The Sovereign Chronicles novel Chapter 40

The brutal intelligence from the Ironcrag Quarry only forged Kaelen's resolve into unbreakable steel.

Celine pleaded with him for two agonizing days before finally yielding to the inevitable. After forcing him to memorize a litany of survival protocols, she covertly slipped him the highly classified topographical maps he demanded.

Two days later, the official ledger for the year's second Grand Hunt was nailed to the Proving Grounds' boards. At the very bottom of the final column, written in stark black ink, was a single name: Kaelen Stormridge.

Anyone with half a brain knew Maelor's cabal had rigged the registry. Otherwise, a Phase Five Servitor had precisely zero chance of passing the Vanguard Vault's screening process.

The masses could only pity the boy. He had made the fatal error of not only humiliating Maelor, but publicly antagonizing him afterward. Maelor's roots in the Sanctum ran terrifyingly deep, commanding legions of lethal seniors and juniors. Now, they had legally dragged Kaelen into the slaughter-zone, painting a massive target on his back as the Hunt's premier prey.

The morning after the roster went public, Kaelen strode onto the Fifth Proving Grounds. This was the staging area for the deployment.

Hundreds of initiates had already amassed on the massive stone plaza. They were predominantly veterans in their early twenties, their aether signatures radiating between Phase Six and Phase Nine of the Spirit Warrior Tier.

Some were grizzled veterans of a dozen Hunts, lounging with cold indifference. Others were greenhorns, jittery with adrenaline, eagerly badgering the seniors for survival tactics.

The Grand Hunt was a graveyard, but it was also a treasury. Surviving meant harvesting priceless aether herbs, stumbling upon the corpses of legendary beasts, or capturing Spirit Beast cubs. For ambitious disciples suffocating under the Sanctum's rigid hierarchy, plunging into the abyss was the fastest way to rewrite their destiny.

Hence, the sheer scale of the operation—a thousand elite combatants marching into the wild.

Many initiates had formed permanent, blood-sworn Warbands, deploying into every Hunt together and splitting the spoils equally.

Across the plaza, lone wolves were brokering alliances, while established Warbands aggressively recruited heavy hitters to bolster their ranks.

The moment Kaelen's boots hit the stone, a swarm of recruiters descended on him.

"Brother! How many Hunts have you survived? Care to sign on with our Warband?"

"Friend, we're a newly forged crew. We need front-line brawlers with your kind of mass. What do you say? A fair cut of the loot!"

"What Phase are you? We're looking for... wait... why do you look so familiar?"

"Blood and ashes, that's Kaelen!" someone hissed.

"I am," Kaelen began, but before he could finish the syllable, the recruiters scattered like cockroaches fleeing a torch, leaving him standing in a five-foot circle of isolation.

Others who had been walking over abruptly pivoted, acting as if they hadn't seen him. In their eyes, Kaelen had raw power, yes. But he was radioactive. A walking death sentence. The odds of him being butchered by a mob on the very first night were astronomically high. They were deploying to hunt beasts and claim fortunes, not to catch a stray blade meant for a dead man.

Kaelen couldn't have cared less. He had precisely zero intention of shackling himself to a Warband anyway.

The Proving Grounds buzzed with violent anticipation.

Knots of warriors huddled over maps, outlining kill-zones and dreaming of high-tier artifacts. Some Warbands were actively negotiating truces, planning joint strikes to bring down Apex-tier Spirit Beasts.

Yet, as Kaelen scanned the sea of faces, his eyes locked onto a handful of supreme anomalies.

Prime Initiate, Gideon!

Prime Initiate, Titus Ironridge!

Prime Initiate, Darian!

He even spotted the reclusive ghost of Mount Veridia—Linnea!

"What the hell are they doing here? They enlisted for the Hunt?" Kaelen narrowed his eyes. These absolute monsters didn't lack for aether herbs or combat tutelage. Then it clicked. They were forging themselves for The Conclave of the Eight Sanctums. These apex candidates were deliberately throwing themselves into the deepest, deadliest sectors of the forest, using the shadow of death to force their bottlenecks to shatter.

As Kaelen observed them, their eyes inevitably found him.

"Darian, that's the Servitor. Kaelen," a female Adept whispered to the towering man.

Darian turned with agonizing slowness, his gaze locking onto Kaelen. His eyes were predatory, his face a slab of granite. Even from fifty yards away, Kaelen could feel the suffocating, crushing gravity of his presence.

