Yulian woke up… He was strapped to a seat in a plane, right next to Lily who seemed to be piloting it. Flying over many snow-capped mountain tops.
“Ah… What…” he exclaimed.
“It is still too early for you…” Lily, who noticed him, said then sprayed something on him.
The next moment he was asleep again.
…
“Are all the elite disciples here?” Ann asked. There was no need to pretend and give face to Marcos here, this was the core of the family after all, and everyone knew who was the boss!
“Other than the ones we know are in dungeons, 5 are missing, Revolt, Pam, Tor, Simon, and Rita,” one elder said respectfully.
“Cassius… Where is your granddaughter?” Ann turned to one of the supreme elders and asked.
“She is doing a critical mission for my hall,” he replied briefly without batting an eye. The supreme halls had certain autonomy in the family, and Cassius was using this to his advantage.
The Blood Hall which he and Rita belonged to was usually tasked with tracking and keeping tabs on the branch families and the illegitimate descendants, and this required some secret missions as they might need to investigate distant descendants who belonged to other families and powers!
Dick, who Victor killed, was the head of one of the family's assassins' halls. He belonged to the blood hall, and this allowed him to hunt for illegitimate babies to collect their bloodline.
“Oh…” Ann raised one eyebrow, she definitely knew something, but she chose not to speak. “What about the others?”
“Revolt and Pam are already 26, as for the others, we were only able to connect to Simon, but he couldn’t come as he was acting as an envoy in the True Sun Empire,” the elder said.
“I see…” Ann, who wanted to punish someone, was disappointed. “Well, I guess it is time to get to business…” she said as she watched Theodore who was arguing with an elder before taking his position next to Victor… Her eyes lingered on Victor. She frowned. Something… his bloodline… it was strange…
“Ann…” Marcos said, alerting her. “Is there a problem…”
“Ah… No…” Ann said, giving Victor a fleeting look again. He was perfectly normal. Strange… Why did she feel as if he reminded her of a certain man seconds earlier? She shook her head.
“Now, most of you should already know about the incoming tournament, but for those who have no idea, let me elaborate!” she said. “In two months, right after the start of the new year, the players association will hold its centenary tournament, only those under the age of 25 can participate!”
“I thought it was in a month?” Mike asked and then quickly shut up when one of the elders gave him a glare.
“True…” Ann didn’t seem angry. “The tournament will start in a month or so, but that is for the lower powers, we will only enter at the last stage, as members of the council this is our right… After all, this tournament is usually conducted to decide the order of the powers in the world and the new council members depending on the winner's order!” she added and watched as everyone nodded.
“Ah, Elder… What order did we get last time?” one docile girl asked. She was an elite heir who awakened two years ago.
“In the last tournament, we managed to secure the fifth position!” Ann said with a reminiscing look on her face.
“Fifth?” Bruno asked, then quickly shrieked when Ann looked at him.
“Yes, the First was the Von Krone, followed by The Heavenly sect, the Von Richter, the Von Zwei then us…” Ann said.
“Ahh… The Von Krone and The Von Richter?” the girl asked. She had never heard of them.
“Those two families disappeared about 20 years ago, one destroyed, and the others hid away like rats after hearing some crazy prophecy. You only need to know that everything about them was erased and the vacuum in the order their disappearance created allowed the Von Rosen and the Von Astrom families to climb in to become one of the 10 members of the players council!” Ann casually said. “If you want to know more about this, I will allow you to enter the fifth level of the library after we finish here!” she finished.
“This time the tournament will be special, it will require 10 members from each power to participate instead of the usual 5, while I can’t elaborate on the reason, you must know that getting a good result would be vital for the family's prosperity!” Ann said mysteriously. “Those of you who will participate will have the chance to gain many merits!” she said, making many of the elite heirs a little excited. Merits in the family were hard to collect. They are the currency that the heirs use to compete for positions and resources.
With high enough family merits, one might be able to ask for whatever he wants.
Victor for example used the merits he got from saving Ann and giving her the necklace to get Lily and her sisters.
This was the reason he became an elite disciple, as Ann couldn’t officially reward him without revealing her status and she didn’t like to owe favors. She also thought he was a good pawn to strengthen Mike’s bid to be the next heir.
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“Are we here to choose the participants for the Tournament?” Bill, who wanted to make his presence stronger, asked.
“Yes… And No…” Ann said. “Now, I was planning to do a normal tournament to choose the participants, but a few days ago there was some trouble here in the mines, so the elders decided to use this chance and conduct the test here!”
“Trouble?” Theodore was the one who asked.
“Yes…” Ann sighed. “As you have guessed, it is the same as the last time…”
“Did it reopen?” Theodore asked. He seemed a little hopeful.
“We don’t know…” Ann said, paused a little then turned to look at the heirs and started telling a story.
“About 25 years ago, around this mine, many accidents began to happen, Miners were disappearing mysteriously… At first, we thought those guys found another exit and ran away, but it was only a matter of time until the investigative team found the first buddy, crushed into a puddle of blood,” she said.
“A monster?” Someone asked.
“Yes… Our first encounter with it was one day later. It was something that we had never seen before and it managed to kill half of the investigator's team before we could subdue it!” Ann said then waved his hand, making a huge body appear out of her storage ring and fall to the ground in front of it working the whole hall.
