A wave of silence rippled across the floor, and then suddenly, an unexpected wave of violence followed it. Immediately, gangs of E Ranks began to assault those around them, presumably seeking to remove another troublesome fighter from the equation. Such was the atmosphere of brutality that the majority accepted the bellowed challenges of battle, attacking like rabid beasts.

“I thought the wider Multiverse was supposed to be more civilized?” Sam said as he expanded his aura outwards, deterring any would be challengers.

“And they call us the barbarians,” the Overlord replied, looking around himself with barely disguised disgust. “People such as this do not know the meaning of true strength.”

Sam raked his eyes across the sudden warzone, noting a few figures that had not joined into the bloodshed. They were all mages, and radiated an aura of concentrated potency. Those would be his opponents in the competitions to come. There was a blue skinned woman with a haughty look in her eyes that seemed to be immune to challenge. Either she was well known for her might, or she had the backing of a powerful sect. Perhaps it was both. She was oddly captivating, but Sam wasn’t sure why.

There were a few dozen more, but the ones that stood out the most were a pair of mages who were clearly twins. Their skin was red and scaly, and their faces seemed patterned after that of a dragon, with a long snout and beady, reptilian eyes. In their hands were obsidian staffs. Probing them with his Dao, Sam could detect vast reserves of fiery energy within them.

A minute passed quickly enough, and with a sudden whoosh, they left behind the blood soaked fields, and appeared within an arena, one of the ones that Sam had seen earlier.

They filled the stands, and as Sam looked around, he noticed that the arena was far larger on the inside than it had appeared on the outside. It had to be big enough to fit a hundred thousand people, but there was a noticeably large number of unfilled seats. Sam wondered if that happened every time.

The base of the arena was covered in sand, and there were hundreds of smaller subdivisions set out for battles. It bore a striking resemblance to the arena from Earth’s tournament. That had been a simpler time.

Before Sam could reminisce, notifications appeared once more.

You will be randomly matched with another fighter soon. Once it is your turn, you will be teleported to one of the smaller arenas below. Surrender is allowed, but doing so more than three times during the course of the event will result in expulsion from this competition. Every victory will provide points, with consecutive victories granting even more. Furthermore, killing your opponent will result in double the points. This is only allowed if both parties agree to a battle to the death.

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The notification disappeared, and the battles began. Immediately, a few hundred fighters were teleported down onto the arena sands. Sam was not part of the first wave, and neither was the Overlord. Instead, they watched, eager to gain some insight into the powers of the other fighters here.

One of the competitors who had gained his attention earlier, namely, one of the scaled twins, was competing against a far weaker opponent. At least, Sam assumed that, given the man’s trembling knees. Such things should have been impossible at E Rank, but some ingrained memories and actions lingered well beyond the end of one’s tenure as a mortal. Despite this, the man forced out a challenge to the death from between his lips, and Sam found himself wondering what was going on. To his surprise, out of everyone competing, the vast majority did so. This was signified by a red border appearing around their segments of the arena floor.

Sam leaned in closer, intrigued by what was happening. His best guess was that most of them belonged to sects who had very stringent rules about performance in the Tower. After all, raising someone up to E Rank took a decent amount of time, and doing so in a way that granted them the strength to proceed beyond that was even more taxing. The Tower served as a sort of winnowing machine, telling the sects who they had made mistakes on. Sam had no doubt that in the brutal world of the wider Multiverse, such mistakes would meet a short and violent end.

In that vein, the ensuing violence was quite commonly one sided. There was no sort of rhyme or reason to the placements. It was truly random. Sam kept his eyes on the lava mage with the obsidian staff, watching as he took a single, threatening step forwards. The sand below turned to glass, and with a single slam of his staff, the fighter before him exploded from within, a bulb of lava appearing where his body had once been. With a crooked grin, the mage flickered out of the arena floor, and back into the stands.

“Interesting,” Sam heard the Overlord observe. “I might get the fight I want after all.”

Sam simply watched in silence as the tournament progressed. There were a few standouts, but most of the matches were between fighters that were far below his own level of power. Even those who seemed to be elites possessed a shade of his strength, unless they were holding back an enormous amount of their potency.

He was able to see the other lava mage fight, and her abilities were a carbon copy of her brother’s. With a single slam of her staff, she obliterated the stocky Teruvarian fighter she was facing off against. The technique was similar to the point of exactitude. Sam’s advanced senses let him note that the radii of the two attacks were the same.