The Sanctum Zero cut through the night sky like a blade of shadow. Its cloak shimmered once, then peeled back, revealing the massive black hull hanging over the city like a storm cloud.
Below, the Thorne Estate lit up instantly. Floodlights snapped awake. Wards etched into stone walls flared gold and red. Towers rotated as heavy cannons locked on, all engines of war now groaning alive. Alarms howled across the grounds—shrill, unending, like the sound of metal grinding bone.
Inside the bridge, none of Class Zero spoke. The whole estate looked like it was preparing for a siege.
Vyn finally broke the silence. She turned her black eyes toward Lucian. "This is what you wanted."
Lucian didn’t blink. His gaze stayed fixed on the storm of lights below. His voice was flat, cold, steady.
The ship doors unlatched with a hiss. Lucian walked to the edge, shadow trailing behind him, and stepped into the night without hesitation.
The air swallowed him. His boots didn’t fall—he simply hung, weightless, then drifted forward, eyes fixed on the heart of the Thorne estate.
Light speared through the night sky—lances of condensed arcane energy, enough to shred fortresses.
Lucian raised his hand.
"Construction: Manifest."
His ability unfurled like an architect’s draft made of pure light, thousands of glowing lines sketching across the air around him. Each line pulsed with raw power, folding in on itself, blueprints made real in the span of heartbeats.
[Construction – XXX Rank]
The power to forge reality into form. Nothing is imagined, everything is built. Structures, weapons, tools—born from raw essence and made absolute. The higher the demand, the greater the strain.
Manifest Armament: Instantly construct weapons of any scale. Each carries the durability of his will.
Eternal Scaffold: Form fortresses, barriers, and groundworks in moments, resistant to collapse.
Adaptive Blueprint: Reconstruct mid-battle; any weapon or structure can be altered or rebuilt on command.
Living Forge: Constructs repair themselves as long as his energy holds.
Lucian’s first act: Manifest Armament.
A bow formed in his hands.
Not wood. Not steel. Something beyond both—a black-and-gold frame humming with veins of red light, like it had been cut out of the world itself. The string was pure force, the arrow nothing but raw death condensed to a single shaft.
The bowstring groaned like mountains splitting. The arrow lit the night, brighter than the cannons roaring toward him.
The shot split into thirty, then into three hundred. Each arrow curved like it had eyes, raining down across the estate’s guard lines. Towers buckled. Cannons cracked. Walls shattered as men screamed, thrown into fire.
Lucian didn’t stop. He drew again, loosed again—arrows swarmed like meteors, cutting through lines of armored security like paper. Blood and flame streaked across the once-pristine grounds.
From the balcony at the estate’s center, two figures appeared.
One, cloaked in noble silks, silver hair catching the estate’s golden wardlight. Eron Thorne himself, his aura so thick the air bent around him.
And behind him—Garrick.
Lucian’s eyes narrowed. The bow in his hand pulsed brighter, edges fracturing with raw force as if it wanted to explode.
"No reason to waste time."
He raised the bow high.
Guards swarmed from every gate, armored and screaming. Wards flared stronger, barriers thick enough to block siege cannons. Garrick flinched, half-stepping behind his father, but Lucian had already drawn the arrow.
The ground shook. Wind folded inward. Even the alarms seemed to choke, as if the estate itself knew what was coming.
It didn’t split. It didn’t scatter. It screamed forward, a straight line of absolute intent, cutting through wards like they were mist. Golden glyphs shattered. The air turned white.
The arrow tore through Garrick’s chest.
He didn’t even scream. Just staggered, lips parting, as blood splashed across the marble balcony. His eyes went wide, confused—like he couldn’t believe it had been that easy. Like the story he thought he was in had ended too fast.
Eron roared. The sound cracked through the entire estate, rattling towers, ripping through the air like thunder. His aura surged outward, red and gold flames spiraling from his body, swallowing the balcony in fire.
Lucian lowered the bow slowly, eyes locked on the scene. His smirk never faded.
"I told you," he murmured to himself, voice low. "No more games."
Dozens of constructs flared awake—towering sentinels of enchanted steel, eight meters tall, each armed with spears that glowed white. Mages along the walls began chanting, their voices layering into one tidal wave of binding spells and stormfire.
Lucian raised his hand.
"Construction: Eternal Scaffold."
The air around him exploded with lines again, this time sketching an entire fortress beneath his feet. Stone and steel stacked themselves from nothing, walls rising high, floors locking in place. In the span of seconds, he stood on a floating bastion, bristling with towers and battlements.
Arrows rained down from his conjured walls, each one a construct of death, firing at the estate’s defenders without pause.
The two fortresses—one old and gilded, the other newborn and black—collided across the night sky.
Eron leapt from the balcony, his body sheathed in crimson light, every step cracking the air. His blade appeared in his hand—an ancestral greatsword, thick with generations of blood. He swung once, and the very space between him and Lucian split like glass.
Lucian answered in kind. His bow dissolved, reshaping instantly into a spear, then into a greatshield. The Adaptive Blueprint subskill kept every weapon alive, shifting form as he willed.
The greatsword struck the shield.
The shockwave lit the horizon. Houses far beyond the estate shattered. Windows across the capital broke in unison. Fire roared as steel screamed against steel.
Lucian held, eyes unblinking.
Eron’s face twisted with fury, voice ragged. "You dare—"
Lucian cut him off, his voice colder than ice. "I dare. And I finish."
From above, more constructs bloomed—winged machines, colossal bows, siege towers—each firing, each breaking the estate piece by piece. Guards screamed, spells flared, bodies burned.
But Lucian’s eyes stayed locked on Eron.
And behind Eron’s shadow, Garrick’s lifeless body still lay on the balcony, blood dripping into the stone grooves below.
That image was all he wanted.
The smirk never left his face.