Chapter 115: Battle Festival
On the afternoon of the twenty-eighth of December, the absolute majority of commercial quarters and administrative ministries across the capital had formally shuttered their gates. From the highest-ranking nobles ruling the inner court to the lowliest weavers of the lower ring and even the massive populations of un-vouched foreign laborers, every soul clutched an executive holiday spanning at least ten days across the calendar. The solitary public institutions continuing to operate with their baseline velocity were the colossal, stone-wrought amphitheaters scattered across every sector of the city.
The Battle Festival—a grand, violent celebration that traced its absolute lineage back to the mythic triumphs of the First King Godfrey's era—functioned not merely as the single most prestigious gladiatorial event clutched by the peerage of the Golden Dynasty, but stood across history as the supreme symbolic monument anchoring the hearts of millions of Golden citizens.
From the chaotic watches of the War of the Gods down to the grueling campaigns of the Unification Wars that had cemented the Erdtree's absolute rule, the acts of un-bracketed battle, systematic slaughter, and territorial conquest had permanently endured as the core structural themes driving this dominant empire. For the Golden citizens who had clutched registries within the walls of Royal Capital Leyndell across generations, these bloody elements had long been hard-wired into the absolute basements of their genetic marrow.
Consequently, across the holiday season anchoring the terminal watch of the winter moon, the numerous colosseums dividing the municipal grid were anything but deserted; they scored as vastly more raucous, crowded, and alive than any standard cycle of the year. Tens of thousands left their cold hearths to flood the tiers of these towering, monumental stone architectures, their spirits thoroughly prepared to monitor the ultimate combat loops separating the continent's most elite fighters via the massive, scrying crystal spheres that broadcasted the live magical projections throughout the metropolis.
Throughout the three-day duration of the tournament, the amphitheater administrations not only provided the sprawling spectator boxes with spacious, comfortable seating arrays and an endless inventory of roasted meats and vintage wines entirely free of coin, but the stables concurrently hand-delivered heavy pillows, down cushions, and thick wool blankets directly to the benches. Millions of fanatical citizens chose to maintain their physical stations inside the stone arenas for the full seventy-two hours of the clock, refusing to drop a single round of the brackets, tracking the carnage from the initial deployments down to the final championship watch.
Yet, this winter's parameters had suffered a total structural shift. Three suns past, the seven premier grand colosseums of the capital had jointly issued an extraordinary executive decree: due to the unprecedented, history-breaking density of high-tier combatants registered across the participant scrolls of this winter's Battle Festival, and to guarantee the absolute apex of entertainment value for the high boxes, a joint council of the masters had resolved to temporarily suspend the standard elimination bracket system that had governed the tournament for over twenty cycles.
Every solitary squad across the sixty-four entries would instantaneously clear the gates to lunge directly into the central championship theater simultaneously. The terminal, sovereign ranking of the teams would be finalized strictly by the absolute volume of their verified hunting points at the dawn watch.
Compared to the historical scripts—where strictly a pair of four-man teams numbering eight gladiators total would descend into isolated sectors of the subterranean waterways, frequently resulting in an un-optimized layout where the opposing squads never even crossed steel across the dark—this temporarily mutated format scored as infinitely more violent and exciting. Sixty-four master combatants had coalesced into twenty independent warbands, and it required zero complex calculations to predict that the high-fatality, un-monitored collisions dividing the rival squads would transform into the absolute highlight of the championship. Long before the iron gates had even stirred across their chains, the absolute enthusiasm of the public had been completely ignited into a burning frenzy!
Deep within the staging vaults of the Serante Amphitheater, Old Hart busied his wrinkled hands arranging the final administrative details to manage the massive influx of the high boxes, while his frantic, deeply anxious eyes continuously shot glances toward the heavy iron backstage portcullis.
A mere fifteen minutes of runway remained on the clock before the supervisors would authorize the contestants to enter the pits, yet those three damned provincial mercenaries had completely failed to report their signatures to his station. If his house stable suddenly logged a total vacancy across the grand deployment watch, it would define nothing short of an absolute miracle if Serante's multi-generational clientele desisted from tearing the stone architecture down to the flagstones. There would be zero strategic purpose in attempting to reopen the ledger for the coming year.
The minutes ticked relentlessly down the grid, and just as Old Hart's internal resolve was hitting absolute despair, the sudden, violent thunder of galloping hooves echoed outside the archway, three heavy warhorses executing a frantic halt before the backstage frame with high-pitched, echoing neighs. The three riders had somehow acquired a set of exceptionally high-purity, magically enchanted heavy plate armor, and the weapons slung across their hips and shoulders shone with a pristine, brand-new steel sheen—though their facial features remained completely hidden beneath heavy, visor-locked helmets.
The old manager scrambled forward, his jaw un-clamping to unleash a volcanic torrent of administrative complaints, but the lead rider—clad in a magnificent, silver-white plate silhouette under the mercenary alias of Lucifer—ruthlessly cut through his vocabulary with a flat, freezing draconic command.
"Guide our boots directly to the primary descent gate. Instantly—the chronological runway has exhausted its margin."
Monitoring the icy, immense aura radiating from the silver-clad chassis, Old Hart registered an immediate, un-mapped wave of pure instinctive dread washing through his spine. Every drop of the bureaucratic resentment his heart had been harboring was forcefully swallowed back down into his chest. He drew a deep breath, executing a stiff nod. "Retrace my slipstream."
