Other than the intensity of the combat, the two weeks ascension period was rather dull as there was little time for anything else. Silas’s ascension, while certainly impressive, didn’t affect his standing in Riverside since he was already regarded as a supreme fighter here. If anything, the citizens would have been surprised if he hadn’t managed it.

Two days following his D rank kill, Silas had returned to Riverside after his patrol to hear Dom too had been attacked by a D rank monster. Fortunately, he had been with a group of constabulary officers, including Lina, and so he had killed it without any losses, although the teamwork did bar him from getting the solo kill and becoming a Sovereign. From this, it was clear to Silas and others who had heard of both of their stories that the System was deliberately spawning D rank monsters near high level humans.

Elise had ordered guards to follow the other high levelled people from Riverside around due to this, but no further D rank beasts had appeared in the area, likely meaning that Dom had been the cutoff point for whatever criteria the System had been using.

1. Silas Wycliffe - level 85 - Duellist

2. Dominic Wood - level 72 - Black Knight

3. Josh Thompson - level 69 - Nemesis

4. Natalie Svoboda - level 68 - Cryomancer

5. Mia Pascall- level 68 - Elementalist

6. Roxanne Martin - level 65 - Oracle

7. Iris Azer - level 63 - Lifetree

8. Clio Tiafel - level 62 - Halberdier

9. Lina Radhakrishnan - level 60 - Blazeblade

10. Diego Garcia - level 60 - Supay Summoner

11. Brigette Wagner - level 59 - Bladesinger

…

98. Elise LeBeau - level 50 - Minister

99. Damon Hersey - level 50 - Metalworker

…

187. Amara D’Aegor - level 47 - Commander

…

231. Rolf Ruttering - level 46 - Tactician

…

2983. Olivia Green - level 36 - Squire

…

3211. Zita Miniati - level 35 - Beautician

…

3798. Ethan Wycliffe - level 33 - Druid

…

5890. Tessa Flowers - level 30 - Alchemist

…

8971. Ima Klossner - level 2

Besides Silas and Dom, Josh was the next strongest in the town, particularly as he could punch well above his weight due to his class, which countered dominant enemies. Natalie, Mia, and Iris were after him, all powerful mages in their own regard, especially from all the books they had taken from the Order. While it was true they had fewer kills than Josh and Dom, this was primarily because of the recovery time needed to replenish their mana, something melee fighters didn’t have to worry about as much.

Roxanne had cut out a solid place for herself in Riverside, her prophecies and foretellings earning her respect from all corners of the village.

The shaerds continued to pay their rent to Riverside through help, Clio being the most notable of their number as she had actively joined the constabulary on their missions out. Amara had been quieter as of recent, although Silas had spoken with Mia how he thought the princess could play an important role in the near future, after all, there was another shaerd princess who had ascended to Sovereignty.

Ethan and Olivia were steadily working up the ranks, slowly but surely building their confidences. They were doing nothing remarkable, but Silas was still proud of them both for what they had achieved. Not everyone could recklessly take the precarious path he had chanced for his power, especially since it needed a snowball effect from all the way back in the tutorial.

Other than that, the other notable thing with Riverside was that its total citizen number had continued to grow while other settlements saw stabilising or even shrinking populations. This was partly due to the celebrity statuses of Silas and Dom, partly because of the high standard of living the town promised, and partly due to the security the constabulary maintained. In particular, many mages had come to Riverside due to the wealth of arcane texts the town possessed.

Perhaps because of this influx of humans, many of the other races in Riverside (most being freed prisoners from Ratterinks) had left to find their own homes, including Vedeir, the stingtail who had been guiding Silas and Skully on runes. Due to recent events, Silas hadn’t been able to invest as much time into runesmithing, but Skully had dedicated himself and reaped abundant rewards for his efforts. He had since founded a runesmithing school in New Derby, which many from Riverside attended too. There were dozens of runesmiths shared between the two settlements now, a considerable number of them now more practised than Silas.

New Derby itself had maintained its position as a manufacturing centre, their power staying constant while Riverside’s exploded out of the roof. Floyd, who had once looked a challenge to Silas, was now child’s play for the Duellist to beat. The Champion was roughly as strong as Dom or Josh, focusing more of his energies into keeping New Derby under his grasp than in advancing his personal power. In fact, he had been this way ever since Dimas had torn him to shreds in the siege of Lyfort.

Looking closely at the list of Sovereigns, some patterns were easy to spot. Firstly, and foremost, was that humans dominated it. Out of the 41 Sovereigns, 18 were human, 6 were drakkar, 3 were stingtail, 2 were shaerds, 2 were dragons, 1 was a mycelia, and the remaining 9 were random races with one-off entries.

A curious thing Silas had noticed was that the mycelia entry was named Ferer Greencare - clearly the prophet - which was intriguing since the surname was similar to the Order’s surname format. In fact, remembering back to the Order’s rivalry with the mycelia, it now seemed likely to him that the prophet had once been part of the cult, only then to break away and compete with them.

Of course, when considering this, it was impossible to ignore the fact that there were no Order entries for Sovereigns, no Krumtor, no Dimas, no Karaes. This was odd as Silas couldn’t see how they weren’t on this list considering their show of strength back in Lyfort, but then again this was Idroa so anything could have happened to him in the time since. Either way, it appeared it would take Krumtor a long time to deliver on his promise to kill Silas.

