“Feyrith it’s nice to see you finally show up, I didn’t get to see your daughters match last round, but I can tell with a look that she’s grown immensely.” Irian said to Feyrith who just walked into the room of nobles.

“Well, she had some good motivators, and she has the drive to accompany it.” Feyrith said with a distant smile at his only friend.

“It truly is unfortunate that her mother passed recently, my condolences.” During the banquet there were many disturbances throughout the world and Feyriths wife was amongst the fallen.

“It’s in the past, neither of us wish to dwell on it so let’s focus on the match.”

“She’s fighting a Lion kin that is supposedly another generational talent.” Tyrion chimed in trying to avoid the somber talks.

“He’s one of the best in my kingdom, so good luck.” Said Ryota incredibly confidently, he had personally tutored some kids when he was bored and this was one among the few he taught,

“Well, I’m sorry to disappoint.” Feyrith pointed at the arena and the match had already been decided while they all weren’t looking.

As the lion charged at Rina, she launched wind blades so fast the lion kin didn’t see it sliced both of his arms off.

“Well…. He wasn’t the best at least.” Ryota began to sit back into his chair and suddenly decided to be quiet. The other rulers saw this and laughed and began to chatter amongst themselves while the second day was slowly wrapping up. After everyone finished their matches, Solstice began to walk out of the arena to go to his Inn, but he passed a hooded figure who whispered something ominous into his ears.

“Watch your shadow tomorrow.” Solstice kept walking after hearing this, clearly the person didn’t want to be discovered and they had no enmity in their speech.

“Sounds like an assassination attempt on you.” Victor said while glancing around at the hooded figure walking away.

“That outline looks really feminine, maybe another competitor?” Victor thought about possible people but couldn’t effectively narrow it down, so he gave up quickly.

As Solstice exited the door he was met by Lily, Luna, and surprisingly Rina. Luna knew what had happened to her mother but it wasn’t her business to share that to other people so she never told anyone, but that didn’t stop her from still yelling at the two other girls for intruding on her quality time with Solstice. The day wrapped up with the four of them going to eat and the girls arguing over who’s intruding on who.

—-Last day of Tournament

Solstice woke up and he could immediately feel tension surrounding the capital.

“You feel it too huh? It’s going to get really ugly really fast today.” Victor was currently looking out his window seeing a huge increase of guards in the city.

“No sense in fighting it, let’s get a move on it.” Solstice grabbed his great sword that was next to his bed and began to walk out of his Inn before he was met by Luna who had a serious expression on.

“If you die today, I will find you wherever you go and drag your ass back.” Luna said this and hugged him as tightly as she could before leaving to go see her father.

Solstice smiled after seeing how much she cared for him, after finally making it to the arena he could see how the number of guards had practically tripled just in this one area.

“I need you paying to pay attention to everything I say, no more blanking out like you tend to do, got it?” Victor remembered when he was trying to get through to Solstice at the banquet and his mind was fried, so hopefully this time he could keep his head on right and listen to basic commands.

All Solstice did was nod like he always does and enter the arena to prepare for the hellish day ahead of him.

——Nobles booth

“I’ve already heard about a handful of attacks in our capitals, luckily we listened to Ariel and left enough forces back to counteract these attempts to draw us away.” Irian said Ariel made them leave just enough personnel at home to repel any half-assed attacks that were supposed to draw more powerhouses away.

The entire booth was so on edge that the tension in the air was only getting thicker before Ariel made her entrance for the first time in a long time.

“I’ve gathered the necessary mana; all we need is to lure the big players in and I can send them into the abyss.” As Ariel said this, multiple people flinched at the name of the abyss.

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Tyrion walked forward and placed his hand on her shoulder.

“Does it really need to be him?”

“It’s too late, Tyrion, it must be done.” Ariel removed his hand from her shoulder and walked forward to take her seat.

“Siphon, I expect you to not let a single soul near me while I create this portal.” Ariel said with coldness in her voice.

“It will be done.” Siphon merely bowed before looking back down at the arena and seeing all the children who will suffer because of their plan.

“At least Bela is strong enough to stay alive.” He muttered internally.

—-Arena

“Don’t make a move but someone’s in your shadow, they’re probably going to wait until you let your guard down or react to them.” Victor said with urgency to Solstice.

“How strong are they?”

“My guess would be either Peak S-Rank or Sovereign, let’s hope for the first one.”

