“No, absolutely not,” Harmon spoke in a fearful whisper. “This is impossible.”

{}

“Ok, time to get started,” Erik muttered to himself. He wasn’t a bully, but some people deserved beatings, and he kinda liked handing them out. Ok, he really liked handing out beatings. Almost as much as he liked fixing them! Once he found martial arts, everything just clicked for him, what with his whole life being spent learning how to have exacting control over his body to a degree others would probably call psychotic. It made picking up the moves super easy. At least, everyone said he shouldn’t have become as proficient as he was as quick as he did.

Squaring up against the opposite team, Erik might have felt bad before yesterday afternoon. After all, no one here was ready for what any of his friends could do. How could they? They’d literally cheated. Plus, Caeden’s whole existence was basically a cheat in and of itself. Evolving any shroud he wanted to was some real nonsense.

Which was a little hypocritical, considering Erik had benefited from that nonsense, but who was going to call him out? Not these kiddos. So, Erik was excited! He’d gotten way stronger while in Caeden’s magical pocket universe (how was that not unfair?), and he wanted to test himself against what should have been difficult opponents. What would have been difficult opponents two days ago.

“Ok, let’s have some fun, kiddies,” Erik yelled, stretching himself out as the opposing team got into position. “Try and follow along, or else this won’t be any fun.”

He couldn’t wait to try out some of the things he’d discovered on someone who wasn’t Cat or Asherta. Both of them were even more unfair than him.

{}

Simon was seething. He’d been stewing in anger and shame ever since yesterday. Dragged before his father after his own guards refused a direct order. Failing to control one’s lessers was a deep shame, one Simon had not known until now.

Then, low and behold, the pair that had been responsible for his humiliation on several fronts and his next opponents were one and the same. He could face them in open battle. Perhaps he wouldn’t have been so keen, considering what happened last time. He wasn’t an idiot; after all, he knew they were stronger than him. But his father had bestowed him with ethertech armaments on a level Simon had never seen. Tech that would surely even the playing field with these savages and peasants.

Just looking at the sloppily formed group, Simon could tell that none of them had an ounce of noble blood. They seemed disorganized and lackadaisical, while Simon was backed by some of the strongest shrouded in their age range. The Ten Thousand Empires would not be shown up when it came to raw power. Maybe he couldn’t face these freakishly powerful peasants alone, but he had been training with this team for years. They would not lose together.

Which is why he almost laughed when the tall, skinny man with the almost disturbing smile walked forward, seemingly challenging them alone. The gall of these wretches! It was astounding. They seriously believed that one of them alone could fight an entire team of five? The power of shrouds, when properly trained, was multiplicative. Especially those with complementary powers. Like his team.

Well, this was convenient. As long as this team underestimated them, they could pick them apart. Honestly, their folly was his gain; he should be thanking the fool for his misplaced pride instead of belittling his intelligence. Unfortunately, Simon couldn’t find it in himself to do so. His anger had not subsided in the least. In fact, it had only grown.

“Helena, Ezekiel, pincer move. They’re offering us an open invitation to take out one of their number unopposed. We’ll not let it pass. Davros, John, with me. We’ll soften him up for the pincer the second the match begins.” Simon fired off commands in a low voice, making sure to use concealment sense to block his words.

The adjudicator flew up over the arena, appearing noticeably interested in the match. This was a match between two first place teams. Even in the youth league, this would be an interesting fight. At least, that would be the expectation.

“Ready.” Simon centered himself, focusing solely on the enemy. He would reclaim his honor.

“Ready!” The response came back from all around him as shroud manifested and circled them all.

The skinny man simply smiled at them while standing casually, having finished his stretching. Everything about him made Simon even more incensed.

“Begin!”

Simon began to throw his first attack, his attention fully focused on the man that had offered himself up to five peers on a platter. Except, he was gone. Before the attack had even finished forming, Simon caught a flicker of shroud around their target in the instant before he simply vanished.

He only had a moment to be confused before a deeply unpleasant crunching sound reached his ears from nearby. Whipping around, Simon found the target. All his long, gangly limbs were wrapped in purple bands that looked oddly…stretchy. One of those limbs was buried completely through Helena’s midsection.

