Chapter 5: Awakening of the Void-Class
The seal broke—not with a whisper, but with a scream.
Ren didn't understand what was happening. One moment he was choking on the magical pressure in the trial arena, his vision swimming. The next, the world cracked.
Time itself seemed to slow.
Crimson sigils tore themselves across the sky above the academy dome. The ground trembled. All around him, the instructors and students froze—some collapsed. A few screamed.
Kael stumbled back, blood pouring from his nose. "What… what is that mana?!"
In Ren's hands, the Codex Nullum flared to life. Black pages turned on their own, revealing symbols that shouldn't exist—arcane, cursed, forbidden. His eyes widened as the voice inside the book whispered with clarity:
"Void-Class Artifact awakening. Identity match confirmed: Kamizuki Ren. Commencing unsealing of Protocol Zero."
Chains that only he could see snapped, bursting around him in concentric rings of dark light. A rune circle bloomed beneath his feet, alive with symbols from every known magical system—and some that were long extinct.
Across the arena, Headmaster Varion rose to his feet, pale. "Stop the trial! That magic… it's not supposed to exist anymore!"
Auron's smirk vanished.
The students whispered, terrified: "Void-Class?" "Isn't that… sealed by the gods?" "How can a first-year awaken that?!"
Ren barely heard them. Power surged through his veins—not just energy, but knowledge. The Codex bound itself to his soul, and a second weapon materialized at his side.
A blade made of obsidian and light.
Its name echoed through the minds of everyone present:
NULLFANG.
A Divine-Class weapon corrupted and rewritten. Its edge shimmered between dimensions, bleeding silence into sound.
Kael screamed and launched a final spell out of pure fear—a storm of lightning. But it never reached Ren.
With a single flick of Nullfang, space folded. The lightning bent around him like water, then vanished into nothing.
He wasn't just strong now.
He was unknowable.
A force that didn't belong.
Even Ren looked down at his own hands, stunned. "What… am I?"
The Codex answered.
"You are the last bearer of the Void Protocol. A mistake. A weapon. A question the gods refused to answer."