[Third person POV]

  The air inside the Chamber of Communion of the Cathedral of Orestia buzzed with residual energy, an electric hum that made the marble statues of the Goddess Gaia seem to vibrate beneath the torchlight. At the center of the hall, upon the cold consecrated floor, the thirty figures began to stir, stretching limbs that felt strangely new and ancient at the same time.

  Their most immediate memories were a bnk canvas saturated with light. They remembered the exact moment the radiance cimed them in their original world—Terra—followed by what felt like fifty eternal years of training in a dimension of absolute emptiness. A space where time did not flow conventionally, yet their bodies and minds had been shaped by a divine voice whispering secrets of combat and power. For them, only a few seconds had passed; in truth, they had lived through five decades of military and magical preparation under the direct tutege of the “Goddess.”

  The first to rise was a young man with a sharp gaze and arrogant posture, a blond named Ulric, followed by the rest of the group. They looked around with a mixture of confusion and recognition. The counter they saw within their minds—that golden mark that had been ticking down during their stay in the Void—had finally reached zero.

  High Priest Machias stepped forward, extending his arms with a rehearsed smile meant to project paternal warmth, though his eyes remained pools of cold calcution and boundless ambition.

  “Welcome, children of the Light! Heroes chosen by the very hand of our Great Mother!” Machias procimed, his voice filling the hall and echoing beneath the domes. “You have been brought from beyond the veil to become the sole saviors of humanity. This world, Lyre, groans under the weight of demons and infidels who defile our sacred nd. You are the answer to our prayers—the holy warriors who will bring eternal peace to this blessed soil through sword and faith.”

  Machias continued with a lengthy speech, den with grandiose adjectives and promises of divine glory that would have moved any true believer. However, he quickly realized the enthusiasm he expected was absent from the faces of the newly arrived. The youths were not inspired by the “sacred mission.” On the contrary, they watched him with an indifference bordering on outright contempt, as though the High Priest were nothing more than a low-ranking herald.

  “We already know all that, old man,” Ulric interrupted, the young man at the front now bearing an elegantly designed sword with runic engravings at his waist. “The Goddess already gave us the speech in the White Void. She told us about your church, about your backward world that needs saving, and about our sacred mission. We spent fifty years training for this. Fifty years being perfect, surpassing every limit nature imposed on us.”

  A young woman beside him, short-haired with a predatory gaze, named Isolde, nodded as she examined her hands—now calloused by training only she remembered. “And if we’re the saviors of this wretched world, I assume the payment will match our divine status, right? I want a pace that puts your king’s to shame, gold I couldn’t count in ten lifetimes, and of course, a collection of the most beautiful princes of this kingdom at my complete disposal for entertainment.”

  “Exactly,” chimed in another of the summoned, a man named Conrad whose muscuture looked ready to tear through his clothing. “The Goddess told us we’d be like deities here. I demand the finest women in the kingdom, banquets sting days, and, of course, sves to clean my equipment and attend to my whims. We didn’t train for half a century in nothingness to come here and live like ascetic monks.”

  Machias felt a nervous twitch form in his eyelid. The arrogance of these youths was unbearable—a brutal dissonance between their youthful appearance and the supposed maturity of fifty years of training. In his mind, they were weapons meant to be grateful, not tyrants demanding tribute before even drawing steel.

  “Please, calm yourselves,” Machias said, striving to maintain composure and project authority. “You are our honored guests and promised saviors, that is true. But you are not the Goddess herself, to demand such tributes before proving your worth on the material pne. Everything will be granted in time, but you must understand that this world has ws and hierarchies that must be respected.”

  “Laws? Hierarchies?” Ulric let out a sharp ugh, and a spark of golden energy leapt from his fingers, cracking the marble floor beneath his feet. “We are the w now. We wield the power Gaia personally granted us. If you don’t give us what we want willingly, we’ll simply take it by force. Your stone walls mean nothing to us.”

  Ulric stepped toward Machias, drawing his sword as it materialized in the air before him with a movement so fluid and fast that most present saw only a metallic fsh. The bde glowed with a light that threatened to cut reality itself. Several of the other heroes took attack stances, smiling at the idea of subjugating the Church they were supposedly meant to protect.

  Machias did not retreat. He knew these youths were strong in raw mana, but their experience was artificial—born in a void where true death and real fatigue did not exist.

  “I see,” Machias said, narrowing his eyes. “You believe fifty years of training against shadows and illusions in the void have made you invincible. Very well. Let us make a deal—a small lesson in humility. If you can defeat my Tempr Knight officers in single combat, I will grant you everything you demand tonight: the gold, the paces, the princes, and the sves. The Kingdom of Orestia will become your personal pyground.”

  “We don’t have time for your games, old man,” Isolde said, stepping forward. “Bring your best men. This will be over before you finish your next prayer.”

  Machias gestured to one of the guards by the main door. “Summon five officers from the Third Guard. Those we consider… average.”

  The heroes snickered, some bursting into mocking ughter. “Average officers? Are you insulting us after our arrival?”

  Five men entered the chamber. They were not legendary giants, nor did their armor shine like the heroes’ celestial equipment. They were men in their thirties or forties, faces weathered by frontier suns and scarred by real encounters with demons and beasts. In terms of rank, they were equivalent to B-Rank adventurers—strong and experienced, but far from the kingdom’s strongest warriors.

