Eyes wide open, her face frozen in an expression that mirrored the disbelief shared amongst the tens of thousands people sitting in the stands, as they watched the darling disciple from the Courts of Steel and Amber, go flying from the stage.

Her flight was short ending when she hit the wall that separated the stage, from the stand. The air shimmering as the wards contained the force from her body’s impact.

Once it was all over, the referee announced the results. Announcing the end of the tournament as he held the winner’s arm high in the air.

“Ladies and Gentlemen! We give you this year’s Spring Tournament Champion! Edwin viiissss-Oddmund!”

The young man seeming to be only mildly moved, when the referee pronounced him tournament champion. Showing the same level of happiness, as that one would show after being given a piece of hard candy.

*****

After the tournament was over it was time for the post-tournament festivities. With food, drink and other diversions being provided by the local businesses, of both the legitimate and illegitimate worlds.

Much revelry would be made. Those who made winning bets on the tournament's conclusion would be out and about spending their coin. Those who’d made losing bets would be looking for places to drown their regrets. Either way capitalism would be the true winner on this night.

High spirited, filled with the excitement of watching true warriors test their mettle, this night would one where very few would sleep, and even fewer would sleep alone.

It was no coincidence that cities like Vignale, where sects came and held recruitment events like today’s, often had a large portion of the population sharing the same birth month.

The ten month gestation period of your average jotun was often fairly exact. With early and late births being a rarity.

*****

While the common folk made merry, the seniors of the Einrode duchy’s martial world did what they’d come to do.

Settling down to the serious business of selecting candidates for recruitment.

For the most part it was a fairly standardized affair. Something they’d done enough that they could trust most of the burden to their juniors.

There would be a list of names, belonging to a group of people who’d been told to hang around.

A group that was essentially made up of anyone who’d done suitably well in the pre-tournament elimination tourney in the underground arena, and anyone who’d managed to make it to the true tournament in the arena above.

The representatives of the minor sects would have go and explain who they were and what their sect’s main business and trade was. Providing what was in essence a small five minute presentation to the crowd.

As for the main sects, The Ironblood-Kings, the Courts of Steel and Amber, and the Orrichalcum Gardens, they didn’t need to explain themselves.

They were the sects who held the controlling influence over the entirety of the Palmas Kingdom and its four nearest neighbors.

The only ones who didn’t know of them were newborn babes, those from distant lands, and those who’d spent the lives, with their heads in the sand.

This wasn’t to say the three sects of the alliance were content to rest on their laurels, though. It just meant that their approach to recruitment was different from the sales pitch that the lesser sects had to give.

Where the lesser sects would try to appeal to any that would listen, the great sects could afford to be more choosey. Sending their juniors to give cards and invitations to those that the senior representatives deemed worthy.

Those with invitations would be allowed into a private party that the three sects held after every tournament. There would be singers and dancers, and the finest of all the food and drink that would available in the city for the evening.

Instead of presentations, there’d be films. Short films, from each of the sects, which would briefly touch on the sects mightiest feats and what they did in general.

The sect disciples who were in the tournament would also be there, chatting with those who’d impressed them and those that their seniors had pointed out to them.

As part of the party’s goings on, there would a Reader-Stone, present and available for any who wanted to properly have their essence assessed and hadn’t had a chance to do so before, either because they lacked the money to buy a private Reader, or didn’t belong to a group that had a Reader in-house.

The Reader-Stone would assess an individual's approximate cultivation, their potential, and their elemental alignment. All these factors being things that would be of interest to the Sect Reps that were present at the party.

It was worth noting that having poor talent or a weak affinity for one’s elemental alignment could cool a sects ardour when it came to recruiting someone. Thus making use of the Reader-Stone, a bit of a double-edged sword.

Again, though, all this was really just part of a large routine. Just part of the life cycle of the organism that was your average Great Sect.

Sects had existed for millions of years. The three sects that currently held sway over the Five Kingdoms of the Palmas Kingdom, had been around for thousands of years.

