Chapter 227: Shock
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"The commander role is more important," Master White said, eyes on the large platform below. "The people coming out now are direct hands from the five heirs."
The regent battles were done.
What remained were the commander fights, and that meant a different class of participant entirely. These weren't ambitious talents scrapping for footing. These were the people the heirs had decided to trust with actual authority over others. The difference in weight was immediate, even from up here.
Master White watched the platform below settle into position for the next round.
His students would be coming out soon.
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Back in the ice elf territory.
New Dual Moon Institute.
"I wonder why they made it compulsory to watch the hunter games selection."
"I have deadlines to meet. This is so unnecessary."
The complaints moved through the grand hall in low overlapping waves. Hundreds of students sat packed into chairs, none of them particularly thrilled to be there, the kind of collective restlessness that fills a room when people know they can't leave and haven't accepted it yet.
At the front of the hall, facing them, stood Titus and Master Black.
Both had popcorn.
Both wore aprons stained with black soot in patterns that suggested whatever they had been doing immediately before this had been genuinely dangerous. Neither of them looked remotely concerned about that.
Unlike the students filling the seats behind them, they knew exactly why the institute had mandated the viewing. They had known for a while. They stood there with their popcorn and waited for everyone else to catch up.
The screen lit up.
Participant profiles began cycling through, one after the other, flashing across the display in quick succession. Names, ranks, affiliations, roles. The room watched with moderate interest, students scanning for anything familiar, mostly finding nothing.
Then the screen landed on two profiles and stopped.
The room changed immediately.
"That's Senior Zeke?"
"Our seniors are fighting for the commander position on a super planet?"
"That's insane, get it guys!!"
The hall went wild. Not gradually. All at once, the way a room does when something genuinely unexpected crosses the screen and there's no polite way to respond to it. People were standing. People were grabbing each other's arms. The noise level jumped hard.
The profile cards held steady on the display.
[Name: Enzo Malvaran
Rank: Sanctified
Affiliations: Dual Moon Institute, Freedom Party
Role: Commander]
[Name: Zeke Burn
Rank: Sanctified
Affiliation: Dual Moon Institute, Freedom Party, Sky Planet
Role: Commander]
The students were loud about it.
Titus was quiet.
His mouth had come open at some point during the reveal and hadn't closed. He was looking at the screen with the particular expression of someone whose mental math had just refused to balance no matter how many times they ran it.
Sanctified.
Those two. From that year. Sanctified already.
How long had it actually been? He tried to calculate it and the number didn't sit right. It didn't make sense against what he knew about the pace of this kind of growth. You didn't move that fast unless something had happened to you that most people didn't survive.
"You know I can find you a seed anytime you want." Master Black said it from beside him, eyes still on the screen, voice easy and unbothered. "If you want to go into your third voyage, say the word."
He didn't believe Enzo and Zeke's talent was inherently superior to Titus's. He just believed in keeping doors open.
Titus let his mouth close.
"It's fine." He turned back toward the room, watching the energy move through the students, everyone talking over each other, Enzo and Zeke's names running through every conversation at once. He smiled slightly. "Let's just enjoy the show."
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On the main platform below the pavilions, two figures walked forward.
They exchanged a glance.
Sized each other up the way people do when they've already made a decision and are just confirming it.
The one to the left was massive. Not tall-massive. Dense-massive. Arms the size of something architectural, wide across the chest, with small patches of fur running along his forearms and collarbone where the skin had taken on something of his clan's nature. He moved with the particular ease of a man who had never once had to prove that he was large.
Snow Yeti Clan. West of the ice kingdom.
Their lineage had a long history of loyalty to the prince of the left, Longdan. The alignment wasn't political convenience. It was generational, built into the clan's identity the way some things just become fixed over enough time.
His name was Heavy Yan, and he sat at rank thirteen on the ice walk rankings.
The story most people attached to his name was that he had killed a tyrant in hand-to-hand combat some years back. No weapons. No distance. Just impact.
Whether the full story was accurate didn't particularly matter. The reputation had legs and he did nothing to slow it down.
To the right stood a man built differently. Lean and still, a katana resting at his waist, and around him a ribbon that moved like it had forgotten gravity was a rule. It drifted. Curled. Resettled. Never stopped.
He was from the Conquerors Party. A general who had seen action at the Battle of Miday and come back from it. That alone said something.
Each of the five factions had eight participants entered into the commander fights. All eight would compete. But everyone who understood how these things worked also understood that deep down, there was one person per faction who had to make it through. The rest were there to clear the path.
The ribbon drifted lazily in the man's wake.
He looked across at Heavy Yan with the calm of someone who had already decided how this would end.
"Brace yourself, mountain."
He pulled the katana free in one motion and swept it forward.
The air froze over where the blade passed, a thin line of cold that cracked and spread outward from the arc.
Then he disappeared.
Not stepped back. Not moved to the side.
Gone. A clean afterimage where he had been standing, and then nothing, and then he was directly above Heavy Yan, dropping fast, the ribbon spiraling outward around him as he came down.
—woosh!!
The commander fights had begun.