Chapter 555: The Tournament Of Succession [I / Bonus - ]

Chapter 555: The Tournament Of Succession [I / Bonus Chapter]

At the center of the platform, standing before the colossal circular archway of the primary transit gate, a scarred Warden of the World Council stepped forward.

He was clad from neck to heel in heavy rune-inscribed mythril plate, holding a massive star-iron lantern that burned with a cold pale-white spiritual fire.

"Silence for the edict of deployment!" the Warden’s voice boomed, amplified by runes embedded in the steel deck.

The heirs and retainers snapped into rigid formation.

Crown Prince Alexander stood at a hidden side of the circle with his posture stiff and his jaw locked in fury.

His arms were encased from wrist to bicep in the heavy glowing Star-Iron Suppression Rings he had demanded from his father.

The runic metal was pulsing with an aggressive hum, actively constricting two-thirds of his internal mana pathways, artificially bottlenecking his Fourth Stage advancement down to the Second Stage to ensure parity with the competition.

His bloodshot eyes were fixed with murderous hatred upon the back of Kara White’s head and his fists trembling against his thighs.

The Warden raised his gauntleted left hand, pointing toward the swirling translucent vortex of the transit gate behind him.

"You are deploying to Sector Forty-Four of the Sovereign Realm," the Warden announced with his voice lacking any sort of emotion. "Under the statutes of the Exhibition of Succession, the barrier strictly prevents all external summoning... You cannot call forth Heroes, Troops, or legions from your home territories. You cross the threshold with only your designated two-person squad, your immediate personal armaments, and your native core."

A low rustle of leather, silk, and scabbards ran through the ranks.

"The deployment zone is vast," the Warden continued. "The transit array will scatter each team to random isolated coordinates across the sector... The sector is an uncolonized wilderness, populated by indigenous Tier-1 and Tier-2 monsters with stronger ones happening sometimes. The Exhibition operates under an absolute Two-Hour Time Limit."

He held up two fingers with his scarred face turning grim.

"The victory conditions are absolute... If a faction successfully eliminates all rival squads before the two-hour mark expires, that faction is declared the immediate undisputed victor. If multiple factions remain standing when the timer concludes, the surviving teams will be forcibly compressed into the central caldera for a sudden-death convergence until only one standard remains standing."

From the Khemet team circle, Lady Safira stepped forward with her voice cutting through the silence.

"Warden! What is the topographical profile of Sector Forty-Four?"

The Warden glanced toward her with his eyes looking impassive.

"The sector is predominantly an arid Wastezone of shifting sand dunes, broken by central greenlands anchored to river aquifers, surrounded by jagged granite mountain ridges."

’A sand wastezone...?’

A wave of sharp irritated glances swept across the floor toward the Khemet representatives.

The people from Borealis and Columbia gripped their weapons with tight bitter scowls.

Khemet was the cradle of sand-affinity casting.

To drop all the combatants into a silica-dense basin was practically handing the desert nation an overwhelming home-field advantage on a silver platter.

It looked blatantly rigged.

Safira and Tariq, however, did not smile. The phantom memory of the black sand dissolving in their private quarters was still burning in their minds, keeping their blood cold as ice.

The Warden raised the star-iron lantern high above his head.

"Are there any final inquiries?"

Dead silence answered him.

"Then let the Succession be settled in blood," the Warden declared.

CLACK!

He released the mechanical safety latch on the lantern.

VUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUM!

The pale-white spiritual fire inside the housing erupted into an all-consuming, blinding wave of luminescence as the spatial fabric around the pavilion groaned under terrifying gravitational tension, warping and folding inward in a massive swirling vortex that swallowed all combatants whole, ripping their physical vessels out of the mortal plane in the span of a single heartbeat.

Aki blinked.

"Gah–!"

Her chest hitched violently as cold thin air rushed back into her lungs, burning her windpipe like crushed glass.

The gut-wrenching sensation of freefalling through a lightless gravity-free void snapped shut with concussive finality, replaced by the hard bite of jagged granite beneath the soles of her boots.

She stumbled forward, her small hands scraping against the rough face of a lichen-covered boulder to keep her balance.

