Chapter 624: The Eighth

"The Monelay have failed."

The Great Udon’s grin didn’t shift, though the shadows gathered around the edges of his floating mask seemed to thicken slightly. "That’s a rather dramatic assessment. They’ve certainly fucked up more than once, but I was under the impression that was practically a qualification for Hosting."

"This is no longer a matter of individual failures."

The projection changed, displaying fragments of Grey’s progression through the Games, from his earliest Frames to the five chains that had just turned two Infernal Princes into unwilling teaching tools.

Images layered over one another until Linear, Resonant, Recursive, and Branching symbols floated side by side around Grey’s silhouette, each one representing something that should have been difficult enough for a Candidate to build an entire Path around.

"The emergence of a Multi Frame user cannot be permitted to continue unchecked. Four within a single compatible foundation introduces possibilities that have historically proven unacceptable."

The Great Udon’s eyes narrowed slightly. "Unacceptable is one of those wonderfully vague words people use when the real explanation is much more interesting."

"You are not being contacted for an explanation."

That earned a chuckle from the floating mask, but there was considerably less humor in it than the laughter he had been filling the studio with minutes earlier. The Monelay had spent the entire First Arc trying to contain a mistake that should never have escaped their fingers in the first place, yet every contract, manipulation, Producer, and obstacle thrown toward Grey seemed to give the boy something else to climb.

Worse, Grey had reached the point where the Monelay applying more pressure might actually accelerate the very growth they were trying to prevent.

The silhouette continued. "They were warned before the First Arc concluded. They were provided room to correct the situation during the transition, and they were allowed to handle the opening movements of the Second Arc according to their own judgment. Their methods have produced the opposite result."

"And now?"

"Now their discretion has ended."

The Great Udon floated silently for several seconds, his grin having faded enough that the expression carved into the green mask looked almost unnatural without it. He understood what those words meant even without details, and he understood something else as well.

There was a reason certain hands had moved behind the scenes when his return to the Genesis Games had gone from an amusing impossibility to reality.

The Great Udon had never been a safe Host. He provoked Candidates, Producers, entire Races, and occasionally whatever governing body was unlucky enough to believe it could keep him on a leash, while audiences had learned long ago that strange things happened whenever he was involved.

Rules became entertainment, entertainment became controversy, and controversy became ratings so quickly that separating one from another was almost impossible.

If someone wanted the Games to become considerably less predictable without immediately advertising that somebody powerful was pushing from behind the curtain, there were few better masks to hide behind than the literal one floating in front of the projection.

The silhouette finally spoke again. "You remember the circumstances that made your return possible."

The Great Udon’s grin slowly returned. "I remember owing favors even less than I remember agreeing to them."

"This is not a favor."

"No," Udon said, his eyes sharpening. "I imagine it isn’t."

The silence that followed carried more weight than anything either of them had said so far. Grey’s image remained suspended between them, five chains spread outward from his hand while four Frame symbols surrounded him, and for the first time The Great Udon wondered just how far back concern over the boy truly reached.

"Grey Temolt cannot reach the Third Arc."

There it was.

Whatever line the Genesis Council feared him crossing sat somewhere beyond the Second Arc, and they had apparently decided it was important enough that the Monelay were no longer trusted to handle it alone.

The Great Udon studied the silhouette. "And if he keeps doing what he has been doing?"

"Then measures proportionate to the threat will be taken."

That answer finally pulled a full grin back across the green mask. "You people always find such pretty ways to say ugly things."

The figure ignored the comment. "Continue performing your role as you always have. When the time comes, you will understand what is required."

The projection began breaking apart into darkness before the voice gave him one final instruction.

"Be ready."

Then The Great Udon was alone.

**

Across the Genesis Network, however, nobody was thinking about secret councils or what might be moving behind the Games.

They were thinking about money.

The Betting Favorites had existed long before Grey Temolt became a name worth placing on a board, seven Candidates whose odds had separated themselves so completely from the rest that bookmakers treated them almost like their own category. They were chosen by the accumulated judgment of institutions and individuals wealthy enough to lose fortunes while attempting to make even larger ones.

The richest gamblers in the universe didn’t bet emotionally. They studied bloodlines that had been cultivated across civilizations and measured the histories of Races that had produced Genesis Kings before. They bought intelligence from Producers through whatever illegal means were available and followed inherited Paths across generations if necessary. Then it all culminated in placed amounts of wealth onto seven Candidates large enough to buy out entire galaxies.

Among them stood Aelthar Infernis, the Infernal King whose position was so overwhelming that the Four Princes of his own generation had surrendered their claims before the Games had even properly tested them.

He represented exactly what a Betting Favorite was supposed to look like, an inheritor so thoroughly prepared that even members of his own powerful Race treated his eventual rise as an inevitability.

The other six carried expectations of the same scale.

For months, every serious Genesis Crown market had revolved around those seven names. Odds moved between them, fortunes shifted from one to another whenever new information surfaced, but there was always a clean gulf between the favorites and everyone beneath them.

Grey Temolt had spent most of the First Arc outside that gulf. First he had been entertainment, then an anomaly, then the dangerous Candidate from a Cracked World who kept surviving situations that should have corrected the universe’s mistake for it. His odds climbed after every impossible victory, only for established money to hesitate at the same question every time.

How long could it really continue? For how much longer could one person go against the odds so consistently? The answer after the volcano was apparently long enough.

Across the largest betting exchanges in the Genesis Network, numbers began moving almost simultaneously as algorithms reacted to wagers and wagers reacted to analysts. Yet, none of them quite knew how to react to Grey Temolt.

But now, they no longer needed to. Because the masses, the small people with a credit or two to spare, the poor who sought to hit one parlay that would change their lives forever, the weak, disenfranchised, and vulnerable had all come together without their consensus.

For the entire First Arc, there had been seven Betting Favorites.

But from today forth, there would be eight.