Chapter 98: Return, The 50 Epic-rank Chosen
Aidan returned on time. He even took a four-hour nap that recovered him, and ate tons more.
By the time the overseer started to announce the Epic-rank Hunter’s round, he had met up with Beatrix and Solenne.
Five hundred Epic-rank Hunters stood in a single long row across the Epic branch’s arena, and in front of them waited five squat stand devices, each paired with a giant floating screen.
"Welcome back," Vann Corel announced, voice ringing across the whole plaza. "Five hundred of you made it through the platform round. Fifty of you make it through this one."
[SECOND ROUND: SIMULATED COMBAT TRIAL. Five participants at a time. Each will face a VR construct of a peak Legendary-rank humanoid Terror. Survive as long as possible, or defeat it outright.]
[Ranking determined by survival time or victory. Top fifty advance.]
"Five at a time, folks, five screens running simultaneous, and I want everybody watching to understand something important." Vann’s tone dropped into something almost gentle. "That construct isn’t held back. It hits like the real thing. This is where the tournament stops being polite."
The first five stepped onto their stands, and the screens lit.
Aidan watched from the crowd with Solenne and Beatrix beside him, and Tom now sitting on Aidan’s shoulder, gauging the construct the moment it materialized on-screen.
It stood eight feet of corded muscle and dead grey eyes, wreathed in a crown of jagged bone, moving with the specific, patient hunger of something built to end fights quickly.
The first Hunter lasted eleven seconds.
The second, a broad-shouldered man who tried to tank the opening blow, lasted twenty-three before his Spirit Armor caved entirely. The third folded in under fifteen. The fourth managed a full minute of genuinely clever evasion before a backhand ended her round anyway.
The fifth surprised everyone.
A quiet, unassuming Hunter nobody had bothered watching landed a lucky opening that staggered the construct, chained three more strikes into the opening, and actually dropped the thing’s simulated Spirit Armor to zero before the crowd finished registering what was happening.
[CONSTRUCT DEFEATED. Time: 1 minute, 47 seconds.]
The plaza roared, and Vann’s voice cracked with delight. "AND WE HAVE OUR FIRST KILL, FOLKS! Somebody get that man’s name, because nobody here knew it thirty seconds ago!"
The numbers rolled by after that, batch after batch of five, most rounds ending inside the first minute, a rare few stretching past two. Only a handful managed an outright kill, and each one sent the crowd into fresh noise.
Solenne watched with her jaw tight, tracking every fight for patterns. Beatrix stood beside her, arms folded, saying nothing at all, which for Beatrix meant she was thinking harder than usual.
"You two are up in the next batch," Aidan said, catching the shift in the queue.
Solenne’s hands curled slightly at her sides. "That thing hits like a Divine-rank glancing blow. I watched the readouts."
"It does." Aidan didn’t soften it, because she didn’t need softening. "And you two have assets of power that can get into the top thirty. Be confident, and utilize all you’ve got." He held her eyes, then Beatrix’s. "You will win."
Beatrix exhaled slowly, some of the tension bleeding out of her shoulders. "Simple as that?"
"Simple as that."
Their names lit up on the board a moment later, and they walked to their stands together, boots ringing on the platform, backs straight.
...
Solenne’s construct materialized snarling, crown of bone catching simulated light, and she didn’t wait for it to move first.
She remembered Aidan’s words the way she’d learned to remember everything useful, filed away and ready, and let them settle the last of the nerves out of her chest.
’Utilize all I’ve got.’ Hollow Step hummed at the edge of her senses, patient and ready. ’Then let’s actually use it this time, instead of saving anything for later.’
The construct lunged, and she folded through the strike entirely, reappearing at its flank with Steller Heart Blaze already blazing crimson down both arms.
She didn’t test it the way she’d tested lesser opponents. She committed immediately, driving a lance of starfire into the joint of its shoulder before it finished turning to face her.
The construct roared and swung anyway, blind with simulated fury, and Solenne folded again, threading through the swing’s exact center where the danger was thinnest.
