The silence that followed Sylas Drogan's forfeiture was heavier, more profound, than after the first match. The crowd had seen a GAMA technique, a simple Aetheric Compression Burst, fail to break a renowned defense. And yet, the defender had yielded in absolute terror. They hadn't seen the true attack, the silent, internal severing of power. They had only seen its result: a fortress whose gates had mysteriously refused to open.
Ren had not just defeated an opponent. He had sown confusion. He had created an unsolvable riddle in a public forum.
In the stands, Elder Tian watched with a deep, contemplative frown. The boy had performed the technique as taught. The visual and Aetheric signature was flawless. And yet, the result made no sense. The burst was not powerful enough to bypass the Onyx Shield. There was a variable at play that he could not see, a piece of the puzzle that was missing. His suspicion, far from being quelled, now burned with a colder, more intense flame.
Nearby, Anya Volkov was not frowning. Her face was alight with the fire of discovery. She had seen the concussive blast fail. She had seen Sylas's Aetheric signature suddenly and inexplicably destabilize for a fraction of a second. It wasn't the blast that had defeated him; it was something else. Something invisible, insidious, and utterly fascinating. The equation of Ren was growing more complex, and she reveled in the challenge.
Ren walked off the platform, the whispers parting before him like water before a shark. He had won, and he had done so in the most unsettling way imaginable. He was no longer just a volcano; he was a walking natural disaster that defied the laws of physics.
That evening, the routine repeated itself. Zephyrion materialized in his room, the spectral form shimmering with a grudging, almost imperceptible nod of approval.
"The technique was a pathetic firecracker," the Sky-Lord's voice echoed in his mind. "But your application of the Raijin's Echo was… adequate. You have learned that a true master does not break the wall; he convinces the masons to lay down their tools. You defeated the boy by making him a stranger to his own power. A subtle, elegant, and deeply cruel victory. There is hope for you yet."
The praise, wrapped in layers of condescension, was the highest he had yet received from the ancient spirit.
The tournament progressed. Ren's name became a source of dread. His third and fourth-round opponents were powerful, from noble houses with deep histories. One was a master of fire-based assaults, the other a whirlwind of blade-arts. Both fell in the same, bewildering fashion. They would launch their most powerful attacks, only to find their own Aether sputtering and dying at the critical moment, their connection to their Spirit Soul momentarily severed by the invisible, resonant echo of Ren's "Compression Burst." They were not beaten; they simply… failed.
He advanced to the semi-finals without receiving a single scratch, without taking more than a dozen steps in any given match. He had become the academy's boogeyman, a master of anti-climax.
With each victory, the tremors of his power spread beyond the academy walls. The reports from the tournament, detailing the successive, inexplicable failures of talented young nobles, reached the ears of their powerful families. They reached the ears of GAMA officials, who saw the same GAMA-sanctioned technique producing impossible results.
And, most dangerously, they reached the ears of the Spirit Lumina Pagoda. Their observers at the tournament, initially there to monitor the installation of the "Aetheric Purity Field," now focused their full attention on Ren. They recorded every micro-expression, every Aetheric ripple. They saw a boy using a standard technique to achieve a non-standard result. He was an anomaly, a ghost in their data. The same ghost, perhaps, that had haunted their northern research facility.
The night before the semi-final match, as Ren sat in his room, the Elder appeared once more. His face was grim.
"You have performed too well," the Elder stated, his voice low. "Your victories are too clean, too inexplicable. You are attracting precisely the kind of attention I was hoping to misdirect. The Pagoda's chief technician has formally requested a private interview with you, to 'commend your prodigious mastery of Aetheric compression principles'."
It was not a request. It was a summons. They were no longer content to watch from a distance. They wanted to place their specimen under a microscope.
"You will decline the interview, of course," the Elder said. "But your time in this tournament is over. It has served its purpose, perhaps too effectively. Tomorrow, in your semi-final match against Anya Volkov, you will do something you have not done yet."
He looked Ren in the eye, his expression hard as granite.
"You will lose."