The Psychopathic Beast Emperor-Chapter 56: Last Days of the Trial

It had been weeks and months for the participants of the trial, but to the outside world, it was finally three days. In a few hours, the trial would end.

Seated in the viewing space, the audience was rowdy and expectant as most of them knew what was coming up. In the Shadow Fang Sect, if there is a contest like this and all participants survive for that long till the last day of the contest, the elimination round is activated.

In this round, something capable of eliminating, if not all, most of the participants is released into the contest. Whoever survives this for long is crowned the winner of the contest.

This puts their weeks and months in the trial to the test. It was a survive or be eliminated.

...

Oblivious to whatever was coming, Exildra and Ren sat in silence and stared at the bare-chested boy seated in the stream. The water reached his chest and released vapor and bubbling sounds. His face was scrunched up in concentration as a small, crimson halo vertically hovered behind him.

The halo was about as big as a football, glowing intensely that his skin had turned crimson, while the water around him boiled.

Slowly behind him, behind the crimson halo, another one slowly took form. This one was also crimson, but with a lighter tone, though its glow made the first one seem like the flicker of a candle. It was much larger than the first one, even with how much it had formed.

"Do you think he can do it?" Exildra asked Ren, her tone filled with disbelief. Just how could one awaken in less than a month, considering the real world, it hadn’t even been a month, and push to the next level like it was a walk in the park? Plus, this breakthrough looked nothing like a Circle of Spirit breakthrough. It was more like a Circle of Initiation to Tier 2: Elemental Core Formation breakthrough.

"Well... Bahamut is built differently. This... is normal," Ren stated with awe in his tone. Bahamut didn’t cease to amaze him. It might be the system, but every action of Bahamut was more... ancient... old.

It was like he was doing the actual thing, while they were just mimicking it. In a normal sense, advancing from the Circle of Body to the Circle of Spirit stage could take up to six months. Even a year if you were that talentless. That was why rich and noble families trained their young ones from the onset, spending a lot of resources to have them awaken earlier and stronger. Then they spend more to push them to higher levels or refine their essences to the maximum, so that advancing in levels would be easy.

Exildra herself was a testament to that. She was at the Circle of Spirit, almost at the peak, but she lacked experience. If she had much experience, she wouldn’t have been subjected to the torture caused by a dead beast.

But Bahamut had none of their resources, whatever they were. He was blind. A reincarnated soul with a system that wants him to go and save his parents...

"He makes it look normal, but forming a full Circle of Spirit can take up to a week of full concentration and meditation. He already formed about half of it! That isn’t normal!!!" Exildra felt like tearing her hair off. What she was seeing was absurd to say the least.

She was known as talented for forming her Circle of Spirit in three days. But as compared to Bahamut, she was as well as trash.

"If you feel bad about yourself, think about those who formed it in a week..." Ren stated, causing Exildra to glare daggers at him. He wasn’t wrong, but she should have known better after spending two weeks with them.

He was as shameless as a hyena. He could send you through a rollercoaster of emotions with just a sentence.

Ragebaiting was his forte!

"Says the Tier 2 bunny posing as a pet!" Exildra growled, her eyes glowing with annoyance. "You’re worse than him... Shameless!"

"I’m divinely talented," Ren corrected with a nod, causing smoke to erupt from Exildra’s nose. Though in his mind, he was thinking of something else. ’The system pushed me to Tier 2... but wait... I am talented. I was just blind. Hehe!’

Just thinking of this made Ren smile in an arrogant manner. Exildra was put in a hard place. She wanted to kick Ren so bad, shove him down the earth, something to calm her down. But he was Tier 2. He could kill her with a kick!

"Muehehehe... MUEHEHE... AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" Ren was lost in his own world now. If someone told her he was a blind and weak boy initially, she wouldn’t believe it. The Ren then and the one now were like heaven and earth. This one gave the presence of a devil in bunny skin!

Exildra finally made the right decision to keep her silence and watch the young guy she’d come to like in the past two weeks.

