Inside the shelter, days blurred into one another, stripped of sunrise and sunset. The dome’s soft glow never changed, the fire always burned, and the only rhythm came from breathing, training, and the quiet sounds of movement within the small house.

  Kana stayed mostly indoors.

  She helped a little—cleaning, arranging, trying to make the simple interior feel less like a strange pocket between worlds—but there was no forest to hunt in, no tribe to patrol for, no Shaman to assist and no way for her to properly train. She would not be able to level up here and she would not be able to face black tigers anyways. Still, she did some exercise as tigress and as humanoid to at least try to prepare to contribute somehow in what was to come. Outside, beyond the dome, John and Archangela vanished into the void to train. Inside, Kana sat on the bed or by the table, fingers tangled in her silver hair, feeling useless as thoughts of the encampment gnawed at her.

  Meanwhile, John threw himself into mastering his dragon form.

  Every “day,” he stepped out into the empty space with Archangela. There, in the limitless void, they repeated the same brutal routine: transformations, aerial maneuvers, spell integration, claw and wing coordination. He refined how quickly he could shift from human to dragon. He practiced chaining dragonfire into elemental spells, learning how to bend his breath into narrower, denser streams or wide, scorching waves. Archangela pushed him relentlessly, her strikes precise, her corrections calm but firm.

  But even as his instincts sharpened and his control improved, a problem nagged at the back of his mind.

  Sparring with Archangela could only take him so far.

  His system windows stayed stubbornly still. No XP notifications. No level-ups. No new skills. Training honed what he already had, but it did not push his stats higher. It was polishing a blade without making the metal stronger. Against black tigers, polishing would not be enough.

  He needed XP.

  And he would not get it through sparring.

  Going back to the real world just to grind was not an option. The moment he stepped out, time would resume for the endangered white weretigresses. Every second he spent hunting weaker monsters would be a second their camp remained under threat. The encampment did not have that luxury.

  The parallel world—his usual way of accelerating growth—was unavailable, its pathways sealed after he had finished his draconic trial. That door was closed.

  But…

  There was another possibility. One that had been with him for a longer time, sitting quietly in his list of abilities.

  “Summon the Trial.”

  The skill name floated in his mind like a warning and a promise. With it, he could call fragments of the Totem Trial itself—those same waves of structured challenges that had honed him before. A controlled environment, enemies tailored to test him, and, most importantly, XP gains that were very real.

  Using it here, in the place where time did not move, might let him level without risking a single outside second.

  Or it might do something else entirely.

  John stared out at the blank void, the dome a quiet star behind him, Archangela resting nearby with wings folded.

  He was unsure if reaching level 50 would trigger some system event—force him out of the shelter as it would have forced him out of the parallel world, break the stillness, or alter the rules that kept time frozen here. The Trial and the System both had a habit of embedding hidden conditions into their thresholds. Level 50 was not just a number; it was a milestone. A border.

  But the black tigers did not care about his hesitation. The encampment did not have anyone else to lean on. And remaining as he was now meant walking into their territory underprepared.

  He flexed his hands slowly, feeling the coiled power of his dragon form still lingering beneath his skin.

  It’s risky, he admitted to himself. But so is going back like this.

  His gaze hardened.

  He might as well try.

  John weighed the risks one final time, the void's pale emptiness stretching endlessly around the shelter's dome. The Trial—summoned by his unique skill—did more than pull him into its white expanse; it froze time outside, just as the shelter did. While he fought within that sub-realm, nothing aged in the parallel world’s shelter, if you could still call it like that, and nothing stirred for the white weretigresses back home. It was as if he had two layers of frozen time. If level 50 kicked him out mid-trial, he could simply re-enter the trial from the real world, chaining one frozen moment to another without losing ground.

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  It was possible to bring Archangela along—the bond between them allowed it, a loophole in the skill's dimensional weave—but Kana had to stay behind, in the shelter. Time's stillness would cradle her safely inside the house, untouched until they returned. But she would not notice his absence.

  Decision made, John nodded to Archangela. "Let's go."

  He invoked the skill.

  Mana drained in a deep, resonant pull, sharper than before. Reality folded inward, the familiar garden inside the dome replaced by blinding white—an infinite arena without horizon or edge, mirroring the shelter's new outskirts emptiness yet humming with the Totem Trial's ancient structure.

