When Hedoan retreated back into the World of Em, Quln’s body shook and convulsed on the ground as if he was being electrocuted.

The cause was due to a backlash unleashed by the contract he agreed upon. It basically read, ‘I’ll support you with the price of being in your world, but if defeated, all of the pain my avatar experiences will travel back to you. I don’t want to deal with it.’ Quln didn’t consider the sequence of what he had done. To conjure Hedoan into the world, he had to supplement it with a lot of the World of Em’s essence which also cost him a majority of his internal energy. The amount of internal energy would need to recover over a period of, at least, six hours. The duel would offer no such time.

This left him in a weak state, but his reliance on such a strong force to deal with opponents of his level left a basic, but fatal flaw. A single, very strong offense, but a lacking defense. He was blinded by Yarla’s quick attack, and he couldn’t react to Hedoan being locked down. He was caught unware by the daddy-longleg’s attack. The primary purpose of which was to disrupt his concentration.

Slowly, Quln’s body relaxed, and with his paralyzed state, he watched as Yarla approached him step by step. She raised her right arm horizontally at her side and it glowed with internal energy that receded back into the skin. A long crystalline spike grew from her palm, encasing her entire arm, extending to the length of her height. The blue scars moved around her body, ready to also send Quln to death.

“I surrender!” Knowing that he would be ruthlessly killed by the Massacring Witch, he chose the path of fighting to another day.

The black token that he showcased before flew up from his body and hovered in the air. With a dark glow, two numbers appeared at its side.

1687 and 3954. The two numbers changed for a few seconds before stopping at 1723 and 3612.

“Milady! Congratulations!” Worill happily yelled at the side.

Not understanding the situation, Tus decided to try out the talisman he got from Fifth. He looked at the black crystal and touched the talisman that he had in his servant shirts’ pocket. As soon as he brought it up to his forehead, he was caught slightly off guard. An old man’s voice echoed in his head: ‘Broadcasting Token: A tool used by the Erkshems’ outside regime to initiate and record duels. After a duel is finished, it would send the data back to the outside regimes’ base, which would decide a change in rankings. The better or worse the performance, the more drastic the change in the individuals ranking which would be absorbed into the regimes’ accumulated ranking.’

‘This thing is really neat.’ Tus praised in his mind.

“Massacring Witch, I’ll challenge you again in the future, and I’ll win!” Quln felt indignant for losing and tried to yell out such words after being picked up by his bodyguards. The leg that pierced his shoulder was forcefully removed by one of them, but they used their internal energy as an anesthetic to suppress the nerves, so there would be no further pain.

“Milady, I’m sure Lord will be proud of your victory.” Shel said after coming from the side of the plaza.

“Congratulations.” Tus said after nodding his head. ‘I was right about trying to avoid these people. Any one of those actions would have killed me without my corpse remaining.’

Yarla’s face had the rare sight of being relieved as if she had broken through a heavy obstacle.

As they were preparing to leave, among the crowds’ loud chatter, an authoritative voice boomed from above, reverberating through the entire city. “Hold it right there!”

Everyone looked up and saw that the one who yelled was Drel. His clothes fluttered as the internal energy covering his body in multicolored light made him hover in the air. His gaze became the color of metal as it landed on Tus who was near the center of the audience.

At a side of the crowd, Haya’s squad stood and watched. They recognized Tus and saw that the alliance members were here as well, so they officially concluded that Tus was their actual target.

During the match, they notified their manager about their suspicions who went through the processes to tell the alliance. However, they found that these two were already watching the area since the beginning, and it was before they sent out any kind of message.

Tus’s heart clenched as he thought, ‘How did they find me?’ He looked at Drel with a part of his focus drifting among the crowd, until he noticed a group, the unknown Haya’s squad, of people staring at him. ‘Are they part of the alliance?’

“Don’t struggle!” Drel made a grabbing motion and a transparent metal hand formed around Tus’s body. Tus was lifted into the air as Drel ordered his colleague with his glowing eyes still focused on Tus, “Velfor. Check with the identifier. I just want to make sure that this is that rat.”

“Already on it.” Velfor jumped from the roof of the building and floated in the air as well. He moved one of his ‘skin and bones’ arm into his clothes until he came out with a red and yellow orb.

He came closer and extended the orb until it started to shine and shake. Seeing this Velfor started smiling sinisterly, “It looks like we have ourselves a denizen of Oblivion!”

His voice shook the minds of the crowd underneath them as they couldn’t believe what they just heard. Especially Yarla, Worill, and Shel. All of them stared at the orb blankly.

“That can’t be right!” Worill denied it directly and asked the alliance members, “How can he be from Oblivion. He doesn’t have a second heart or any kind of power.”

Drel stared down with an elated expression, “We know! The alliance allowed a powerless rat to enter Oblivion because we didn’t feel the need to even stop him. But our luck in this era is so great that we now possess the greatest specimen of our kind, a transcendent human. Too bad he can’t utilize it without the second heart, but luckily, we can.” Drel slapped his forehead like he rehearsed it, “Oh, sorry, I felt so great that I spilled some information. Velfor, should we destroy the city?”

Tus listened and was so shocked that his mouth hung open… and a fly flew in…