Outworld Liberators-Chapter 206: Welcoming New Disciples as Radeon and the Rest Trained

Chapter 206: Welcoming New Disciples as Radeon and the Rest Trained

Tabulae looked at the man who had called her talented. Not as a grandfather. Not as family.

Only as trash that pretended to care when things went well.

Eldric rested a hand on her head and patted once, gentle enough not to feel like pity.

"In your heart, they are your enemy," Eldric said.

He pointed toward Biscuit and Shortbread, laughing now, already moving on with their day as if nothing had happened.

"For them, you are strangers," Eldric continued. "Their life goes on, yet you keep the anger inside."

His eyes stayed on Tabulae.

"Who do you think wins in the end?"

Tabulae’s fingers loosened on her robe. The fantasies of punishment, the thousands of sufferings she had wanted to give them, all of it suddenly felt heavy and childish in her hands.

In the end, she was only a young girl. Wronged. Lacking experience. Robbed of the right to love without fear.

Eldric’s smile softened into something knowing.

"I will have someone speak with you after this," he said. "I think you will like to see him again."

A ghost attendant gestured with an open palm. Tabulae followed, still numb, still trying to understand what it meant to let go of poison without letting go of justice.

She was invited upward, to the summit of Radeon Terraces.

As her back receded into the distance, Eldric turned to the remaining winners and did for them what he had done for her.

He spoke to anger. He cleared confusion. He offered words simple enough for mortals to hold, yet sharp enough to stay in a mind for years.

One by one, they too were guided up the mountain to their new quarters.

The manager waiting there was Shears.

Behind him trailed several men and women from Ironbuck Mine, eager for managerial roles, shadowing him like apprentices in hope of future appointment.

Almsgiver, Reelfisher, Irongrit, and Raxutus cupped their fists and bowed, recognizing authority on sight.

Shears only smiled. He had been trained not to swell at praise or flinch at attention.

The youngsters behind him looked smug at the bows, imagining themselves receiving that same respect one day.

Seeing Shears’s calm, they swallowed their excitement and watched instead.

"The named disciples will be staying here," Shears said, pointing.

At a decent sized thatch hut.

The disciples froze. A few rubbed their eyes as if the mountain air had made them see wrong.

There was nothing shameful about a thatch hut, but after Eldric’s grandeur, after forged badges and heavenly screens, they had expected stone halls and golden lamps.

Shears saw their faces. A sneer almost rose. He held it down.

"Your wooden plate is the key to your hut," he said, voice even. "Before I proceed, do you have any questions?"

Handlefiddler spoke first. He had not survived contracts and knives by keeping his head in a gutter.

"I want to know the proper functions and features of this thatch hut," he asked.

"A sharp one," Shears exclaimed.

After Handlefiddler spoke, his wooden token vibrated in his palm.

Earlier on the walk up, he had noticed six squares printed on it, each marked with a zero.

Now the pattern shifted.

The zeros began to change into something else.

[0] [0] [0] [0] [5] [0]

Handlefiddler was sure he knew what those numbers meant.

He was not sick in the head, and wood did not vibrate on its own without reason.

Still, he kept the token tucked in his sleeve and listened, face calm, eyes sharp.

Shears lifted his hand and gestured for Handlefiddler to follow.

They walked a few paces to the nearest thatch hut.

Shears held his hand out and Handlefiddler handed him the wooden token, then Shears pressed it against the doorframe.

The hut opened.

The inside was not cramped. It was not poor. It was a thousand square feet of clean space, arranged with purpose.

A meditation room sat to one side, cushion placed dead center, a glowing array etched beneath it.

A simple bed waited in another corner. A spring fountain bubbled quietly with cups set beside it, as if someone had expected thirst and planned for it.

A small linen screen hung on a wall for viewing whatever Radeon Terraces chose to show.

Shears watched their faces change and smiled without warmth.

"This thatch hut is powered by at least a hundred arrays," he said. "Sound isolating. Anti divination. Defensive formations. Enough to withstand a full blow from a peak Spirit Transfiguration stage powerhouse."

His gaze swept the group.

"I saw some faces looking down on thatch huts," Shears added, teasing like a man poking a bruise.

Those who had smirked earlier went stiff and flustered now, suddenly eager to look respectful.

Then the tokens of the loudest skeptics vibrated.

Several of them, men from the Debt Collectors Society, pulled their wooden plates out and stared.

[0] [0] [0] [-] [1] [0]

The numbers had changed. The white zeros were turning red, one by one, like a wound spreading.

Panic hit their faces.

"Sir," one blurted, voice cracking. "What is this? What does it mean? Am I going to be removed of discipleship? Am I losing my chance?"

Shears only shrugged.

The ghost attendants nearby shrugged too, polite as statues.

The men looked like their world had collapsed in one breath.

"Lord Radeon," Shears said, then coughed as if correcting himself. "Ahem. I mean God Eldric. He is not a petty man."

His voice rose into a scolding shout that made the whole line flinch.

"If you are out just like that, wouldn’t that be too unfair? Has your brain rotted from inhaling headless chicken back then?"

