Chapter 141: A Chimera in the Making?

The semifinal bracket materialized on the crystal projection above the Colosseum, and fifty thousand voices died at once.

[Liana vs. Lord Commander Draven]

[Theo vs. Crown Prince Aurelius]

In the imperial box, Princess Calla covered her mouth. The attending ministers exchanged uneasy glances.

"Finally," Aurelius murmured, rising from his seat. The Aurelian Dragonblade materialized at his hip, its imperial aura pressing outward.

Down in the Academy section, Liana’s fingers tightened around Theo’s wrist.

"Be careful."

Theo gently removed her fingers, squeezed them once, and walked toward the arena steps.

The two combatants took their positions on the central platform. The Colosseum held its collective breath.

Aurelius stood with regal composure, golden Aquilas circling his shoulders, the Dragonblade unsheathed.

Across the arena, Theo held the Empyrean Edge loosely at his side.

By every measurable metric, he was outclassed... lower cultivation, inferior swordsmanship, fighting on enemy turf where every cobblestone fed his opponent’s weapon.

"Sovereign." Aurelius’s voice carried across the platform without effort. "I will make this offer once. Bend the knee. Swear fealty to the Crown, and I will overlook the incident at the Ashfall Peaks."

"The relic you chased through the tomb," Theo said, smiling, "my Empress absorbed it. You spent three days hunting a single strand of my hair. And your Praetorian Guard lost a fight to a six-thousand-year-old woman wielding dream butterflies."

A muscle twitched in Aurelius’s jaw. The golden Aquilas screamed.

"I take it that is a refusal."

"I am merely providing context," Theo replied, "for why the phrase ’bend the knee’ sounds particularly funny coming from you..."

The Aurelian Dragonblade erupted.

The accumulated Mandate of a ten-thousand-year dynasty poured through the blade like a dam bursting, and the Colosseum trembled to its foundations.

The pressure was staggering...

Fourth-Realm spectators in the upper galleries buckled. Lord Ashford gripped his armrest. Master Cato’s tea rippled in its cup.

"This is the Dragonblade at full deployment," Duke Regulus announced from the royal observation deck, a smile tugging at his face. "Within the Capital’s boundaries, no weapon in the younger generation can match it. The commoner has already lost."

But as the imperial aura reached its zenith, something stirred from across the arena.

A voice rose from Theo’s inner world.

His eyes hardened. He dismissed the Empyrean Edge; the divine sword vanished into its spatial sheath.

In its place, Theo extended his right hand, palm open, and called the weapon he had been restraining since the tournament’s first round.

The Abyssal Hammer materialized in his grip.

But this was not the weapon the audience remembered.

The warhammer’s obsidian head began to glow...

First with a volcanic crimson, then with branching veins of white-gold lightning crawling across its surface like a living circuit.

Ancient runes, older than the Empire itself, blazed to life along the haft.

A second wave of pressure crashed across the arena and collided with the Dragonblade’s golden light head-on.

"Is that..." Duke Regulus’s prideful smile evaporated.

He rose from his seat, Exarch-level senses extended to their limit, disbelief carved into every line of his face.

"That hammer... is a Primeval-grade weapon?"

No one answered.

In the Academy’s observation box, Headmaster Lucius gripped his pipe so hard the stem snapped.

Elder Tiberius had gone entirely white.

"Impossible," Tiberius whispered. "I examined that hammer myself. It registered as a mid-grade artifact. How is it..."

"Perhaps it was hiding," Pontifex Valerius said serenely from her corner seat.

Every head in the box swiveled toward her.

The ancient Exarch was sipping tea from a jade cup, legs crossed, expression utterly unruffled... as though watching two children squabble over a wooden sword in a schoolyard.

"Pontifex," Lucius managed, his voice strained, "did you know about this?"

She took another sip. "The boy seems to produce hidden trump cards the way rabbits produce offspring. I stopped being surprised somewhere around the third or fourth one."

She produced a second teacup from her sleeve.

"Tea? It is Lucid Dream Blend. The Sovereign gifted it to me as a signing bonus. Quite excellent."

Duke Regulus stared at her. Then at Lucius. Then back at the arena, where his prince was now facing a weapon that should not exist in the hands of any living mortal.

"Who *is* this woman?" the Duke demanded.

"That," Headmaster Lucius said, pinching the bridge of his nose, "is a very long story."

On the platform, Aurelius’s dual-pupiled eyes contracted to pinpoints.

He could see it with perfect clarity...

The Abyssal Hammer was genuine.

The weapon was a relic from the Age of Primevals, and its combat potential rivaled or exceeded the Dragonblade even within the Capital’s empowered boundaries!

"Theo." Aurelius’s voice carried a new edge. "You have surprised me."

"I get that a lot."

"But a supreme weapon remains an external tool," Aurelius continued, "Cultivation determines the victor. And you are a full tier below me."

Imperial radiance cascaded from his shoulders, crystallizing into ornate golden armor across his torso, arms, and legs... the Aquila Regalia, materialized through pure Imperial bloodline authority.

Only the exposed skin of his hands and neck remained unshielded.

His dual-pupiled eyes blazed, and a colossal golden dragon coiled behind him like a living shadow, its roar shaking the arena’s ward-stones.

"Submit," Aurelius commanded, "and I will offer you a position within the Crown’s inner circle. Your talents are wasted in obscurity."

He meant it...

Despite the tomb humiliation, despite the decoy, despite everything... Aurelius could acknowledge genius when he saw it.

A man with Theo’s resources, properly directed under the Crown’s authority, would be an invaluable weapon.

Theo tilted his head. "You know, Your Highness, I would not mind serving the Crown. The benefits sound generous."

Aurelius waited.

"But there is one problem."

"Which is?"

"Your Highness has spent the last three days watching Liana fight. Not as a fellow competitor. Not as a peer." Theo’s eyes gleamed. "You were searching for exploitable weaknesses."

Aurelius’s expression did not change.

"The Reborn Empress is a national treasure," the Prince replied evenly. "Understanding her capabilities is a matter of imperial responsibility."

"That is the issue." Theo raised the Abyssal Hammer.

His grin sharpened to a knife’s edge. "We are never going to see eye to eye, Your Highness."

Something shifted behind Aurelius’s golden irises.

The golden dragon behind Aurelius reared back and opened its jaws.

A sphere of concentrated Imperial Mandate gathered between its teeth... a miniature sun forged from ten thousand years of dynastic will.

The destructive force compressed within that single sphere surpassed the combined output of every attack Theo had witnessed in the tournament.

The distilled authority of every Emperor who had ever sat on the Eternal Throne, channeled through the bloodline of their last living heir.

"Theo." Aurelius’s voice was gentle now. "You have begun to annoy me."

The sphere descended.

Theo’s expression hardened.

He planted his feet, drew back his right fist, and met the golden apocalypse with raw might.

His arm trembled. Spiderwebbed across his knuckles, his wrist, his forearm—

And healed instantly.

The sphere of Imperial Mandate cracked. Splintered. And broke apart in a chaotic eruption of golden shrapnel.

Through the dissipating light, Theo surged forward.

The *Shadow-Weave Array Seal* across his back split open.

From beneath the concealing sigil, something monstrous unfurled...

A pair of enormous wings, scaled and veined with crimson light, each spanning twice his arm’s length.

They were Drake wings.

Grown from assimilated beast tissue. The product of the *Parasite* class’s most visceral function.

Moving at a speed that defied his cultivation tier, Theo closed the distance to the Crown Prince in a single wingbeat.

The Abyssal Hammer blazed in his grip. His fist aimed at the Crown Prince’s breathtakingly regal face.