Her vision swam with dancing white spots and her stomach violently churning with the spatial sickness that plagued unawakened mortals during long-range teleportation.

She swallowed hard, blinking rapidly, trying to force her equilibrium to settle as the howling roar of transitional void-wind gave way to the desolate whistle of high-altitude gales whipping through narrow mountain gorges.

Aki straightened her back with her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird, and looked around.

She was standing on a wide elevated rocky plateau high along the jagged spine of a massive granite mountain range.

Below her, stretching out for tens of leagues beneath a bruised twilight-purple sky, the Wastezone was an intimidating sprawling expanse.

To the far east lay an ocean of rolling, yellow-sand dunes that churned and shifted in the wind like an inland sea... directly below the sheer mountain cliffs, a narrow belt of emerald-green jungle clung to a winding pale-blue river and beyond the jungle, rising like an ancient blackened crown in the center of the horizon, was the dark rim of a massive volcanic caldera.

"You awake now...?"

The smooth relaxed voice came from the edge of the precipice and Aki turned her head with her breath hitching.

Kara was sitting casually on the very lip of the thousand-foot drop, her legs dangling out over the empty abyss.

She was leaning forward, resting her chin on her single right palm with her wire-rimmed glasses pushed neatly up the bridge of her nose, looking down at the vast expanse of the Wastezone with the bored unimpressed posture of someone waiting for a delayed bus.

Aki blinked, rushing forward two steps before catching herself.

"Sil—I mean, Kara! How long have we been here?!"

"About four minutes," Kara answered without looking back, casually flicking a small pebble off the cliff edge with her thumb. "You were completely out cold, Princess... The spatial pressure hit your nervous system pretty hard, it seems unawakened biological channels don’t process dimensional folding well so you looked like a stunned deer for a second there."

She tilted her head slightly toward the narrow goat path winding up the rocky ridge behind them.

"Gave these two enough time to track our transponder beacon, at least."

CLACK! CLACK!

The sound of armored boots striking stone echoed from the lower rocks.

Emerging onto the plateau, their breathing heavy but controlled, were Lieutenant Maya Da Silva and Captain Leona.

Both Amazonian officers were fully clad in the pristine void-ivory strike armor Kara had provided.

The pearl-white plates were unmarked, the gold stabilization runes humming with a soft pale-green luminescence as the wind-acceleration runes actively regulated their momentum.

Maya immediately snapped a clenched fist over her breastplate, dipping her chin.

"Lord Vespera! We locked onto your personal transponder the instant our squad materialized in the lower ravine! The immediate perimeter is clear, but we registered three separate kinetic mana flares five kilometers south... Columbia and Shogya have already initiated contact in the lower basin!"

Kara let out a soft amused hum through her nose, still staring out over the vast plains below.

Over the past four minutes, while Aki had been unconscious on the rocks, Silas had been sitting quietly on that ledge, conducting a thorough internal diagnostic of his spiritual pathways.

’They gave me full reins...?’ Kara thought, her brow furrowing slightly behind her clear lenses.

It made no sense.

Silas had fully expected the World Council’s arbiters to slap an array of high-grade suppression cuffs on his soul pathways before shoving him through the transit gate... something to artificially bottleneck his Gold Core down to match the rest of the children, just as Alexander had done to himself.

Yet... nothing.

His soul pathways were wide open.

The Second Phase Gold Core was spinning smoothly in the center of his chest, radiating that dense liquid-gold authority without a single dampening ward or restriction placed upon his vessel.

’Do these idiots actually believe I’m going to hold back out of the goodness of my heart just to make the broadcast look entertaining?’ Kara wondered, a dark dangerous smirk curling the corner of her lips. ’Or does the King have some hidden contingency waiting for me in the caldera...?’

Silas wanted to find out.

He wanted to see what happened when the high court realized they had locked all of their prized noble heirs in an arena with an unchained apex predator.

Kara pushed herself off the ledge, standing upright on the absolute edge of the drop.

She turned around to face the three women with her double-breasted jacket flapping gently in the mountain gale.

"Alright," Kara said casually, raising her single right hand in a lazy wave. "Take care of each other, ladies. I’m going to go enjoy this whole thing."

