Chapter 10: Advantage

Kaden lay on his bed, eyes fixed on the plain, black ceiling of his chamber.

He had just returned from his meeting with his parents.

“The Warborn Trials, huh...”

He muttered the words under his breath, still absorbing their weight.

The Warborn Trials—a series of challenges assigned by the family patriarch to every young member upon awakening their Origin.

In a family like his, where battle was a way of life, your path was forged the moment you awakened. Your worth was measured through combat. And once you received your first trial...

There was no turning back.

You complete it—or you die trying.

That was the belief of the Warborns.

To them, death wasn’t a tragedy. It was a rite. If you weren’t willing to face death, you had no right to claim the lives of your enemies.

There was no in-between.

No compromise.

And that belief ... had to be carved deep into every awakened Warborn.

“Insane,” Kaden muttered, sitting up at the edge of his bed, hands folded beneath his chin. “What kind of trial is that for someone who just awakened?”

His trial sounded simple.

Clear a dungeon.

But reality was far from kind.

The dungeon was located deep in the wilderness. Which meant he’d first have to fight his way through beasts outside the dungeon just to reach the entrance.

And inside?

At least a hundred monsters—plus a boss-class creature at the end.