Helena’s shroud was Beetle. Not the most visibly pleasant shroud, but it gave her formshift a strong defensive carapace that could turn even infused weapons. Simon had a hard time dealing damage to her through it, and he had the highest ranged damage output on their team. Shards of that carapace fell to the ground from around the fist-sized hole in her torso, along with thick globs and streams of ichor.

“Oh, shit.” Her attacker, Simon recalled his name was Erik, spoke. “I didn’t bring down the damage enough. Sorry, my bad.”

His arm, which had lengthened by over a foot to make it through Helena’s formshifted beetle-like body, withdrew. As it did, a warm yellow and green light surrounded his fist. In moments, all the damage, the gaping hole in Helena’s body, regenerated perfectly. It was like she’d never been hit.

“Dang it, that was close. Poked a hole in both your lungs and nicked the heart. Literally obliterated a couple of major blood vessels. Dang. That would have dropped you in a few seconds, by the looks of it.” Erik shook his head, the increasingly disturbing smile never leaving his face.

What kind of monster are we facing?

“Tell you what. I’ll go back over there, and we can start this over. I’ll let you guys take a couple shots since I kinda went overboard there. Sound good? Good!” Without waiting for a response, he was gone.

Simon snapped his gaze back toward the other team to find that, sure enough, the smiling demon was standing exactly where he started. Noticing Simon’s attention, he waved.

“Helena?” He didn’t need to clarify what he was asking.

She shook her beetle head. “I didn’t even slow him down. I didn’t know I’d taken the hit until his arm was already out my back. I don’t think I could have recovered from that if he hadn’t healed me. I just died.” She whispered the last sentence like she could hardly believe it herself. Simon couldn’t blame her. “He just killed me. Then brought me back. I…I don’t-” She couldn’t finish, merely shaking her head.

The situation had reversed in an instant with a single attack. Suddenly, they all went from feeling like they had a solid chance of winning to wondering if they would survive.

And that, Simon realized, was the point.

“It’s a trick.” He snapped his fingers. His teammates looked at him. “Think about it. He’s our age. They check before every match with a shroud. He’s definitely our age, and I refuse to believe someone our age can be as strong as he would lead us to believe he is.”

Simon nodded, feeling more confident in his assertion. “This must be their strategy. Send out one member who had a devastating blitz attack and act like he can do it easily and repeatedly. It’s demoralizing, especially when he invites us to come at him. This is all mind games. I bet he’s dead out of shroud, or close to it. We’ll take him up on his offer. Helena, Ezekiel, just like always. But expect his teammates to jump in. I’m betting his offer is a trap of some kind. We can still win this.”

Unless he wasn’t lying. Unless he was actually just that powerful. Simon pushed those thoughts away. That was the fear talking. It couldn’t be true; this was all mind games and trickery. Yesterday must have been the same. These people were charlatans. Skilled deceivers and liars, nothing more.

He didn’t want to think about the alternative.

His words seemed enough to restore some of the confidence to his team, and it was only a moment later that they were back as they were when the match first began. Only this time, there was no impossible attack interrupting them.

Simon, Davros, and John proceeded to bury Erik in attacks as Ezekiel and Helena crossed the distance. This was their most basic formation. The backline was merely a distraction to give the frontline to engage. Helena, with her dense defenses, acted as a counterpoint to Ezekiel, who was the team’s best damage dealer. His range was short, but he hit far harder than even Simon.

Usually, Helena and Ezekiel acted almost as an anvil and a hammer, crushing the enemy between them. It was Simon, Davros, and John’s job to respond to any changes in the battlefield. Simon was purely a distance fighter, having little in the way of short-range attack or defense. Meanwhile, Davros and John could operate at any range but didn’t reach the heights of Simon or Ezekiel.

Erik disappeared under a barrage as the frontline hammer and anvil closed the distance. Simon could feel his attacks connecting through his shroud constructs, but he wasn’t reaching flesh yet. The lanky peasant still had some shroud to defend himself, it seemed.

Finally, Helena and Ezekile were in range, and the backline cut off their attacks. Erik was there, seemingly unaffected. Purple chains circled him, the source of his defense. Helena was there, reaching out with four massive chitinous arms, grabbing the shroud manifestations. She couldn’t break through, but she wasn’t supposed to. Helena’s only job was to take his focus and hold him in place until Ezekiel could deal with him.