No one knew what to do. So they did what people always did in cultivation stories when fear swallowed pride.

They started kowtowing and apologizing, foreheads thumping the ground in frantic rhythm.

Shears let them grovel for a moment longer than necessary, then continued as if they were not there, explaining how showers worked, how lighting could be turned on and off, and what rules applied inside the huts.

On the underground practice grounds, Fay, Thaddeus, Lifara, and Oswin stood in a narrow corridor that funneled them into a single file whether they liked it or not.

All four had reached the peak of Cornerstone Setting Stage.

It showed in the steadiness of their breathing and the way none of them fidgeted, even with death waiting around a corner.

Oswin, the acting leader, took point, hammer in one hand, shield in the other.

He edged forward until his shoulder brushed stone, then leaned just enough to see.

The corridor ahead glittered with ghostly bows. Not hands holding them. Just weapons crammed into the air, drawn and released in silent rhythm.

Spectral bolts poured down the passage.

"Brace," Oswin barked.

Fay, Lifara, and Thaddeus moved with him at once, qi flaring as their strengths braided together.

A barrier rose in the tight space, taking the first impact with a heavy, ringing thrum that shook their teeth.

At the far end of the hall, a shape peeled out of shadow.

An assassin skeleton.

Its body surfaced and sank again like the darkness was water, ribs and blade edges flashing for a heartbeat before vanishing.

Thaddeus’ instincts screamed. He raised his sword behind his back as if expecting a second strike from the wrong direction.

A clang rang out as kissed metal.

Lifara flicked seeds into the air. They burst into life, thorny vines snapping forward like whips to snare the skeleton’s ankles.

The skeleton opened its jaw and spat smoke that crawled low and thick, trying to blind and confuse.

The four of them swept their spiritual senses in different directions, trusting each other to cover the angles. It was efficient. It was necessary.

"Below," Fay roared.

All of them jumped as Fay puffed her cheeks and blew teal flame down into the smoke.

The fire licked through it in a cruel wash, lighting the corridor in brief blue.

The skeleton only laughed, jaw clacking in a mocking rattle.

Oswin’s eyes narrowed. He pulled a small turtle shell into his left hand and a pendulum into his right.

Radeon’s lessons echoed in him.

A man who relied on one divination trick was begging to be fooled.

For now he had only two.

The pendulum stilled. Then jerked.

Oswin’s voice cut through the noise.

"We move. We defend on the run. We’re getting closed in from the front and the back."

The other disciples did not argue.

They ran the corridor, barrier tight, senses spread, knowing the next strike would come from the dark that had already learned their rhythm.

Radeon watched all of it while he cultivated, attention split the way only a truly dangerous man could manage.

He was still in Breath Tempering, the first step, yet his body no longer begged for bread or sleep the way mortals did.

A few days before the tournament, he had gone into closed door cultivation and refused to waste a single breath.

He was squeezing the cultivation stage dry, wringing out every fraction of strength it could possibly hold.

Right now he lay on a fiery forge used for melting steel, flat on the iron like an offering that did not flinch.

Oisin and Elsin stood over him and hammered his body down with controlled force.

Each strike rang. His body answered with a clang like metal, not flesh.

Off to the side, broken hammers lay in a neat line.

Copper hammer. Iron hammer. Forged steel hammer. Cold steel hammer.

All discarded, all defeated.

Oisin and Elsin had moved on to Jade Bronze.

That was no common material. It was already at the level of an epic artifact, suitable all the way to the peak of Nascent Embryo stage.

And Oisin and Elsin were not tapping Radeon with it.

They were striking him with full power, peak Nascent Embryo force measured and delivered like a craftsman shaping a blade.

Radeon did not scream. He did not beg them to stop. He let the impact travel through him and forced his body to learn.

Radeon did all this without any defensive qi. Pain was nothing to him. He did not dull himself through it.

He used the pain to adjust his muscles, perfecting the physique he wanted.

Each time the Jade Bronze struck, every cell in him drank a sliver of the material’s truth, hardness, and density.

His flesh consumed the lesson and rewrote itself with it, again and again, until the line between man and forged thing grew thin.

This body tempering method had a name.

Unlimited Forging Integration.

It climbed through levels, each one more absurd than the last.

Mortal Resistance. Mystic Rigidity. Galactic Solidity. Cosmic Immovability.

Each contained nine stages.

Right now, he was already on the first stage of Mystic Rigidity.

In his past life, Radeon had never had the chance to cultivate it, having discovered the method only in the latter years of his life.

He had walked the Path of Devouring and Absolute Energy Control instead, building his strength along two brutal roads at once.

It was one of his few regrets. A method like this only worked if you re cultivated from the bottom.

A cosmic ruler could not afford to weaken himself, not even for a day.

The moment he faltered, every suppressed enemy would leap for his throat.

But now he had a second beginning.

Now he could grab every method he knew. Now he could become complete.

So he lay on the forge and let the hammers fall, turning pain into progress and progress into something the world would eventually have to kneel to.