Re-Awakened :I Ascend as an SSS-Ranked Dragon Summoner Chapter 808: Billionaire’s Trophy

"I swear Noah, I’d ruin you if you break my wife!!" Kelvin shouted from behind reinforced glass, watching every second of what was unfolding in the training room below with the particular intensity of a man who trusted nobody with anything he cared about.

Diana screeched to a stop at the far corner of the room, opposite Noah, her shield already forming around her arm in a hardened arc.

"You’re sure about this, Diana?" Noah said, settling into a loose stance. "Kelvin never makes promises he can’t keep."

"Ignore him, Eclipse. You know how dramatic he gets." Diana smirked, already breaking into a run toward him. "Besides, you’re the guy with dragons. Don’t tell me you’re scared of a rich billionaire kid."

"That’s literally the backstory of Batman!" Noah said, meeting her halfway.

"I heard that!" Kelvin called from above, watching Diana raise her shield to block as Noah struck deliberately at its surface, testing the reinforced edge with just enough force to make it ring without threatening to crack it.

She held the block, boots skidding half a foot across the training floor, and grinned up at him through the impact.

"That’s it?" she said. "You’re pulling punches."

"I’m calibrating," Noah said. "There’s a difference."

"Calibrate harder."

He obliged, driving a second strike into the shield with noticeably more behind it, and this time Diana’s whole body absorbed the shock properly, Tidal Rebound catching the force and holding it rather than firing it back, exactly the drill they’d agreed on before starting.

"Good," she said, breathing a little harder now. "That felt right. Like something I could’ve actually taken a hit like that from before Kruel."

"You’re close," Noah said. "Not fully there yet, but close."

They ran through another dozen exchanges, Noah escalating in small careful increments, watching her stance for any sign the force was outpacing what her body could actually process, and Diana matched every step of it, absorbing, redirecting, occasionally firing a fragment back at him that he had to actually dodge properly.

"Alright," she said finally, lowering her shield, chest heaving. "I think that’s enough for today."

"You did good," Noah said.

"I know I did," she said, and grinned.

Kelvin’s voice crackled through the room’s speaker. "Nobody died. Excellent session, truly. A landmark achievement in modern combat training."

"You watched the whole thing like a hawk," Diana called up.

"I watched the whole thing like a concerned husband...to be" Kelvin said. "There’s a difference."

---

Later, the common room had settled into its usual afternoon rhythm, and Sam looked up from his tablet at the small cluster gathered near the kitchen counter.

"Based on projected travel times," he said, "Sophie and the team should be back today. Assuming nothing held them up on Raiju."

Nobody in the room had any idea what had actually happened out there, and Sam said it with the easy confidence of someone reading a schedule rather than someone who understood what that schedule might now be covering for.

Marcus and Reyna approached from the corridor a few minutes later, both of them hovering near Noah with the kind of hesitance that people building up to a favor they weren’t sure they had the right to ask would have.

"You two look like you’re about to confess to a crime," Noah said.

"We need to ask you something," Reyna said, wringing her hands slightly.

"Then ask."

She took a breath. "My little cousin. He’s been sick for a while now, void sickness, and the healers gave him six months, maybe less. It’s his birthday today. He’s a huge fan of Ivy. And of you, honestly, probably more than any of the rest of us combined."

Noah’s expression softened.

"Oh," he said quietly. "Okay."

"I was wondering," Reyna said, "if you and Ivy could come to his party. Make his wish come true. I know it’s a lot to ask—"

"Yes," Noah said, before she’d even finished the sentence.

Reyna blinked. "Really?"

"Really," Noah said, already turning to head off toward the corridor. "Text me the details."

---

Back in the workshop, Diana pulled off the last piece of her combat gear, setting the shield down carefully, and glanced at Kelvin with one eyebrow raised.

"Be honest," she said. "Do I look extra bloated today?"

Kelvin looked at her properly, considering the question with genuine seriousness. "No. You look like the peak specimen of our female species."

Diana laughed, loud and real. "Thanks. Other people’s fiancés tell them they’re beautiful. Mine tells me I’m the peak specimen of the human female."

"You are," Kelvin said, entirely unbothered. "I stand by the science of it."

She crossed the room and kissed him, quick and warm, and pulled back with a smile still on her face.

"Shade," she said, not looking anywhere in particular. "Come on."