Infernal Shadow Ranger answered next, shadow pouring off her like a second skin, and she let it drape across the construct’s vision, half-blinding a thing that hunted by more than sight but still relied on it plenty. Every fold after that came from angles the construct couldn’t track fast enough to punish.
[Solenne: 88/100]
One hit had gotten through, early, a glancing graze that would have ended a lesser Hunter’s confidence along with a chunk of their armor. Solenne didn’t let it slow her down at all.
She stacked fire and shadow together into something new mid-fight, an idea she’d never tested outside sparring. Her whole starfire lance came wreathed in a coat of clinging dark that swallowed the light bleeding off it, and she drove the combined strike straight through the construct’s exposed ribs.
The construct staggered, Spirit Armor bar dropping in one violent lurch, and Solenne pressed the opening without hesitation, three more strikes landing in the span it took the thing to recover its footing.
[Simulated Spirit Armor: 12/100]
The crowd on the plaza had gone loud, sensing what was coming, and Aidan watched with his arms uncrossed now, something fierce and proud settling into his chest that he didn’t bother naming.
Solenne folded one final time, appeared directly behind the staggering construct, and drove her flame-wreathed shadow lance clean through its spine.
[CONSTRUCT DEFEATED. Time: 2 minutes, 14 seconds.]
The plaza’s roar hit a genuine peak, and Vann’s voice cracked straight through it. "SHE DID IT! Second kill of the round, folks, and that was not luck, that was a woman who came here with a plan and executed every single piece of it!"
Solenne stepped off the platform breathing hard, drenched in simulated sweat, and grinned wide enough to hurt.
...
Beatrix’s turn came a breath later, and her construct materialized already mid-charge, no warning, no opening posture, straight into a full sprint.
Beatrix didn’t flinch.
Maelstrom Anchor took root beneath her boots in the same instant, and she remembered Aidan’s words too, though she carried them differently than Solenne did, less filed away and more worn like armor she’d already decided fit.
’You will win.’ She planted her feet. ’Simple as that.’
The construct’s opening blow crashed into her raised forearms, and the impact should have staggered anyone standing that flat-footed against something built to end fights quickly. Beatrix didn’t move an inch. Her anchor drank the force whole, and one bright stack of Cerulean War Requiem lit up her arms in answer.
The construct hit her again, and again, escalating fast, clearly reading her stillness as an opening to exploit.
Each blow fed the anchor. Each blow wound another stack tight around her forearms, and the blue light thickened into a solid, humming corona. Beatrix simply stood there and let a thing built to kill Legendary-rank Hunters hand her its own strength one strike at a time.
"She’s not even blocking," Vann said, audibly baffled. "She’s just, folks, I don’t think she’s dodging a single hit, what is happening down there."
By the eighth strike, her Spirit Armor sat dangerously thin, and the corona around her arms had gone bright enough to cast shadows across the platform.
Beatrix released it all at once.
The stored violence of eight brutal blows erupted outward as a rotating wall of anchored water, catching the construct mid-swing and driving it backward across the entire platform in a single, unstoppable surge, its Spirit Armor bar collapsing in one continuous plunge rather than a series of hits.
[Simulated Spirit Armor: 31 to 0.]
The construct dissolved into harmless light before it finished its backward slide, and the platform went briefly, stunned silent.
[CONSTRUCT DEFEATED. Time: 1 minute, 58 seconds.]
Vann found his voice a half second later, and it came out somewhere near a shout. "SHE TANKED HER WAY TO A KILL! Two in a row, folks, TWO IN A ROW, somebody find out what guild these two run with!"
Beatrix let her anchor release, staggering half a step as the accumulated strain finally caught up with her, and looked out into the crowd until she found Aidan’s face.
He grinned back at her, both fists raised.
Solenne reached her first, throwing an arm around her shoulders, both of them laughing the particular laugh of people who’d just proven something to themselves as much as to anyone watching.
"Top fifty," Solenne said. "We’re actually, genuinely, top fifty."
"Told you," Aidan called over, unable to keep the satisfaction out of his voice. "Simple as that."