Silas had also gone to speak to Princess Amara about Xiivet, from which the drakkar, stingtails, and shaerds originated from. Seeing as this planet collectively had a significant number of Sovereigns, he felt it was paramount to hear more about them. From her, he had learnt that while shaerds had kept to firecores to survive on the frozen planet, the stingtails had kept to the air with spells to combat the cold, and the drakkar had kept to themselves on the ground, possessing internal heat which allowed them to wholly ignore the cold.

The shaerds had primarily fought off other species from their firecore settlements, the princess title going to the leaders of settlements which had been around for centuries. In contrast, the stingtails rarely fought other races as they instead focused all their efforts into eradicating competing stingtail clans. And removed from all this, the drakkar had existed at a higher level entirely, their Magi and Titans granting them ridiculous strength which no one wanted to test. But at the same time the drakkar had shunned the outer world, instead devoting their lives to regaining their ancestral bloodlines. For all their differences, it was so far unheard of the three races to work together, but considering this was a completely novel situation anything could happen.

All the same, the point still stood that no matter how special or previously untouchable these races had been, they were nothing to humanity which had risen at a ridiculous pace after adapting to Idroa, now flooding the highest ranks with their numbers. Regardless, Silas didn’t need to consult anyone to know that cooperation between the human Sovereigns would be difficult, to say the least.

With the two-week ascension period coming to an end, Silas expected something extraordinary to happen, so he stayed home that day with Mia, Bandit, Ethan, and Chloe, who had come to visit from Léonois. Olivia had moved out two weeks prior after earning enough to buy her own place.

“It’ll be okay,” Silas reassured them, raising his palms in a calming manner. “The System clearly wanted Sovereigns since it gave us this extra time to ascend, so it’s not like it’s just going to get rid of us now.”

Mia sat beside him, her hands on one another resting on his knee. Her face was gently lined. “What if it doesn’t want Sovereigns? What if it just wants the one Sovereign?”

“Like a death match?” Chloe asked.

Bandit squawked in a very uncharacteristic way, causing Ethan to do a double-take. “Really? You think it’ll just be a lot of rewards.” The Druid shrugged after a thoughtful moment. “I suppose it’s possible.”

Bandit hooted, asserting itself.

“Yeah, that’ll probably be it,” Silas said, pointing at Bandit while looking at Mia. “Remember all those rewards we got in the tutorial. I bet it’s a second round of that,” he said. Although he said this casually, he himself didn’t believe it for a second. In fact, the best realistic scenario he could think of was that nothing would happen at all, but what were the chances of that?

Mia exhaled deeply through her nose, her expression making it clear that she hadn’t fallen for his lies. “Just take care. I don’t want you to do anything hasty.”

“When have I ever done that?” he asked, hoping it would make her smile. It didn’t. He gulped. “I’ll listen to Elise’s advice and keep to the shadows, don’t worry.”

This did make Mia smile, although it was more a contained smirk. “When you say that, I can’t help but worry more…” She stopped as her hands fell through where Silas’s knee had been, landing on the couch. He had vanished.

****

Silas opened his eyes to a scene he hadn’t seen in a long time, but all the same one he couldn’t forget in at least ten lifetimes. Baby blue sky, gentle wind, swaying grass for as far as the eye could see: this was where it had all began - the tutorial, the entry to Idroa, and now whatever the next stage was. But unlike the previous two times, he wasn’t alone here this time.

He breathed hard as he glanced around, spotting dozens of others. On his second look around, he counted 40 individuals exactly, 41 when including him. Their bodies were all faint, as if someone had desaturated their appearances, and none of them had auras. Silas saw he was not exempt from these effects as he peered down at his own body. All the Sovereigns were positioned in a rough, scattered circle.

He recognised the majority of humans easily enough; there Lucian was, there Freddie, there Ajit, there Elisha, there Aengus, and so on. He had only not seen three of them before, and they were identified easily enough by a process of elimination; there stood Kuraim, the Necromancer, there Zafeera, the Blood Ripper, and, finally, there the strongest human to exist, Dahlia, the Abomination. He thought she fit her moniker quite well.

Other than the humans, there were two shaerds of different colours, giant drakkar and elderly ones, scorpion-like stingtails glaring at kin, and the prophet regarding the whole scene with a curious expression. To the side, the two dragons roared at each other and postured, their voices dulled just like their appearances - this sight particularly seemed to affect the drakkar, who looked distraught at the rivalry.

There was a hideous truck-sized tentacle monster squirming to itself, and right beside it, a seven-headed serpentine monster Silas knew as the hydra. On the opposite side of the circle was a bird as big as a fighter jet with noble features and feathers painted in shades between gold and crimson; Silas figured it would look rather magnificent if not for the dulled colours. Hovering around this bird was a giant floating eye which blinked curiously at the avian before it; the bird was clearly used to the attention as it posed for the cameras.

Near Dahlia stood a four-foot dwarf, which Dahlia eyed and licked her lips at. By Elisha flopped a blue whale; its thumps should have shaken the ground but instead the ground was still. A kraken tried to coil itself around the whale, but its tentacles just went through the blue whale’s flesh as if it were two holograms clashing. An oak tree watched this scene from behind them, and Silas somehow knew it was watching despite its distinct lack of eyes.

Beside Silas himself hopped a troll from foot to foot, its race easily identifiable by the fiery red hair and bulbous nose. But unlike other trolls he had encountered, this one was only as tall as him and wearing thick-rimmed glasses.