Nova was sighing at both the cruelty and the fortune of this Lesser Orange portal when he suddenly looked at Jack and said, “There’s more to it.”
This time, it was Jack’s turn to look at his friend curiously.
“It’s about the Gold coins,” Nova said before launching into an explanation. “Other civilizations will probably have a thousand warriors. That means their combined wealth will surely be in the billions, if not tens of billions, while we’re only four. If, during the draw, we’re the leader civilization and are matched against a strong subordinate civilization, there’s a high possibility they’ll bet an amount of Gold coins that we won’t be able to match.”
Jack nodded and said, “We’ve already established that. What’s your point?”
“My point is that we only have one chance at this portal, unlike the other civilizations. If we lose our very first fight, we won’t just have failed the portal, we’ll become slaves to the other civilization due to a debt far too large for us to repay. To top it all off, we don’t even know how long the soul mark lasts, if it even vanishes in the first place. But…”
His face a mask of seriousness, Jack looked at Nova, waiting to hear the rest.
“That was the bad part. Next comes what’s going to turn our lives for the better.” Nova smiled. “One win, and we’ll earn more than we’ve ever earned through portals, hundreds of millions of gold, and if we’re lucky, billions. With time moving twice as fast as on Earth… by the time we get out of here, we might be strong enough to protect ourselves from the already established civilizations.”
Jack, having listened to everything, sat silently for a while. Earlier, they had focused on the negative points, but now they saw something within reach that could greatly help them, and, based on Erevan’s words a year ago, it shouldn’t even be too hard to obtain.
While Jack didn’t know the average strength of the civilizations present here, he doubted he was weaker than them, which made the gold coins from the bet all the more achievable.
“Mhm. If we manage to win our first fight and the bet is high, our chances of earning big in this portal will slowly snowball,” Jack said thoughtfully before hastily standing up, startling Nova.
“Where are you going?”
“Where else?” Jack answered. Then, in a matter-of-fact tone, he added, “We need to scout the other civilizations to find out the overall strength in this place. Don’t tell me you planned on staying cooped up in here until our fight?”
Nova’s lips twitched, but he knew better than to reply. Silently standing up, he thought, ‘Show me the currently ongoing fights.’
An avalanche of information appeared in his mind, but he processed it with ease.
The list of ongoing fights seemed never-ending, easily reaching into the hundreds of thousands, possibly even the millions.
It was absurd.
“What…” he exclaimed out loud.
Still, although his mind was fast enough to process all of it, he found the number of civilizations locked in battle impossibly high. Those fighting weren’t the only civilizations in this place, there had to be many others without an ongoing match, but he found it hard to even guess how many.
Jack turned to him and tilted his head.
Taking a deep breath, Nova looked back and waved his hand. “It’s nothing. I was just picking an arena to spectate.”
“Is that so?” Jack said calmly, eyeing his friend before asking, “Which one did you choose?”
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“Let’s go to Arena #7,” Nova said. As he thought about teleporting, he soon disappeared from the room.
A moment later, after shrugging, Jack disappeared as well.
//////
“ASTRAH, I’VE BET ALL MY GOLD COINS ON YOU! YOU BETTER KILL THAT LOSER!”
“HEH, AS IF A PRETTY BOY COULD KILL TRINESAT. YOU’D BETTER OPEN YOUR EYES WIDE, OR YOU’RE GOING TO MISS HOW HE DIES.”
Shout after shout rang in Nova and Jack’s ears as soon as they arrived at Arena #7.
They stood at the end of the seats of a stadium-like structure, which were filled with… people?
Nova noticed this and thought, ‘Why do they all look like humans?’ His eyes swept through the bustling, seemingly countless crowd, all of them glued to a massive screen floating in the middle of the stadium.
From their position, it seemed impossible to see the fight without it.
Pushing the thought to the back of his mind, he turned his head toward the center of the arena.
There, apart from a giant screen that seemed endless, was nothing but rows of seats stretching as far as the eye could see. It was impossible to tell what lay at the very end.
‘Just how many people are here?’ he wondered before looking away. After surveying his immediate surroundings for a moment in search of a place to sit, he spotted two seats only a few steps away.
Nudging Jack to follow him, the two soon sat down, still amazed by what they were witnessing.
“There,” Nova said, pointing at the screen, where someone who looked like a young man with white hair stood with his arms crossed, while his opponent, a middle-aged man dressed in black, rested his hands on his sword’s scabbard.
“They haven’t even drawn their weapons yet, but the crowd already looks ready to go to war for them. What a strange sight,” Jack murmured.
Nova smirked. “Strange? It looks so familiar to me.” He chuckled lightly before fixing his gaze on the screen as the two were about to begin fighting.
The middle-aged man unsheathed his sword and, in a blur, slashed at the young man.
There were no tricks, nor any flashy moves.
It was a simple strike, one that any normal human could have performed back before Earth began its evolution.
But when the middle-aged man did it, the air froze, the elements stalled, and a thin line seemed to cleave through everything in its path as it rapidly approached the young man.
/////
“Sword Force, and it’s almost at the peak of the first stage,” Jack exclaimed the moment he saw the slash, before sighing in amazement. “To think a fight you randomly picked would have someone this strong.”
‘Is that Sword Force at the peak of the first stage? Jack shouldn’t be mistaken but then…’ Nova frowned. ‘Why does it look so weak?’
/////
The young man stared at the slash that was only moments away from reaching him, yet he didn’t reach for his weapon. Instead, he lifted a finger and gently swiped.
A horizontal arc, no more than a few centimeters long, shot toward the incoming slash at a speed that exceeded most of the crowd’s senses, eliciting a wave of gasps.
When the horizontal arc met the sword slash, it was as if hot magma had met snow.
The sword slash, performed by someone who had nearly reached the peak of the first stage of Sword Force, vanished into nothingness, while the horizontal arc born from the young man’s gentle swipe continued unhindered toward the middle-aged man.
“YOU!”
Having seen the result of the collision and having come to a dreadful conclusion, the middle-aged man lost his composure and shouted at the top of his lungs before frantically slashing at the incoming arc, trying to wear it down.
One…
Two…
Five…
Ten…
Sweat rolled down his forehead as he slashed more than ten times in mere moments, yet his eyes held none of the relief one would expect after achieving their goal.
It was only natural, the horizontal arc hadn’t stopped. Despite all his frantic slashes, it had only weakened, never disappeared.
Eyes trembling, the middle-aged man watched as the arc brushed past his right arm and continued forward for many kilometers before finally vanishing.
He felt a sensation he had always known since birth slip away. Looking at his right arm, he saw… nothing. When he tried to heal it, it was as if his cells were too terrified to move toward his right side, much less begin the healing process.
He understood. It was impossible for him to heal his own arm with his strength.
A sense of loss washed over him, and in an instant, he seemed to have aged decades. Then, slowly lifting his head, he met the gaze of the young man, who had barely moved his finger since the start of the fight.
It was devoid of any emotion, as if this victory meant nothing to him.
Softly, the middle-aged man, with eyes filled with anger and sadness, said, “I admit defeat.”
A bright glow encompassed him, and a moment later, he vanished from the screen.
From start to finish, the young man hadn’t said a word, nor had he so much as blinked.
/////
The stadium fell silent, only to explode moments later into a cacophony of cheers and shouts.
Jack grimly muttered to himself, “Peak first stage? Second stage? Maybe higher?”
‘That’s more like it,’ Nova thought, nodding to himself as he stared at the screen, watching the young man being enveloped in the bright glow before disappearing.
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