Kelvin glanced around the room. "How do you always know when he’s here. Even Noah, the guy whose dragon he technically belongs to on paper, can’t always tell."

"It’s syncing," Diana said simply, already heading for the door. "You just have to know what to listen for."

She left, and a moment later the workshop’s far door opened and closed on its own, no visible cause, no sound beyond the click of the latch.

Kelvin stared at the empty doorway.

"That dragon needs a collar," he said, to no one.

---

Reyna and Marcus touched down near a residential block on the Eastern Cardinal’s outer district, both of them carrying wrapped gifts under one arm, and Reyna checked her comm for the fourth time in as many minutes.

"He said he’d be here," she said, voice tight with nerves. "He’s running late."

"Noah Eclipse doesn’t make empty promises," Marcus said, steady, like he’d said it to himself more than once already. "He’ll show."

They walked up to an open house where a modest crowd had gathered, neighborhood families, a handful of kids running loose across a small yard strung with balloons, and Reyna spotted the birthday boy near the center of it, sitting in a chair someone had clearly decorated specially for the occasion.

"Sen," she said, crouching in front of him. "Happy birthday."

Sen, small and pale, an oxygen line running discreetly under his nose, looked up at her with wide eyes.

"Is Noah Eclipse actually coming?" he asked.

Before Reyna could answer, the air near Marcus rippled, a thin distortion of purple light folding open, and Noah stepped through it in a plain hoodie and jeans, hands in his pockets.

"Sorry I’m late, Sen," he said. "Had a hard time picking an outfit today. My girlfriend who usually dresses me isn’t around."

Sen’s eyes went even wider. "Sophie? I saw on the streams it’s her who picks your clothes. She’s so cool."

Noah grinned. "Yeah. She is." He crouched down to Sen’s level. "Want to meet someone else that’s cool?"

"Yes!"

Noah looked up at the sky. "Okay. Come on down, girl."

A shape descended slow through the clouds, violet scales catching the afternoon light, wings spread wide as Ivy glided down and landed gently in the open yard, careful to keep her full weight off the ground until the last possible second.

The kids lost their minds.

Some scattered, shrieking, hiding behind parents’ legs. Others, braver, edged closer, hands out, eyes huge with wonder. Sen stood up out of his chair on his own, something Reyna hadn’t seen him do in weeks, and walked toward Ivy with careful, determined steps.

Ivy lowered her head, letting him touch her snout, and made a low, pleased sound in her throat.

"Can we go to your domain?" one of the braver kids shouted. "Where all the dragons live?"

Noah crouched down, considering it seriously rather than brushing the question off. "Not yet," he said. "I’ve got a bunch of little dragons in there right now who are still learning to listen when I call them. They’re a bit rough around the edges, honestly, still figuring out their own strength. Once they’re a little bigger and better at recall, I’ll bring you all in properly. I promise."

The kids seemed to accept that, already too distracted by Ivy to be disappointed for long.

Marcus and Reyna pulled Noah aside for a moment.

"Thank you," Reyna said, voice thick. "You have no idea what this means."

"Oh, it’s nothing," Noah said, already turning back toward the party. "Really."

He spent the next hour blinking kids around the yard in short, careful bursts, one at a time, each landing met with shrieks of delighted terror, parents standing at the edges with their phones out and genuine smiles on their faces.

---

Back at headquarters, Kelvin scrolled through his phone as he wandered into the common room.

"Eclipse is trending again," he announced. "Well. Noah specifically." He held the screen up. "No stream drones anywhere near where he went, but some parent posted a video of him and Ivy at a kid’s birthday party."

Diana snorted, leaning over to look. "Watch him start getting booked for birthdays now."

"He genuinely has no idea what’s coming," Kelvin said, grinning.

The common room erupted before he could say anything else, voices overlapping, someone shouting from the corridor.

"They’re back! They’re back!"

"Who’s back?"

"Sophie and the rest!"

The whole floor moved toward the docking bay at once, Kelvin and Diana among them, and they arrived just as the ramp lowered and the three girls that went to Raiju with Lucas came down, slow, drained, none of the usual energy in their steps at all.

"What happened?" Kelvin said immediately, scanning their faces. "We didn’t get anything from you since Raiju. How’d it go? Is One handled?"

Sophie’s face crumpled, and she burst into tears.

Diana’s eyes swept the group once, twice, searching.

"Wait," she said. "Where’s Lucas?"