Shroud Arcanum - Chapter 21 - - Next Trial

Crimson Vale Academy—where reputation is currency, and failure is a stain you wear on your sleeve.Behind gothic walls and spotless uniforms, students aren't just educated—they're measured, ranked, and pitted against each other in a brutal meritocracy. Privileges are earned, not given. The strong rise. The weak vanish.Enter Kairon Vale, a transfer student marked Rank D—the bottom of the bottom. No badge. Just a stitched black fang, branding him as “Obsidian”—a warning to others.In a system where points dictate your value, Obsidian-ranked students claw for every opportunity to ascend into the prestigious Golden or Platinum ranks—where comfort, power, and influence await. But for most, it’s a losing battle.Yet Kairon isn’t here to fit in, impress, or play by their rules. Cold, calculating, and impossible to read, he watches the system… and waits. Because while the academy judges worth by numbers and names—he understands something deeper:Everyone wears a mask. And every mask can be cracked.Let the games begin.

A door unfolded before him.Evil thrived, and whispers spilled from within.The resentful compound eyes flickered and vanished, the presence longing to burst out was blocked inside, and the alluring murmurs echoed in the ear.The sticky, pink brain mumbled something. A figure cloaked in a yellow robe watched from a distance. A dark green presence, smelling of blood, roared. A string of wondrous soap bubbles released friendliness—and many, many guests.They sincerely invited Lu Li to join this mad party.Lu Li stepped in, his stride resolute and unwavering.He had no reason to refuse.

Earth has been visited by the Embryeniel records, so the world and its habitants are pushed towards the path of evolution.Strange monsters only made up by imagination appeared everywhere and the world changed into a situation of either survival or death.Jon is a normal student in Palflic university, all he thought about was finishing his school safely and is faced with possibility of been abandoned by his parents, however little did he know about himself and what the world had in-store for him.Other worlds and universes, clans and sects, people and monsters stand in his way, will he prevail or succumb to the desires of others.

Back in 1998, an ordinary person who has been through, tired, cried, and fought, hopes to run down-to-earth and keep up with the trend of the times.

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