bitter rival of the disgraced Lee Family, leaned back in his leather chair, a dark, desperate sneer twisting his face.

"Calm down, both of you," Vane growled, his eyes narrowing on the floating projections. "Terrence is strong, but he’s walking straight into a trap he can’t possibly survive. He’s already descended into the subterranean sector."

The other two administrators froze, their eyes widening on the holographic call.

"The Generation Zero layer?" the Hibiscus City administrator whispered. "Vane... you didn’t."

"I did," Vane replied with a cold, sinister grin. "Before Terrence even returned, I made a deal with the entity guarding the primary underground entrance, that ancient underground dweller sealed down in the dark. I promised him that he could use Stan Visor whatever he wanted."

"An underground dweller?" the Hanging City administrator asked, a chill running down his spine. "Can that monster actually handle a former Lee?"

"He’s a remnant from the forgotten era," Vane declared, slamming his fist onto the table as a vicious smile broke across his face. "Let Terrence rage all he wants. The moment he steps onto that creature’s turf, he isn’t just fighting a city guard, he’s fighting an ancient horror that hungers for surface blood." The wet, stone subterranean corridor erupted in blinding flashes of pale-yellow light.

...

CRACK!

A bolt of condensed lightning tore through the dark, vaporizing a stone pillar right where Terrence had been standing a millisecond prior.

Dust and red-hot embers hadn’t even touched the ground before a second bolt, faster, wider, and humming with a deafening frequency, snapped through the air from a completely different trajectory.

Terrence didn’t just dodge; he moved like an apparition.

Without relying on shadow magic, his raw physical strength shattered the stone beneath his boots with every explosive step. He pushed off the curved wall, vaulting upside down across the ceiling arches as three consecutive thunderbolts shot beneath him, melting the metal piping along the walls into glowing slag.

His reflexes were monstrous. Turning mid-air, Terrence kicked off an overhead stone beam, his body blurring into a sharp zigzag pattern through the tunnel. Every time a blinding flash lit up the dark, Terrence was already elsewhere—bending his spine at impossible angles, sliding across the slick stone floor, and leaping through the crisscrossing network of lightning like a lethal acrobat.

BOOM! BOOM! CRACK!

The entity was unrelenting, firing bolts from the absolute darkness of the tunnel’s far reaches. The enemy never once showed his physical form, shifting position through the electrical currents themselves. The flashes were blinding, casting erratic, strobe-like shadows across the ancient ruins, turning the tunnel into a chaotic killing field.

Terrence landed on a knee, his cold eyes tracking the residual ozone in the air.

ZRRRRT—BANG!

A lightning bolt didn’t shoot from ahead, it erupted from the wet floor directly beneath Terrence’s feet.

The sheer speed of the discharge caught him off guard. A blinding, golden flash blotted out his vision as thousands of volts surged straight up his right leg and chest.

"Gah!"

The impact blasted Terrence backward through the air. He slammed violently into a reinforced stone archway, cracking the thick bedrock before crashing down onto the wet cobblestones. Smoke hissed off his charred robes, and arc-lightning crackled across his skin, burning away a portion of his sleeve.

Slowly, Terrence pushed himself up from the rubble. He wiped a thin trace of blood from the corner of his lip with the back of his hand, his golden eyes glowing through the rising smoke.

"Fast..." Terrence muttered, his voice dropping to a dangerous, icy register as his shadow began to boil around him. "Very fast."