Travis watched from one of the docking towers as the opening ceremony played out. He sighed. It would have been such a poetic moment to strike. Unfortunately, the Revolution was fighting tens of thousands of years of history right now.

The shrouded, dumb assholes that they were, almost always started shit at the beginning of the Tournament. It was practically their fucking anthem. Already, one of the docking towers had been almost knocked over by some petty bullshit. As much as the Founder was an eccentric weirdo with insane plans, he was pretty sly. Attacking this early on would run the Revolution into a bunch of shrouded waiting for something to go down.

So, they gave up on attacking the opening ceremony almost immediately once planning had started. As much power as the Revolution had managed to gather through advanced ethertech, shrouded were terrifyingly strong. They needed to take every advantage to have any effect at all.

Of course, Travis was even more aware of what was supposed to happen than any of his former fellows. The Founder had keyed him in on the real objective. Travis suppressed a giddy giggle just thinking about it.

War.

Oh, it was brilliant. Just brilliant. Attacking a mass conclave like this, with multiple nations present among their most promising and powerful warriors? How could that not cause all-out war? If the shrouded were smarter and less arrogant, then they might have teamed up, focused their attention on the Revolution. Squashed it mercilessly.

But they wouldn’t. Their internal grudges ran too deep. They’d had thousands of years to build up their hatred for their neighbors, while the Revolution was hardly even fifty years old. They practically didn’t exist in the eyes of the shrouded leadership. It was hilarious, how blind they were.

They already had the perfect example. The Founder, Travis’s mentor, had found a co-conspirator. More of a patsy than an actual participant, but he had his uses. King Harmon of the Vast Kingdom. He’d been more than willing to buy up ethermen and weapons to go to war. Both against his fellows in the Ten Thousand Empires and the holders of his family’s ancestral lands, the Central Authority.

He didn’t care about the Revolution beyond using them to supply himself. He’d already murdered dozens of fellow rulers before he’d even got here! Large-scale war was coming for the Ten Thousand Empires no matter what happened at the Tournament. The Founder had already manufactured a stable customer base to fall back on, even if every plan here failed.

Brilliant. Every day, Travis was more sure he’d made the right choice, following the Founder and his insanity. War profiteering for an unshrouded seemed impossible. They weren’t even a part of any country’s military! No country took unshrouded seriously.

But this! This Tournament would change all that. After they were done, all shrouded would fear and respect the weapons the unshrouded could bring to bear. Add in the heads of a few kings and queens rolling on the floor, and they’d be lining up in droves to get their hands on the weapons to win the wars that followed in the ensuing power struggles.

It would be beautiful.

And Travis would have a front-row seat to it all. His arm twitched. He could hardly wait.

{}

King Harmon sat in the Empires delegation box, set high over the rabble. He watched his knights enter the field, gleaming in their ceremonial armor. Three hundred thousand years of history told upon that shining metal surface. And his family had been there for it all from the very beginning.

He clenched his fist, accidentally crushing the cobbler of five-thousand-year-old wine within. No matter, a servant came along and replaced it in moments. He hardly noticed the constant shaking of the man’s hands. He didn’t spill any wine, so it didn’t matter.

The Vast family had held a position of prestige for two hundred and fifty thousand years. The largest empire in the Ten Thousand Empires by land and population. Descended from one of the original founding emperors. Not the Founding Emperor, but one of his two sworn brethren.

They had been important. Valued.

Then it was all taken away.

Harmon’s father, the third of his line, had lost most of the family’s territory to those upstart shits in the Central Authority. Then he died in combat, fighting the Ghost of Authority. The only respectably powerful man among the CA. The loss was a shame he could never undo, so grand and far-reaching was it.

At least, that is what he’d thought. Harmon, drowning his misery in combat and high-grade aged alcohol, had been met by that mysterious man one lonely night. He’d promised impossible things, and Harmon had thought him a liar and a charlatan. Until he brought them. Those Ethermen were wildly powerful. Strong enough to beat the average shrouded in single combat. They couldn’t contest a true Knight of the Realm, the pinnacle warriors of the Empires, but they were ridiculously strong for something made with unshrouded hands.

It was then that Harmon had seen a path forward. A beacon of victory in his dark despair, shining as bright as the Pillar at midday. This fool, this weapon merchant, thought himself so clever for creating such marvels. He looked down on Harmon. A King, heir to Emperors. Looked down on him. It was insufferable.

But Harmon was no fool. His rise necessitated such tools. His lands had been reduced to a shadow of their former self, nothing but echoes of greatness. He was not a match for any of his rivals, within or without the Empires. Which meant he would spare the smug merchant for a while longer. But soon, he’d lose his usefulness.

And that is when Harmon would strike.

These ethertech warriors were unnecessary once Harmon had regained his family’s former glory. At that point, they would only become a tool for his enemies to rise against him. So, they would have to go. It was too much of a hassle to keep them around after they had outlived their usefulness.

But first, Harmon was looking forward to trouncing every other nation in the Tournament using this advanced ethertech. Then, when the Tournament drew to a close, the Central Council would all die by his hand, and the other nations would learn to fear his might.

