The Darkness System: Rise of the Broken Sovereign

Chapter 174: Chapter 174: The Curse Broken

Michael turned his head toward Elara’s position on the ruined facade.

Elara’s fingers trembled on her bowstring. She had seen what this man had done. Watched him fight three opponents simultaneously and survive an attack that should have killed everyone in a two-hundred-meter radius. And now those ruined golden eyes were looking directly at her.

She fired anyway.

The arrow screamed through the air, lightning crackling along its shaft, a powered shot designed to punch through barriers that had already breached Kael’s defenses once.

Michael raised what remained of his arms. Light blazed.

Aegis Avatar.

The colossal figure of a knight erupted from Michael’s body, incandescent and translucent, twenty meters of golden mana shaped into divine armor. Six massive feathered wings unfurled from its back, each one spreading wide enough to cast shadows over an entire city block. The construct’s chest opened, and Michael’s battered body floated inside, suspended in a cocoon of golden light that immediately began repairing his missing arm, his shattered wings, his burned flesh.

The Blade of Sanction materialized in the avatar’s giant hands. A greatsword of pure radiance, easily fifteen meters long, humming with concentrated light energy that made the air itself recoil.

Michael, floating safely within the construct’s chest, drew the Blade of Sanction in Elara’s direction.

SWOOOOOSH.

A horizontal slash of concentrated light erupted from the greatsword, a beam of radiance wider than a city street, and it wasn’t aimed at the arrow. It was aimed at the building.

Elara’s eyes went wide.

BOOOOOOOM.

The arrow ceased to exist. The building behind her ceased to exist. The two buildings beside it ceased to exist. A swath of destruction a hundred meters wide carved through the district like a god had drawn a line with a finger.

Elara was thrown from the collapsing facade by the shockwave, her body tumbling through the air, bow spinning away from her grip. She hit the ground hard, bounced twice, and skidded to a stop in a pile of rubble.

Blood ran from a gash on her forehead. Her left arm was injured with multiple ribs cracked.

Elara looked up at the towering golden knight through a curtain of blood-matted silver hair.

"That was bullocks," she whispered.

Then she turned and ran.

Michael didn’t pursue. The avatar turned back toward Kael and Karacus, the Blade of Sanction raised, its light illuminating the ruined district like a second sun.

Kael stood with one hand pressed against the arrow wound in his stomach, dark blood seeping between his fingers. Beside him, Karacus favored his uninjured leg, frost crackling weakly from his claws, his dragon form partially receded to conserve energy.

Both got into fighting stances.

Kael drew one Void Edge blade with his free hand. It was all he could manage. Karacus raised his fists, scales thickening over his knuckles.

Michael’s avatar took a step forward. The ground shook.

Kael braced himself. Karacus bared his fangs.

Then a chime echoed through the city. Coming from every bracelet simultaneously.

[TIME UP]

The golden knight froze mid-step. Kael’s blade lowered fractionally. Karacus’s fists unclenched.

All remaining participants in the abandoned city of Valdris vanished simultaneously, their bodies teleported out in a coordinated extraction that pulled nineteen fighters from every corner of the district in a single instant.

The stadium erupted.

Nineteen students materialized on the stage in various states of destruction. Some were barely standing. Others were carried off on stretchers by medical staff who had been on standby for hours. The teleportation and resurrection teams were visibly exhausted, their mana reserves depleted from eight hours of continuous operation, but great healers with high cultivation were already moving through the wounded, mending flesh and knitting bone with practiced efficiency.

Kael appeared on the stage with an arrow still embedded in his stomach. A healer reached him within seconds, her hands glowing with warm green light. The arrow dissolved. The wound closed. The internal damage repaired itself in under a minute. He sat on the stage floor, breathing deeply, feeling his mana begin its natural recovery as the Transcendent Core drank in the ambient mana of the crowded stadium.

Karacus appeared three meters away, the arrow in his thigh already removed by another healer, his dragon form fully receded to human. He sat with his back against a pillar, arms crossed, eyes closed.

Michael appeared at the far end of the stage, his Aegis Avatar having dissolved during teleportation. His missing arm was regenerating slowly, golden light knitting flesh and bone in real time, a process that would take hours rather than the seconds his armor had provided. He sat alone, no one approaching him, his bright eyes closed.

The Neon Abyss students huddled together near the edge of the stage. Two of them were shaking. Their captain, Ryan Durant, sat among them with his head in his hands, murmuring the same words over and over.

"I don’t wanna die. I don’t wanna die. I don’t wanna die."

Elara appeared at the opposite end from Michael, her silver hair matted with blood and dust. She sat on the stage floor with her knees drawn to her chest, staring at nothing. The expression on her face wasn’t pain. It was devastation. If she had been in any other academy, she could have made the top three.

One hour passed.

The healers worked. The crowd buzzed with speculation. Bets were calculated and recalculated. The Commentator filled the silence with analysis and replay breakdowns.

Then the holographic rankings dropped.

The Commentator’s voice boomed through the colosseum.

"Ladies and gentlemen! The final individual rankings of the final round of this exciting inter-academy tournament!"

The numbers materialized in massive luminous script above the arena.

1st Place: Michael Weston from Empyrean Celestial Academy, 9,050 points.

2nd Place: Kael Cassian Vorn from Heaven’s Gate Academy, 7,700 points.

3rd Place: Karacus Drakemore from Heaven’s Gate Academy, 6,950 points.

4th Place: Dean Hawthorne from Astral Zenith Academy, 6,350 points.

5th Place: Valerius Kaine from Iron Nexus Academy, 5,900 points.

6th Place: Ryan Durant from Neon Abyss Academy, 5,600 points.

