Chapter 623: Be Ready

The Great Udon’s laughter rolled through the studio like thunder, the enormous green mask floating above the stage while its impossible grin stretched wider across its face. Behind him, the screens showed Grey standing over the volcanic crater with five chains spread outward, but Udon didn’t immediately explain what the audience was looking at, allowing the image to linger until the cheers started dying down on their own.

"Do you know what arrogance looks like?"

The screens shifted to the moment the Infernal Princes descended, fire pouring from their bodies while Brad and Amara could barely remain standing beneath them. Eight Elementals filled the crater, two carrying one of the most prestigious titles of their Race, while Grey remained against the wall with his attention fixed on a Cyber Mat as though the battle below didn’t deserve enough respect to make him look up.

"Is it descending upon a Cracked World with the accumulated inheritance of a Race that has survived since antiquity?" The Great Udon’s eyes widened theatrically as the screen filled with fire. "Is it surrounding three little humans within the mouth of a volcano, wielding the land, the sky, and even the mountain beneath their feet as weapons?"

His grin curled upward.

"Or is arrogance finishing your mech first?"

The studio exploded.

The replay skipped forward, Grey finally stepping away from the tree as the first rattle of chains spread across the crater. Udon allowed the footage to play without speaking while one Infernal Prince attacked, his movements blurring into fire, only for Grey to watch him once, reach outward, and begin moving in the same way moments later.

"Imagine that," The Great Udon said softly, forcing the audience to quiet down to hear him. "You spend your entire life learning to walk, only for a stranger to watch you cross the room and ask why you’re limping."

Laughter rippled through the studio before the next sequence began, Grey’s copied technique becoming cleaner, faster, and more efficient until the Infernal Prince found himself losing exchanges against his own method of movement.

Then came Earth.

The screens filled with volcanic stone folding upward at an Earth Elemental’s command, followed by Grey’s chains sinking into its influence and beginning to understand something that had never belonged to him. The Great Udon’s grin faded into something almost reverent as rock climbed Grey’s body, fire slipped into its cracks, and the two separate Elemental paths began collapsing into one.

"There are inheritances in this universe that civilizations have murdered one another to possess. There are bloodlines guarded for ten thousand generations, abilities written into flesh so deeply that entire Races call them identity."

The stone surrounding Grey melted and magma rolled across his shoulders.

"But does that matter to Grey Temolt?"

The audience surged to its feet.

The Great Udon’s laughter returned as the footage accelerated, Grey dancing across the crater while magma flowed around his body and the Infernal Princes desperately tried to adjust. He hummed and moved to a rhythm only he seemed capable of hearing, stealing techniques in the middle of exchanges, returning them improved, then humiliating one opponent after another until his attacks sand with the hum of an undying performance.

"Do not mistake what you are seeing!" Udon roared as the green mask swelled across every screen in the studio. "This is not an Elemental awakening! This is not some lost dual lineage appearing after ten thousand years! This is a casual flare of a young man’s imagination, talent and grit, painted in a single graceful arc of youthful exuberance!"

The footage froze on Grey surrounded by fire and molten stone.

"How many true dual Elementals have appeared in recorded history?"

A number flashed behind him.

"Not even enough to fill two hands."

The number vanished, replaced with Grey’s grin.

"Apparently they should have tried tree sap."

The laughter was deafening.

Udon spun the broadcast back farther, showing Grey harvesting from the strange volcanic tree while Brad and Amara nearly died buying him time. "This is what fascinates me! Give ten thousand technicians access to the greatest vaults in the universe and they will fight over the rarest alloys, the oldest relics, the materials with names long enough to require their own fucking paragraph."

The screen zoomed toward the amber sap flowing through Grey’s siphon.

"This little bastard found a tree."

Another roar rolled through the studio.

"He looked at living cells and saw machines, looked at sap and saw circuitry, then took the natural signalling structure of a plant and turned it into an artificial Neural Frame capable of changing itself!" The Great Udon’s face stretched into another delighted grin. "That, ladies and gentlemen, is why copying a blueprint does not make you a great technician. A great technician looks at the universe and realizes everything around him is already a workshop."

The battlefield returned, this time ending on Grey standing among eight restrained Elementals while his five chains stretched through the crater.

The Great Udon stared at that image for several seconds.

"I have watched generations enter these Games, geniuses born beneath suns that Earth does not even know exist, heirs trained by civilizations that were building mechs while Grey Temolt’s ancestors were still learning which berries wouldn’t make them shit themselves to death."

His grin slowly returned.

"And I am beginning to wonder if Grey Temolt is the finest mech technician of his generation."

The studio erupted so violently that the broadcast filters had to suppress the sound.

A notification appeared beside Udon’s face, and his eyes shifted toward it before amusement flooded his expression. "Oho? It seems a certain Race finds that statement offensive."

Several mechanical silhouettes appeared across the screens.

The Para Bots.

"Well then, we can’t leave something like that unanswered, can we?" Udon’s voice lowered conspiratorially before swelling again. "Maybe one day we’ll stop arguing about it and put the machines where our mouths are! Grey Temolt against the Para Bots, genius against inheritance, Cracked World against the Race that believes machinery belongs to them!"

His grin filled half the studio.

"PRODUCERS! YOU HEAR THEM! GIVE THE PEOPLE THEIR FUCKING FIGHT!"

The audience answered loudly enough that the advertisements were almost drowned out when the broadcast finally cut away. The Great Udon continued smiling until the studio emptied and the last recording indicator disappeared, but once silence returned, the expression carved across the floating green mask slowly flattened.

Grey was becoming troublesome in a way that had little to do with ratings.

A private communication opened in front of him, revealing nothing more than a silhouette hidden beneath layers of distortion. However, The Great Udon knew exactly who it was.

It seemed the Genesis Council was finally running out of patience.