Chapter 514: Theories
Moon reached into his storage ring.
He had been carrying this secret for months. Nobody knew. Although Selene had her own ideas about it, she didn’t have any conclusive evidence.
The teammates he had returned from the gate with had no memory of the final fight, no recollection of how it ended, no idea what had been hidden inside the chamber where their deaths had nearly become permanent.
Only Moon knew.
But Alaric had just shown him something rare.
Trust from the first encounter. The Light Sword Saint had walked into Moon’s neighbourhood at night, dropped one of the kingdom’s most carefully guarded operational secrets at his feet, and told him about a spy embedded in the highest reaches of the Association. He had done it because he believed Moon deserved to know.
Moon could do the same.
He withdrew the core from his ring and held it in his palm.
"Do you know what this is?"
Alaric’s brows furrowed as he looked down at the object resting in Moon’s hand.
The core was small, Inside its surface was a deep, swirling purple, alternating through shades of violet and indigo as if a storm were trapped inside.
Mist was spread within it, occasionally forming faint shapes before dissolving back into the swirling colors. It was a beautiful sight to behold.
"Well." Alaric said slowly, his eyes never leaving the core. "Judging by my experience, this is a core."
Moon nodded.
"You’re not wrong. But this isn’t just any core."
"What do you mean?"
Moon turned his hand and offered it. "Check it out for yourself."
Alaric took the core carefully, cradling it in his palm gently. He brought it closer to his face. His brows pulled tighter together as he studied it from multiple angles.
His expression began to morph from curiosity to confusion.
Moon watched him work, a soft smile forming on his face.
The more he stared at the core, the deeper his frown became.
"I can’t read it." Alaric muttered. "There’s no status. It’s completely ambiguous to my senses. I might need a specialized appraiser to identify it properly."
"You won’t need one. I’ll tell you what it is."
He paused. "This is the core of the beast I killed inside the S-Rank gate."
Alaric’s eyes lifted from the core to Moon’s face.
"The core of a Supreme Rank creature." Moon dropped the bomb.
As a bomb would land, its biggest impact would take several seconds before arriving. Alaric’s expression didn’t change immediately. His mind processed the information in stages, thinking through Moon’s words faster than most people could follow.
"Supreme Rank." He repeated softly. "That’s the name of the next rank above S?"
Moon nodded.
The Surpasser placed a hand thoughtfully against his chin, his eyes drifting back to the core in his palm. The pieces were aligning in his head visibly. Moon could see the moment they clicked into place.
"Just as I suspected." Alaric murmured. "There are indeed beasts beyond S-Rank. The gates have never confirmed it because no one’s ever cleared an S-Rank to verify what waits at the boundary. As for the Sanctuary, it seems like they are just considered "a stronger version of s-rank" that nobody is able to kill."
He looked back up at Moon.
"But the fact that you killed one. At your level. Alone."
His eyes sharpened.
"You are not someone to be trifled with."
Moon simply smiled. He didn’t confirm or deny. The smile on his face said enough.
Alaric studied him for another long moment.
"Do the other survivors of the gate know about this?"
Moon shook his head.
"They were hypnotized through the entire fight. It was a Three-Tailed Illusion Fox. It controlled the element of illusion. While we were inside the gate, it created an entire false reality around them. They never saw the real battle. They have no memory of the kill."
Alaric exhaled slowly. His eyes drifted back to the core.
"Illusion. Three tails. Supreme Rank." He shook his head slightly. "If this is what waited at the end of an S-Rank gate of the First Order, then I wonder what waits in the higher-tier gates."
He carefully placed the core back into Moon’s hand.
"Why are you showing me this?"
Moon closed his fingers around the core and met Alaric’s eyes.
"Because you told me something tonight that might save my life. I figured I owed you something in return. Something that confirms what your intelligence has probably been speculating about for years."
He pocketed the core back into his ring.
"Now we’re even." A faint smile crossed Alaric’s lips.
Moon nodded.
"There’s another reason I showed you this core. I believe it’s linked to the River of Paths."
Alaric’s eyes narrowed immediately. The interest he had been showing intensified. The mention of the River of Paths had changed the conversation entirely.
"What do you mean?"
"To put it simply, I believe Supreme Rank creatures are S-Rank beasts that have made contact with the River of Paths. That contact grants them control over their element at a level no other First Order being can match. The Three-Tailed Illusion Fox didn’t just use illusion the way a normal mage uses fire or earth. It was able to create spells so powerful that they could place a whole team of humanity’s strongest awakeners in an illusion they could never hope of brekaing."
"It had a mastery over its element that no First Order being should have."
He looked at Alaric. "And the effects didn’t stop at elemental mastery. Its constitution was on a completely different level too. Its physical attributes were leagues above what an S-Rank should have been capable of. Everything about it was a step ahead."
Moon shook his head slightly.
"That’s the only explanation I could come up with. First Order beasts that touch the River of Paths somehow transcend the normal boundaries of First Order. Their bodies and their skills both upgrade together. The result is a Supreme Rank creature."
