The laboratory was no longer a sanctuary of science; it was a kill box. From the labyrinthine corridors of the hideout, the remaining strength of the Dark Saints poured into the chamber. Six hundred fanatics, their faces obscured by hoods and masks, formed a suffocating ring around the boy in the center.
"Contain him!" Noelle shrieked, clutching his stump as he retreated toward the obsidian throne.
The front line of mages acted as one. Their hands wove through the air, pulling moisture from the damp walls and the very breath of the onlookers. A massive, shimmering sphere of water surged forward, swallowing Kael whole.
Inside the bubble, the world went silent. Kael's lungs burned as the liquid rushed into his throat. His vision began to fracture into dark, blurry edges, and his golden-brown eyes rolled back. Every desperate exhale was trapped as a mocking silver bubble within the sphere.
"Enough! Release the pressure!" Noelle yelled, his voice cracking. "Do not drown him! He is an asset! He is the future of this war!"
But the minions did not move. Their eyes were wide, fixed on the boy who had just caused their leader to lose an arm.
Memories of the arena's devastation and the terror of the Saint State clouded their judgment. Fear had overridden their loyalty. They didn't see an asset; they saw a monster that needed to be put down before it could breathe again. They maintained the spell, their knuckles white as they squeezed the water tighter.
Kael's heart slowed. The cold of the water seeped into his bones. But deep within his marrow, where the "Creatrix" had hidden her greatest gift, something felt the threat of extinction.
A low hum started—not in the room, but in the atoms of Kael's body. Suddenly, a surge of mana erupted with the force of a collapsing star. The water bubble didn't just break; it began to hiss. Within a heartbeat, the sphere turned from a cold prison into a sphere of white-hot, pressurized steam.
The bubble burst with a violent, concussive roar.
The shockwave hit the first few ranks of the Dark Saints like a physical wall, throwing them backward into their comrades. Panic rippled through the six hundred as the steam cleared to reveal Kael standing upright, his skin glowing with a terrifying, incandescent heat.
He didn't speak. He didn't scream. He simply opened his hands.
Flames, black-edged and searing, lashed out in every direction. The first lines of mages, the ones who had held the water spell, didn't even have time to shriek. The fire was so intense it bypassed the stage of burning; their bodies turned to charred husks—crisp, blackened silhouettes that crumbled into ash before they hit the ground.
The air in the room warped. The stone floor beneath Kael's feet began to liquify into slag.
The mana signature coming from the boy shifted, elevating past the Emperor State, past anything Noelle had ever seen in a human. A crown of flickering, ethereal light manifested above Kael's brow, and the sheer weight of his presence forced the remaining five hundred soldiers to their knees, their lungs struggling to draw air in the vacuum of his power.
Kael had entered the Saint State.