  “I’ll be the first to teach you a lesson,” Ulric said, stepping forward with absolute confidence bordering on blindness. “Which one of you is the strongest? I want to finish this farce and go cim my pace.”

  The tallest of the officers, a man with calm eyes named Adalbert, stepped forward without a word. He drew a pin steel sword, its bde worn by years of service.

  “Before we begin,” Machias interjected, pulling a handful of red-stone amulet neckces from his robe, “put these on. They’re life insurance. Each amulet will protect you from a single fatal blow, shattering in the process and teleporting you three meters out of the enemy’s reach. I don’t want our ‘miracles’ dying on their first day due to excessive enthusiasm. We will fight with killing intent. No restrictions.”

  Ulric slipped the colr on with disdain, practically tossing it around his neck. “Whatever. It’ll just keep this poor man from dying too quickly by my hand and dirtying this pristine floor.”

  The fight began without further ceremony.

  Ulric lunged forward with astonishing speed, nearly vanishing from sight. His technique was fwless—academic, pristine. Every ssh of his golden bde followed the exact trajectories he had practiced millions of times in the White Void. Adalbert blocked the first strike with a thunderous csh, sparks flying. At first gnce, their strength seemed evenly matched.

  Ulric smiled smugly. “Is that all this world’s elite has? I trained fifty years to surpass mediocrities like you.”

  But Ulric’s smile slowly faded as the exchange continued. Adalbert did not fight like the shadows of the void. He didn’t follow perfect patterns or textbook movements. The officer used his body weight, spat at Ulric’s feet to distract him, and above all—his eyes… his eyes did not hold the emptiness of a training dummy. They held the professional bloodlust of a man who calcuted the precise moment to end a life.

  Adalbert unleashed a downward ssh with brutal force, forcing Ulric to block with both hands. The impact sent painful vibrations through the young man’s arms up to his shoulders.

  “What’s wrong, boy?” Adalbert growled—the first time he spoke, his voice a guttural rumble born of countless battles. “Fifty years in a cotton box and you don’t know what a real weighted strike feels like? Move or die—there are no forgiving shadows here!”

  Adalbert accelerated. The duel ceased to be fencing and became technical sughter. He didn’t seek elegance; he sought Ulric’s neck, his tendons—death, delivered efficiently. Ulric began to retreat, his feet stumbling over the slight imperfections of the marble floor—fws that never existed in the perfect void.

  Then Adalbert made a move Ulric didn’t recognize at all. The officer ignored an obvious opening in his own guard and locked eyes with Ulric.

  It was a gaze of pure death—the killing intent of someone who had already taken lives and felt absolutely nothing about it.

  Ulric froze for a fraction of a second.

  Fear—raw, animal, overwhelming—something he had never felt in the White Void, where nothing was real and consequences didn’t exist—seized his lungs. His hands, which had wielded a sword for imaginary decades, began to tremble uncontrolbly. Cold sweat blurred his vision.

  “No… wait… this isn’t…” Ulric stammered, panic shattering his voice.

  Adalbert did not wait.

  The pin steel sword descended like lightning toward the “hero’s” neck. Ulric didn’t even raise his weapon to defend himself; absolute terror had locked his nerves and shattered his judgment.

  CRACK!

  The amulet around Ulric’s neck exploded into a thousand red shards. A fsh of light enveloped him and deposited him three meters away, where he colpsed to his knees, vomiting bile from the massive adrenaline surge and lingering panic. He was alive—but his eyes were empty, broken by his first encounter with real death.

  “Next,” Adalbert said, wiping his bde on his forearm with an indifference more painful than the blow itself.

  What followed was a demonstration of the difference between power and experience. One by one, the heroes who had demanded paces and sves were confronted by the officers. All shared the same fw: they had power, they had perfect technique—but they cked the soul of a warrior. At their first true deathmatch, under the pressure of steel that genuinely sought to end their existence, they crumbled like houses of cards.

  Isolde burst into tears and dropped her sword when the officer facing her sliced off a lock of her hair mere millimeters from her throat, his gaze filled with disdain. Conrad, the massive brute, wet himself and colpsed to the floor begging for his life when he felt the cold tip of a spear brush his heart through his celestial armor.

  After an hour, all thirty heroes were sitting or kneeling on the cathedral floor. The arrogance was gone. The demands were gone. What remained was a group of terrified youths who had learned a bitter truth: fifty years of training in a perfect simution meant absolutely nothing compared to one minute of bloody reality.

  Machias walked among them, observing their trembling forms with cold, cruel satisfaction.

  “Now that we’ve crified your position in this world,” the High Priest said, his voice dripping with venom, “I believe we can begin working together. You are strong in mana, yes—but weak in spirit. Frightened children in warriors’ bodies. Those fifty years only gave you the tool. Now, we will teach you how not to tremble when it’s time to use it.”

  He turned to the guards.

  “Take them to the luxury chambers I had prepared. Let them rest on the silk they so desperately desired. But remind them that every meal and every minute of sleep will be a privilege earned tomorrow. Let them reflect on how their fifty years of ‘perfection’ dissolved before ‘average’ men.”

  The heroes were escorted out of the hall. Some walked like sleepwalkers; others sobbed quietly, unable to comprehend how their half-century of effort had been so utterly meaningless against true killing intent.

  Machias gnced at Pope Benedict, who observed from the rear with an icy smile. The Goddess had provided the metal; the Church would now forge it through trauma.

  “At first light tomorrow,” Machias whispered, “we begin breaking them… so we can rebuild them in our image.”