My Divine System Chapter 38

After the intense fight, Michael felt completely drained, his body and spirit exhausted beyond measure. He couldn’t continue any longer. It was at that moment he finally accepted the harsh truth: his dream felt far-fetched. If an ordinary student had managed to deplete him this much in battle, how could he possibly stand a chance against a legacy? Even though he didn’t make it into the top 50, there was a silver lining. His rank had improved, and that small victory gave him hope and motivation to train harder and become stronger.

Determined to learn, Michael decided to watch the upcoming matches carefully, hoping to glean any useful strategies or techniques from the competitors. Soon enough, the challenge reached the coveted top 50 ranks—and that was when the real excitement began. To Michael’s surprise, the first battle wasn’t between low-ranked students as expected. Instead, the fight was between two highly skilled students ranked 23rd and 20th in the academy.

The tension in the arena skyrocketed as spectators braced themselves for an epic showdown. Finally, the battle between a legacy began. The arena was silent, heavy with anticipation. Two figures faced each other in the center, their eyes locked. For a long moment, neither moved. Then Kaelen took a step forward, his voice sharp.

“You’ve been staring at me like you can see straight through my skin. What are you trying to find?” Eren’s tone was calm, unnervingly so. “Not trying. I already found it. You’re too restless. Too much weight pressing down on your chest. I can almost hear your pulse from here.”

Kaelen’s jaw tightened. He raised his hand, and the air grew damp. Droplets spun into existence, floating in a slow orbit around him. The ground beneath his feet glistened wet. “Then drown in it.” Immediately, both of them released their aura.

Michael felt like he was drowning, and it was as if he was pinned down by a mysterious force. Nick, who was sitting close to Michael, finally spoke, “Do you feel it?” Since the tournament started, his talkative roommate was quiet and shocked, and it was surprising that he decided to speak now.

“This is the reason I told you not to challenge a legacy because they will break you,” Nick said. He waited a little bit, letting his words linger in the air. “These aren’t normal students; each of them is trained at a young age to wield, destroy, and will do anything for recognition. They are not built to be heirs; they are built to be weapons… A fight between you and a legacy is a death sentence.”

Michael didn’t know what to say. If these two possessed this kind of aura, then what were they truly capable of? The droplets fused into two massive serpents of water, jaws snapping as they surged forward. Their speed was brutal, whipping the air like whips of liquid steel.

Eren lifted only a pencil. He didn’t even open his book; he just let the graphite hover in his hand. His right eye ignited, lines and swirls glowing across the iris like shifting ink. When Michael saw those eyes, he was amazed. Eren’s Art Eye was a deep black iris, darker than ink, within which glowing silver brushstroke-like patterns swirled and shifted constantly, as if his eye was a living canvas itself.

A faint broken ring of light circled the iris, resembling fragments of calligraphy that faded and redrawn themselves. When activated, the shifting strokes sharpened into vivid sketches and script-like etchings that bled outward into the sclera like crawling ink veins, making it seem as though his eye was tearing open into another world.

“Art of Callistride: Creation.”

A single stroke in the air, silver and shimmering. The serpents froze, stiff as statues, inches from crushing him. Their liquid bodies distorted, their flow halted like frozen sketches.

Eren tilted his head slightly. “Serpents are meant to slither, not bite. All I did was remind them of that truth.” The frozen water cracked like broken glass, collapsing into harmless droplets.

Kaelen snarled. “You think you can just draw me apart?” He slammed his palms to the arena floor. The ground trembled as cracks opened, and water burst upward like geysers, spiraling into a monstrous wall.

“School of Tide: Doom Tide.”

With a guttural roar, he sent it crashing down like a collapsing ocean. The wave engulfed half the arena, swallowing Eren whole. For a heartbeat, the crowd gasped.

But then, from inside the torrent, faint glowing lines spread like veins of light, weaving into a massive lotus. Each petal stretched wide, deflecting the force of the wave.

The water split apart around it, raining harmlessly to the floor. Eren stepped out from within, hair and clothes barely wet. He twirled his pencil lazily in his fingers. “Your anger makes the water wild. Wild things are easy to predict.”

Kaelen’s teeth clenched. His calm broke. “Predict this.” He raised both hands, and the water that had seeped into the ground vanished from sight, absorbed deep below the arena. The silence was suffocating. Then a hundred sharp spears of water erupted upward from beneath Eren, bursting out like jagged glass.

They struck with no pattern, no rhythm, stabbing from every angle. Eren moved his pencil, slashing strokes in the air. Silver lines unfolded into shields, barriers, even blades that cut the spears down. But the assault didn’t stop. One pierced his sleeve, tearing skin. Another grazed his cheek.

Kaelen laughed, his voice sharp with triumph. “Not so calm now, are you?” Eren’s breath steadied. His glowing eye fixed on Kaelen like a hawk. “No. I’ve simply read enough of you.”

The puddles scattered across the arena shimmered, reflecting Kaelen’s image, but then began to move differently. They grinned when he frowned. They whispered when he stayed silent. Kaelen’s eyes widened. “W-what is this…?”

