Chapter 116: Ensuing Chaos
Chapter 116: Ensuing Chaos
An older, shorter man with thick streaks of white running through his dark hair stepped forward from the line of guards, his steps quick.
He shared a distinct facial resemblance to Isolde. He was her uncle, one of the primary strategists of the Castiglione family.
As he approached, Isolde rapidly reined in her surprise, her expression returning to a cold, focused mask, though a deep, burning intrigue remained locked in her eyes.
She leaned down slightly just as the man whispered some words into her ears. She listened intently, nodding curtly, before the senior strategist stepped back.
He shot a sharp look filled with meaning toward the rest of the family guards, and without a single word, they all immediately turned and began to file down the other side of the hill with purpose, leaving Isolde alone with Alexei.
Alexei watched them go, then turned his head to deliver a silent, heavy nod to his own men standing off to the left. They caught the cue and instantly dispersed into the lower camp.
What exactly they were going to do remained a mystery, but one thing was clear:
These bounties, placed on the heads of the top ancient variants by none other than Uhtred, had just set the entire continent into motion.
Uhtred was the exact same person whom the ancient variants had targeted with a 15,000-merit bounty the moment the trial began. Yet now, he had somehow found a way to not only double that amount on the head of the person who started it, but he had also gone so far as to place bounties on the rest of the top ten ancient variants in the trials... the grand total coming to a whopping 135,000 merits.
"It seems your initial assessment was entirely correct, Isolde," Alexei said, turning his gaze toward the horizon, a fierce, predatory glint of competition and excitement flickering deep in his eyes.
"There is no more room for debate... Uhtred is ’Red.’"
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In every other separate region of Australia, the exact same thing was happening...
Antoine Blanc stood at the base of a sandy dune, frozen in his tracks, as he and his makeshift party stared at their system panels in absolute silence.
"A hundred and thirty-five thousand merits..." he whispered under his breath, his eyes wide with a lingering disbelief despite the fact that he had already read the notice five times over.
His crew members were completely static around him, their previous greed regarding Uhtred’s bounty even more thoroughly dead.
Without hesitation, Antoine closed his system panel, waving it away. His gaze turned northwest in the direction Uhtred had disappeared to, along with that giant serpent.
He had originally intended to leave Uhtred to his own devices since the guy was moving too fast to track, but this single broadcast rearranged his entire priority. He needed to find this man immediately.
Uhtred wasn’t just a powerful frontrunner anymore, he was a paradigm-shifting entity that operated entirely outside their understanding of power.
If a single person... a single human, possessed this many merits to spend on bounties, then just how much more did he have in his reserves to be able to comfortably do this?
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Deep within the brutish, heavily fortified stone outposts that the ancient variants had claimed as their primary headquarters within the trial grounds...
The atmosphere was no different.
Inside a massive, crude tent constructed from the fresh hides of apex beasts, the interior still smelled heavily of damp blood, gamey meat. The hide had only just been stitched together into a tent earlier in the afternoon. The thick skins were completely untreated, but the person sitting inside didn’t care for such petty inconveniences.
Krijn sat alone on a heavy stone bench at the center of the room, a look of absolute, incomprehensible shock frozen onto his brutal face as he stared at the System notification floating before his eyes.
For the first time since the modern humans came back from their integration space, the Neanderthal general was looking at something that utterly stumped him.
The fifteen thousand merit bounty he had placed on Uhtred’s head earlier in the day had not been drawn from his balance alone.
Even as the second-ranked on the trial leaderboard, Krijn did not possess that many merit points.
The only individuals within the Neanderthal clans who held that kind of amount in the clan strongholds in Zone 2 and Zone 3 back in the main continents.
To raise the fifteen thousand merits for Uhtred’s bounty, Krijn had been forced to coordinate with the other two ancient variant generals.
The negotiation had been a miserable, frustrating process. The Homo erectus general had especially been very stubborn and had only contributed a small fraction of the balance. Krijn had been forced to drain nearly his entire personal account to make up the difference.
It was only later in the afternoon, after the trial had fully kicked into motion, with many more humans joining the trial and accepting the bounty to hunt their own forerunner, that the other two generals finally considered throwing more of their merits to increase it from ten thousand to fifteen thousand, so as to further pressure Uhtred.
That was just how difficult it was to rack up merits... but then there was this.
This made absolutely no sense.
How had Uhtred, a newly integrated human of just two weeks, raised up 135,000 merits to place bounties on his head and the rest of the top 10’s heads. This was not even something remotely possible!
Krijn continued to stare at the flashing names on the public notice, his eyes tracing the hefty 30,000 figure right next to his name.
He sat there in the dim, blood-scented dark of his tent for several minutes in silence. Then suddenly, a low, guttural vibration began to rattle inside his thick chest.
The vibration leaked out of his throat, evolving into a heavy, full-on hysterical laugh that echoed violently against the leather walls of the tent.
Krijn clutched his stomach with his massive, calloused hand, his massive body shaking as he laughed at the sheer, beautiful madness of the move.
A dangerous, burning glint of pure warrior excitement flickered deep within his dark eyes. His gaze became distant, as if he could peer across the vast expanse separating him and Uhtred.
"You truly are an enigma, Uhtred," Krijn muttered aloud, his voice dropping into a deep, gravelly whisper that carried a touch of genuine respect. "It is but a shame that I will still have to kill you in the end."
The Neanderthal general stood up from his bench abruptly, his laughter dying out instantly as his face settled back into a cold, lethal expression.
He reached down and gripped the handle of his weapon, a heavy axe that mirrored Uhtred’s own choice of armament. He slung the weapon over his broad shoulder and stepped out of his tent into the freezing night air of the camp.
Chaos had ensued within the ranks of the camp. They had all burst into a cacophony of noise as they all saw the same notice being displayed to them within their various system panels.
Greed was burning in the eyes of every Neanderthal, even the ones who lacked the power to earn the merit points for killing any of the top ten.
Krijn paid no mind to any of them. Instead, he strode directly toward a campfire where a lone young Neanderthal sat.
The young Neanderthal’s shoulders slumped as he heard the footsteps of Krijn, his general.
He looked back, and an unwilling acceptance was in his eyes as he understood exactly what was about to happen to him...
He was the number 10 ranked on the trial leaderboard, afterall...