Chapter 85: Top 100
High above the Great Zil Forest, in a chamber of drifting light that showed the whole hundred kilometers of canopy laid out like a living map, the Divine-rank Overseer stood with three other Organizers around a slowly rotating projection of the race.
Ordun and Kyrsa occupied one corner of the observation ring, technically present as Enforcer liaisons rather than judges, and Kyrsa hadn’t stopped watching one particular blue marker for the better part of an hour.
"The Voss girl from Silvercrest is running a clean third," one of the Organizers noted, an older woman with a voice like grinding stone, tapping a marker near the forest’s northern edge. "Trained under her house’s own war-tutors since childhood. No surprises there."
"The Kalveth boy is still in the top twenty," another added, tracing a second cluster. "Rising star. Nobody expected a merchant house to produce fighting talent that clean."
"And the two Nevelrot cousins?" the stone-voiced woman asked, scanning the projection. "Their family made a great deal of noise about this tournament."
A pause. The map shivered, searching.
"...Their markers went dark forty minutes ago," Ordun said mildly, not looking up from his own cup. "Signal lost somewhere in the eastern quadrant. Happens sometimes, out there."
"Oof, they’ll be pissed."
"Let them deal with it."
Nobody in the room pushed the point.
"Furthest along overall," the Overseer said, redirecting attention to a single lead marker pulling well clear of every other cluster on the map, "is this one."
The projection zoomed, resolving into a crimson-gold streak cutting low and fast between the trees, well ahead of the pack behind it.
"Pull the registration," the stone-voiced Organizer said, curious now.
[Registered: Garen. Peak Legendary-rank.]
[Origin: Earth, Sol System. Recently confirmed member world of the Cloud Whirl Alliance.]
[Notable affiliation: Reported to answer to an unregistered Divine-rank Master. Identity unconfirmed.]
The room went quiet for a moment.
"A newly joined world," the older woman said slowly, "producing a Legendary-rank Hunter fast enough to lead this entire field, with a Divine-rank patron nobody’s ever heard of." She glanced at the Overseer. "That’s either an extraordinary coincidence, or it isn’t a coincidence at all."
Kyrsa took a long, deliberate sip from her cup and said absolutely nothing.
...
Twenty kilometers ahead of all that chatter he had no idea was happening, Aidan felt the mountain start to rise properly beneath his boots, the forest thinning into broken rock and switchback trails climbing toward a peak still lost in cloud.
He also felt, quite clearly, more than two hundred people converging on the slope behind him.
Some moved solo, fast and desperate. Others advanced in tight, coordinated packs, and a fair number of both had clearly decided that the crimson-gold figure cresting the mountain first made a very convenient obstacle to remove.
The first attack came without warning, a thin, humming lance of compressed force aimed at his legs from somewhere far below, some technique built to strip speed rather than kill outright.
Aidan felt it coming a full second before it arrived and let it hit anyway, curious.
His pace didn’t drop at all. Whatever the shot was built to slow simply wasn’t there to slow, his stride unbothered, and irritation flickered hot and fast through him at the sheer presumption of it.
’Cute.’ He didn’t even turn around. ’But wrong target.’
He answered without breaking stride, a wide net of Epoxy laid backward down the slope on a thread of wind, and a cluster of shouts rose up from below as half a dozen climbers found their boots suddenly, permanently glued to the mountainside.
"Should’ve aimed better," he called back, not particularly caring if they heard him.
The second attempt came from a coordinated trio working the terrain itself, splitting a section of trail into a rockslide meant to bury whoever was climbing above it. Aidan felt the mountain shudder and simply stepped sideways off the collapsing path entirely, walking a stretch of sheer cliff face like it was level ground, Gravity bending just enough under his boots to make the impossible look bored.
The trio’s rockslide thundered down onto empty trail behind him.
The third attempt was subtler, a woman with an illusion-based talent weaving a false switchback into his path, meant to send him hours out of his way before he noticed. Aidan felt Silence answer that one on its own instinct, the mute current swallowing the illusion’s supporting hum until the false path simply flickered and died in front of him.
He kept climbing, unbothered, three separate attempts on his progress behind him and not one of them costing him a second of ground.
Then, further down the mountain, he felt something that actually made him slow.
