Chapter 141: We Must Win
"Antoine," the United New Eden representative spoke up quickly, providing his name as Uhtred tried to recall it.
"Yeahh... Antoine Blanc," Uhtred nodded slowly. "What about the other strike force members? What exactly happened after I left you guys? You are here, and they’re not..."
He turned away from Antoine and faced Zara again.
"...In fact, what happened after I passed out? What about the Homo erectus general I was battling? Is he still alive? What’s the current situation of the trials right now?"
"The Age of Hunger trial is over," Zara deadpanned. "We lost."
"We lost...?" Uhtred frowned.
He clearly needed more explanation, but Zara didn’t seem interested in giving it. Thankfully, however, Antoine took over:
"It was a close one. We nearly caught up to the ancient variants’ border right at the end, thanks to you, Uhtred," Antoine said, staring at Uhtred’s face with a look of respect. "You killed the Homo erectus general... Do you not remember?"
Uhtred kept his face flat, revealing nothing, but internally he was slightly surprised. He did not actually remember the moment the general died.
However, now that Antoine said it, he did remember seeing his Total Merit Balance at 93,800 instead of the 78,800 it should have been with the merit he got from his new title.
The 15,000 Merit bounty he had placed on the general had been quietly returned to him for killing the general by himself.
Uhtred kept all of these thoughts to himself and only stared at Antoine, waiting for him to continue.
The Frenchman let out a low breath and went on.
"Your act of killing one of their major generals gave us a significant territorial push. Along with Zara, who fought the Neanderthal general, Krijn, to a standstill, things were looking very good for us... But in the end, our overall loss of human lives was simply too massive to bridge the gap. The ancient variants reached the border of the next trial grounds before we did."
Antoine paused, gesturing to the air.
"You were unconscious when the announcement was made, but if you check your system logs, you’ll see it there. The ancient variants received something called an ’Inheritance Shard’ as a reward for winning this Age of Hunger trial."
Hearing this, Uhtred reopened his system panel and browsed through his logs.
Sure enough, he noticed the System notices confirming the same thing. The ancient variants had indeed won the trial, and the prize listed was indeed an Inheritance Shard.
From the name alone, Uhtred could tell it had to be something highly beneficial for them as a whole.
He clenched his teeth. Modern humans had lost the first phase. Even though this was just one of many trials to come, it still left a bitter taste in his mouth to lose right from the onset.
"Right now, we’re in a sort of buffer period," Antoine explained. "The system gave everyone a twelve-hour window to head to the border of the next trial. Every human on the continent is moving toward the border right now, and the ancient variants are doing the same. Attacking each other is prohibited by the System for the duration of the migration."
"Here," Zara suddenly spoke up, interrupting Antoine.
She tossed a red-colored orb toward Uhtred. He moved quickly, catching it with his functioning left hand.
As the orb nestled into his palm, he stared at it, knowing immediately what it was.
"When I found you, you were already passed out, and the Homo erectus general had just died," Zara said. "I harvested his core before those scavenging desert insects could arrive to devour his body."
Uhtred stared at the blood-red essence core. It pulsed with a strange, eerie energy, even though its original owner was long dead.
Esoteric magic...
Uhtred recalled the System notices regarding his magic. While his elemental spells had consolidated into Multi-Elemental Magic, his newly gained blood magic was still sitting at Level 1, having received no level increase.
This Esoteric blood magic was an entirely different thing, a completely new branch of power that he would have to explore from scratch.
And having the Homo erectus general’s essence core in his hand was going to help him do exactly that.
"Thanks," he muttered to Zara.
Zara only shrugged, looking away. "Why are you thanking me? It’s your spoil of battle."
"We’re here," a third voice suddenly grunted from the front of the cart.
Uhtred turned, feeling several sharp jolts of pain shoot through his body at the movement. He grimaced but forced himself to look anyway to see who was speaking.
Now that he thought about it, he had known someone had to be pulling the earth cart he was lying in, but he had not bothered to look over the front edge to see their face until now.
It was a heavily built, muscular man. He was shirtless, with dark tattoos crisscrossing his broad back.
Uhtred ran a quick scan with his inspection skill and saw that the man was Level 10, likely one of the newer powerhouses to reach the double-digit threshold.
Uhtred wanted to offer some words of acknowledgment, but his voice died in his throat as he looked past the man and saw the view ahead.
In front of them was a wide expanse of humans dominating the landscape. Tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people were gathered along a shimmering, invisible border that stretched for miles to the east and west. It was a crowd of survivors larger than anything he had seen since the integration began.
And beyond that shimmering, invisible wall lay a completely new terrain.
It was vastly different from the dry, barren desert lands of the Trial of Hunger.
The second trial grounds...
Uhtred did not know what was waiting for them beyond the barrier, but one thing was certain: whatever the second trial held, humanity had to dominate it without fail. They had already lost the first round, and they could not afford to lose a second.
"At least those lands look much greener than this place," Antoine muttered, staring at the lush landscape visible beyond the shimmering barrier. "What do you think this next trial is going to be about?"
"It doesn’t matter," Uhtred said flatly.
He stood up, ignoring the stiffness in his joints, and leapt over the edge of the earth cart onto the hard ground. A pained grimace crossed his face as his feet hit the ground, his body still feeling incredibly hot and sore, but he toughed it out.
The number one ranked human could not be seen returning to the human frontier being pulled along in a cart like a sick, dying man.
Zara understood his intentions immediately. Without saying a word, she reached into her spatial storage and pulled out a large, dark piece of cloth. It was wide enough to completely cover Uhtred’s shriveled-up right arm.
She tossed the cloth to him. Uhtred caught it and wrapped it securely around his shoulder and arm, hiding the mummified limb from sight.
His eyes remained fixed on the massive crowd and the green horizon ahead.
"No matter what the trial is, we just have to win," Uhtred said, his voice firm.
"We must win."