7th Place: Elara Amastacia from Sylvan Star Academy, 5,550 points.

8th Place: Cassian Vale from Heaven’s Gate Academy, 5,250 points.

9th Place: Liora Sance from Empyrean Celestial Academy, 5,200 points.

10th Place: Theron Vasek from Astral Zenith Academy, 4,700 points.

10th Place: Bronn Sid from Iron Nexus Academy, 4,700 points.

10th Place: Mason Croft from Heaven’s Gate Academy, 4,700 points.

13th Place: Cyprian Ashford from Empyrean Celestial Academy, 4,500 points.

14th Place: Vespera Bloodworth from Neon Abyss Academy, 4,000 points.

15th Place: Darius Hale from Empyrean Celestial Academy, 3,700 points.

16th Place: Kira Voss from Astral Zenith Academy, 3,200 points.

17th Place: Lena Cross from Astral Zenith Academy, 3,150 points.

18th Place: Rooley Slanders from Heaven’s Gate Academy, 3,100 points.

19th Place: Dax Murdoch from Iron Nexus Academy, 2,700 points.

The Commentator let the numbers hang for a moment before continuing.

"And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for! The academy rankings!"

The display shifted. Total points from all remaining students per academy, summed and ranked.

1st Place: Heaven’s Gate Academy, 27,700 points.

2nd Place: Empyrean Celestial Academy, 22,450 points.

3rd Place: Astral Zenith Academy, 17,400 points.

4th Place: Iron Nexus Academy, 13,300 points.

5th Place: Neon Abyss Academy, 9,900 points.

6th Place: Sylvan Star Academy, 5,550 points.

The stadium went silent for a single, breathless second.

Then it exploded.

The Commentator’s voice cracked with genuine excitement, all professional detachment abandoned.

"FIRST PLACE! HEAVEN’S GATE ACADEMY! After decades of Empyrean Celestial dominance in the inter-academy tournament, Heaven’s Gate has finally broken the curse to take first place!"

Students from Heaven’s Gate who had been able to afford coming to watch the tournament live rushed the barrier, screaming, cheering, crying. Some of them were crying and laughing at the same time. A group of Gold Tier female students had somehow smuggled in a banner that read "VORN FOR CAPTAIN" and were waving it wildly despite security’s attempts to confiscate it.

Kael watched the chaos from the stage floor with an expression of mild amusement.

Karacus opened one eye, looked at the screaming crowd, and closed it again. "So loud," he muttered.

Cassian’s smirk. "Try to enjoy it. We earned this."

In the VIP section, high above the chaos, VP Dubois sat in her chair with her legs crossed and a smile on her face.

She sipped her tea and a rare smile could be seen on her face.

Some victories didn’t need words.

End of Arc 1: The Discard Ascent

*************************************

A/N: After a long time of writing and publishing, it’s been quite an interesting journey, hasn’t it? Four months. One hundred and seventy-four Chapters. And what a ride it has been.

When I started this novel, I had a clear vision of who Kael was. A boy discarded by his family. A soul carrying the weight of a past life he couldn’t remember. A monster in the making who chose to be something more than what his bloodline demanded. But I didn’t expect him to grow into someone this... alive. Every Chapter, he surprised me. Every fight, he pushed further than I planned. And every relationship, no matter how complicated or messy, felt real.

The Inter academy tournament arc was something special to write. Not because of the action, though god knows there was plenty of that. But because it was the first time Kael stepped onto a stage where his name meant nothing. No Vorn family shadow. No System carrying him. Just him, his blades, and an arena full of people who wanted him dead. And he delivered. Second place individually. First place for the academy. A curse broken that had lasted decades.

But this arc wasn’t just about Kael. It was about everyone.

Caelan standing against Michael with nothing but a sword and his pride. Rooley revealing the starlight fox that made everyone in the stadium lose their minds. Karacus being the unstoppable force of nature we always knew he was. Yenna pushing her domain past its limits because she refused to go quietly. Cassian casually sipping tea while making grown men look foolish. Mason grinding through fights like a war god who didn’t know how to stop. Even the villains had their moments. Ravenna’s poison garden was beautiful in the most terrifying way. Michael Weston was the kind of antagonist that makes you nervous because you know the author created him to be a problem.

I laughed while writing some of these Chapters. I cringed at others. The Kael and Aria Chapters... look, I’m not apologizing for those. Read at your own risk.

But here is the honest truth. This novel would not exist without you. The readers who stuck around from Chapter one when Kael was a broken kid in a brutal family. The readers who joined during the academy arc when the world expanded beyond anything I initially planned. The readers who leave comments, send messages, and remind me that this story matters to someone other than myself like AlwaysHimself, quiet readers like rhyshanley2, The book keeper, Drexion and others I couldn’t mention. Four months is a long time to write anything. Your support is what kept me going when the words didn’t flow, when the outlines didn’t make sense, and when real life decided to be inconvenient.

Arc 2 is coming. And if you think Arc 1 was intense, you have no idea what is waiting. The Inheritance Grounds. The Astreon bloodline. Damian Astreon, Is he the father, Kael himself or someone else?

Questions that have been building since Chapter one are about to start getting answers. And Kael... well, Kael is about to discover that the world is much, much larger and much, much darker than he ever imagined.

But that is a conversation for another day.

For now, take a breath. Celebrate with Heaven’s Gate. Mock Neon Abyss for shaking in their boots. And know that the Discard’s Ascent is just starting.

The boy who was supposed to be nothing has become something no one can ignore.

Thank you for being part of this journey.

See you in Arc 2.

— Author

Come back here, I’m not done. Where do you think you are going😒😒, go and drop that REVIEW on this novel🥺. If you have followed this far, the novel must be very interesting to you😏😏.