Eren’s voice cut like a blade. “Your fear. Your doubt. Your failures. All sketched out of your soul. They’re loud. And now, you can hear them too.” The reflections lunged at Kaelen, crawling out of the puddles like twisted versions of himself.

They clawed and wrapped around him, whispering words only he understood. His control cracked—the water around him spiraled chaotically, lashing out in every direction like a storm gone berserk. “STOP!!” Kaelen roared, but his own water fought him, reacting to the chaos inside his chest.

He clenched his fists, forcing the whirlpools together, compressing them until they fused into a massive water dragon. Its roar shook the arena as it coiled around him, scales rippling like liquid armor.

“School of Tide: Water Dragon Call.”

“You want to read me? Then read this..the strength I forged myself!” The dragon lunged forward, jaws wide, a torrent of pressure blasting the tiles apart. Eren’s eye flared to its limit. His pencil slashed faster than sight, pages of his sketchbook flipping on their own as glowing ink poured into the air.

From his strokes emerged a towering figure of black and silver ink, an Ink Titan, faceless, vast, with chains of script wrapping around its arms.

“Art of Callistride: Call of Titans.”

The Titan clashed with the water dragon, the arena exploding with shockwaves.

Ink and water collided, spraying mist and black droplets into the air like a thunderstorm. Through the chaos, their voices clashed. Kaelen screamed, “You hide behind drawings! I fight with what’s mine!” Eren replied calmly, “And yet… mine is stronger because it reflects what you are.”

The Ink Titan’s chains whipped forward, wrapping the dragon’s throat. With a final, crushing pull, the dragon shattered into torrents that rained down, drenching the arena. Kaelen staggered to his knees, gasping, his control broken.

Eren lowered his pencil, his Titan dissolving into fading lines. His glowing eye dimmed. “Art is truth. And truth always drowns false strength.” The arena fell into silence, only the sound of dripping water echoing.

Eren turned, closing his sketchbook. The arena was in ruins. Tiles shattered. Columns cracked. Mist and ink stained the air like storm clouds. Kaelen’s chest heaved, his hands trembling but still raised.

Water swirled around him violently, pulling from every drop that had drenched the arena. The puddles, the mist, even the sweat dripping from his skin—everything answered his call. The storm converged into a towering vortex, a colossal leviathan of water forming above him.

Its body coiled, filling the arena, jaws opening wide enough to swallow everything. Kaelen’s voice cracked with fury. “If you can read me, then read this—MY WILL TO CRUSH YOU!”

“School of Tide: Tide Ruler.”

The leviathan roared, its voice like a tidal cannon. Eren stood perfectly still. His arm bled, his cheek stung, but his breathing was calm. His glowing eye blazed brighter than ever, lines spiraling outward like galaxies.

His sketchbook flipped open on its own, pages tearing free and swirling around him in a cyclone of ink and silver.

He raised his pencil one last time. His voice was quiet, but it carried across the arena like thunder. “Then let me show you… the end of your story.” He dragged the pencil down through the air.

“Art of Callistride: Doom Bringer.”

The pages burst into flame-like ink, merging into a colossal Ink God—a faceless giant with endless chains inscribed with ancient script. Its sheer presence bent the air, its outline bleeding between reality and imagination.

The ground quaked as the leviathan and the Ink God stared each other down. Kaelen screamed, thrusting both arms forward. “DROWN!!!” The leviathan surged, a wall of water collapsing toward Eren with enough force to flatten mountains.

Eren whispered one last word. “Bind.” The Ink God moved, faster than a storm, its chains whipping out. They pierced through the leviathan’s watery mass, glowing scripts burning across its body.

The leviathan roared, thrashing violently, water exploding in violent tsunamis that ripped across the arena. The crowd screamed, shielding themselves as shockwaves tore through the barrier walls.

Kaelen poured everything into it, blood dripping from his nose. “Break free! CRUSH HIM!” But the chains only tightened. The leviathan’s body cracked—not like water, but like fragile glass, shattering piece by piece into torrents.

Eren’s eye pulsed, veins glowing across his face, blood trickling from the corner of his own eye. The Art Eye strained, on the brink of tearing him apart. He whispered one last word. “Erase.”

The Ink God dragged the leviathan down and shattered it completely. The explosion of water shook the arena like a collapsing sea, drowning everything in mist. When the mist cleared, Kaelen lay on his knees, soaked and trembling.

His power flickered, broken, his eyes hollow with exhaustion. Eren stood a few feet away, swaying, his sketchbook falling shut at last. His eye dimmed, its glow fading back to normal.

He looked at Kaelen quietly. “You fought like a storm… but even storms fade when the canvas dries.” Kaelen’s head dropped, his body giving out, collapsing onto the drenched arena floor.

The fight was over. The arena was silent for a moment, then erupted into roars of disbelief and awe. Eren turned, dragging his pencil once across the broken ground. A single silver lotus bloomed from the crack, glowing softly.

Then, without another word, he walked away. Michael only had one word: “Too strong.” The power of the legacy was a force. “I have to get stronger. I must.”

The tournament ended with the legacy showing off their supreme strength and the reason why they were called legacy for a reason. No one in the top 15 competed with each other, so no one knew what they were capable of. They were like hidden dragons, waiting for their opportunity.