Dyon grinned even as boos rained down from the surrounding crowd.

Thadius’ uproarious laughter nearly drowned it all out as he heavily patted Dyon’s shoulder, “I like your style successor. Both the sign and your wives, well done.”

With a smile, Dyon gently laid Delia to rest on one of the heavily cushioned beds then motioned for everyone to enjoy.

Ri and Madeleine, much to Dyon’s sadness, completely ignored him and left to tend to Delia. Venus seemed like she would ingratiate herself well with them, so Dyon could only let it be.

“Tell me successor,” Thadius leaned in and whispered into Dyon’s ear, “How do you keep two at once? Ronica doesn’t seem to mind, but River won’t let me live it down. She won’t even talk to me anymore!”

Dyon’s breath got caught in his throat, causing him to cough until tears came from his eyes.

Seeing this, Eli began laughing heartily. For the first time in a long time, everything seemed perfect.

That said, he still turned a worried gaze toward Delia, something Dyon didn’t miss. “You should be the first person she sees when she wakes up.” Dyon playfully nudged at Eli.

Hearing this, Arios and Thadius both raised eyebrows as though something juicy was happening.

Eli blushed profusely, “What are you saying! The princ – I mean Delia is too good for me.”

Dyon grinned, wrapping his arms around Eli’s shoulders, “You might want to think carefully about that.”

Eli blinked in confusion, “What do you mean?”

“Let’s just say that…” Dyon turned a sly eye toward Delia’s sleeping figure, “After Delia’s change is complete, there might be seven beauties instead of six. I only want the best for my friend.”

“Delia can’t possibly get more beautiful!” Eli protested.

Ri, Madeleine and Venus looked up in confusion.

“Eh – “ Eli covered his mouth quickly, hoping they didn’t hear him.

“It’s settled then.” Dyon grinned. He knew that Eli didn’t care about something like how beautiful Delia was in comparison to others. After all, Eli had spent years traveling to Patia-Neva peak, at Focus Academy, to see Delia. How could he not have seen Madeleine in all that time? And yet, Eli had fallen for Delia.

Dyon hardly cared about such things either. He had been fully willing to take Ri as his wife before he was even aware of how beautiful she was.

The reason, though, he had brought up Delia’s beauty was to hint at something entirely different. Ri, Madeleine and Delia all had one thing in common: they each had a God level constitution amongst the top three.

Madeleine became a world-renowned beauty with the partial awakening of her constitution, although that then led to her sickness. But, she became even more of a beauty after it was fully awakened.

Ri became a beauty worthy of rivaling Madeleine as soon as her constitutions stopped conflicting with each other.

And now? Delia’s constitution was about to fully awaken… The end result was clear.

Maybe it was less important than the power given by a constitution, but, the ranking of female God level constitutions often linked with their beauty. This was, of course, evolutionary. They were by definition the peak of what a female could be, born with peak level constitutions. As such, every aspect of them also reached that level of perfection.

This also explained why Elves were such an inherently beautiful race of people. Even their weakest were already born with Earth level bodies – something humans could never match. Normal human blood lines, that is.

Faith seeds didn’t work like this. That was because faith seeds were the product of cultivation. Although they did have profound benefits to the body, they didn’t fundamentally influence one’s genetic code. After all, faith seeds were external power sources from past peak experts.

What did this mean in the end? It meant that the most beautiful women in the cultivation world were also the most powerful. Having won the genetic lottery, their Earth, Heaven and God level constitutions gave them advantages no one else had.

And even further? This meant that Dyon would have to pay extra attention to the strongest beauty in this universe. Saru Shruti.

“Will she wake up before the next round?” Eli asked softly.

“Doesn’t matter. I’ll take her through the next round no matter what. I know this tournament is important to her, so I can’t allow her to lose because someone thinks they can lord over her life.”

Madeleine looked up. After Eli’s outburst, they had started to pay more attention to what was going on, on the “boys” side of the luxurious living room type area. “What happened?”

“I think I have a small idea,” Ri answered, “Delia’s father sent me a message saying that she would be fine and that he’d prevent future attacks on her mind. It seems as though he knows who the enemy is, but allowed Delia to be attacked as a trial.”

“So it’s the Clyte…” Dyon and Madeleine said in unison. They were both fully aware of who Delia’s enemies were. But, what they didn’t understand were Patia-Neva’s actions. Neither had any way of knowing how powerful he was, let along why he’d try to hide something like that.

“The Clyte?” Eli asked.

Dyon remained silent, allowing Madeleine to answer. “Focus Academy was formed while I was still with the main Sapientia branch. But, I still know a few things because of my father.

When Patia-Neva made the move to create the academy, he didn’t hide himself at all. In fact, he even allowed a Kami branch family to be a pillar of the academy, who are obviously a clan originally from Planet Naiad, where the Clyte are from. That said, maybe the most glaring evidence of this is the fact he never changed his last name like the Storm family did.

Being part of the Sapientia family, my father was privy to information many weren’t, especially because of my step mother. So, he immediately made the connection between the recent destruction of the Patia-Neva clan and the appearance of Head Patia-Neva.