And there he was, palms bathed in a fiery red edged in sickly green. Ezekiel’s shroud was Repulse, a modifier shroud. His family had long ago learned to use their shroud on the most fundamental particles of reality, allowing them to unleash the devastating potential hidden within; atomic fission. The only downside being their difficulty controlling the attack before they reached a certain level of power. If Ezekiel moved his manifestations too far away, his control would collapse, and the attack would break from his confinement.

But anything within the reach of his hands was dead; they just didn’t know it yet.

Got you, you arrogant idiot. Simon watched with satisfaction as Ezekiel reached out. None of their target’s teammates moved to interfere. Whatever the trap was, they were assuming Erik would survive this attack, apparently.

Ezekiel’s hands were mere inches from Erik when the skinny man finally reacted. He snapped his fingers, and the flaming manifestations in Ezekiel’s hands were surrounded in purple and black chain constructs. Their greatest attacker, nullified just like that.

“Well, that was fun!” Erik reached out and patted Ezekiel on the head like he was a toddler that had just shown him a picture with all the coloring inside the lines. Pure patronizing condescension rolled off him. “Those balls of whatever actually packed a pretty good punch! Good job!”

He flicked his wrist, and more chains encircled Helena and Ezekiel, flinging them across the arena and back beside Simon.

“Now!” Somehow, his smile got even wider, “My turn.”

The chains surged, and Simon saw his end approach.

{}

Harmon struggled to control himself. The moment that team of abominations entered the arena, he had to stop himself from attacking them. What he saw down there on that stage across from his son’s team was not what he’d seen only a little over a week ago at the opening ceremony. They had somehow grown from concerning future threats into something he very much wished to never face right now.

From what he could feel, which was much less than he used to be able to glean, these people were all somehow many dozens of times as powerful as they had been back then. They could stand head and shoulders above most of Harmon’s best men. In fact, they might just have some of the single most threatening auras he’d ever felt. It was more than just power he was feeling.

It was almost as if he was looking at warriors that had spent a thousand years refining themselves on the battlefield. Any lack of experience he might have felt at the opening ceremony was gone, replaced with a deep sense of dread.

And all of that was pointed directly at his son.

*Snap*

Harmon kicked out, flinging the remains of the chair he’d been sitting in across the room as he saw merely one of these five monsters move almost too fast for his highly refined senses and plow a hole through a defense specialist in a single attack. And then proceed to heal the damage like it was nothing.

Every moment made it that much harder for him to restrain himself. This was beyond any estimation he might have had. Even the words of his son’s bodyguards had not indicated something like this. Indeed, it seemed as if these youngsters’ combat power far outstripped even their oversized IP.

Something was wrong with these five; their growth was impossible. He might have suspected the CA had swapped them out with older shrouded somehow, but his aura confirmed that these were the same people. They had simply multiplied their power in every aspect in less than a month. It was looking more and more likely that Simon would not survive this match, an unacceptable outcome. Harmon would not allow his legacy to diminish, not again. His father had lost too much, Harmon would not do the same.

But he held back. Interrupting this match would open himself to reprisals from the other nations. That didn’t matter, considering his plans for their continued survival. Namely, stopping it. But the increased scrutiny at such a crucial time could be devastating. So, he held back. Even as the Empire team failed in their attacks, completely shut down by the Erik boy’s domain.

He held back right up until the two front liners were tossed across the arena, and Erik squared up to close that distance once again. Then he stopped holding back.

“Fuck this!” Harmon reached into his regal coat, an article specially designed with a secret spacial pocket in the lining for hiding sensitive items. From it, he pulled three things. An ethertech device with a single button on it, a pair of gauntlets, and a cloth-wrapped glaive. “We start now!”

And he slammed his finger down on the button before crushing the device. Then he leaped from his private booth and through the wall right into the arena, between his son and the team of abominations.

“I have had enough!” He dragged both of the gauntlets on before gripping the glaive’s bare haft. “This ends NOW!”

He flicked the glaive, the cloth unraveled. Instantly, the Emperor’s Blade slammed down over the arena, suppressing every shroud, instantly making Harmon the strongest shrouded within its bounds. With the Blade in hand, he was a god.

The first to fall would be these impossible upstarts, the first bloodshed in his grand conquest. But they would not be the last. It was time.

The Vast Kingdom Rising would begin.