Sensing Esteban’s location within the crowd, he unceremoniously wrapped his distant figure in a globe of spiritual energy and lifted him high above the crowd only to drop him a few metres away from where he was standing. The pale, freckle-faced kid landed on steady feet, a bit flustered as he noticed that everyone’s attention was now on him.

“Please Nolan, I don’t want to—”

“Be quiet for a sec.” Addressing Kendal, he said, “I’ll agree to your proposal, but the one facing you won’t be me, but my disciple!”

Esteban let out a hopeless sigh. “Who’s your disci—”

Nolan rested a vice-grip on the boy’s shoulder, leaning in to whisper, “Seems you know where things are going.”

“Mess with people if you want, but why can’t it ever be Ian or Sean or someone else?”

“Stop looking so annoyed. I chose you because I thought you’d appreciate the prize money more.”

“Prize money? How much is it?”

“I think it was…120,000 spirit stones.”

Esteban looked at him with shining eyes. “You’re really the best person in the group!”

“Heh, it’s good that you know.”

While he and Esteban had been muttering to one another, the energy of the crowd seemed to explode with all sorts of perspectives and perceptions. Countless people doubted that someone Nolan’s age could have their own disciple, with many belittling him for embarrassing a child in such a setting. Others remarked over the fact that Esteban was an Integration-staged cultivator and thus clearly possessed a certain level of talent, though most people saw the proposition as pointless. The old man was at the eighth level of Integration, which would naturally afford him a larger spiritual space than a young boy at the first level.

Amidst the clamour of conversation, Esteban turned to face Kendal and said, “Do I really get 120,000 spirit stones if I win?”

Kendal let out a disbelieving laugh. “Let alone 120,000, if you manage to beat Old Roc, I’ll give you a million spirit stones!”

Others in the area began to laugh, painting themselves as try-hard bootlickers in Nolan’s mind. Not wanting to waste any more time, he said, “You all heard the man. A million stones it is!” Turning to the Genesis-staged host, he said, “Do you want to put up the barriers, or do you want me to?”

Kendal rested an arm on the man’s shoulder, speaking to him in a nonchalant tone. “If he wants to do it, then let him do it.”

Nodding, Nolan drew out a series of diagrams with rapidly-moving fingers. He didn’t know how to use the specific arrayment that the man had used earlier, so he decided to design individual arrayments that could conjure up specific sizes, numbers and shades of barriers.

“That took longer than I thought it would,” commented Esteban two minutes later. He was looking up at the 120 targets that Nolan had conjured, which lit up the sky in various colours within a large field of distribution.

“It would’ve been faster if I’d practiced altering the barrier arrayment before.”

Quietly, the boy said, “You look kind of drunk.”

“That checks out. It probably didn’t help with the drawing speed, either.” Raising his cup to attract the attention of those around him, he infused inner essence into his voice so that it carried over the entire area. “Alright, everyone. My young disciple here versus that quiet grandpa, same rules as last time! Before we start, though, I think it’s only fair that we get that betting booth going again, you know, to make things more interesting!”

Kendal agreed with a calculating smile, allowing for the competition to be postponed for a short while so that those who desired to do so could bet on their favoured competitor. The bets were quite complicated, including estimations on how many points either of the participants would gain and what composition of barrier colours would make up their scores. Nolan had faith in Esteban’s ability to use the attack arrayment that almost everyone in the group had learned, as he and his friends had been forced to rely on it quite frequently in life and death situations. Let alone multiple arrayments, even the weakest members of the group could fire hundreds of energy swords off so long as it wasn’t under urgent circumstances.

We’re about to make off like bandits.

Nolan bet five million spirit stones that Esteban would win by achieving a full score, a decision which drew questioning gazes from those taking down the bets. He didn’t care in the least what other people thought, however, for he knew how developed Esteban’s spiritual sense was and therefore the accuracy of the boy’s awareness.

Once Kendal announced the commencement of the match, Nolan called out to everyone one last time, his voice ringing throughout the pervasive purple ambience that cast soft light upon all corners of the courtyard. “Alright everyone. I’ve raised my disciple here as a gentleman, so we’re going to let the old man go first.”

Neither the chamberlain’s son nor his servant had any objections to taking up the first turn. With that in mind, the old man wasted no time in carefully drawing out an arrayment diagram before taking aim at a distant yellow barrier with a focused gaze and activating it with a bright flash of golden light. A moment later, a metre-long blade of white light appeared in front of him and immediately shot off into the sky before shattering the target in question.

The man was already drawing up a second arrayment by the time the first one disintegrated, his next projectile shattering a green target that had been hovering about thirty metres above the ground and four times that distance from where the man was currently standing. The old servant broke six targets in the end with the five attack arrayments that he managed to draw out and activate during the fifteen minutes allotted to him. Each time he’d broken a target, the crowd had given off all sorts of reactions; some people groaned at their luck in having wrongly guessed the results that the servant would achieve, while others cheered at their good fortunes after growing convinced that Kendal’s side was destined to win.

Lowering his voice, Nolan looked Esteban in the eye and said, “Okay, I bet that you’d break all of them so take your time and do them by colour.”

“I’ll do it, but only if you promise to give me two million more stones from whatever you end up winning.”

Seeing the dollar signs in the boy’s eyes, Nolan pushed him forward and said, “Yeah, yeah, that’s fine. Just don’t shit the bed here, okay?”

Bursting with motivation, Esteban took a deep breath and donned a focused expression as most of the surrounding guests quieted down in anticipation of his efforts. The moment he began to design his arrayment diagram, all lingering voices were quickly subdued, their owners astounded at the amount of detail contained within the diagram and the speed with which he drew it. Forty or so seconds later, Esteban’s finger stopped moving and he gave a short scan of the night’s sky before injecting the proper amount of energy into the diagram’s entry point and activating it with a brilliant flash of light that was far more blinding that that which had given life to the old man’s arrayments. Raising a fully-sleeved arm out in front of him, a sudden gust of wind shook Esteban’s frizzy hair as sixty swords of golden light suddenly solidified in front of him.

“This is…”

The other competitor was speechless as he beheld the mass of floating swords, which disappeared with an abrupt flash and extinguished all of the green targets in sight within a matter of moments. The speed of the projectiles was easily four or five times as rapid as the old servant’s had been, an impressive feat in the eyes of the audience considering that a single sword was much easier to direct than dozens at the same time.

“Alright,” muttered Esteban, hurrying to draw out a second arrayment. “Let’s see, forty yellow ones, so adjust the number by shortening these shapes…” About 45 seconds later and another mass of golden swords followed the first, erasing all yellow lights from the sky after a brief flash. In the heavy silence that followed, Esteban turned to cast an uncertain look at Kendal and asked, “Do I need to keep going? I already won, right?”

“Finish what you started,” chuckled Nolan, nodding toward the slack-jawed young man. “Look at his face. Okay, forget what I said earlier, get rid of the rest at the same time. Do it as G as possible.”

“Easy for you to say…”

“You made like 55 swords that one time in the glade and you’re way stronger now. Just give ‘er and unload. Trust me, it’ll destroy that guy’s confidence.”

“Alright, but if they try to bother me after this then you’ve got to take care of it, okay?”

Tousling the boy’s hair like an uncle to his favourite nephew, Nolan puffed out his chest with a drunken smile and said, “For sure, for sure. Just get this ball rolling already.”