"He’s very handsome..." she muttered absentmindedly, but Ren heard her.

"Don’t tell me... You..."

"Piss off!"

"At least I’m better than him. Pfft!"

"You’re a bunny!"

"A handsome one. Thank you for the compliment."

"Ugh!"

BOOM!

The loud explosion drew their attention to the stream, where they saw something manifested above Bahamut. It was a huge, reddish-black halo that stretched for about three meters. It looked more like a crown, but with jagged sides and uneven rises.

The moment it appeared, the two halos behind him enlarged by two times each. The Circle of Spirit swiftly crossed the halfway mark, pushing to almost a finish.

But what was more strange was the aura radiating from that halo. It was brutal and heavy. The whole place reeked of blood, gore, and malevolence.

It was so powerful that Exildra was sprawled face down into the ground, her body shivering in fear and suppression. Ren wasn’t much affected, but even he could feel the brutality and malevolence.

"A... concept..." Exildra muttered weakly, her face a mix of shock and fear.

Concepts!

Special abilities or traits that defined what or who a cultivator would become. They were so rare that finding cultivators with them was akin to trying to tear clouds from the sky while jumping.

Even with her background, she only knew of two concept wielders. The Elven King and the Black Fang Prodigy of the Shadow Fang Sect. But even with that, she didn’t know what kind of concept they had.

It wasn’t like she could tell. Even with one right in front of her, she couldn’t understand it.

There was a saying that, "To get a concept, understand one..."

But how was she supposed to understand when her face was plunged into the earth? She was suffocating! Her mind was too focused on survival at this moment. Plus, there was no guarantee she could understand such an overwhelming concept, which made the world plunge into red in broad daylight.

"It is a sub concept..." Ren suddenly spoke out, as his eyes flared with deep red light. His small body floated upwards for about thirty seconds, only to be sent back down. The huge crown-like halo slowly disappeared, leaving a floating Bahamut with two halos; one a complete circle and the other, almost a circle, rotating and glowing intensely behind him.

Bahamut was almost a Circle of Spirit cultivator, and he would be... soon. The last moments were the most crucial, considering how his muscles had begun tightening, and the way his hair swayed wildly without the wind.

...

Far away from the boiling stream, where a blind boy was forcing the world to bend around his will, something shifted.

It was neither loud nor violent. If one were not paying attention, it would have gone unnoticed entirely. A grain of sand slid down the side of a rock where there was no wind. A cluster of insects went silent at once, their collective hum cutting off abruptly. The soil tightened, compacting just a little, like a muscle flexing beneath the skin.

Deep underground, something moved.

Roots that had grown undisturbed for decades snapped without sound, severed cleanly like the handiwork of an expert. A faint vibration rippled outward like a tremor, but too slow and deliberate.

Somewhere, a burrow collapsed inward, crushing its former occupant before it could even react.

The ground suddenly parted as something massive came out. It displaced the earth as it moved, but left no trail behind. The soil folded back into place after it passed, smoothing itself as if nothing had happened just moments ago.

A shadow slid beneath the surface, silent and dangerous. Aboveground, a patch of grass withered in a perfect circle. The blades curled inward, turning brittle and gray, then crumbled into dust. A moment later, the dust too was gone, blown away.

A faint scraping echoed through the stone layers below, moving with a slow and rhythmic pulse. It echoed with the sound of segmented limbs moving with purpose, each motion calculated and intentional.

A pulse suddenly rolled through the world, brutal and heavy.

Several kilometers away, a predator froze mid-step, hackles rising for no reason it could understand.

The soil could no longer hide its passage as small distortions appeared at random intervals on the earth.

No eyes saw what it was. No one heard it again. But it had begun to move.

The Eliminator of the trial...

It was on the move now.

...

AN: I have a cold, but I will force myself to do my part for the week. Please support me with powerstones, Golden Tickets, and gifts. Keep the reviews and comments coming too...

Feel free to critique.