A ripple spread across the pond.
The miniature black wolf flickered into view, crimson eyes gleaming with ancient hunger and sothing older than mory.
Then.
A vast shadow swallowed half the map.
A piercing cry split the air.
A colossal eagle descended from its domain, wings spanning storms and trailing golden lightning in their wake.
"Master."
Its voice was sharp. Regal.
"I will join as well."
Aryan blinked. "That’s Pymon?"
The ones they were riding upon. At that ti, it was as massive as a small continent, with a world on its back filled with various exotic birds.
John smiled, the easy smile of a man who already knew how this story ended. "Of course. Each of my Sovereigns can carry their lineage with them anywhere and instantly phase them back here as well. It’s interdinsional pathways I’ve installed as traits."
"Second spot goes to Pymon."
The eagle folded its wings, settling beside Alfred in miniature form, but even small, it carried the weight of sothing that had never once lost.
...
The pond trembled again.
This ti.
Flas.
Golden. Crimson. Void-black.
A serpentine form rose from a volcanic ocean, its body coiling endlessly, each scale shimring like a collapsing galaxy caught mid-fall.
Two blazing eyes opened.
Slow. Unbothered.
"John."
Its voice rumbled like the quiet before a star dies.
"I was waiting."
Rudra exhaled slowly. "That must be..."
"Rexion," John said. "Third spot."
The dragon’s miniature form erged and coiled lazily — yet the light around it bent, as if even space preferred to give it room.
...
The remaining seven Sovereigns stirred, one by one, their domains breathing open like the pages of books that had never been ant for human eyes.
A massive serpent with a translucent body filled with flowing constellations — Mirista, the Astral Serpent — glided silently across a dark ocean floor.
A towering insectoid entity with crystalline limbs and fractal wings — Volpris, the Prism Devourer — hovered in a prismatic jungle that bent colour into sound.
A beast of living liquid tal, shifting endlessly between forms — Morphion, the Living Alloy — stood still in a silver wasteland, and sohow, that stillness felt like a threat.
A pale whale wreathed in orbiting blazing purple masks and lapis waves— Very, the Masked Whale, issued a vibration across the land as it spewed out aquatic life that blood into oceanic forest and countless fish, constantly reshaping its zone.
A great turtle carrying forests and waterfalls, mountain ranges, and entire river systems across its back — Terravax, the Verdantbearer — moved through a drifting sky at its own unhurried pace.
A shadow without shape, flickering in and out of space like a skipped heartbeat — Zyphalon, the Phase Reaper — existed the way a knife exists just before it’s used in a land of crimson and black that always reeked of blood and chaos.
And finally—
A radiant, deer-like entity stepped through a golden field, its branching antlers woven from flowing streams of ti as it weaved dreams into reality across its vast fields.
Unhurried. Inevitable.
Chronavael, the Ti Stag.
...
Marcus let out a low whistle.
"Each one feels like a natural disaster with a personality," Maya said, though the corner of her mouth was curving upward.
Silvester grinned, leaning back with his arms crossed. "I like them already."
"And they are all Tier-37, sa as you." Hiroshi blinked. He wondered how powerful these monster sovereigns were.
Everyone wondered. And they would soon witness it as well.
"Alright, you all decide amongst yourselves who will be the fourth one. Play a ga or sothing."
The seven monster sovereigns looked at each other.
A silence stretched across the pond — not uncomfortable, but the particular kind of quiet that forms when beings older than civilisations are sizing one another up without any of the usual posturing.
Then—
Mirista, the Astral Serpent, flicked her tongue. A constellation shifted in her translucent body. It looked almost like a shrug.
Volpris clicked its crystalline limbs together once — a sharp, prismatic sound that scattered tiny rainbows across the water’s surface.
Morphion simply rippled. A hand ford. Dissolved. Ford again into sothing vaguely resembling a pointing finger — though at what, no one could say.
Very, the Masked Whale, issued a low vibration that made the air taste briefly of salt and sothing ancient. One of its blazing masks rotated forward, as if leaning in with interest.
Terravax did not move. The waterfall on its back continued to fall. Sowhere in its forests, a bird called out — once — and went quiet.
Zyphalon flickered. Vanished. Reappeared three feet to the left. Flickered again. The crimson of its domain bled briefly into the air around it like spilled ink before pulling back.
Chronavael simply watched them all.
Unhurried. Already knowing.
...
The group observed this in comfortable silence.
"Are they... deliberating?" Maya asked.
John chuckled. "In their own way,"
Another mont passed.
Then.
Zyphalon flickered one final ti and went still.
Very’s masks all rotated backward — a quiet gesture of deference from sothing that had never deferred to anything.
Mirista dipped her constellation-filled head.
Volpris folded its fractal wings.
Morphion collapsed its pointing hand and simply flattened, like a bow made of liquid silver.
Terravax exhaled. A small cloud drifted off its mountain range and dispersed into nothing.
And Chronavael stepped forward.
Ti rippled outward from its hooves in soft, slow rings — the way a stone settles into still water, unhurried and inevitable.
"I accept," it said.
Its voice was the sa as before. Calm. Ancient. The kind of voice that never needed to be raised, because everything worth listening to eventually ca to it anyway.
"There we go." John smiled.
Alfred. Pymon. Rexion. Chronavael.
"What now?" Rudra asked.
John grinned. "Now, we depart. We will go around looking at participants of different Pocket Realm Mayhem events, and enter the one where we’ll have 50% chance of winning."
"50% chance?" Marcus tilted his head. "Why not 100%?"
John smiled with intrigue. "There won’t be any event where there’s more than 50% chance of winning for us. In fact, there’s no power or force here that has more than 50% chance of winning in any event. That’s how the third layer makes its events."
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