He chuckled to himself, sipping the fine vintage as he watched the Central Authority step onto the arena floor, undisguised scorn riding his features. Nothing impressive to see there. At their head, the ghost of Authority was still as impressive as ever. He was the only real threat to Harmon’s plans. But if the suppression field worked as the merchant had advertised…

Well, Harmon had felt its effects himself, and the Ghost was an aura-focused shrouded. It would be a crippling blow. With him out of the way, the rest of the Central Council would be easy to handle. And with them out of the way, the Central Authority would be open to his conquest, retaking the ancestral lands and restoring the Vast Kingdom to its imperial origins.

Still drinking from his elaborately designed goblet, Harmon continued to peruse the CA participants as they marched into the arena. Before he destroyed the CA, he wanted to humiliate them, destroy them in the Tournament and prove his people superior. Indeed, it was looking like that would be easy. His investigative sense swept over all the entering shrouded, cataloging them easily.

Nothing of note, only middling strength across the board. Finally, the main Tournament contestants stopped coming, and only the youth members were left. Hardly worth noticing, his own son would soundly defeat them all in the combat tournaments. Harmon was proud of his boy, and the warriors gathered around him were exceptionally talented. It would be easy-

Harmon inhaled sharply, fine wine rushing into his lungs and forcing him to spit it across the private booth. He coughed, momentarily forgetting himself in surprise. A moment of infusion enhancement cleared his lungs effortlessly. It was a reflex more than conscious thought. After all, Harmon’s mind was consumed staring at the five children, five monsters standing in the youth division.

Due to his station as a King, to combat both espionage, liars, and the incompetent, Harmon had developed a highly advanced investigative sense. It was a point of pride for him. Along with that advancement came an ability ordinarily impossible for the average investigative sense. Harmon could read portions of shrouds.

It was a flimsy ability, even as skilled as he was. The weakest concealment sense could hide from him. But in ideal conditions, he might be able to tell the domain of a shroud or how many splinters one had. More than just finding another shrouded’s Invasion Pressure. It had been a massive boon in several battles, as few expected such an esoteric ability.

Despite his long history with it, Harmon almost doubted his highly refined senses, gazing upon those five. It seemed impossible, what he was sensing. They were standing in a row, and he could feel an awareness shared between them. The kind developed among comrades who had fought together.

Five like this, with these shrouds? On one team? The Revolution had said the CA was weak! That they had struck a devastating blow! But if five monsters like this were allowed to grow…

Harmon’s plans for the CA could take decades, centuries to play out. Their territory was nothing to scoff at. In a few decades, those five would be nigh on unstoppable. It was ludicrous, just looking at them now. He double and triple-checked his senses, once more unbelieving of what he was seeing.

Two, two dual-shrouded. One of them Nascent and the other a True Shroud! As if that wasn't enough, another held a magic shroud. Harmon had encountered the Flame King more than once. The man was the only user of a magic shroud in the modern era, as far as he was aware. Yet here, he recognized the same odd sensation flowing from this girl.

The other two were less concerning, though they were exceptional in their own right. One held a strange physique, modified somehow. It was not the same overflowing power held by the barbaric forces of the Fire Kingdom. But something more…natural. Complete. It set his mind on edge in a way he couldn’t place. Like he was staring at a ferocious beast hiding in the skin of a girl.

The last one was by far the least obviously exceptional. She held three splinters, a large number for one so young. But many foolish youths chose to pursue splintering without gaining the necessary control over a single domain. Notably, the young woman was holding a bonded monster, with another resting on her shoulder. Both of a kind he had never seen or heard of before. Glacial King Kodiak and a Stellar Roc? The names alone were foreboding. And both were immensely powerful, though he could sense that they were not yet fully mature.

The two dual-shrouded and the magic shroud alone were enough to trounce practically anything their age, and then adding in those two strange unknowns was just adding insult to injury. Harmon couldn’t believe it. In the entire Ten Thousand Empires, they would average one to two dual-shrouded every ten to twenty years. He hadn’t failed to notice the third dual-shrouded among the CA youth either. Though that one was less immensely threatening, as he wasn’t a Nascent or True Shroud.

That spoke to something especially dangerous. Skill. For most shrouded, it took time to reach that level. On average, one in every one hundred shrouded would reach Nascent Shroud within five years of beginning their training. One in every ten thousand would reach True Shroud in the same time frame.

But he was aware of the Central Academy’s five-year training cycles. These youth students should only be within a year of their training. More than that, dual-shrouded naturally had a harder time reaching their higher forms, as they had to split their attention between two shrouds. It would take a transcendent genius to reach True Shroud, as a dual-shrouded, in less than a year of training. Some shrouded never reached that level of skill.

Harmon grew concerned the more he thought about it. Those five represented a truly absurd level of skill, luck, and raw power. Their IPs were nothing to scoff at, either. What kind of hellish, relentless training had they undergone to go this high? Most of their fellows only had two-thirds of their IP! The other youth division participants from the CA weren’t exactly shining stars in the grand scheme, but they were not failures by any means.

This was dangerous. Both now and in the future. As in all things, there was no rule against killing your opponents in the Tournament of Powers. Many countries sought the opportunity to crush rising stars and strong talents in this sterile environment, removed from the chaos of open combat. His son…

Facing these monsters in human form could easily end his life. He needed to take action. Nothing too overt. No doubt these five, or at least the most prominent three, would be carefully protected outside the combat events. Damon was not to be faced lightly, and his efforts to defend his students and Academy from outside influence were legendary. He’d fought the entire Council to maintain his right to rule that school as its soul owner.

No, his action must be more subtle, more indirect.

He needed to talk to that weapon merchant.