“A golem?” Bill asked looking at the huge 20-foot-long disfigured human-shaped pile of black obsidian on the ground.
“Exactly… It was those obsidian golems that started appearing out of the mine walls, killing everything in their way! There are only two known ways to kill them. Either damage their bodies by about 61% or destroy the nucleus that is usually hidden somewhere around its body.”
“Is this one new or old from back then?” It was Victor who asked. He had just used his appraisal on it and it only reported the same results he got when he appraised the chunk of rock outside.
This thing was just [A ROCK]
“It is new…” Ann nodded. “I hunted this guy yesterday, he is still fresh!” she added making many of the heirs begin to look at each other.
“You want us to defeat them?” Bill asked.
“Oh… Let me continue my story first….” Ann said. “Back then, the head of the Secrets Hall Ariana managed to push those things back with the help of her disciples, and after searching the tunnels for three months they managed to locate their source… It was a dungeon gate at the deepest level!” she said.
“A dungeon?” Zoe was the one who asked this time. Unlike the other elite heirs who seemed a little scared, she wasn’t. She had already conquered an S-ranked dungeon after all, and had become a little confident.
“Yes, to be precise an SSS-ranked dungeon gate, that not only lets people in, but it also lets monsters out!”
“AHHHH….” Zoe exclaimed. “Does it let monsters out?”
“Yes, that gate is strange, it pulsates every once in a while, about once an hour, and when it does that it grabs everything in its vicinity like when a gate opens for the first time, and when it retracts it leaves behind a monster we call Golem Spirit… This thing drills into the walls to possess the stones and birth Golems!” Ann said. “We believe that this must be some kind of glitch due to the gate appearing inside of a Ruin where the world rules are weak!” she explained not expecting any of the heirs to really understand. Most of them didn't even know what the word 'Ruin 'really meant. They thought it was just an old dungeon.
“So… Did they conquer it?” one guy asked.
“They tried, but all the teams we sent in didn’t return… Some died, but the life jades for many of them are still intact to this very day in fact.” Ann said. “Supreme Elder Ariana was one of them, she was caught in one of the gate pulses and was dragged inside… We haven't heard from her ever since and now the Secrets hall is run by High Elder Tolin!” Ann said, pointing to an old nasty-looking woman to the side.
“Mistress… It is time to replace Ariana…” the old woman said, grabbing this chance to talk. “There are certain things I can't do without the supreme seal!”
“We will talk about this after the tournament…” Ann said dismissively. Victor could tell that there was some fighting on who would appoint the new supreme Elder. “Now, back then we didn’t know what to do… The gate was unconscionable, so after some deliberation, one smart guy suggested burying it with stones… The result was a disaster as not only did the gate push the stones away as it pulsated, some of those obsidian stones turned into golems and started to attack us…”
“Then?” Zoe asked.
“In the end, we managed to create a gate using the metals refined from the obsidian in this mine… They seem to have anti-magic powers and it worked in stopping it!” Ann said. “Then, three months later the gate just disappeared….” Ann said, shrugging her shoulders.
“What?” everyone asked.
“Yes, it just vanished. At first, we thought it was conquered, but the ones who left never returned… The main theory was that the dungeon inside was not conquered, but the gate was closed for some unknown reason… Now we believe that the gate was reopened, but it is not in its original location where we built the metal door, and we haven't found its location yet… ”
“So our mission?” Bill, who felt that Ann was finished with her story, asked.
“Simple… From now until the end of the month, all the elite disciples will enter the tunnels to kill the golems and locate the gate! For every golem you kill, you get 1 point and for locating the gate you get 100… If you ever find the gate, stay more than 100 feet away from it and use a talisman to call for help!” Ann said. “The ones who get the most points, will not only get Merits of equal value, but will also get one of the seats in the tournament!”
“Can we form teams?” Bill asked.
“Yes, but only one in the team will get all the credit…” Ann nodded. “Each one of you will get one of the tunnel guards to guide you and act as a witness, this place is a labyrinth so you have to be careful!”
“What about the elders?” Theodore asked.
“We will act as observers and only intervene in emergencies…” It was Marcos who replied. “If the young ones couldn't even solve something like this, they are not worth joining the tournament!”
“Oh…” Theodore looked at Ann. She nodded. The elder council had already made up their mind on this. It seemed like there was more to this contest than announced. This might even relate to the fight for the patriarch’s seat!
It seemed like it was a good move to move Elena and Lara away from the archipelago. This place would be a mess…. Was he forgetting something?
“Ah… Esteemed grandmother… What about your birthday party?” it was Victor who shamelessly asked.
“IS IT TIME FOR THAT?” Marcos scolded.
“It is!” Victor replied looking at his grandmother who raised one eyebrow and then frowned when she felt Theodore expecting a look on her. She was planning to cancel the party due to the emergency situation.
“Theodore… Follow me to the inner hall…” she said finally. She could feel he had something to say.
“Can Mike and Victor come too?” Theodore hesitantly asked.
“... Come on… But this better be important!” she said.
Theodore nodded.
“Marcos, explain the Golem’s anatomy and attack patterns to the kids and tell them what to do, I will be right back!” she said as she left.
The patriarch just squirted his eyes and then turned to look with a questioning look at Theodore and his sons who hurried after Ann.