The four figures advanced through the long, damp limestone corridors, penetrating the absolute structural core of the subterranean colosseum vaults. What wove into their field of vision defined a massive, vaulted assembly hall whose stone perimeters were completely decorated with dozens of high-tier, specialized armaments clutched by the house collection. In the absolute center of the flagstones sat anchored a gargantuan, circular stone well spanning a width of more than ten meters, its dark maw completely sealed by a massive, reinforced steel valve bulkhead. Two meticulously tailored administrative scribes, heavy parchment ledgers and fine ink quills clutched within their fingers, stood waiting beside the rim.
"Those operators define the official supreme supervisors dispatched by the Sovereign Capital Arena Association," Old Hart whispered, his voice dropping into a hushed brief. "Their office handles the absolute validation of your signatures and the exact census of your warband. Their networks will track and record your terminal scores utilizing the scrying crystal feeds operating through the backstage panels throughout the match."
He cast a rapid glance to check the three silent, iron-clad figures standing behind his shoulder, before extending his palm to deliver a light, reassuring pat against Lucia's silver plate. "Banish the worry, son. The Gladiator Association operates under the joint governance of more than thirty founding noble houses of the realm. Every single faction is legally conformed to abide by the ancient regulations their seals wove into the treaty; zero lords possess the stomach to dare tamper with the terminal tournament archives."
Lucia turned his visor to check the manager's face through the narrow slits of his silver helm, executing a silent, slow nod of acknowledgement, before advancing his heavy boots toward the steel valve alongside Radahn and Kristoff.
"Serante Warband... three active combatants total," the recording scribe stated, his quill checking the parchment line as his eyes tracked Lucia's shield. "Hand-deliver your verified fighter badges to clear the ledger."
Following a precise physical audit of the three solid gold cross medals, the scribe executed a terminal check tracking the names and baseline provincial registries of the trio. Having verified that every variable balanced cleanly against the master grid, the two Association supervisors simultaneously extracted a pair of highly complex, heavy iron master keys, driving their lengths into the twin locking mechanisms guarding the valve bulkhead before executing a synchronized clockwise and counter-clockwise rotation.
GRRRRRR-KLANG-KLANG-KLANG—!
A heavy, grinding mechanical scream of massive bronze gears turning through oil violently filled the subterranean vault. The half-meter-thick steel bulkhead valve initial cracked apart down its central axis, before slowly, smoothly sliding deep into the stone foundations on either side to un-veil a pitch-black, gaping entrance yawning into the earth. Instantly, the freezing, intensely damp, and toxic atmospheric pressure of the Leyndell Subterranean Shunning-Grounds came rushing up through the shaft to lash their armor.
"Knights," the master scribe spoke, his tone turning completely flat and un-fused as his eyes locked onto the black void. "The regulatory protocols governing this winter's Battle Festival have completely departed from the historical parameters. The exact watch your boots clear the rim of this shaft, the tournament registers its active compliance. Your warband preserves zero avenues to exit the tunnels until the terminalwatch of the calendar triggers the conclusion. Throughout the duration of the hunt, your survival or your total liquidation remains a variable of zero consequence to the crown. Now... my office demands a final validation from your tongues—does your center confirm your intent to participate?"
Lucia offered zero verbal response across the space. He simply shifted his weight forward, executing a fluid, un-hesitating leap to drop his entire iron-clad mass straight down into the black abyss of the well. Radahn and Kristoff tracked his slipstream a microsecond later, their heavy silhouettes instantly plunging into the dark to evaporate from the sight of the room.
The two Association scribes wove their master keys in the inverted direction without a single watch of delay, and with a thunderous, echoing BOOM, the monumental steel valve bulkheads slammed back together to lock the gate.
Parallel to the scene playing out inside the Serante basements, an identical script was being actively executed across more than a dozen grand colosseum fortresses across the municipal grid. Concurrently, a handful of elite noble warbands consisting exclusively of high-tier Night Fighters cleared the private subterranean descent gates hidden deep within the basements of their ancestral family manors to penetrate the waterways.
Under the un-bending, mercilessly violent format dictating this winter's Battle Festival, it remained an absolute mystery how many mortal souls would still possess a living heartbeat when those massive steel valves were forcefully reopened by the ministries.
"Lords and ladies, high peers of the realm, and proud citizens of the capital—the monumental Battle Festival your hearts have eagerly anticipated across the annual cycle has officially initiated its countdown—!!!" the master herald roared from the absolute center of the primary arena stage, his voice amplified by liturgical stones to saturate every tier of the stadium box. "Sixty-four master fighters holding a Mithril Rank or higher, aggregated across twenty legendary warbands, are clearing their shields to cross lines against over one thousand seven hundred ferocious, bloodthirsty Icefield Trolls! Only the true, authentic sovereigns of steel will preserve their standing when the dawnwatch breaks!"
"Now... un-loose the full measure of your thunder to welcome these fearless heroes of the empire—!!!"
Across hundreds of massive colosseum architectures spanning the metropolis, hundreds of thousands of fanatical spectators exploded into a synchronized, deafening roar that rolled across the capital like an absolute tidal wave of sound. Brilliant, multi-colored magical fireworks violently detonated across the high sky, painting the winter night in millions of shimmering, cascading streaks of starlight. The crowd chanted the names of their favored champions with an un-bracketed, manic intensity, hurling un-counted thousands of winter flowers, silk ribbons, and shimmering golden leaves directly toward the colossal projection walls displaying the scrying crystal feeds. The absolute totality of the Golden Royal Capital had entered a state of complete, un-mitigated frenzy at that specific watch of the world!
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