Divine System: Land of the Abominations-Chapter 364: Draft.

The Trials Begin (5)

The wave reached him.

Nero felt it before anything else.

Not pressure.

Not force.

Absence.

It passed through him like something searching for structure—and finding none worth reacting to. For a brief, fleeting moment, there was a hollow stillness inside his chest, as though something had brushed against the very core of him...

...and failed to grasp anything.

Then it was gone.

Just like that.

No resistance.

No consequence.

No judgment.

It continued past him as if he had never been there.

The world resumed.

To his left, a boy seized mid-breath, his body locking rigid before white fire swallowed him whole. There was no heat, no flare—just an instantaneous reduction to ash that scattered and vanished before touching the ground.

To his right, another candidate disappeared entirely. No light, no sound. One moment present, the next... nothing.

Behind him, someone collapsed, choking on air that no longer seemed to reach his lungs. His fingers clawed at his throat before he was dragged backward by something unseen, his body scraping across the white surface until he was gone.

The wave moved on.

Uninterrupted.

Merciless.

Nero stood still.

He blinked once, slowly.

Then again.

His grip on the spear tightened—not from fear, but from the realization settling into place.

He had passed.

Whatever had just moved through them—whatever had burned, erased, and discarded without hesitation—

Had found nothing in him worth acting upon.

A quiet breath escaped him.

Relief came, but not explosively. It crept in, low and steady, pressing down on the remnants of tension that had built within him since the beginning of the ritual.

His shoulders loosened—just slightly.

"...So that’s it."

The words barely left his lips.

Around him, the process continued, but it no longer mattered in the same way. The threat had passed him. The blade had swung, and it had not touched him.

Still—

He watched.

Not out of curiosity.

Out of necessity.

Because even if he had survived it, he needed to understand it.

The wave advanced through the remaining mass of candidates, its pace unchanged. There was no delay, no exhaustion, no fluctuation in its execution.

It judged.

It decided.

It moved on.

The numbers dropped rapidly.

Spaces opened where bodies once stood.

Ash drifted and disappeared.

Silence swallowed every reaction before it could fully form.

And then—

It ended.

No final surge.

No signal.

The pressure simply ceased.

For the first time since the beginning of the Soul Examination, the white expanse felt... still.

Nero exhaled again, slower this time.

He didn’t lower his guard.

Didn’t relax fully.

Because something told him this wasn’t over.

Not yet.

Ahead, the Red Mother remained as she had been—frail, unmoving, yet impossibly present. The ten white-robed figures stood behind her, silent once more, their earlier chant now reduced to memory.

Then—

One of them stepped forward.

The movement was small.

But it carried.

Their head tilted slightly downward, as though observing something unseen beneath the surface of the world itself.

And then—

They began to chant.

The sound returned instantly.

Low.

Measured.

Unfamiliar.

It did not echo. It did not rise.

It existed.

The moment it began, the white expanse responded.

A circle of pale light formed beneath Nero’s feet.

Not drawn.

Not projected.

It simply... appeared.

He glanced down.

Every candidate had one.

Identical.

Perfect.

A faint hum vibrated through the ground—if it could even be called ground.

The air tightened.

Nero’s grip on the spear shifted instinctively, his stance lowering just enough to anchor himself.

He had no idea what was about to happen.

But he knew one thing—

This wasn’t the end.

The chanting deepened.

The circles brightened.

And then—

Everything vanished.

---

The Trials Begin (6)

Impact.

The world returned all at once.

Nero hit the ground hard, the force of it driving through his legs and into his spine. Bone fragments crunched beneath his boots as he dropped into a low stance, his spear already in motion before his mind had fully caught up.

He scanned.

The air—

Wrong.

Dry, but thick.

It carried a smell that clung to the back of his throat instantly.

Rot.

Old. Deep. Settled into the land itself.

He straightened slowly.

The ground beneath him was not soil.

It was bone.

Fine fragments layered across something harder beneath. Every step produced a brittle crunch, like walking across endless remains that had been ground down over ages.

Fog stretched outward in every direction.

Thin in places.

Dense in others.

It shifted slowly, revealing glimpses of the world beyond before swallowing them again.

Nero lifted his gaze.

And froze.

In the distance—

Ribcages.

Enormous.

Towering structures of bone, curved and jagged, rising from the wasteland like the remains of something far too large to comprehend.

Not one.

Not a few.

Dozens.

Hundreds.

Stretching across the horizon.

Half-buried.

Endless.

"...Golgotha."

The word formed in his mind without effort.

Above, the sky hung in a constant state of twilight. No sun. No stars. No movement. 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

Just a dull, unmoving expanse.

Around him—

Movement.

Candidates.

Thousands of them.

Scattered.

Disoriented.

Some rising.

Some shouting.

Some already running without direction.

The silence lasted less than a breath.

Then—

A scream.

Sharp.

Cut short.

Another followed.

Then more.

Nero turned.

The fog shifted.

And something moved within it.

Fast.

Too fast.

The first figure burst through the mist.

Tall—

No.

Long.

Its limbs stretched unnaturally, pale skin pulled tight across its frame. Its mouth split wide, revealing rows of blackened teeth that caught the dim light.

It didn’t run upright.

It dropped—

And lunged forward on all fours.

Behind it—

More.

Dozens.

Then hundreds.

The fog collapsed under their movement as the wave surged forward.

The distance vanished instantly.

The first line of candidates didn’t even have time to react.

Impact.

Bodies collided. Weapons rose too late. Screams broke across the wasteland as the creatures tore into them with unstoppable force.

Nero moved.

Forward.

His spear shot out, piercing through the chest of the first one that reached him. The resistance was wrong—soft, then suddenly dense as it struck something deeper within.

He twisted—

Ripped it free—

And stepped aside as another lunged past him, claws scraping across his armor with a sharp, jarring screech.

He pivoted.

Drove the spear downward—