Chapter 117: Association
Deep within the primary command sanctuary of the Sovereign Capital Arena Association, a vaulted hall densely packed with towering arrays of scrying crystal spheres, dozens of administrative officers stared with pale, un-blinking countenances at a graphic scene projected by the magic circuits. The ambient air inside the room had grown so thick with suffocating tension it felt exactly like solidified, molten iron.
"Has that monster completely lost his sanity?" someone finally failed to contain the pressure within his chest, his voice exploding in a frantic, near-hysterical gasp.
This sudden outcry completely ignited the long-simmering resentment fracturing the lower association members, and an adjacent supervisor immediately echoed the sentiment. "Across the thirty-two winters since the initial inauguration of the Battle Festival, zero registered gladiators have ever deployed such sub-human, excessively cruel methodologies to liquidate an opponent—not a single soul across the chronicles!"
"Every standard fighter arrests the momentum of his steel the exact watch his intellect decodes that his opponent lacks the physical capacity to retaliate. This tournament defines a heroic, civilized competition separating human warriors of the realm, not some barbaric, blood-soaked slaughter engineered by the lowly beast-tribes of the borders! I demand that our high enforcement detachments be dispatched into the shafts this instant to manually terminate Rolo's entry. Evaluating his current trajectory, how many more noble lives does his blade plan to harvest if his line is permitted to press deeper into the dark?"
"Arrest your vocabulary! Silencio!"
Standing at the absolute center of the hall, an elderly man draped in the magnificent, fur-lined robes of high office, his half-gray hair neatly pinned beneath a silver circle, released a thunderous shout. His voice forcefully silenced the surrounding chaos, his fist striking the primary slate console. "Cease this useless bickering; let our focus lock onto stabilizing the immediate fracture fronting our desk!"
"Systematically isolate and delete this specific scrying projection from the master stream this instant. Under zero administrative conditions is this butchery to be broadcasted to the eyes of the public boxes. Authorize the official disclosure of Sharon's warband liquidation strictly in the brief format of a standard, localized casualty report. Pivot the primary scrying streams to trace the alternate squads actively executing matches across the quadrants—ensure the visual focus settles onto those warbands whose minds have not yet mutated into madness. Our master console maintains a precise five-minute chronological cushion ahead of the city's public projection walls. Deploy that small gap of runway to evaluate what specific content satisfies the criteria to be broadcasted, and what elements must be ruthlessly purged from the ledger!"
Following a whirlwind of frantic bureaucratic activity across the room, the elderly official flicked his heavy silk sleeves in disgust, striding past the iron doors to retreat into his private executive chamber. Waiting within the perimeter of his office were two senior retainers representing the private houses of Duke Duolis and Marquis Osarion.
"Gentlemen, it appears my tongue is conformed to emphasize a foundational truth across your stations," the old man spoke, his expression turning thoroughly grim as his eyes locked onto their doublets. "This metropolis defines the absolute capital of the Erdtree, Leyndell. The Battle Festival constitutes a supreme, state-backed gladiatorial competition monitored simultaneously by over two million Golden citizens, not one of those lawless, un-monitored underground blood-wagers your houses conduct deep within your private cellars!"
"My office records absolute zero care regarding the political bet currently dividing the ambitions of your respective masters; my solitary mandate is to safeguard the structural integrity of this championship match as it broadcasts live throughout the city ring! Now, disclose the math to my face: what specific strategic calculation prompted your lineage to un-loose such a rabid hound—an entity who has completely, systematically cast out his own humanity—onto the public sand? Does your strategy intend to completely destroy the glorious, thirty-winter history validating Leyndell's Battle Festival?"
"My house hand-delivers its deepest regrets, President Loshil. Although the Duoris Family and my own personage perfectly comprehend the gravity of the anxieties driving your scepter, my tongue is conformed to state that this heinous sacrilege registers absolute zero connection to our banner." The senior butler representing Duke Duolis shrugged his shoulders with an innocent, un-fused posture.
"Our command explicitly selected the public arena of the Battle Festival, rather than the isolation of a private shadow duel, to serve as the ultimate proving ground for this clash separating the two ministers because our master values the ancient authority, the public glory, and the historic grandeur validating this event. Compared to those controversial, un-recorded private betting circles conducted behind curtains, strictly the Battle Festival—witnessed simultaneously by thousands of high-born Golden peers—possesses the legal weight to decisively determine the administrative outcome separating the Duke and the Marquis."
"But," he paused, casting a contemptuous, razor-sharp look toward his modern colleague from the Marquis's stable before sneering, "certain desperate factions across this table have clearly desisted from respecting the absolute red lines of the peerage strictly to steal a victory. A Court Perfumer whose neural pathways have been completely shattered by the consumption of forbidden alchemical toxins may indeed score as zero different from a brutal, blood-soaked mad dog, exactly as your voice articulated."
"Watch the formatting of your vocabulary!" the master steward representing the house of Marquis Osarion answered coldly, his frame remaining rigid beneath his furs. "So long as the High Golden Temple desists from issuing a sovereign decree to formally strip Master Rolo of his titles... by virtue of his imperial letters patent as a Court Perfumer, his name remains a dignified healer holding an institutional rank equivalent to an imperial viscount. He does not define a creature whom common retainers of our tier possess the leverage to insult at our leisure."