When my father asked Head Patia-Neva about this, he didn’t try and hide it at all. He expressed that he had enmity with the Clyte God Clan and that he had lost his lover as a consequence.

Because Patia-Neva was so honest, the pillar families decided to remain in the Focus Alliance. Well, it wasn’t so simple, actually. The main reason was because attacking the clans and sects of another planet is highly taboo. Which meant that if Patia-Neva was ever found out, it would be him alone who suffered and the rest of Focus Academy would be left alone so as to minimize any noticeable impact.

However, there was always quite a few odd things about Patia-Neva’s actions, even aside from the fact that it didn’t seem as though he was truly hiding.

For one, there was the location he built Focus Academy on. The ruins of the Celestial Deer Sect had been a pseudo taboo area for quite a long time until Patia-Neva came.

The second was the central pillar library and the masterful arrays Focus Academy had access to. For example, the creation array that was used at the opening ceremony and the teleportation array to the Elvin Kingdom. Patia-Neva always brushed these off as having been left by the previous Celestial Deer Sect, but the problem still remains that they shouldn’t have been so intact. If they had been, why hadn’t they been taken by someone else instead of being left to such a weak academy?

And also, the books in the central pillar library. It didn’t make sense for them to exist. Dyon has probably told you all some version of this story at some point, but the Celestial Deer Sect was completely sealed. So, how did Patia-Neva gather books from them?”

Dyon’s brain churned more and more quickly as he listened to Madeleine’s words. As soon as she mentioned the teleportation array to the Elvin Kingdom, his memory remembered something else.

There was not a single flaw in the teleportation array. And, come to think of it, there was not a single flaw in the creation array either. The level they were both at was something even the current Dyon couldn’t put the most accurate gauge on…

But, it had been thousands of years since the destruction of the Celestial Deer Sect… No array should be able to last that long without maintenance. Even the Gates themselves closed down for a few months every year to repair themselves… So, the question was how?

How was it possible?…

Delia was oblivious to all of the talks around her. The smile on her face had still not faded as she seemed off in her own dream land.

She remembered long hours of training on her peak spent with her dearest elder sister and a lanky boy with sandy blond hair.

He was always so polite and shy, but his demeanor always completely changed when it came to tending to his garden. Every little detail from taking off his shoes, to spending weeks planning out water routes and plant distribution, to even his focused murmuring as he spoke to himself about what he could improve and what he had done wrong.

Delia and Eli never spoke all that often to each other. In fact, Eli was always overly formal. But, Delia always found it interesting that despite how flustered he was whenever he saw her or Madeleine, he always seemed to completely forget about their existences until it was time for him to wave goodbye to them again.

Never did Delia ever think that this boy’s voice would be the one that pulled her from a path she would have come to regret. But, he had. What she didn’t know was that while Eli spent his life diligently analyzing and coming to an understanding of every seed he planted, he had been observing Delia from afar the same way.

It wasn’t that Madeleine wasn’t also a kind soul. In fact, Eli could hardly understand it himself. If he was going to fall for someone, shouldn’t it have been Madeleine?

But, there was something in Eli’s heart as a botanist that told him that Delia needed help arranging the flower that was her. Something told him that she was just a step away from making the wrong move and that he could play a role in adjusting her just perfectly.

That fascinated him. Even as Eli concocted medicines for Madeleine, he studied Delia. He saw her cold and yet soft-hearted demeanor. He took note of her graceful swords play, an art that seemed to be predicated on diverting the effort of foes into strength for her. He even took note of how she could transform from a beauty with flawless olive skin, to a beauty with the fairest skin he had ever seen.

Everything seemed to point toward the same thing: a façade.

Delia’s entire being seemed to be coated in something false. No, not false. Something that was fundamentally important to her character, but still slightly flawed. And that was when Eli saw it – the perfect picture of what Delia was.

She was a leaf. Sleek, green and healthy. The picture of nature and warmth. The epitome of everything life. But, she was covered. She had a cold, but delicate exterior. She was a sword of unprecedented sharpness, but still one that chose to parry.

She was a leaf covered in snow.

**

Outside of Delia’s dream land, everyone seemed to have settled into a calm rhythm. There was still quite some time before the final round – time given because all participants had just fought – so Dyon was taking his time to enjoy his wives.

Ri had left for a moment to go and ask Primrose, Mithrandir, Celine and Opal if they’d like to come over. After all, the miscellaneous area for ranked geniuses wasn’t comparable to the top ten areas. This was especially true if you were relying on others to be there like the four of them, because none of them had ever taken part in a campaign.

So, Dyon had coaxed Madeleine into leaving Delia be, convincing her that she was fine while winking toward Eli’s blushing figure.

“What happened?” Dyon say across from Madeleine, holding her small hands in his as he looked into her eyes intently. He hadn’t had the opportunity to find out what she had been through, and he felt as though he should ask.

A sad smile spread across Madeleine’s features as she shook her head, “It doesn’t matter anymore. I’m here with you and little sister Ri, that’s all that matters.”

Dyon sighed, “Do you wish I treated your family differently?”