Thus for the seniors of the group, the proceeding would be seem almost boring. Things would only get interesting when something novel happened.

Such as the appearance of a candidate that performed well enough to pull the interest of more than one of their number.

With an even rarer occurrence being a candidate who performed so well that all three sects sought to recruit them, and none of them were willing to back down on the matter.

*****

“You put him down Berthold...I was talking to him first!” Howled one of the seniors the Courts of Steel and Amber.

“Hmm? Put what down? I’m sorry...I’m not quite sure what you’re-...”

“The boy! I’m obviously talking about the boy! Don’t go pretending to be senile now, you bi-...witch!”

“Huh? B-, Witch? I’m not quite sure what a bee witch is but those sound like fighting words. You want to go, sonny?! Step aside for Grandma! I might have just turned ninety but I’ve still got it in me to give you a spanking, old thing!” said the Berthold, of the Ironblood-Kings. Who, thanks to her robust cultivation, didn’t look a day over forty.

Never once considering dropping the green-skinned lad that she currently had tucked under her arm, like a suitcase.

Treating her blatant kidnapping attempt, like a blatant robbery attempt, and showing no intention of backing down. Like a proper rogue would.

More seniors from the Orricalchum Gardens and Steel and Amber Courts came. Which resulted in the Seniors of the Ironblood-Kings’ Sect gathering as well.

Noting that they were outnumbered by the other sects, by a five to one ratio, but still showing no signs of backing down.

Just as things were about to heat up further, and the auras of the old warriors began to climb, the whole world shook.

Those who were standing outside the tent where the party was taking place all gasped, eyes unblinking, mouth hanging ajar.

The fact that there were some seniors out there, acting like dazzled juniors was enough to get the rest of the old representatives to step beyond the tempt and take a look.

They were treated to the dazzling sight, as an entire section of the sky seemed to have been replaced by a strip of blazing energy.

The energy electric and alive like a colossal lightning bolt. An explosive river of rampaging blue-white essence. The aura of the event, fierce like a thousand rampaging dragon-kings.

*****

The one who’d set things off with the Senior Sect Representatives had been a certain young man from Rus.

As if it weren’t enough for him to have climbed to the top of the rankings, making through both the underground and aboveground tournaments and then winning the final match, he’d had to go and show off during the after-party as well.

As had been the case for most instances where he gave hint to his less than normal nature, it had been a simple moment of shortsightedness.

He’d used the Reader-Stone. Wanting to take the opportunity to scan the advice, so that he could compare the data from the scan, to the data he’d collected on similar devices that he’d seen during his last life.

Naturally that meant letting the Reader-Stone scan him, while he was doing his thing. A mistake.

The result being the revelation that Edwin, wasn’t just a normal earth aligned warrior, with a decent amount of potential, an elite stage cultivation and a decent amount of elemental affinity.

Instead he was revealed to have a one in a million, high potential, top grade affinity for all the elements.

A consequence of the nanites in his system which could utilize nearly all forms of energy, disregarding the type.

Not that the Sect Reps knew that, all they knew was that they were standing the presence of a heaven shaking talent. A young one at that. Only eighteen years old. In other words a treasure worth fighting, if not killing for.

A boy blessed with a heaven defying physique, akin to that of their venerable and anarchical ancestors.

A person, well worth, going to the effort of kidnapping and drawing in by all means. Even if it meant their sects having to make some concessions to their partners in the alliance, afterwards.

****

Aware that it was his own carelessness that had gotten him into this mess, Edwin did some very fast thinking to get himself out of the troubling situation in which he found himself.

Plying the depths of his memories, and a bit of his older brother’s slyness, he found himself drawing from his time on earth when he used to read bits of fantasy fiction in his freetime. Especially of the wuxia, far east fantasy, genre.

He remotely called for the ship that floated thousands of miles overhead, idling above the city and had it fire its m-busters. The current strongest amongst its beam cannons, capable of wiping out all life on a third of the continent, or drilling a hole halfway through the Embla’s smallest moon.

