Chapter 75: Qualification Test for Top 10,000

Far out in the deep, a planet turned.

It was not a planet so much as a world swollen past all reasonable scale, a super-mega sphere whose curve filled the void from edge to edge, its surface a patchwork of continents that each could have swallowed a dozen ordinary worlds. Rings of artificial satellites threaded its upper atmosphere in slow, gleaming braids, and across its night side, vast cities burned like constellations brought down to the ground.

The view fell toward it. Past the satellite rings, through a band of high silver cloud, down toward one unremarkable speck on the planet’s vast face. A dome. From orbit, it looked tiny, a single dewdrop on the skin of a giant.

It was not tiny.

The dome measured five hundred kilometers across at its base and rose a full thousand kilometers into the sky, a transparent vault so enormous that its own ceiling held weather, faint streaks of cloud drifting near the apex while the ground far below basked in engineered daylight. And beneath that impossible vault sprawled a city unlike anything the team had yet seen.

It made the auction-city of Ocean Melody’s first planet look like a quaint provincial town.

Towers of pale alloy and living crystal climbed kilometers into the air, their flanks alive with drifting rivers of light. Transit lines arced between them in soundless ribbons, ferrying capsules of people through the open air. Floating platforms hung at every altitude, gardens and plazas and entire districts suspended on nothing, linked by bridges of hardened formation-light. Magitech arrays the size of mountains pulsed at the city’s heart, drinking ambient mana and breathing it back out as power for ten thousand glowing wonders. The air itself shimmered faintly with the density of refined energy.

It was beauty and engineering and raw wealth fused into a single living machine, and into it, today, had come a flood of people.

...

The team stepped off the receiving platform into the noise and the light.

Four of them, walking close together. Rudrean and Aelira at the front, Lyra a half-step behind with her ears swiveling at the sheer density of sound, Ryzen and Rivera flanking. To anyone watching, a party of five young experts arriving for the competition.

The fifth walked with them all the same, just not where anyone could see her.

’This place is obscene,’ came Isalyn’s voice, dry and clear in the shared link, projected from the quiet of the Dragon Vision Spirit Mirror’s dimension. She could not step out, not here, not among so many sharp eyes and detection arrays where an unregistered presence would ring every alarm in the dome. So she rode hidden, watching through the bond, present in everything but body. ’I have walked the wealthy worlds of the old Alliance. This still makes me feel like a country cousin.’

’It’s incredible,’ Aelira breathed, head tipped back to follow a garden-platform drifting overhead.

’Eyes forward, dear,’ Isalyn said fondly. ’Gawking marks you as prey.’

Lyra’s tail had gone very still, her crafter’s gaze raking the magitech towers with naked hunger. "The arrays here," she murmured. "I could study them for a decade and not run dry."

"Later," Rivera said gently. "We have a test first."

...

The preliminary venue rose ahead of them, and it was a marvel in its own right.

A single hall vast enough to hold a city district, its ceiling lost in haze, and filling the air within it were hundreds upon hundreds of floating blocks. Each block was a broad slab of pale stone hovering at its own height, and on each one stood two things: an examiner in Guild colors, and a sleek upright chamber of dark glass and humming circuitry. A VR chamber. The pillars of the preliminary, repeated across the hall in their hundreds, were a quiet machine for grinding tens of thousands of hopefuls down to a chosen ten thousand.

Because that was the cull. The team had learned it on the way in. Tens of thousands had come, drawn from across the Riglight Guild Alliance’s reach, and only **ten thousand** would walk out qualified for the tournament proper two days from now. The preliminary did not care for politics or pedigree. It cared for one thing.

Combat power.

"Registration first," Rudrean said.

They joined the flow toward the intake counters, where Guild clerks worked with brisk efficiency. A token was pressed into each of their hands, a thin temporary card that pulsed once against the skin.

"The card notifies you when a block opens for you," the clerk recited, not looking up, having said it ten thousand times already. "Step into the chamber when called. The VR will construct waves of hostility. Clear them. The chamber measures your combat power as you fight. Your score posts to the central leaderboard. Top ten thousand at the close of the preliminary qualification. Next."

Simple. Brutal. Fair.

