Chapter 52: The Road Upward II

The Decennial Competition was not a single competition.

It was a chain.

Every ten years, young people with confirmed Spiritual Roots enter a system of local assessments and martial contests through families, guards, officials, and other recognized channels.

Blackwood served as a gathering point for the town and a much wider surrounding region.

Those who performed well enough traveled to the state capital.

There they met rooted candidates gathered from other towns, districts, established families, and military organizations.

A much smaller number continued farther.

To the kingdom’s capital.

The age limit was under twenty-five.

"When was the last cycle?" Joe asked.

"Two years ago," Daren said.

Joe calculated automatically.

Eight years remained.

He was around fifteen now.

He would be roughly twenty-three when the next cycle arrived.

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Still within the limit.

Simon would be twenty-six.

Joe looked at him.

Simon frowned immediately.

"Don't."

"You'll be too old."

"I know my own age."

"So, you introduced a road already closed to you."

"I also don't have a Root."

"That closes it sooner."

Simon pointed his spoon toward him.

"You probably don't either."

Joe ignored that.

The timing was still worth remembering.

If some future event proved his current assumption wrong, the next cycle would not yet be closed to him.

Nothing more.

"How many candidates did Blackwood have last time?"

"About six," Daren said.

Joe looked at him.

"Six across ten years?"

"From the wider Blackwood region. Not just people born inside the walls."

That number felt tiny until Joe considered the size of the net.

Blackwood contained thousands of people. The villages, farms, forest settlements, roadside communities, and smaller market centers around it added many more. Children were born every year. People moved inward looking for work. Rural youths joined the guard.

Ten years of births and movement had produced only a handful of rooted youths connected to Blackwood's side of the cycle.

Rare was clearly the correct word.

Yet Blackwood was only one collection point.

Six from here might become dozens once the entire state gathered its cases.

Several states could produce enough participants for the kingdom level to feel like a true competition.

Something could be extraordinarily rare among ordinary people and still look almost expected inside a place designed specifically to collect the rare exceptions.

"Two of the last Root holders were discovered through the guard," Daren added.

"Same screening?"

"I think so."

"What happened to them?"

Daren thought.

"One stayed mostly local afterward. Got some family interest, I think."

"And the other?"

"Made the state round."

Joe's attention sharpened.

"Why the difference?"

"One of them was already progressing much faster as a martial artist."

That answer was simple enough to matter.

The Root had not created the difference.

The difference had existed before either man knew he possessed one.