The light from the beams lighting up the heavens and dazzling any who happened to look up on that particular half of the hemisphere.

As big a show of force as the boy had on hand at the moment, since he’d not really thought he’d need much more than that when he’d built the ship...Something that he’d been intending to rectify but had failed to get around to. Since as previously mentioned, it hadn’t seemed a priority.

Having started, what was to the people of Embla, a once in lifetime spectacle, he was finally given a window in which to speak up for himself.

“Um...Excuse me. Would you mind, putting me down, please? There’s something I have to do.”

Awestruck, the female cultivator actually put the boy down. Letting him stand on his own two feet, while she stared up at the river of blinding blue-white plasma that ate away at the firmament above. Making night into day.

Edwin raised his hands, holding them above his head and created a discharge of essence between his palms. Generating his own small light, one bright enough to pull the attention of the seniors.

He made the light in his hands pulse and then made the ship fire its own light in pulses. Alternating the pulses in his hand and the blasts from the ship and making them match. Using old earth morse code to carry a conversation with himself.

“What are you doing, boy? What is that?” said one of the Sect Representatives. Leon Skinner of the Orrichalum Gardens.

“I’m talking to My Master, Sir.” said Edwin.

There was an inaudible gasp from the group as they absorbed what the young man had said.

Finding themselves sobered by the idea that this event was something that a “person” was responsible for, and struggling to adjust to the knowledge that this mysterious figure was the master of the boy that they had just been seconds away from coming to blows over.

“You say, that all this is your Master’s doing?” said old Cornell. Who also happened to be nearby.

“Yes, sir.” said Edwin. Still controlling his pulses and blast.

The group fell silent once more, trying to imagine what manner of being could be behind such unspeakable power.

“He taught me a few things before I came to this city. Now he’s congratulating me on winning the tournament.” said Edwin.

“You mean, your master was watching you?” said one of the Sect Reps.

“Yes.”

“So he was here today then?...In the city.”

“No senior, he watched from a distance...We wouldn’t be communicating through lights in the sky, if he’d been here in person, sir.” said Edwin. Tilting his head, in an innocently questioning look.

His words creating some awkwardness and unease for the group. The awkwardness born from the sect seniors coming to realize that an even more prestigious senior had witnessed them squabbling like children.

The unease birthed from the fact that none of them had felt the unseen eyes on their backs.

The bursts of raw power that surged through the sky, making them feel like they’d somehow missed having someone swing a mountain-sized, axe-blade, above their heads. Their own “short” statures being the only reason that they were still alive.

“What is he saying now?...If you don’t mind me asking.” said Cornell. Not minding at all if the youth minded, but still taking care to remain polite now that he knew that this young pup, had an old wolf watching over him.

“Master was just asking about my condition, and I was just telling him that I’m okay and about to ask which one of you guys’ sects, he thinks I should apply to....” said Edwin.

This revelation reminding them all of the fact that the person they were talking to, was someone they’d all wanted to draw in.

A miracle child, with a master, whose power could casually sunder the heavens.

Suddenly, for all that the prospect of being the one to hold the boy’s future in their hands was still very attractive, it had the feeling of taking gold from a dragon’s horde.

It felt like stealing treasure from a legendary beast while its eyes were still open and watching.

“With a master like yours you’d still join a sect?” questioned one of the seniors.

The youth nodded.

“Naturally, sir...After all, my illustrious master can’t be bothered watch over my minuscule self forever, can he?...and He only teaches when he is in the mood to do so…Thus further guidance, from a proper institution is a must....” said Edwin.

The youth wore a helpless look on his face, as he answered the old Jotun’s question.

“Ah...In that case, I wouldn’t mind knowing which of sects you were interested in joining.” said Leon. Fighting hard to keep the tone of his voice even.

Calculating as the other seniors had, that pulling in the boy would still be a good deed, one with a chance of pulling in the mysterious old monster, who’d just made his presence known.

The rest of the sect seniors seeming to lean in towards the youth, like bees towards a flower and moths towards a flame.