’A combat-power sieve,’ Isalyn mused. ’They build a virtual battlefield, throw monsters at you, and read how hard you hit and how long you last. No tricks, no terrain to exploit, no allies to lean on. Pure output.’ A pause, thoughtful. ’Which means, darling, you will need to think carefully about how much of yourself to show.’

Rudrean’s eyes flicked toward the great leaderboard hanging above the hall, a towering column of light scrolling endlessly with names and numbers, the top ten thousand burning bright and the rest fading below the line.

’I was already thinking it,’ he answered quietly.

...

Their cards pulsed, one by one, as blocks came open.

Ryzen went first, climbing the lift-disc to his assigned slab with a nervous grin and a thumbs-up over his shoulder. Rivera followed soon after, calm as still water. Then Lyra. Then Aelira. Then Rudrean.

Inside the chamber, the world dissolved and rebuilt itself. A grey arena, endless and featureless, sky the color of static. And then the first wave bled into existence at its edges, snarling constructs of light and malice, and surged forward.

...

When it was done, they regrouped beneath the great leaderboard and looked up to find themselves on it.

Ryzen and Rivera had landed comfortably inside the top five thousand, well clear of the cull line. Ryzen pumped a fist; for the weakest member of the team, breaking five thousand against this field was a genuine triumph, and his awakened talent had carried him further than he’d dared hope.

"We’re in," Rivera said, the faintest warmth breaking her calm. "Both of us. Safely."

Higher up the column, three more names burned in the top hundred.

Lyra sat at 34th. She studied it with quiet satisfaction, arms crossed. She had not fought as a frontline bruiser, she never did, but her crafted gear and the layered tricks she’d woven through the VR’s allowance had stacked into a score that put her among the hall’s elite.

"Acceptable," she said, which from Lyra was practically a celebration.

Aelira’s name blazed on the 27th.

"Twenty-seventh!" She grinned, delighted, and then her grin turned a touch sheepish. ’I held back,’ she admitted across the link. ’I really did. But the moment the waves piled up, I just kind of... used eighty percent anyway. It felt wrong to crawl.’

’Eighty percent and twenty-seventh in a field of tens of thousands,’ Isalyn noted, amused. ’You have no idea how that looks to the people reading this board.’

And Rudrean’s name sat at 97th.

"Top hundred? Not bad," he said, nodding slowly at the number.

But privately, looking at the names stacked above his own, his thoughts ran cooler and sharper. He had used half his strength. Barely fifty percent, dialed down with deliberate care, enough to place well without lighting a beacon over his own head. And it had still carried him into the top hundred.

’Given the spread on this board,’ he relayed, watching the top ten names burn at the column’s crown, ’if I’d gone all out, I’d have placed at the top or very near it.’

’Almost certainly,’ Isalyn agreed, and there was no flattery in it, only assessment. ’Which is exactly why you didn’t. A nobody from Earth taking ninety-seventh is a young talent. A nobody from Earth topping a Guild Alliance preliminary is a headline, and headlines reach the Velkar family.’ Her voice cooled. ’Ninety-seventh is perfect. Strong enough to qualify with room to spare. Forgettable enough that no one writes your name down to remember it.’

’My thinking exactly,’ Rudrean said.

Aelira leaned into his shoulder, reading the same logic, and her earlier sheepishness faded into a smaller, more careful smile. Twenty-seventh was louder than she’d meant to be. But twenty-seventh in a sea of names was still just one more promising youth, and there were dozens of those above her. It would pass without notice.

"So," Ryzen said, bounding over, all his nerves replaced with bright energy now that his slot was secured, "we all made it. Every one of us. Top five thousand at worst, top hundred for three of you. We’re actually doing this."

"We’re doing this," Rudrean confirmed, eyes still on the slowly scrolling board, on the line that separated the chosen ten thousand from everyone below.

Two days. Then the tournament proper, and after that, if all went as Tyoga had set it, the one-time Super Tycoon Secret Realm.

He let the qualified names of his team settle in his mind, then turned away from the board.

"Come on. We’ve earned a look around before it begins."

"How about we try to scout some people? I mean, just check them out."

"There are some hot places in the city where Core Genesis powerhouses are gathered." Lyra’s eyes flickered as she had sent her eyes around to check the situation by watching and hearing people’s talk.

"This...seems fun. Let’s check out." She looked at Rudrean and others, eyes a bit thrilled. "It’s a market, auction, and a place of competition all in one."