Solstice made a mental note to keep attention at his shadow throughout the rest of the day.

More and more people were funneling in to watch the last round of the tournament until everyone heard a guard yell.

“UNDEAD!” Is all anyone heard before chaos descended onto the city.

Out of nowhere thousands upon thousands of undead appeared in the capital and their sole mission was to kill as many as possible. Shortly after the skeletons and zombies appeared, magic circles appeared in the sky and all sorts of undead began to funnel out of these also. A handful of dragons and missing powerhouses who seemingly vanished away were reappearing from these circles with the sole intent to destroy everyone here.

“I’m assuming that this is the Death Sovereign, and if that’s the case what the fuck do we do?” Ryota had heard about the only person to ever deal with this guy was Leviathan, how he did it nobody knew, but nobody in the capital was confident of dealing with him.

“Just stay the course, Leviathan should show up. Go out and help you three.” Ariel pointed to Tyrion, Irian and Ryota before shifting her focus back to something and focusing.

Back at the arena because of the appearance of incredibly powerful undead, more guards were pulled away resulting in lower tier undead getting inside the arena and attacking the participants. Only a few thousand remained so it was fairly easy to get them all into a defensive perimeter to await the end of this onslaught.

Solstice was the only one who wasn’t with the group and was currently swinging his great sword around decimating more and more undead. With each swing he would amplify the gravity of his sword and send waves of air pressure that would launch the enemies into each other.

“Don’t waste too much energy, the person in your shadow is still present and watching.” Victor whispered to Solstice.

After a few minutes a powerful undead appeared in the arena finally and it was someone nobody expected. Solstice saw Cinder but clearly, he wasn’t alive anymore, but he retained his mind and personality.

“No hard feelings kid, if I kill you, I can pass on.” Cinder said this and immediately charged at Solstice, and this drew the attention of the teens.

“I’m going to go help him, make sure nobody leaves the formation. We don’t need to repeat what happened last time.” Luna said before sprinting into the distance and going to help Solstice, shortly behind her though appeared Lily. Luna could only smile and keep running to assist Solstice.

Cinder made it to Solstice and punched his sword sending him spiraling through the air but before he hit the wall he was caught by vines. He looked over and saw Luna smiling at him and just giving him a nod.

With that he knew he at least had support in defeating the Duke.

As Solstice sped up to meet Cinder, he saw a huge fireball descend and crash into an ice spike generating a lot of mist in the arena. As he began to run through it he noticed the mist would disperse for him so clearly someone else was supporting him too. As he made his way back to Cinder, he could see the man was lost so he used his gravity to increase his speed and increase the mass of his sword and swung it as hard as he could. The swing hit Cinder right at his waist but instead of cutting through him it just launched him like a bullet into the arena wall. The impact turned the left side of his body into meat paste but what happened next made Solstice and Victor let out a big sigh.

Cinder somehow still got back up and while doing so his body was regenerating at breakneck speed.

“Good try, but they won’t let me die until you're dead, so just die easily unlike your father.” Cinder said with a smug look.

While Solstice with support of Luna Lily was fighting Cinder, Alpha 2 along with the Death Sovereign were waiting on someone.

“He’s almost here, you tie him up so I can finish my plan.” Alpha 2 said to his helper. With that Alpha teleported away with an artifact, shortly after Leviathan appeared and stopped in his tracks.

“Julius, it’s nice to see you again.” Leviathan said while smiling at the Death Sovereign,

“Haven’t heard that name in a while, it was my first, wasn’t it?” Julius said while reminiscing about his past.

“Why are you here? I let you live only because we used to be friends.”

“You took what was rightfully mine, so maybe by killing you I’ll take it over? Mostly I just wish to kill you.” Julius began to laugh and started to summon his strongest undead.

“I’ve been collecting some real works of art in hopes of killing you my friend, it’s been a long time coming.” Julius conjured a throne of darkness and sat down while around a hundred undead appeared all ranging from every race across Aevis.

“So, you were the reason more and more powerhouses kept disappearing, I should’ve known.” Leviathan clenched his fists and charged forward and completely obliterated an undead Lion kin who attempted to stop him.

To deal with necromancers you had to stop the source, but that’s easier said than done, when you have thousands of undead and powerful ones at that attacking you and constantly regenerating it becomes a huge ordeal. Especially if the necromancer is like Julius and has enough mana to sustain them for days.

Thus began a long and grueling duel between two old friends.