The Author's Draft

Chapter 89 - 8: SS-Rank

Aiden’s hand touched the crystal orb.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then the orb began to glow.

Faintly at first, just a slight brightening of the light already present inside. But the glow intensified rapidly, spreading from where Aiden’s hand made contact outward through the crystal until the entire sphere was luminous.

A holographic display materialized above the orb, a swirling light that shifted colors as the device calculated his mana signature and power level.

The light turned brown, solidifying into a stable glow.

D-RANK

The ranking appeared beneath the brown light, hovering in glowing text, then immediately the color shifted to green.

C-RANK

The colors kept changing, climbing faster. The orb’s light grew brighter, pulsing faster as it tried to keep up with the measurements. The holographic display turned blue.

B-RANK

Administrator Voss leaned forward slightly, his eyes widening behind his glasses.

But the color didn’t stop climbing. It shifted to purple, the holographic display pulsing with deeper intensity.

A-RANK

Murmurs spread through the guild representatives immediately.

The orb’s glow intensified further, becoming almost painful to look at directly. The light spilled across the platform and reflected off the reinforced glass wall in shifting patterns. The holographic display shifted to brilliant gold.

S-RANK

The room went completely silent.

Every guild representative was on their feet now, staring at Aiden with expressions that ranged from shock to naked greed. Even the Hunter Association staff who’d been processing other paperwork had stopped to watch.

Then the holographic display spiked again, the gold light exploding into radiant platinum that filled the entire space above the orb.

SS-RANK

Administrator Voss’s face went pale. "Everyone step back—"

The orb shattered.

Crystal fragments exploded outward in a burst of light and raw mana. Voss threw up a protective barrier instinctively, spiritual energy forming a translucent shield around him and the platform. Shards bounced harmlessly off the barrier and scattered across the floor, tinkling like broken glass.

When the light faded and the mana dispersed, the pedestal where the orb had sat was empty except for a few larger pieces of broken crystal still glowing faintly with residual energy.

Complete silence filled the evaluation chamber.

Then everyone started talking at once.

The guild representatives were practically shouting over each other, voices overlapping in a chaotic mess of excitement and disbelief. "Did you see that?" "SS-rank, that’s—" "We need to recruit him before—" "I’ve never seen an orb shatter like that—" "Who is he?"

The Hunter Association staff looked between the shattered orb and Aiden like they couldn’t quite process what had just happened, their professional composure cracking under the weight of witnessing something extremely rare.

The other awakeners waiting for their evaluations stared with expressions ranging from awe to envy to fear.

Administrator Voss stood on the platform, still maintaining his protective barrier even though the danger had passed, clearly using the moment to collect his thoughts. He took a breath, lowered the barrier, and spoke loudly enough to cut through the noise.

"That’s only happened three times in London."

He cleared his throat, straightening his glasses with one hand while gesturing at the broken orb with the other.

"Can you please wait here?" he asked Aiden directly. "We need to retrieve the reinforced evaluation orb, the one designed specifically for measuring S-rank and above. It’ll take a few minutes to bring it from storage."

Aiden nodded once but said nothing, his masked face giving away no reaction to the chaos he’d just caused.

The guild representatives were still talking amongst themselves, but their voices had dropped to intense whispers now. Aiden could hear fragments of conversation.

"...never seen a reading climb that fast..."

"...from D-rank to SS-rank in seconds, that’s insane..."

"...need to make an offer before the other guilds—"

"...Chairman’s going to want to hear about this..."

Then Kane stood up from where he’d been sitting with the guild representatives.

He walked forward slowly, his long black coat swaying with each step, his amber eyes fixed on Aiden.

Kane stopped a few meters from the platform and looked directly at Aiden, his voice carrying clearly across the now-quiet room.

"Impossible."

The single word hung in the air. Every head in the room turned toward Kane, then back to Aiden. The implication was obvious to anyone paying attention, they had history, they’d fought before.

Kane took another step forward, his spiritual pressure beginning to leak out unconsciously as his emotions affected his control.

"I fought you at Westfield," he said, his tone somewhere between accusation and genuine confusion. "You weren’t this strong then. Not even close. What changed? How did you get this powerful in just—"

Aiden’s killing intent erupted.