Having delivered the reprimand, he executed a slight, disciplined bow toward Loshil—the furious, breathing president commanding the Gladiator Association—his tone softening into a smooth, courtly apology. "Lord President, the horrific scene that has just materialized across the scrying glass was by no means directed by the strategy of the Osarion Family. But now that the tournament gates have dropped and the high-court bet has registered its active compliance, we petition your office to extend a stabilizing hand—in strict consideration of the immense, multi-generational contributions our house has hand-delivered to reinforce the gladiator guilds of Leyndell across the decades—ensuring this festival reaches its terminal watch in a normal configuration."
"Naturally, our house guarantees across its honor that an output of this volatile nature will mathematically never manifest across a future iteration of the Battle Festival. Following the closure of the tournament, the Marquis will personally provide your office and every voting member of this association council with an exceptionally satisfactory tier of material compensation to balance the ledger."
President Loshil fixed a freezing, razor-sharp stare onto the countenance of the Osarion retainer. He maintained an absolute, suffocating silence across a vast watch of the clock, before delivering a minor, almost imperceptible nod of his chin, his voice emerging flat. "Ground your promise deep within your calculations... now, clear my perimeter. Leave my office!"
The exact watch the rhythmic crunch of their leather boots had completely faded at the far end of the marble corridor, the elderly Earl—who had logged over sixty winters across the ministries—released a cold, deeply disgusted laugh through his teeth, muttering into his chest. "Filthy, deeply hypocritical aristocrats!"
Uttering the condemnation, his mind may have temporarily overlooked the data node proving his own bloodline clutched a hereditary earldom within the peerage, or perhaps his intellect was completely, beautifully aware of the systemic decay but still harbored zero hesitation to curse the absolute totality of the ruling class, including his own signature.
"What our scrying crystal spheres are actively tracking across this watch defines a sudden, high-voltage encounter materializing within the tunnels of District Twenty-Five! The dark-horse Serante warband has crashed head-on into the veteran vanguard of the Sibel squad while transitioning toward the primary core sectors. Across a close-quarters melee of this density, where neither front has prepared its defensive loops, the numerical deficit will inevitably mutate into Serante's absolute weakness—wait, look to the glass! What specific sorcery is executing across the floorboard!"
The master herald anchoring the commentary booth stared with wide, un-comprehending eyes at the visual feed shifting across his projection slate, while simultaneously, the massive civilian crowds packing dozens of stone colosseums exploded into a synchronized, deafening roar of pure adrenaline-fueled cheers!
The three golden-clad mercenaries harvested from the Serante Amphitheater had completely overwhelmed the hyper-elite four-man warband—veterans who had fought together across the brutal Sibel Colosseum brackets for years—in the span of a solitary, earth-shattering exchange of steel! Despite the overwhelming, law-breaking disparity in their raw physical parameters, the Serante trio had deliberately, meticulously deployed strictly the flat spines and heavy backs of their greatswords to execute their strikes—guaranteeing they could systematically shatter their opponents' defensive postures and fracture their bones without taking a single drop of human life! What an unimaginable tier of martial dominance and supreme self-assurance that defined!
"What specific strategy are their blades executing? Heavens above, following the total defeat of the Sibel squad, the Serante trio are actually choosing to manually point out the geographic coordinates of their own sanctuary camp back in District Twenty-One to their broken foes! They are actively directing their defenseless, disarmed opponents to retreat straight into a secure safe zone!"
"My intellect truly struggles whether to praise the terrifying, world-shattering physical output demonstrated by these three dark horses, or the magnificent, noble knightly spirit driving their blades!" another master host exclaimed, his hands shaking against the table. "Across my fifteen winters managing the commentary boxes of this metropolis, my memory fails to archive the last watch my eyes tracked gladiators of this classification. They define nothing short of an absolute role model for every warrior drawing breath across the Land of the Erdtree!"
"Liquidating a premier four-man warband has hand-delivered an immediate allocation of forty hunting points straight to the Serante ledger, instantaneously launching their name to claim the fourth rank across the tournament brackets! But evaluating the map, their immediate geography registers as exceptionally precarious. As their boots clear the perimeter of the core warrens, they are rapidly closing the distance to intersect the current number-one seeded warband—the host of Duolis. The Duke's personal proxy team has already amassed a monumental mountain of seventy-six hunting points by successfully liquidating two independent three-man warbands and systematically eliminating sixteen rabid Icefield Trolls, anchoring their name as the single most powerful contender chasing the tournament crown!"
"Alas, the layout carries a profound layer of internal drama! These two specific warbands can be cataloged as emerging from an identical regional lineage across the ministries, but from the exact watch their boots cleared the iron valves to enter this battlefield, every master contestant is conformed to cast out those meaningless outer variables—mustering the absolute zenith of their fighting spirit to contest the highest honor of the sword. Apart from the trusted teammates who permanently anchor their immediate flanks, every gladiator must deploy his cold steel to meet every target crossing his tracking path—let us monitor what specific, cataclysmic clash these two titans will format when their lines inevitably collide!"
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