The world around Toya suddenly dissolved. One moment he was in the mansion's training hall, and the next, he was standing in a vast, desolate Void. It looked similar to where Haruto had been, but it felt different—rough, dry, and suffocatingly silent. The air felt like sandpaper against his skin.
"What... where am I?" Toya tried to speak, but the words died in his throat.
Suddenly, the ritual hit its peak. The white aura had injected into the circle began to surge through his veins like liquid fire. His veins didn't just bulge; they began to glow with a blinding white light, straining against his skin as if trying to burst out.
The agony was unlike anything he had ever felt—worse than the Level 60 Mana Fever. It felt like his muscles were being shredded and rewoven with metallic threads. He felt himself being lifted. In this mental void, he was rising higher and higher, as if his soul were being pulled toward a higher ceiling of power.
Stage 1: Pressure. It felt like an ocean was resting on his chest, trying to crush his lungs.
Stage 2: Expansion. His internal mana began to expand so rapidly he felt like a balloon about to pop.
Stage 3: The Peak. Just as he reached a certain height in the Void, he stopped. He was suspended in mid-air, trembling.
Toya wanted to scream. He wanted to howl until his throat bled, to beg Ivory or Haruto to stop the process. But he couldn't move his jaw. He couldn't even blink. He was a prisoner in his own body, forced to feel every millisecond of the corruption and the creation happening inside him.
Something in the Void was watching him—a massive, cold presence that didn't belong to the Goddesses. It was the "Produced" spirit Aeterna had mentioned. It felt heavy, ancient, and hungry.
While Toya was fighting for his life in that dry, agonizing Void, the atmosphere in the training hall was deceptively calm—until the aura broke.
Toya's body hovered a few inches off the floor, perfectly still, but then the White Aura exploded from him. It wasn't a soft glow; it was a violent, jagged radiance that lashed out like lightning, cracking the floor tiles beneath him.
"What is happening to him?!" Haruto shouted, shielding his eyes from the blinding glare.
"He looks like he's about to erupt!"
Aeterna didn't move an inch. She stood next to Haruto, her eyes fixed on the timer in her head. "Just ten more seconds, Papa," she said, her voice chillingly steady.
"If he survives this, he will be the first human in history to summon an SSS+ Rank Spirit directly. No evolution, no leveling up—just pure, raw power pulled straight from the Abyss."
Ivory staggered back, clutching her chest. Her face was pale, and she was breathing heavily.
"I can feel it... the mana density... it's suffocating! Haruto, I can't breathe! Aeterna, stop the ritual! It's too much!"
Aeterna didn't even look at her. "Not a chance," she whispered.
"The bridge is already built. Now we just wait to see if the Human passes... or if he turns into stardust."
Haruto stepped forward, his hand reaching out. "Toya!"
"Don't touch him, Papa!" Aeterna warned. "If you interfere now, the feedback will kill both of you."
Inside the mental void, Toya was at his breaking point. Every fiber of his being was screaming for the agony to stop. "Why?" he thought, his consciousness flickering like a dying candle. "Why does getting power have to hurt this much? Is it worth it? Should I just let go?"
But then, a spark of defiance ignited in his mind. He remembered his goal. He didn't just want to be a sidekick; he wanted to be the strongest human alive. He wanted to stand at the top, even above Haruto.
"If Haruto endured more than this to get that Queen... then I won't back down!" Toya roared internally. "I won't be the one left behind!"
With a final, desperate surge of will, he reached out his hand toward the dark ceiling of the void, trying to climb even higher. He let out a silent, soul-shattering scream—and then, VOOSH.
The vacuum of the void collapsed. The darkness sucked him back down at terminal velocity.
Toya's eyes snapped open back in the training hall. For a split second, it looked like he had succeeded. He was standing, his aura flickering wildly. But as he tried to take his first breath of real air, the price of forcing an SSS+ rank summoning hit his physical body.
"Toya!" Haruto yelled, starting to move toward him.
Suddenly, Toya stiffened. Thick, crimson blood began to leak from his eyes, then his nose, and finally, a heavy trail of it spilled from his mouth. His internal organs were reeling from the massive mana overflow that even his Level 60 endurance couldn't fully contain.
His knees buckled, and he crashed face-first onto the cold floor, the jagged black chain of the Star-Eater clattering loudly beside him.
"TOYA!" Haruto screamed, diving forward.
Ivory, Lustra, and Bellona scrambled toward him, their faces masks of pure horror.
"His mana veins are rupturing!" Ivory shouted, her hands already glowing with a frantic green healing light.
"I told him! I told him it was too much! The caliber difference is tearing him apart from the inside out!"
Lustra began chanting a stabilization spell, her voice trembling.
"Don't die, Toya! Stay with us!"
Haruto turned his head, his eyes burning with a mix of fear and fury as he looked at the tiny Empress standing calmly behind him. "Aeterna! Do something! You said he'd be fine!"