  "Black tiger," John commanded aloud, shaping the summon with intent. No weak echoes this time—a true predator, scaled to push his limits, but only one.

  The white rippled. Shadows coalesced at the center, swelling into a massive form: midnight fur veined with ember-red stripes, eyes like smoldering coals, muscles coiling under hide thick as iron plate and the menacing chains characterizing these predators. The system window confirmed it:

  John did not remember the red stripes; was this black tiger a mutant? Or maybe his eyes had become better at piercing the shadows surrounding these beasts.

  It lunged without preamble, faster than any wyvern—a blur of chains, claws and fangs aimed to shred.

  John shifted to golden dragon form mid-dodge, wings flaring to counter the momentum. The first clash shook the non-space: claw met scale in a screech of sparks, dragonfire breath clashing against the tiger's aura-shield in a burst of steam and shadow. Archangela wove through the edges, her light-lances pinning the beast's flanks while John hammered aerial strikes—tail sweeps, horn charges, water orbs exploding against its rune-marked hide. Still, Archangela held back. John needed this to be his fight; she was just assisting.

  Hours blurred into a grind of adaptation. The tiger adapted too, feinting with phantom shadows, aura bursts disrupting John's flight. But the Trial rewarded precision: each kill fed XP, bars climbing steadily on both tracks. Archangela struck true facing some other tiger but gained nothing—her status frozen, a pet bound to his ceiling post-parallel world challenges. She could follow him here, fight beside him, but levels stagnated until he overtook her true power. The angel was not able to level up beyond John's level once the parallel world challenge had ended. He was lucky enough that he could take her with him, but she would stagnate until John caught up to her and she was far ahead of John in level and power.

  Finally, both of John’s bars hit the cap.

  The white pulsed, pressure building like an overfilled dam. Ascension loomed—but no gateway opened, no realm pulled him in. The system held, recognizing the anomaly without ejecting him. He couldn't push further here; Tier II (or beyond) demanded ritual, not raw XP.

  John exhaled steam from draconic jaws, dismissing the tiger's fading corpse. At his demand, the Trial spat him back to the shelter, time untouched.

  He was ready—or as ready as paradox allowed—for whatever came next.

  John stood in the shelter’s pale submarine hush, the Trial's white light still fading from his vision like afterimages on water. Both level bars glowed at 50—unnatural and natural tracks aligned in perfect, stubborn stasis. But no ascension gateway shimmered. No class options unfolded. Just a single, unyielding system prompt hovering before him:

  He was stuck. Should he go out into the real world and look for a stone? But he would lose time. Should he face the black tigers like he was now?

  Archangela tilted her head slightly, sensing the frustration coiling in him. Kana emerged from the home then, her silver hair catching the faint glow inside the shelter. She hesitated momentarily, eyes flicking between them before settling on John.

  "What... are you thinking about?" she asked carefully, voice soft but steady.

  John exhaled, rubbing the back of his neck. "I've hit a threshold. Level 50. But I can't ascend without an Ascension Stone—the special crystal to unlock the next tier. I don't have one."

  Kana's blue eyes widened briefly. John was only level 50 and held this power? Then she nodded as if piecing together a puzzle. Without a word, she reached into the folds of her tattered clothes—still ragged from her dangerous escape—and drew out a small, palm-sized crystal. It pulsed with inner azure light, runes etched faintly across its facets, humming with restrained power. It looked different from the ones he knew from the human world but still, it was the real thing.

  "I was given this by my mom," she said quietly, holding it out. "For when I reached the threshold myself. I actually did... just before the black tigers attacked. But I had to flee. You should have it. Your ascension is more urgent than mine."

  John stared at the stone, then at her. The weight of it settled heavier than its size suggested—a mother's foresight, handed over without hesitation. He felt a pang of guilt twist in his chest; taking it meant delaying her own growth. But the encampment's peril loomed larger, the black tigers' suspicion a ticking blade. For the greater good, they could hunt another stone once the threat was ended—weretigress lands held such relics, guarded but findable.

  "Are you sure?" he asked, voice low.

  Kana met his gaze, unflinching. "Use it. Save them."

  He took the crystal, its warmth seeping into his palm like borrowed resolve. A lucky moment, born of trust. Now, the path forward gleamed clear.