Thirteen distinct Legendary-rank signatures, clustered together, moving with the disciplined coordination of people who’d trained side by side for years, and every one of them familiar.
Isolde Marr. Lysandra Corvain. Faces and names he’d shared a burned camp, faces that had watched him carry a mission alone against a whole Wolfshadow war-pack.
’They really worked hard it seems. All of them reached the peak or near the peak of Legendary-rank.’
[Jovan: The battlefield planets does provide the opportunity for that as long as they have talents to show for and potential to use them, and it’s clear they’ve grasped it.]
They were under attack, a much larger group harrying their flank with layered ranged strikes, and even peak Legendary-rank, even fighting as one, Earth’s whole contingent was barely holding the line against numbers that outmatched them badly.
Aidan stopped climbing entirely and turned back down the slope.
’They fought this hard to get this far.’ Aidan’s eyes flickered as he looked at them with a carefree smile. ’Guess I’ll give a little push.’
He hit the attacking group like a dropped comet.
Three of them went down before the rest even registered a new player had entered the fight, lightning and metal and the flat of his scythe clearing space with brutal, practiced efficiency. He didn’t bother being clever about it. He just made the problem stop existing as fast as possible.
Within a minute, the attackers that hadn’t fled outright were unconscious, and Earth’s thirteen stood in a loose, breathless circle, staring at the crimson-gold figure who’d just casually solved their entire crisis.
"Garen." Isolde Marr stared past him at the pile of unconscious attackers, then back at him, her mouth opening twice before any words made it out. "That took you less than a minute."
Aidan rolled his shoulders. "Figured I’d say hi on the way past."
Near the back of the group, a familiar bandaged face pushed forward, breathing hard but grinning wide.
"Mister Jiran." Aidan said with a chuckle. "Peak Legendary already. Look at you."
"Wouldn’t have made it this far without your ingredients and your name doing half the guild’s morale for us," Jiran said, still catching his breath. "Didn’t expect to owe you twice in one tournament."
"You don’t owe me anything." Aidan clasped his shoulder briefly. "I’ll swing by after this. Cook me something obnoxiously good, and we’ll call it even."
Jiran laughed, startled and pleased. "Deal."
"All of you, listen." Aidan glanced up the slope, cloud still swallowing the true peak somewhere far above. "Pack tight, watch each other’s flanks, and don’t stop for anything smaller than another crisis. You’ve got this."
"You’re not staying to escort us?" Lysandra teasingly asked.
"I’ve got my own line to finish." Aidan grinned, already turning back uphill. "But I’ll see you at the top."
He broke into a run, wind gathering fast around him, and this time nobody else tried to slow him down.
Because they knew this demon was unstoppable, and offending him would only make them lose their chance.
...
The peak, when it finally arrived, was smaller than he’d expected, a wide shelf of pale stone jutting out above the cloud line, dozens of Hunters already scattered across it in various states of exhaustion and triumph.
[Rank 34. Advancement confirmed.]
Not first. He’d burned real time doubling back for Earth’s line, and he found he genuinely didn’t mind the number attached to that trade.
He turned back toward the cloud bank below, and watched.
One by one, over the following hour, thirteen more figures crested the ridge, bruised and breathing hard and very much alive, every single one of Earth’s Legendary-rank Hunters making it into the standing hundred with room to spare.
Isolde found him first among the gathering crowd, still catching her breath.
"We wouldn’t have made top hundred without you," she said. "Not even close."
"Maybe." Aidan shrugged. "I just made the math easier."
"That’s not nothing, Garen."
Jiran arrived last, collapsing onto the stone beside them with a groan of pure relief, and grinned up at Aidan without bothering to wipe the mud off his own face first.
"Still owe you that meal," he said.
"Damn right you do." Aidan grinned, looking out over the assembled hundred, the cloud sea stretching endless and gold beneath the mountain’s peak. "Don’t skimp on the seasoning this time."
Jiran laughed. "I thought you wouldn’t be able to handle the spice."
"Nah. Go all out this time. Just make sure things are tasty." Aidan grinned.
"It’ll be tasty enough that you might bite your fingers off while eating."
"Great."
...
[You may return to the starting point by flying now. After 12 hours, the hundred of you must be here to depart for the next round. The hundred of you will compete against other 29 batches of hundreds. And among the 3000 of you, only 30 will qualify to enter the Origin Tomb.]