Arcadian Live

A dark silence befalls the audience as everyone stares at the forerunner screen. However, this silence is broken when Mikaela claps his hands once, causing every other screen within the stadium to vanish before the forerunner screen grows in size until it fills almost all of the stadium’s ground floor.

As if on cue, the entire stadium breaks out into chaos, with millions of voices all shouting, whispering, crying, and screaming at once.

Mikaela, however, just continues to watch the screen without saying a word.

On the screen, Wolf can be seen with a pale whitish-blue light shining from his entire body, along with a bright ice-blue one radiating straight from his eyes as he begins to lift upwards slightly from the ground. At the same time, the description above the screen begins to glitch out as Wolf’s species rapidly disappears and reappears, with parts of the words occasionally being replaced by new words.

Mikaela’s eyes widen as he watches this happen. Meanwhile, a man in a far-off corner of the viewing room gains a fervent look to his eyes as he sees part of the species name that replaces Wolf’s previous species.

At the same time, two words suddenly flash in the place of Wolf’s id on the screen three times before returning to showing his id.

“Unique species?” “What’s a unique species?” “The hell?” “What’s happening!”

Confusion begins to replace the previous chaos as the fervent man mutters, “Reaper!”

‘Is he awakening his reaper bloodline?’ Mikaela thinks to himself whilst narrowing his eyes at the screen as the kraken swings two of its tentacles towards Wolf.

However, Wolf – as if in a trance – floats out of the way before focusing directly on the kraken and raising his hand, palm outward. At the same time, two strange cone-shaped chunks of ice with sharp tips appear above his shoulders, along with two beautiful wings seemingly made out of a mixture of blue light and snow that appear behind his back.

“What’s he…” Mikaela begins, only to trail off as a spear of ice, the same shade of color as the light shining from Wolf’s body, materializes as if from nothing in front of his palm before suddenly flying straight towards the two offending tentacles.

Under the shocked looks of the audience, the spear penetrates straight through one tentacle before piercing through the other as well and pinning the tentacle to the iceberg, completely disregarding the black scales on its body.

Several seconds pass, and thousands of voices from the audience begin to cheer in delight, but it doesn’t last for long as the bright light shining out of Wolf begins to fade and he slowly lands on his feet on the ground. At the same time, the wings vanish, along with the chunks of ice, and the glitching of his species listed above the screen finally comes to an end, with his species once again returning to being a Harbinger Lycanthrope.

No one in the stadium says a single word, leaving the only noise within the viewing room to be that of the kraken’s pained wails as it begins to regenerate one of its tentacles, while also struggling to free the one still pinned to the ice.

Then, as if awoken from a trance, Wolf suddenly begins looking around in confusion.

Time passes for several more seconds until Mikaela thinks to himself, ‘So… he didn’t awaken?’

The Void

Deep within the Void, in the middle of a strange cave, a being that has been asleep for over a century opens its eyes, revealing pitch black orbs that seem to suck any of the nearby light into their endless depths.

The being doesn’t do anything for several seconds before eventually blinking once. Then twice. Then finally a third time.

The being has the form of a tall human male, with two wings seemingly made out of the same energy as its eyes, along with two strange cones of energy floating over its shoulders. He hasn’t a single item of clothing on his person, nor does he have any sort of weapons in sight, with strange veins of black light radiating throughout his body.

Finally, after several seconds pass, The Reaper finally raises a hand and swipes it horizontally in front of him, causing something similar to a System screen to appear, except with borders made out of a deep black and vicious energy. On the strange screen is the scene of Wolf’s transformation.

The scene plays out for a little while before repeating once until The Reaper snaps his fingers to pause it and stares at Wolf.

“A child of ice. A harbinger. And a new-found species.” The man begins, his deep voice echoing throughout the entirety of the Void dimension. “All mixed into one creature.”

Every resident of The Void immediately begins to cower in fear as they hear the sole ruler of the Void’s voice for the first time in over a century.

The Reaper snaps his fingers once more, causing the scene depicted on the screen to continue once more until it shows Wolf returning to normal, where he snaps his fingers a third time and freezes it again.

He then stares at Wolf’s image in the screen for several minutes, only to finally say, “Not yet, child. It’s too soon to awaken to your powers.”

“Reaper of the Blue Moon.”

After these final words, The Reaper waves away the screen and closes his eyes once again, falling back into slumber.

Wolf

I look around in confusion for a few seconds, only to jump to the side as I sense something – which I quickly remember to be the event boss’s tentacle – swiping down and striking the ice where I was just standing.

What the heck just happened? I feel like I’m missing something…

My gaze is attracted towards one of the kraken’s tentacles, which appears to be pierced straight through by a large spear of ice.

Uh… when did that happen? And how did my ice pierce its scales?

Wait, that is my ice right? It looks slightly different from normal…

I jump out of the way of the event boss’s tentacle again before rushing towards the pierced-through one and focusing on the ice within the spear.

It definitely has my eternal ice element in it, but it also seems to have… something else… mixed in.

That aside-

I jump out of the way again as another tentacle slams into where I was standing.

-what happened? I don’t remember anything that’s happened since I activated Cocytus and cut off one of its tentacles…

Which seems to have done a number on this area, and also beached the kraken. So that’s good.

Not that it does much for me if I can’t get through its…

I use the ice beneath me to launch me out of the way of another strike, but not quickly enough this time as its tentacle manages to hit my arm, sending me flying into the iceberg before landing face first into the ice, creating a large indent of my body in it.

“Shit…” I groan before getting out of the ice and rushing back towards the speared-through tentacle.

If I can’t safely climb its body again now that it’s no longer frozen…

I jerk to the side mid-run to avoid another tentacle.

…then my only choice at this point is to use that spear wound, regardless of where the spear came from, as my opening!