The next day, Advait forced himself to the Eternal Ascendancy. He sat through classes like a shadow, head down, barely breathing. Gorak taught as usual—professional, calm—but his eyes never left the boy. Every time Advait hesitated on an answer or moved too slowly, Gorak's voice cut sharper, laced with mockery only the child could hear. No blows fell there, though. Gorak waited.
After classes ended and the students returned to the real world, the men appeared again. They pulled Advait back to the empty school. Gorak stood waiting.
"You were so gloomy today," he said, almost gently. "You didn't do anything properly. You should be punished."
The beating resumed. Day after day, the pattern repeated. In the Eternal Ascendancy, silent torment through stares and words. In the real world, fists and boots until the boy could no longer stand.
His body broke in places too many to count—ribs cracked, skin split, joints swollen, bruises layered over bruises until no clean skin remained. He survived anyway. The next day. The day after. And the days that followed.
At first he cried out. He screamed for help until his throat bled raw. Then the screams faded to whimpers. Finally, even the whimpers stopped. His voice died completely.
His mind fractured under the weight. Simple thoughts slipped away. Sentences would not form. Words dissolved before they reached his tongue.
His face changed last. No more tears. No more fear. No more anger. The expressions drained away until only a blank mask remained—a puppet doll's face, empty eyes staring through everything and seeing nothing.
He became a lifeless doll.
After that, a dark red fire erupted from the child's broken body. It surged outward in a roaring wave, consuming everything—the office, the men, Gorak himself—in an instant of blinding crimson. Flames twisted like living shadows, devouring flesh, stone, and air alike until nothing remained but ash and silence.
This was the footage published on the E.A. Network.
At first, viewers clicked expecting another routine announcement or some update. But as the video played on, the truth unfolded. They watched a seven-year-old boy endure beatings, threats, and the shattering loss of his family. They saw his body break, his mind fracture, his face turn into an empty doll's mask. And finally, they witnessed the moment despair ignited something destructive and unstoppable inside him.
The dark red abyss that had terrified the world months earlier had a face now—a child's face.
Some adults wept openly. Others sat frozen, unable to look away from the real suffering on screen. This was not fiction, not a scripted tragedy. It had happened. A boy had been crushed until his pain birthed destruction. People whispered to themselves, I can't even imagine being in his place.
Fear settled deep.
Children watched too. There were no age restrictions, no content warnings. Young eyes saw their teachers in a new light—sudden, sharp fear of the adults who were supposed to protect them. Parents flooded complaint lines. The response from E.A. Network was calm and unyielding:
"Let those children adapt to the future chaos. Do not expect them to live the sheltered childhoods you had. The world has changed. So must your thinking."
Not everyone accepted it. Some parents raged, demanded censorship, pulled their kids from screens. But others took the words to heart. They sat with their children, explained gently what they could, and let them watch the rest. The video continued playing in homes across the planet.
In its final minutes, the narrator explained the truth behind the dark red fire: it was the awakening of a Physique. No cultivation. No training. Even without any prior power, it had erased an entire school in seconds.
And it would not be the last.
More awakenings would come. More destruction would follow—terrifying, unstoppable, growing worse with each new case. (The essence flow is also increasing.....)
The world recoiled in fear. People began to dread these Physique awakenings like a plague.
Then the video delivered reassurance.
"E.A. Network has launched a powerful satellite network. It watches the entire Earth. The moment it detects an awakening, it will alert the responsible nations. Those nations must form dedicated military units for rapid evacuation and containment."
The screen flashed one final warning, cold and absolute:
"Every nation must hear this clearly. If any government allows torture, abuse, or excessive cruelty like what happened to this child after today, that government will be replaced on that same day."
Reactions split across the globe.
In streets, cafes, and chat groups, civilians murmured:
"Sigh… at least we'll get warned early. We can survive those awakenings now."
"But how? You saw the fire in the video—it swallowed everything in five seconds. Even if we got warnings first, How do we react that fast? And the Military, can they be able to arrive in time?"
"You're right. How can anyone move quick enough?"
"Why worry like that? The game company is far ahead of us. If we can think of the problem, they likely already solved it. They're broadcasting the alert publicly—they must have tech that detects the awakening before it fully erupts."
"Well… your reasoning isn't wrong. If E.A. Network or the game company behind it says they can handle it, they definitely have something up their sleeve."
"Yeah, I agree."
(They were not wrong.)
Sphera had indeed equipped the satellites with a advance detection technology. They scanned every living body on Earth—human, beast, or otherwise—monitoring the percentage of awakened atoms in real time. The moment any individual crossed 20% awakened atoms, the system highlights it. At that threshold, the atoms began to subtly affect reality, but the effect was still weak, non-catastrophic. Nations would have time to respond.
Progress from 1% to 20% will typically took years, even if accelerated, it will take months or days. Sudden spikes like Advait's were anomalies—born from emotions so extreme that they are almost impossible to replicate. His emotions pushed over half his atoms into awakening in moments.
But after the threat, such extremes would not be able to repeat.
Civilians truly had little to fear.