Aeterna didn't flinch. She looked down at Toya's bleeding form with a cold, analytical gaze.
"He is fine, Papa. If he stops breathing, that's just a temporary problem."
"THIS ISN'T A GAME, AETERNA!" Haruto roared, his Void aura flaring dangerously.
The air in the room didn't just turn cold—it felt like it was being erased. As Haruto's roar echoed off the walls, a massive pulse of dark energy erupted from his chest, sounding like a heavy, distorted heartbeat. For a split second, his presence became so overwhelming that it felt like his soul was about to physically tear out of his body.
The silence that followed was terrifying.
Aeterna actually flinched, taking a small step back. Her eyes, which usually held nothing but ancient arrogance, were wide with genuine shock. Haruto—the boy who saw life as a boring glitch game, the person who viewed everything through a lens of cold logic—had just screamed with the raw, desperate fear of a human losing his best friend.
Ivory, Bellona, and Lustra froze, their healing spells flickering in their hands. They stared at Haruto as if they were seeing a stranger.
"How can a man who quantifies everything suddenly sound so... real?" Ivory thought, her heart racing.
Asobi, who had been quietly standing in the corner trying to stabilize Toya's mana from a distance, stopped her incantation. Her eyes were fixed on Haruto. Even the most detached person could feel the sheer weight of the emotion he had just released.
Haruto's mind went completely blank. He looked at his shaking hands, then at the bleeding Toya, and then at the tiny, trembling Aeterna. He didn't know where that voice came from. He didn't know why his "Game Logic" had just shattered.
"I... I'm sorry," Haruto whispered, his voice cracking as he regained his senses.
"I didn't mean to shout. I just..."
Aeterna's lower lip trembled. She looked down at her small, pale hands, her red eyes shimmering with moisture. She was on the verge of tears. "What is this?" she thought, her internal code screaming in confusion.
"I am the Origin. I am core and mana. Why does my chest feel tight? Is it this human form? No... it's his mana. It's so deep, so living... it's making me feel things I shouldn't know."
She quickly wiped her eyes, forcing her Empress persona back into place, but the mask was cracked. She realized now that being "Papa's daughter" wasn't just a title—it was a link to his very humanity.
The heavy, suffocating silence of the room was suddenly broken by a sharp gasp of air.
Just as Haruto turned toward him with a face full of desperation, Toya sat bolt upright. He didn't look like a man who had just bled from every orifice; he looked like someone who had just woken up from a long, refreshing nap. He stretched his arms, casually wiped the blood from his face with his sleeve, and looked around at the chaos he had caused.
"Wait... why is everyone looking at me like I just died?" Toya asked, blinking at the scene.
"Did I miss something?"
The shock in the room was palpable. Ivory, Bellona, and Lustra stood frozen, their healing magic still glowing in their palms. Asobi, who had been sweating with tension, let out a long, shaky breath of relief.
Aeterna, still rubbing her teary eyes, immediately switched back to her smug persona, though her voice was still a little shaky.
"See? I told you! I told you he wasn't going to die. Toya is too stubborn for a simple system crash. And yet..." she sniffled, shooting a sharp look at Haruto,
"...Papa yelled at me for nothing."
Aeterna turned her head away, crossing her small arms and pouting with a dramatic "Hmph!" Haruto looked at her, then at Toya, and felt a wave of genuine guilt. He walked over, reached down, and picked Aeterna up, tucking her into his arms.
"I said I was sorry," Haruto muttered, his voice unusually soft. "I overreacted."
The three Goddesses watched this interaction with wide eyes. To them, Haruto had always been a puzzle—a man so detached from reality that he treated his own life like a series of quest markers. He was supposed to be the "Cold Hero," the one who quantified every emotion into game terms.
But seeing him now—holding a crying spirit-child and showing genuine fear for his friend—it was as if the "Glitch" in his heart had finally healed into something human.
"It's strange," Ivory whispered to the others.
"We were supposed to be the ones teaching him about human emotions, yet here he is, acting more human than any of us expected."
Aeterna's brain was practically short-circuiting. One moment, Haruto was a terrifying storm of Void energy and shouting, and the next, he was holding her with a gentleness she didn't know how to process. "Wait... he was just furious, and now he's carrying me?" she thought, her face turning a deep crimson. "And why... Why does this feel so comfortable? My body shouldn't be reacting to a human hug like this!"
But her internal crisis was cut short by a violent BOOM that shook the very foundations of the mansion.
A massive explosion of raw, jagged mana erupted from the center of the hall, sending tiles flying like shrapnel and spider-webbing the floor. Asobi let out a frustrated scream, slapping her forehead with her palm.
"Are you serious?! Is everyone here obsessed with breaking my house?! It's a mansion, not a demolition site!"
With a sharp flick of her wrist, she sent a wave of restorative gold magic across the room, instantly repairing the shattered tiles and walls. But the smoke didn't clear—it began to swirl and thicken, condensing into a dark, towering Humanoid Form made of shifting stardust and chains.