CHAPTER 88: THE CROWN'S HUNGER

Orven leaned heavily against the cold granite wall, his chest heaving as he wiped a trail of blood from his chin. His mana pathways throbbed with a dull, aching exhaustion from surviving the spatial implosion.

"That is enough for today," Orven rasped, his voice raw. He slowly straightened up, retrieving his moon-steel daggers with trembling fingers. "My internal mana pathways are fragmented from that spatial shockwave. I need a full day to recover my core. Tomorrow... I will teach you the third and final pillar."

Caius inclined his head in a sharp, respectful nod. "Understood, Elder."

Orven turned his back, stepping toward the heavy iron exit doors. As he walked, his mind raced in a chaotic storm of cold sweat and sheer disbelief.

Tiny affinity?

Orven thought, a shudder running down his spine.

He recalled the foundational lore taught to every apprentice in the Mage Society. A Black Core was not a recognized stage of standard cultivation. In Nyx'ari history, a blackened core was known only as a tragic anomaly, the mark of a ruined, corrupt foundation resulting from failed mana circulation, shattered spirit pathways, or dark element backfires. Mages who developed black cores were considered broken, their magic unstable and destined for self-destruction.

When Orven had first taken Caius as a student, he had assumed the boy's dark mana was simply an unrefined, low-tier element. He had no idea Caius had possessed a Black Core from the very beginning, using it as his baseline power.

Yet Caius had not succumbed to corruption. He had taken a flawed, dangerous core that usually spelled death for a mage and forced it into a state of absolute, razor-sharp obsidian perfection.

The Patriarch needs to know this immediately, Orven thought, pushing through the heavy wooden doors. He didn't just survive a corrupted baseline; he mastered it.

Left alone in the quiet chamber, Caius did not rest.

The scent of blood and ionized space lingering in the air slowly faded. At the far end of the hall, the captive Arachne warrior remained resting against the cavern wall, exhausted from the tension of the earlier spar. Its eyes were shut, its breathing heavy and slow as it drifted into a deep sleep.

Caius walked slowly toward the sleeping creature, his boots making no sound against the stone.

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He didn't draw a blade. Instead, he closed his eyes and sank his consciousness deep into his soul sea, arriving at the central chamber of the Crown Core.

High above the dark throne room, his obsidian core rotated silently, radiating its razored edge and gravitational intent. In the corner of the realm, the Flame Demon shifted inside its circle, watching intently. Across from it, the spiritual phantom of the Arachne Princess pressed against her barrier, sensing what Caius was about to attempt.

Until now, I have only pulled spiritual essences into this realm upon death, Caius analyzed within his mind. But with my core's obsidian density and my new spatial mastery... why stop at spirits?

Caius opened his physical eyes in the real world. He extended his hand, pointing his index finger toward the floor directly beneath the slumbering beast.

Instead of projecting mana upward into a physical blade, Caius allowed liquid obsidian energy to seep out from his palm, pooling onto the granite. The shadow beneath the Arachne expanded rapidly, turning into a pitch-black reservoir of thick, viscous dark ink.

The surface of the black pool rippled silently, swallowing the ambient light around it.

Then, Caius activated Void-Stride in reverse. He mapped the internal spatial coordinates of his Crown Core directly onto the liquid shadow pool, opening a spatial rift between the physical world and his soul sea.

The dark ink pool liquefied completely, losing all physical friction.

Without a sound, the resting Arachne warrior began to sink. The thick, obsidian ink swallowed its eight heavy legs first, then engulfed its chitinous torso. The creature stirred faintly in its sleep, but before its instincts could even trigger a panic reaction, the ink pool pulled it downward like quicksand.

Glub.

The black pool swallowed the Arachne's head whole. In a matter of seconds, the massive six-foot-tall creature had completely submerged into the floor, vanishing from the training hall entirely. The pool of dark ink contracted back into a thin, ordinary shadow on the stone floor, leaving behind no trace, no blood, and no structural damage.

Inside Caius's soul sea, the dark throne room shook.

BOOM!

A thick, liquid portal opened in midair above the obsidian floor. The physical Arachne warrior plummeted straight out of the ink-black vortex, crashing heavily onto the dark stone of the realm. It scrambled up instantly, snapping awake as it screeched in confusion, its multifaceted eyes darting around the towering spectral throne room. It was no spiritual phantom; its physical, flesh-and-bone body was breathing and fully intact inside the realm of his soul.

From inside her glowing circle, the spiritual Arachne Princess gasped, her multifaceted eyes widening in sheer terror as she stared at a living member of her own race trapped inside the void. Beside her, the Flame Demon’s flames flared wildly in shock.

The living Arachne warrior lunged forward in panic, but before it could take three steps, a massive, glowing rune circle ignited beneath its feet, trapping its physical body instantly beside the other two presences.

Caius’s spectral form materialized at the center of the throne room, floating above his obsidian core. He looked down at the three trapped entities, feeling the absolute control he maintained over every atom within his Crown Core.

He had not just learned spatial magic. He had turned his soul sea into a physical prison.