CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: The battlefield
The battlefield had already forgotten what silence felt like.
For three days and nights, the elites of Eryndor bled against the beast tide.
Mountains of corpses ringed the clearing. Armor was cracked. Talismans had burned to ash. The air reeked of rot, iron, and exhausted magic. Even the sky seemed dimmer, choked by the residue of too many dying auras.
No one noticed when the forest behind them went quiet.
Not at first.Then branches stopped swaying.
Leaves froze mid-fall.Predators halted with jaws around prey that suddenly forgot to struggle.a corridor opened through the sea of monsters ... not carved by force, but by instinct older than hunger.Something was walking toward them.
Leylin stepped out of the trees.Not descending from the heavens. Not erupting from the earth.Just… walking..Barefoot.Hair stirred by a wind no one else could feel. His expression held the faint crease of someone thinking too hard about something trivial.
The beasts backed away.Rank after rank lowered themselves, trembling. Even the colossal apex predators flattened against the soil, throats rumbling in helpless submission.
Students stared.Instructors forgot to breathe.Leylin stopped a few meters from the front lines and looked around, puzzled by the empty space around him.Then he spoke.
"Excuse me… can someone tell me where"
Blank stares.Only fear answered him.Leylin frowned slightly.
"…Right. Different world."
A faint chime echoed in his mind
[.System:]>>Language incompatibility detected.
Permission to upload: Eryndorian Common .. World: Eryndor
"Yeah," Leylin muttered. "Please."
Knowledge slid into place like a missing bone snapping into alignment.He looked up again.
"Uh… hi, people. I need your help."
No one moved.No one even blinked.
"I met a weird monster earlier," he continued, pulling something from behind his back. "Transformed mid-fight. Pretty rude, honestly. He dropped this."
Jayden's sceptre glinted in the dim light.Reality bent around it.Several guardians recoiled as if struck.
"That's"
"Impossible"
"The Sovereign Heirloom"
Leylin glanced between them, confused by their reactions.
"…Is it valuable or something?"
An elite scout, an old man with a scar splitting his face, stared in dawning horror.Not at the sceptre.
At Leylin.Behind him, a young woman tugged his sleeve, voice trembling.
"Grand-uncle… why is space breaking when he moves?"T
he old man swallowed.
"Because… child… he's beyond us."
He spoke softly, as if afraid of being heard.
"In Eryndor, there are seven realms of cultivation."
He pointed weakly toward Leylin.
"Foundation Establishment. Core Formation. Nascent soul.Domain Realm. Domain Expansion. Demigod."His lips trembled.
"And beyond that… the rumored God Realm. A level our ancestors believed could destroy planets
."The girl looked at her frost-wreathed core hovering near her chest.
"Then… he's…"
The old man didn't answer.He didn't need to.
Meanwhile, Leylin scratched his head, still holding the sceptre awkwardly.
"…Sooo."..The word rolled across the battlefield.Every beast ran.Not in formation. Not in retreat.In blind, screaming panic.
Trees shattered as titanic bodies forced their way through the forest. Winged horrors crashed into each other trying to escape the sky. The ground shook as thousands fled at once.Leylin blinked.
"…Was it something I said?"
A guardian roared, snapping out of his paralysis.
"They're regrouping! Don't let them encircle us again!"
Power erupted...Domain auras ignited across the clearing as the elites surged forward, chasing the retreating tide.Leylin watched them go.Then sighed.
"…Why does everyone here choose violence first?"
He stepped forward.And vanished.The Battle ,he reappeared in the middle of the fleeing horde.A colossal serpent lunged at him, jaws wide enough to swallow a fortress.
Leylin raised a hand.Confusion flickered across his face as the creature disintegrated before touching him, its body unraveling into threads of essence that spiraled into his chest.
"…Oh."
Another charged.Same result.Leylin looked down at his hands, unsettled.
"I didn't mean to do that."
The ground exploded as a titan beast slammed down behind him, claws like falling mountains.Leylin turned slowly.For a moment, he simply stared at it.Tired.Not physically.Something deeper.
"…Do we have to do this?"
The beast roared and attacked.Leylin moved without thinking.Not a technique. Not a skill.Just a step.Reality folded.
He passed through the monster like a ghost walking through smoke. A heartbeat later, the creature collapsed into a hollow husk, everything inside it gone.Leylin stood there, looking almost apologetic.
" really am just trying to find someone."
Another wave came.He exhaled softly.
"Alright… if you won't listen…"
The air darkened.Not from power.From absence...hunger without emotion.A quiet, devouring gravity that pulled everything toward him.From the distant battlefield, the elites stopped and stared in horror as entire sections of the forest vanished into a slowly expanding sphere centered on a lone, confused boy.
The old scout whispered hoarsely:
"That isn't combat."
"That's extinction."
And in the center of it all, Leylin rubbed his eyes like someone who hadn't slept in days.
"…I'm tired."