Chapter 731: Leaderboard, and Realm Defense Hub
Chapter 731: Leaderboard, and Realm Defense Hub
The announcement arrived before the dark did.
It came to every fighter on the rim at the same moment, written across their vision in letters that carried the weight of the top six Empires behind them, and along the whole edge of the world, millions of eyes read the same words at once.
[The 3,041st World-Ending Event begins shortly.]
[All kingdoms of the Upper Layer are bound to the defense. The Upper Layer survives together, or it does not survive at all.]
That second line was not a flourish. Every veteran on the rim knew it as plain fact. The dark beyond the border did not come to raid or to test. It came, every month, to end the layer entirely, to swallow ten thousand kingdoms and everything they had ever built. The only reason the upper layer still existed was that every month, so far, the whole of it had fought as one thing and held.
Then the leaderboard opened.
It unfolded across the sky itself, vast and cold, ten thousand names in ranked order burning against the fading light. At the very top sat the six Empires, their names heavy enough that they seemed written in different ink. Below them the great kingdoms of the top hundred, then the long roll of the rest, thousands upon thousands, all the way down to the newest and smallest names clinging to the bottom of the list.
The Regalons found themselves on it without needing to search. The board pulled each kingdom’s rank forward to its own people, and there it was, glowing quietly above their stretch of broken ground.
[Ananta Regalon. Rank: 378th.]
"Still feels new," Natalia murmured, looking up at it.
"Get used to it fast," Marcus said. "Because look what comes next."
The Empires’ second announcement wrote itself beneath the board, and this one changed the shape of the whole night.
[By decree of the Six Empires: contribution during this event will be measured and ranked.]
[Top-tier rewards will be granted to the ten kingdoms ranking highest in contribution.]
[Medium-tier rewards will be granted to kingdoms ranked 11th through 50th.]
[Low-tier rewards will be granted to all kingdoms ranked 51st and below.]
A sound moved along the rim when that landed, a low ripple of voices from a million throats, because everyone understood what it meant. The defense was mandatory. The rewards were not equal. The Empires had turned survival itself into a competition, and they did it every month, because nothing kept ten thousand kingdoms fighting at full strength like greed stacked on top of fear.
John rode back along the Regalon line with a dry look on his face, like a man watching an old trick performed for a new audience.
"There it is," he said. "The whip and the sugar. The dark makes you fight, the board makes you fight hard." He nodded up at the burning list. "The top-tier rewards are worth killing for, and I mean that exactly. Resources that can lift a kingdom fifty ranks in a season. Every Empire-adjacent power on this rim will be hunting contribution tonight like it is prey."
"And a kingdom our size?" Big D asked bluntly. "What should we hunt?"
"Survival first. Contribution second." John held up a hand before the old man could bristle. "I am not telling you to hide. I am telling you the scoring favors the prepared, and you are about to see why. Assign your admins. It should be opening for you now."
It was. A new notice hung in front of Big D, patient and official.
[The Realm Defense Hub is now open to Ananta Regalon.]
[Assign five admins. Admins may access the Hub, monitor the full state of the defense, and accept missions on behalf of the kingdom.]
The choice took less than a minute, because the family had settled it days ago in the war councils. Big D took the first seat. Marcus took the second for overall command, Natalia the third for the ranged lines, Silvester the fourth for logistics and movement, and Kayla the fifth for support and rescue. Five confirmations, five soft chimes, and then the Hub opened around them.
It was not a place, exactly. It laid itself over their sight like a second world, a vast living map of the entire rim drawn in light, every territory marked, every kingdom’s stretch outlined and named. Marcus turned slowly where he stood, reading the whole defense at once, and for a moment even his composure slipped into open wonder.
"You can see everything," he said. "Every territory on the rim. Who holds what. Where the line is thick and where it is thin."
"That is the point," John said. "The layer defends itself as one body, so the Hub lets the body feel all its own parts. And here is the part that matters for your ranking." He gestured, and a panel bloomed in all five admins’ sight. "Missions."
The panel was empty for now, but its purpose was written plain across the top.
[Missions are generated automatically according to the state of the defense. Reinforce failing territories. Hold critical points. Answer calls for aid. Contribution is awarded according to difficulty and outcome.]
"The dark does not attack evenly," John explained. "Some stretches get a quiet night. Some get drowned. When a territory starts to fail, the Hub knows before the defenders do, and it generates a mission. Any kingdom’s admins can accept it and send their people. Save someone else’s ground, and their trouble becomes your contribution."
Natalia’s eyes narrowed as she took that in. "So the kingdoms at the top of the contribution board every month are the ones running toward other people’s disasters."
"The strong ones, yes. The clever ones pick their disasters carefully." John smiled without much warmth. "And the dead ones picked wrong. Missions pay well because they are where the dying happens. Never forget that the board is a graveyard with prizes on it."
Big D grunted, unimpressed by the poetry of it. "We hold our stretch first. That is not negotiable. Marcus, you decide if and when we can spare force for missions, and you decide it with your head, not the board."
"Understood."
Along the rim, the last preparations rippled outward as far as sight could reach. Banners were planted. Formations locked. On the Regalon stretch, between the twin spires and the dry ravine, the family settled into the ground they had marked and drilled, ranged lines on the heights, vanguard forward, healers staged in the hollows. Above them all, the leaderboard burned steady against the darkening sky, and under it, the contribution board waited at zero for ten thousand names alike.
Kayla stood with the support units and watched the far darkness gather itself, and found her hands were steady, which surprised her a little. "Every month," she said quietly, to no one in particular. "They do this every month, and the layer is still here. Hold on to that."
"The layer is still here because every month, enough people did not run," Hiroshi said beside her, rolling his shoulders loose. "Tonight we get to be some of those people."
The light died out of the sky by degrees, and the rim’s own defenses woke to replace it, walls of pale radiance rising along the border, war-lights kindling across a million positions, until the whole edge of the world glowed like a thread of fire laid against the dark.
And the dark rose to meet it.
It came up off the horizon in silence, which was the worst part, a black tide lifting into the sky along the entire length of the rim at once, higher and higher, until it stood over the world like a wave that had decided not to fall yet. Deep inside it, things began to move. Shapes without clear edges, in numbers that made counting meaningless, all of them flowing toward the thread of fire where ten thousand kingdoms stood waiting.
The Hub spoke once more, to every admin on the rim at the same time.
[The defense begins.]
[Missions generating.]
The panel in front of Marcus was no longer empty. Even before the first monster touched the first wall, missions were blooming across the map like wounds opening, dozens, then hundreds, territories already predicted to fail, calls for aid already priced in contribution. He read them with his jaw set, and above him the black wave finally leaned forward.
"Steady," Big D rasped, and his old voice carried down the whole Regalon line. "Steady. Let it come to us."
The wave broke.
The sound arrived a heartbeat later, a single unending roar as the dark crashed against the entire rim at once, and the world-ending event began in earnest with the Regalons standing in their first hour on the main stage, shoulder to shoulder on ground that was finally their own to hold.