Primordial Heir: Nine Stars-Chapter 392: Into the Tower 1

The basin was silent as if afraid of distributing this sacred moment. Seven frozen corpses lay scattered among the shattered pillars, their bodies already crumbling into crystalline dust. The wind whispered through the canyon, carrying their remains away.

Khione stood alone in the center of the destruction, her clothes torn, her skin marked with wounds, her wings broken. She was a ruin.

’’Huff! Huff!"

But she was alive. And she had grown.

She could feel it—not just in her spells, which were sharper now, more refined. In herself. The cold of this place had become part of her. The ancient patience of the ice, the brutal necessity of survival, the understanding that power alone was not enough.

She needed precision. Adaptability. The will to endure.

She had learned that lesson today, carved into her flesh.

She sat on a broken pillar and began to tend her wounds, binding cuts, splinting the cracked bone in her leg. Her hands shook from exhaustion, but her mind was clear. The spells needed more work. The killing particles needed to be faster, more aggressive. The slowing field needed to be denser, harder to resist.

But she was on the path. The path to Master. The path to standing beside Nero, not behind him.

She looked up at the pale sky, at the endless frozen world stretching to every horizon. Somewhere out there, deeper still, stronger monsters waited. Greater challenges. More lessons to learn.

She would face them all.

She would grow, would become stronger, would forge herself into a weapon worthy of the storm to come, worthy to shield him of some of his burdens she swore.

Khione E. Undine, the Ice Queen, rose from her shattered pillar and limped deeper into the frozen world, leaving the corpses of her enemies to dissolve into the endless white.

°°°

The white tower rose against the gray sky, a needle of bone-colored stone that seemed to pierce the clouds. Nero stood at its base, looking up at the structure that had broken so many cadets before him. The Tower of Trials. Ten floors. Three stages. A graveyard of ambition and a forge of legends.

He had spent hours in the gravity room, pushing his body until his muscles screamed and his bones ached. Now he was rested, refueled, ready for the next challenge. The pass in his hand was light, but the cost was not—three hundred credits for access to the first three floors. A small fortune. If he failed any floor, he would pay again to retry.

He wouldn’t fail.

The doors slid open silently, and he stepped inside. The world dissolved around him, light and shadow swirling, and then he was standing in a place of green.

Forest stretched in every direction, thick and wild, the trees ancient and heavy with leaves that blocked the sky. The air was warm, damp, alive with the sounds of insects and birds. It looked peaceful. It was not.

Nero’s eyes, those ominous red eyes that had seen so much, swept across the canopy. His presence detection, honed through countless battles, reached out like invisible fingers. And there they were.

More than two hundred. Goblin bodies, goblin weapons, goblin hunger hidden in the leaves, behind the trunks, beneath the ferns. Waiting. Watching. Ambush perfected.

A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

He reached up and ruffled his dark blue hair, a casual gesture, almost bored. His eyes gleamed with something that might have been amusement. Might have been anticipation.

He drew his sword.

Flames bloomed along the blade, orange and gold, hungry and bright. And from his shoulders, from his back, from the space between his shoulder blades—fire wings erupted. Great sheets of living flame that spread wide, heating the air, turning the leaves nearby to ash.

The goblins broke cover. Two hundred screaming, green-skinned bodies poured from the forest, weapons raised, hunger in their eyes. They had been waiting for prey. They had found something else.

Nero launched himself forward.

He didn’t run. He flew. His wings caught the air, and he became a comet of fire and steel, his sword trailing flame like a banner. The first wave of goblins met him at the edge of the clearing.

Slice~

He passed through them like a scythe through wheat.

Slash! Slash!

His sword moved in arcs, wide and clean, each stroke taking three, four, five of the creatures. Fire followed the blade, consuming bodies, turning flesh to ash before it could hit the ground. He didn’t need to aim. The goblins were everywhere, pressing close, their numbers their only advantage.

It was not enough.

He landed in their midst, his wings folding, and became a whirlwind. His sword was fast, deadly leaving blur in its wake, fire and steel, and every movement was a killing stroke. He didn’t block. He didn’t dodge. He simply moved, always moving, and where he passed, only ash remained.

A goblin lunged at his back. He didn’t turn. His wing swept out, a sheet of flame, and the goblin was gone. Another came from the left, spear raised. His free hand caught the spear, snapped it, drove the broken end through the creature’s throat.

The goblins kept coming. They were mindless, driven by hunger and the prana of the tower, an endless tide of green flesh and rusted weapons. They threw themselves at him, and he cut them down.

His fire wings spread again, and he shot into the air. Below him, the goblins milled, confused, their prey vanished. He hovered for a moment, looking down at the seething mass of bodies, and smiled.

He dove.

His sword pointed down, his body straight, his wings folded. He became a spear of fire falling from the sky. He hit the center of the goblin horde like a meteor.

The impact cratered the earth.

Kaboom!

Fire exploded outward in a ring, consuming everything within fifty feet. Goblins screamed, burned, dissolved into ash. Trees caught fire. The forest became an inferno.

Nero rose from the crater, untouched, his sword still blazing. Around him, the remains of the goblin army lay scattered, burning, dying. A few tried to run. His wings flared, and he shot after them, a blur of flame and steel.

He caught the first before it reached the tree line. The second fell a moment later. The third, the fourth, the fifth—he cut them down like flowers, each stroke precise, each movement effortless.

The last goblin, a small creature with wide, terrified eyes, stumbled and fell. Nero landed before it, his sword raised. The goblin looked up at him, and in its eyes, he saw not hunger, not rage, but fear. Simple, pure, animal fear.

He lowered his sword. 𝘧𝘳𝘦ℯ𝓌𝘦𝒷𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓂

The goblin scrambled away, disappearing into the burning forest. The relieved goblin had gotten far before its body was set ablaze and reduced to dust, the culprit didn’t even look.

He stood in the center of the clearing, surrounded by ash and flame, his fire wings still spreading heat into the air. His chest rose and fell with steady breaths. His sword hummed with residual fire.

The forest burned around him. The goblins were gone. And the first floor was complete.

A doorway shimmered into existence at the far end of the clearing, a spiral of light leading upward. Nero sheathed his sword, his flame wings shimmering before suddenly vanishing.

The first floor had been nothing. A warm-up. A joke to the current him. He knew the next floors would not be so easy. The tower had recorded Elysia’s fights. It would recreate her, her skills, her power through each stage. Each stage would be harder than the last.

He stepped into the light.

His red eyes gleamed in the firelight. He didn’t bother checking the time he spent to clear this floor, it was less than 20 minutes, the previous record was 35minutes(Elysia) but she wasn’t strong as Nero at that moment.