Maya and Leona blinked in unison, their jaws dropping in utter disbelief.

"Wait—what?!"

Aki’s eyes widened in mounting panic. "Kara! What do you mean you’re going to enjoy it?! Where are you going?!"

Kara gave a slow deliberate wink behind her wire-rimmed glasses.

She leaned backward... stepping clean off the edge of the thousand-foot cliff.

"KARA!" Aki screamed, her boots scraping violently against the granite as she sprinted toward the ledge with her hands reaching out into empty air.

Kara was falling.

The mountain wind howled in her ears, tearing at her tailored charcoal suit, her dark hair whipping wildly around her face as the rocky abyss rushed up to meet her at terminal velocity.

Yet she looked up at the receding ledge, raising her single right hand to offer Aki a cheerful parting wave.

"Take care of yourself, Aki!" Kara’s voice boomed up. "Fight like your life is on the line, because it is! But if you really, really need help... if you’re truly about to break..."

Kara’s violet eyes flared with the usual warmth.

"Call my name and I’ll show up."

She twisted her body in mid-air.

WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH!

A concentrated vortex of pale-green wind-mana detonated beneath her dress shoes and the gale did not only break her descent but it propelled her forward like a fired cruise missile.

Kara flattened her silhouette, cutting horizontally through the mountain gorges, soaring across the vast expanse of the Wastezone with terrifying speed, leaving behind a thunderous boom that echoed off the granite peaks.

BOOOOOOOOM!

Up on the precipice, Aki stood with her fingers gripping the cold edge of the stone with the howling mountain wind whipping her navy skirts and tossing her loose dark hair across her face.

She watched the tiny charcoal-suited figure streak across the sky toward the distant battlefields and her chest heaving with rapid shallow breaths.

Her small hand rose, her gloved fingers curling tightly around the cold Star-Iron pendant resting against her collarbone.

’Silas...’ Aki thought, her vision blurring with fierce burning resolve as she turned back to face the Amazonian soldiers.

’I won’t let you down.’

The thunderous concussive boom of Kara’s departure was still rolling through the granite crevices of the mountain ridge, sending cascades of loose slate and powdered quartz tumbling thousands of feet into the valley below.

On the narrow wind-battered precipice, the air smelled sharply of ozone.

’I’m beginning to hate this smell...’

Aki slowly pulled her boots back from the crumbling edge of the cliff.

The howling updraft tore at her blue hair, whipping it across her face, but she didn’t blink as she took three deep, measured breaths through her nose, feeling the cold air bite all the way down into her lungs.

The intoxicating rush of adrenaline was still singing through her veins, but beneath it, the cold reality of their situation clamped shut like an iron jaw.

Kara was gone.

She had plunged into the lower atmosphere like an artillery shell, cutting a straight line across the bruised purple sky toward the central caldera.

Aki turned her back to the precipice and faced the two Amazonian warriors standing ten paces away.

"What do we do now?" Aki asked.

Her voice was surprisingly steady, lacking the fragile trembling hesitation that had defined her in the corridors of the Citadel.

She reached down, adjusting the strap of the lightweight harness cinched tightly over her dark training clothes. "Can either of you sense anyone else nearby? Anyone tracking our beacon?"

Lieutenant Maya Da Silva stood with her heavy combat boots planted wide on the granite shelf.

She closed her eyes for three seconds, her breathing slowing to a deep cadence as her Second Stage Purple Core pulsed within her chest, sending an invisible concentric ripple of earth-mana vibrating down through the bedrock.

Beside her, Captain Leona stood in a half-crouch, her fingers resting lightly against the twin hunting daggers strapped to her hips.

Her cornrows were pulled back tight against her scalp with her sharp hazel eyes scanning the crags above them.

"Nothing close," Maya said, opening her eyes. "About four miles south, down in the salt flats, two factions are throwing high-tier elemental strikes like drunken sailors... One’s Columbia since I know the crack of their shock-cannons anywhere. The other feels like Shogya’s wind arts as they spiked their mana signatures within ninety seconds of landfall."

[Author’s Note]

The Discord has been set up! Feel free to come along, the invite link is below...

https://discord.gg/fa72E7e5m