Kaelen didn't flinch, meeting Darian's predatory stare head-on. For years, Kaelen had covertly stalked Darian's training sessions from the shadows. It was through endlessly dissecting Darian's movements that Kaelen had reverse-engineered the first three phases of The Titan's Vigor, granting him the power to finally shatter his mortal limits.

Darian held the stare for a long, heavy moment. Then, he began to walk toward Kaelen. He was built like a siege engine, his strides devouring the distance. Stripped of heavy armor, his body was a masterclass in lethal musculature—coiled, dense, and bursting with explosive kinetic potential. He wasn't overly bulky; he was perfectly, terrifyingly proportioned. And fiercely handsome.

He was the reigning champion of The Titan's Vigor, a man whose explosive power had terrorized the Azure Sky Sanctum for years.

Given his status as a Prime Initiate, it was practically guaranteed he would inherit the legendary Terra-tier codex: Codex of the Primeval Titan. His future was boundless.

"Darian's moving on Kaelen!"

"Is he going to execute him right here?"

"So that's Kaelen? First time seeing the dead man walking."

"Oh man! Darian vs Kaelen? I've been praying for this!"

"I've been dying to see Darian's reaction to Kaelen stealing his martial art. Hehe, the blood is about to flow."

Gideon, Lian, and the other Prime Initiates turned their full attention to the impending collision. Darian was a Phase Eight titan who fought like a berserker. Very few in the Sanctum had the suicidal courage to cross blades with him.

"You are Kaelen." Darian stopped three paces away, his eyes dissecting the boy.

"Senior Darian." Kaelen offered a crisp, perfectly executed martial salute. Neither arrogant nor subservient.

"Output of a single strike. Give me the weight."

"Your skin is thicker than a dragon's hide. They tell you to show up, and you actually march to your own execution? If they told you to slit your throat, would you be this obedient?"

"Open your eyes, peasant. Look around this plaza. Every single warrior here is a Phase Six minimum."

"A literal boot-licking Servitor, desperately trying to crawl into the ranks of your betters. Are you delusional, or just pathetically eager to die?"

"Did you actually convince yourself that surviving Maelor gives you the right to challenge Phase Sevens? He was playing with his food. Once his bones mend, he'll crush your skull like a grape."

"Piss off! Crawl back to whatever gutter you sleep in! The Hunt is a game for gods, not a slaughterhouse for stray dogs."

Kaelen merely smiled, shaking his head. "Does barking like this make you feel powerful?"

"I think it's highly entertaining! Don't you?"

"Shut your mouth and crawl back to your masters!"

"Always acting so high and mighty. Do you genuinely still believe you're the 'Little Lord' of your ruined city? You should be on your knees thanking us that we haven't snuffed out your pathetic life over the last eight years!"

This was a calculated humiliation. Stay, and they would break him in front of a thousand witnesses. Leave, and his spine would be officially broken; he would never be able to hold his head high in the Sanctum again.

Kaelen's expression remained colder than ice. "The deployment is about to commence. I'd rather let my blade do the talking in the woods than waste breath on cowards in the courtyard."

"Trade blows? You think you're worthy to trade blows with your betters—" The lanky youth sneered, leaning right into Kaelen's face.

Suddenly, a pitch-black Warblade cleaved the air, stopping millimeters between their noses.

"Who the hell—" The pack spun around, ready to roar in fury. The words died in their throats as all the blood drained from their faces. Titus Ironridge!

Titus stood there, his wild hair blowing in the wind, his narrow eyes sharper than the blade in his hand. He radiated an aura of pure, unadulterated violence. He stepped forward, lifting the flat of the Warblade and slapping it ruthlessly against the lanky youth's cheek. *Smack! Smack!*

"Step. Back."

The arrogant pack's aura shattered instantly. Not a single one dared to breathe, let alone retaliate. They stumbled backward in terror.

The hundred-strong army of the Grand Elder's faction instantly tensed, hands dropping to their hilts, their faces darkening as they glared at the scene.

The rest of the plaza watched in stunned silence. Absolutely no one had predicted Titus Ironridge of all people would intervene.

Among the younger generation of the Azure Sky Sanctum, Titus's raw talent and lethal combat power rivaled even the Gold-Crest Paragons. Furthermore, he was wildly unpredictable, infinitely more savage, and backed by a terrifying lineage.

Titus stepped squarely in front of Kaelen, pressing the razor edge of his Warblade directly against the lanky initiate's throat. "A man should know his exact worth. If you had been given the exact same broken resources and torture Kaelen endured for the past eight years, you wouldn't even be fit to lick the blood off his boots today. Stow your pathetic, boot-licking arrogance. If you have the power, draw your blade and execute him right now. If you don't... shut your mouth and piss off."