It slammed into Kane like a tsunami hitting a shoreline, overwhelming and absolute. The pressure crashed down with the weight of the Slaughter Dao itself, carrying the bloodlust of a thousand battles fought in an endless crimson ocean, refined through seven days of mechanical slaughter until it became something pure and terrible.

Second-stage Slaughter Intent, focused and deliberate, aimed directly at the Enforcer.

Kane’s eyes widened. His A-rank cultivation flared automatically in response, spiritual energy forming a defensive aura around his body as his instincts screamed danger.

It wasn’t enough.

The Slaughter Intent tore through his defenses like paper, overwhelming his A-rank cultivation through sheer qualitative superiority. This wasn’t just mana or spiritual pressure, this was Intent, a fundamental understanding of violence and death made manifest.

Kane’s knees buckled. He tried to stay standing, muscles straining, but the pressure was relentless. His hands hit the floor first as his arms gave out, then his chest followed as the Intent compressed him completely against the ground.

He couldn’t move. Could barely breathe. The killing intent felt like drowning in an ocean of blood, like being crushed under the weight of countless corpses, like staring into an abyss that stared back with murderous hunger.

The pressure spread outward from where Aiden stood, washing over the room like poison gas.

People started reacting immediately. The weaker guild representatives stumbled backward, faces going pale, hands instinctively reaching for weapons they couldn’t draw because their bodies had locked up. A few Hunter Association staff members dropped to their knees, gasping as the suffocating presence made their survival instincts scream.

Even the awakeners waiting for evaluation felt it, those with lower cultivation or weaker willpower swaying on their feet as primal fear gripped them.

An A-rank guild representative stepped forward from the observation area, clearly intending to intervene. He was a man in his forties, wearing expensive combat gear with the emblem of one of London’s top guilds prominently displayed on his chest. His A-rank cultivation flared around him as he approached.

"Stop this immediately or I’ll—"

Aiden’s gaze shifted to him.

The killing intent redirected, focusing on the guild representative like a hammer targeting a nail.

The man staggered mid-step. His A-rank cultivation helped him resist better than Kane managed, his power and experience giving him slightly more defense against the Intent. But only slightly. He dropped to one knee with a pained grunt, both hands braced against the floor to keep from collapsing completely, teeth gritted against the pressure crushing down on him.

Nobody else moved. Nobody spoke. The killing intent filled the chamber like a physical presence, making it hard to think clearly, hard to do anything except focus on the primal instinct to survive.

Then someone started clapping.

The sound cut through the oppressive atmosphere, slow and deliberate applause coming from the back of the room near where the guild representatives had been sitting.

An old man stood up from a chair positioned in the corner, half-hidden behind some of the younger representatives who’d been blocking him from view. He looked to be in his seventies at least, with white hair and a weathered face marked by decades of scars that spoke of countless battles survived. He wore simple clothes, no guild insignia, no rank badges, nothing to indicate his status or affiliation.

But the moment he stood, the atmosphere in the room shifted.

He walked forward slowly, still clapping, a broad smile spreading across his weathered face. The killing intent washed over him as he moved, there was a slight heaviness to his steps, a minor resistance, but unlike everyone else in the room, he wasn’t being crushed by it.

One of the guild representatives who’d managed to stay standing noticed him moving. The woman gasped, her eyes going wide.

"Is that not him?" she whispered, barely audible over the continued clapping.

Another representative managed to turn his head to look, his face going from pale to completely white. "No way..."

"The Chairman’s been here this whole time?"

"We didn’t even know..."

Shocked murmurs spread through those who could still speak. Several guild representatives looked stunned that the Chairman of the Hunter Association had been present in the room and none of them had noticed or been informed.

The old man continued walking toward Aiden, still smiling, still clapping.

’We actually have a chance of winning this war—if I can make him an ally.’

He studied Aiden carefully as he approached, taking in every detail. The masked figure standing calmly on the platform. The controlled killing intent that had crushed an A-rank Enforcer and a guild representative simultaneously. The casual way this young man stood there like none of this was particularly impressive.

The Chairman stopped a few meters from the platform, still well within range of the killing intent but showing no sign of distress. He lowered his hands from clapping, the smile remaining on his face, warm and genuinely pleased.

"Remarkable," he said, his voice carrying clearly despite not being particularly loud.