The Box: Fate
Chapter 72 — The Threshold of the Divine
The mountain winds howled through the narrow crags of the western pass, but the Sovereign Vanguards no longer felt the sluggish drag of exhaustion. They moved with a synchronized, rhythmic speed, their fully restored bodies cutting through the rough terrain like seasoned veterans.
Gideon led the pace, his massive jagged greatsword swaying on his back. Beside him, Azureus walked in his majestic humanoid form, his sapphire scales glowing with a stable, deep brilliance that reflected off the rocky walls.
"The reaper's grace has mended your flesh," Azureus spoke, his deep voice carrying over the wind as his slitted eyes scanned the teenagers behind him. "But do not let this sudden vitality make you arrogant. You are completely blind to your own metrics. In a real world, entering a battlefield without knowing the depth of your soul's reservoir is a quick path to a permanent grave."
Zanaki caught up to the front, his hands tucked behind his head. "Hey, snake-eyes, we've been throwing lightning and shadows around just fine. What metrics do we need? The screens are gone, and frankly, I don't miss the pop-ups."
Gideon scoffed, looking back with a smirk. "The kid thinks muscle memory is enough. Listen to the dragon, brats. In this world, the native people don't use 'systems' built by some teenager in a computer room. We use the ancient, hard-coded baseline of the **True Creator**. In my city, Ignis-Vail, there is a **Grand Origin Guild**."
Kataki, walking silently at the center of the group, looked up. "An Origin Guild? Like a status registrar?"
"Not a registrar. An awakening altar," Gideon corrected, his face turning serious as the towering obsidian walls of his citadel began to appear on the western horizon. "It doesn't give you 'experience points' for killing small animals. It interfaces directly with the divine energy of this planet. If your soul is strong enough, the altar unlocks your **Divine Status**."
Azureus nodded, his silver hair catching the fading twilight. "It will not show you a game menu. It will reveal the physical weight of your soul limit, your elemental affinities, and the raw capacity of your life force. But more importantly... it allows you to petition for a **God Skill**."
The sixteen-to-eighteen-year-old players quieted down, the gravity of the words hitting them hard.
"A God Skill?" Murasaki whispered, her fingers curling around her catalyst staff. "Like the ones we had from the cards?"
"The cards were just synthetic emulations," Azureus explained coldly. "Ren-sama built codes to mimic the natural forces of this world. But a true God Skill is a direct fragment of authority granted by the primordial forces. The Angel entity your leader summoned? That is a conceptual force of the True Creator. If you unlock your native status, you stop using artificial scripts, and you begin drawing from the absolute reservoir of this reality."
Vahn, walking beside Kataki, touched the old scar on his face. "Ten years ago, my squad thought the system was everything. We thought the game rules governed our destiny. If we had known that the native world had its own divine architecture... Rin might have been able to anchor her soul before she dissolved."
Kataki gripped the hilt of **The Twin Fangs of the Eclipse**. His broken wrist was perfectly healed, but the weight of his pact with the Angel of Death was a constant pressure in his chest. He knew that relying on a reaper wasn't a long-term strategy. They needed to adapt to this new, ancient world's rules, and they needed to do it before the Seven Demon Lords made their move.
"How far to the Grand Origin Guild, Gideon?" Kataki asked, his silver eyes flashing with an intense, quiet resolve.
Gideon pointed his massive hand toward the valley below.
Emerging from the mountain mist was a colossal, fortified city forged entirely from black volcanic stone and red iron. Rivers of natural lava flowed through reinforced aqueducts, lighting up the massive metropolis like a burning star against the dark sky. This was **The Crimson Citadel of Ignis-Vail**, a bastion of absolute military might.
"We enter the gates in twenty minutes," Gideon grinned, his white-hot aura flaring with pride. "Let's see what kind of divine fragments the True Creator has waiting for a bunch of outworlder brats."