CHAPTER 38: THE FIRST ROOT

The room pulsed with ancient silence.

Thalen stood before the jagged pedestal, the veins of crimson light still spiraling slowly across its blackened stone. Behind him, the SSS Hero Elarin watched with folded arms, eyes sharp beneath the furrow of her brow. They had descended into the Forgotten Hollow a chamber buried beneath centuries of rubble and myth. Only those acknowledged by the Tyrant’s Spirit were said to be able to awaken what lay here: the First Root.

He wasn’t even sure what that meant yet.

Thalen’s hand hovered over the relic, his blade aura resonating faintly in his chest. The sword on his back now forged from rare Dreadsteel shimmered subtly in response. But it wasn’t the sword that mattered now. It was him. His aura. His spirit.

The First Root wasn’t an object.

It was a force.

"Reach not with your hands," Elarin whispered. Her voice echoed as if the chamber itself were listening. "Let the Tyrant within you call it."

Thalen closed his eyes.

The path behind him was soaked in trial and pain. Ever since awakening the Tyrant Spirit, he’d felt like a vessel splitting open from within. The power didn’t obey easily it clawed, it raged, it demanded more from him than he had ever given. And now it brought him here, to a place only the SSS Heroes had ever known.

The chamber stirred.

Faint whispers rippled through the walls. Voices. Screams. Echoes of ancient battles long buried. The air thickened as Thalen extended his aura not through strength, but through surrender. Blade Aura hummed from the core of his soul, a fine edge of control and clarity, honed by years of effort. Beside it now burned the deeper flame the Tyrant’s Spirit. Not fire. Not fury. But pressure.

Crushing, indomitable pressure.

The two forces touched in him, not merging, not yet. But intertwining.

And then the pedestal cracked.

Stone burst upward, light spiraling into the air like a living root system of aura. The glowing trails wrapped around Thalen, not binding him, but feeding into him as if answering a silent hunger long ignored. The chamber darkened, shadows retracting into corners. Elarin took a cautious step back.

"It’s responding to both your auras," she said, more to herself than him. "You’ve found harmony, even if only for a moment. That’s more than most of us ever did."

Thalen’s breath caught.

From the spiral of light, a seed emerged glimmering with pure aura, an orb no larger than his palm, floating just above the cracked pedestal. It rotated slowly, casting long beams of translucent energy across the hollow. As he reached forward, not with force but reverence, it dropped into his hand.

Instantly, pain lanced through him.

His vision blurred. A roar ripped through his skull. The two auras within him surged, clashing violently as the seed no, the Root forced them to confront one another fully. There was no escape. No pause. The pain wasn’t physical. It was in his spirit.

His mind was flung into memory.

He was ten again, standing in the rain, watching his brother chosen for the Tempest Aura ceremony while he was left behind. He was fifteen, training alone while others laughed, called him weak. He was seventeen, his Blade Aura only just manifesting, so feeble it couldn’t cut through simple wood.

And now he was here. With the Tyrant’s Spirit.

The Root pulsed.

The Blade Aura shimmered and thrashed, trying to remain whole. The Tyrant’s Spirit pressed down like a mountain, demanding it yield. But Thalen gritted his teeth. Neither would dominate. Not now.

They would grow. Together.

With a scream that split the silence, he forced both forces to bend not to each other, but to him. The aura burst outward, a violent gust that knocked Elarin to her knees. The chamber’s walls groaned.

And then stillness.

Thalen stood panting, eyes glowing with dual light. The Root had embedded itself within his soul. It was no longer a seed.

It was a beginning.

Elarin rose slowly. "You survived the First Root. Do you know what that means?"

Thalen nodded slowly, still trembling. "It means I’m ready to learn to combine them."

Elarin’s lips curled into the faintest smile. "Not just combine. Create. Your Tyrant Spirit is no longer wild. It’s evolving. Your blade... your will... is no longer a copy of those who came before."

Thalen’s sword vibrated on his back, the Dreadsteel responding to the change. A crack of energy flickered across its surface. Not damage. Growth.

A new tier.

Legendary.

As they turned to leave the hollow, the walls whispered once more. But this time, not with screams. With acknowledgment.

The First Root had chosen.

Far above, in the capital of Aeris Dominion, a meeting of the SSS convened.

"The Root has awakened," murmured Veyr, the Arcane Tyrant, his long silver hair coiled beneath a hood. "We felt it. All nine of us."

"The boy succeeded," said Grelda, the Bone Tyrant. "He reached the Root before even I did."

Silence hung between them.

From the shadows, a deeper voice emerged. Gruff. Tired. "It was bound to happen. I saw it in him the day he awakened."

The others turned.

It was the First Tyrant the retired ruler of the realm. He stepped into the light, his face still masked by his crimson veil, but his presence towering. "The Root was not meant to be a test. It was meant to be a mirror. If he survived it, it means he is no longer just a Tyrant Spirit wielder. He is a cultivator of balance. And that is more dangerous than any single aura."

Grelda frowned. "Do we guide him? Or fear him?"

The First Tyrant turned toward the chamber’s great window, watching the storm clouds roll across the horizon.

"We do neither. We prepare. Because if he truly walks the path of both, then he will awaken more than just power. He will awaken the enemy. The one we buried under myth."

Outside, thunder cracked. The Tyrant’s price had just begun to show its weight.

And Thalen had only taken his first step.