Ancestral Lineage-Chapter 299: You Are Not Ready

The light of their victory had barely begun to fade.

The Tyrant's body remained motionless for three seconds. Its twisted form hissed, armor cracked, core flickering with unstable Destruction magic. Regnare, chest heaving, watched from one knee—frosted blood dripping from his lips.

Yamal hovered near him, ragged. "Is it... done?"

Rhask had fallen to his knees beside a boulder, coughing blood. Vorr was missing an arm, using his hammer as a crutch. Maelis had collapsed from overcasting her Sight Veil. Every breath from the squad was agony. Every second they remained alive was on borrowed time.

And then it happened.

A heartbeat.

The Tyrant's core—splintered and dying—beat once.

Then twice.

A third time.

With a sickening, elastic crackle, the light reversed, flowing inward like a dying star taking one last breath.

Then—

Regeneration.

Dark tendrils of abyssal flesh writhed across its wounds. Its horns gleamed anew, its armor knitting back together. The glow of Destruction not only stabilized—but brightened. Runic veins pulsed down its body like it was being reborn.

"...No..." Regnare whispered.

In under six seconds, the Tyrant stood fully restored.

Simulation Alert: [Enemy Condition: Ascended Rebirth Triggered. Learning Threshold Exceeded.]

Its body shifted. Refined. Smarter. Faster. Deadlier.

Then—it moved.

And the battle ended.

In a blur that not one of them could track, the Tyrant vanished and reappeared mid-air, a ring of energy shattering around it from the sheer force of re-entry. A new limb had formed—a serpentine tail of living void, crackling with quantum-null entropy.

It slammed the ground.

The impact wasn't physical.

It was conceptual.

A wave of unmaking burst outward. Color vanished. Sound inverted. It was like the simulation itself glitched, overwritten by something beyond coding.

The squad screamed—

—but not from pain.

From something deeper.

From failure.

Regnare reached out, frost forming helplessly around his fingers as his squadmates were swept away like insects caught in a god's breath. He tried to stand.

But the world shattered around him.

SYSTEM MESSAGE:

Simulation Terminated: Catastrophic Loss Condition Triggered. Squad Integrity: 0%.Time to Collapse: 00:17 seconds.Last Conscious Signature: Regnare Kael'Dri.

Silence.

The simulated dusk faded.

The Beast Plane disappeared.

And Regnare collapsed forward into cold white nothingness.

...

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Regnare's eyes fluttered open to the burn of sterile lights above. His body felt like it had been wrung through a collapsing star. Muscles torn. Bones protesting. The memory of the Tyrant's final strike—world-ending, impossible—still echoed through every cell in his being.

He sat up slowly, vision swimming. Around him, the other eleven members of his squad were coming to—some groaning, some still flatlined in disbelief, all of them coated in simulated blood, grime, and exhaustion.

And then he heard it:

"Seventeen seconds. Not bad. Honestly, I expected nine."

The voice cut clean through the ringing in Regnare's head—smooth, amused, annoyingly familiar. Everyone turned toward the center of the massive observation platform that hovered just above the simulation pit.

There, standing like he'd been watching a mid-day comedy show rather than a massacre, was Ethan.

He wore a loose black hoodie and dark joggers, one hand casually cradling a synth-orange soda, the other tucked in his pocket. His knit cap was pulled low over his hair, his circular-rimmed glasses catching the glow from the shattered arena's false sun. He looked more like someone waiting for a bus than the Emperor of Anbord.

But no one mistook him for anything less.

Even battered and bruised, the entire squad stood straighter—whether from respect or fear, it was hard to tell.

Ethan jumped down from the platform, landing with a quiet thud that somehow carried more weight than Tyrant's entire charge.

"Honestly? I had popcorn."Sip."Caramel. Best way to watch a tactical disaster unfold."

Regnare, still on one knee, wiped his face and glared. "You watched us get flattened?"

"Watched? No, son," Ethan said, tilting his head. "I studied it. Like a tragicomedy. The part where Maelis screamed 'It's learning' right before getting tail-swatted into a tree? Chef's kiss."

Maelis grunted from her place on the floor. "I'm going to kill you in your sleep, old man."

"Make it past ten seconds next time and I might let you try."

Vorr grumbled. "That thing was rigged. It cheated."

Ethan looked mildly insulted. "Rigged? Vorr, my sweet muscle-brick, the Tyrant was the tutorial boss. It was even holding back."

Rhask, still smoldering faintly from self-detonating in phase two, coughed. "That wasn't holding back. That was a warm-up for Armageddon."

Ethan raised his soda. "Exactly. Character development. You all learned something today."

Regnare stood fully, brushing his ash-coated tunic. "Yeah. We learned we can't even dent it."

"Wrong. You learned you could take off three of its fingers before it nuked you into orbit." Ethan flipped his holopad to show a still image—Regnare mid-air, blades glowing with frost and curse runes, just before the Tyrant exploded. "You made it look cool, if nothing else."

"Gee, thanks, Dad. I'll hang that frame in my obituary."

"You're welcome. Also—" he turned to address the full squad now, pacing with a relaxed gait, "—for the record: this wasn't punishment. This was just your first true stress test."

Yamal folded his arms. "First?"

"Oh, absolutely." Ethan smiled. "You think you're the first team I've watched get atomized here? The Tyrant has a fan club."

Kalev groaned. "You're insane."

"I'm the Emperor. Close enough."

The squad collectively sighed.

Ethan's voice softened slightly, but still carried. "You were outmatched, yeah. But you weren't outclassed. You lacked coordination. Precision. Timing. You hesitated. And in the real world, even one blink too long is a massacre."

He glanced at Regnare with a sideways smirk. "Also, next time, maybe don't yell 'now!' before a surprise attack."

Regnare groaned. "I hate you."

Ethan took a final sip and dropped the empty bottle into a floating bin. "No you don't. You hate that I'm right."

He headed toward the chamber doors, waving over his shoulder.

"Good job, squad. Simulation resets tomorrow. Tyrant 2.0. This time? He brings his dog."

"Wait, what?!" Nyarelle shouted.

"Yeah," Ethan called back, already disappearing into the corridor. "It breathes fire and self-doubt."

The door hissed shut.

Regnare slumped onto a bench, exhaling hard.

"…I should've let the Tyrant eat me."

Maelis groaned from the floor. "Too slow. I already volunteered."