Madeleine shook her head again, “I still haven’t forgiven them, why should you?” A defiant glint shone in her eyes. “A few months ago even my step mother came to convince me that you were no good. I love them, but I won’t accept them if they won’t accept you.”

“I want you to know that if it ever comes to it, I won’t allow anything to happen to your family.” Dyon caressed Madeleine’s soft cheek. “We’ll save them. And, if they continue to be annoying, we can just lock them in a comfy room with movies and food.”

Madeleine giggled, thinking back to her movie nights with Dyon. “You didn’t finish lord of the rings without me, did you? I want to watch it with you and Ri.”

Dyon shook his head, “Of course not. I only watched the first movie with Ri. We can finish the rest and the preludes together. But, more importantly, this makeover of yours. I didn’t think it was possible for you to get more beautiful.”

Madeleine looked at Dyon before blushing. She could never win a staring contest with him. The purity of his eyes always made his words seem all the more real, as though his word was law and it was impossible for him to be wrong. It made even Madeleine, someone who heard compliments like that blush.

“I have a feeling you already know what happened with this. But, it’s a shame I lost my glasses though.”

“Speaking of your glasses,” Dyon got a serious look on his face, “I feel as though Amethyst destroyed them on purpose.”

“So you know that much, hm?” Madeleine smiled. She was rarely surprised by Dyon now. Honestly, her reaction to Airic’s appraisal of Dyon had been more longing and excitement than surprise. “But why on purpose?”

“That I’m not sure about. But.” Dyon’s hand found his way to Madeleine’s collarbone to gently palm her silver necklace. “She didn’t destroy this. That’s telling us something.”

“So it could either be symbolic or…”

“Or it could be the glasses themselves. In which case, we may need to keep an eye on your family as well.”

Madeleine didn’t know how to feel. But, she had always found it off that the main Sapientia branch went out of their way to distribute such high end materials even to the much lesser branch families.

From birth, Madeleine was assigned carbon framed glasses. These glasses then had the potential to be upgraded to crystal framed glasses once a member became proficient with the Sapientia speed reading technique. Then, the crystal framed glasses could be ‘customized’ to varying colors.

Before Madeleine’s were destroyed, they had begun to tint purple. Connery Sapientia’s however, tinted green. This was explained as taking the form of a person’s aura, and it made sense for Madeleine since her favorite color had always been purple. In fact, whenever she wasn’t wearing the white transcendent dress Dyon gave her, she was likely wearing a purple dress of some sort.

However, the question no one asked enough was… why?

Hearing the rustling of moving feet, Dyon turned his gaze from Madeleine to find Ri with a few other elves.

Celine and Opal especially seemed to have overly excited expressions on their face as they sent quick glances toward Madeleine.

Dyon could barely stifle his laughter, “It seems you have some fans.”

Madeleine playfully slapped Dyon’s hands away and got up to say hello and be introduced by Ri. It didn’t seem to take long for them to become the best of friends. But, Dyon was so distracted that he almost didn’t notice Zaltarish come in with them.

“Dyon! This isn’t fair!” Zaltarish plopped down on the couch beside Dyon followed by Arios and Thadius, all of whom were looking at Dyon with varying degrees of jealousy.

Dyon looked at his wrist as though he had a watch on it, “Well would you look at the time, it seems like the final round is about to start!”

Just as they were about to pull Dyon back, the booming voice of Elder Den pierced through the stadium, causing the loud cheering of the crowd to erupt again.

“This is it, ladies and gentlemen! The final round! But, I believe you all know that there’s more at stake than just the available positions. This is about the pride of warriors. A pride that has been continuously stepped on by a shameless fool. A shameless fool that took the extended olive branch of the Sapientia family and trampled on it before the public.

All monitors panned to Dyon’s newly formed top ten area, causing boos to rain down. But, all they found was a young man wearing a plain white T shirt and black sweat pants rolled to his calves. Well, that and there was a girl sleeping soundly on an array behind him.

He seemed oblivious to the anger he had stirred even as 2300 warriors intent of tearing him limb from limb, ran, flew, leaped and bounded their way to the center of the arena.

Turning back toward Madeleine and Ri who had stood with worried expressions on their faces, Dyon grinned. “If I ask for two kisses, how mad do you think that would make them?”

Ri rolled her eyes even as Madeleine giggled, “Be safe.” They both said.

Dyon smiled light, nodding before stepping into the air with the help of his arrays. But, before he could get far, he heard an obnoxious voice from behind him.

“So this is our supposed prince consort? Our so-called princess is just a fool, but I wonder what pills you fed Madeleine Sapientia to get her to agree to be with you. Imagine making this big show just to die.” Clarice Grimbold stood beside Fiora with a sneer on her face.

Dyon raised an eyebrow, “Listen, generic mean girl 1 and 2. I advise you watch your mouths. Out of respect for my father in law, though. I won’t kill the citizens of his kingdom without adequate reason. That said, you should pay attention to the two behind you, or else you won’t get to see whether I die or not.”

Not bothering to explain, Dyon flew off into the air, finding his way in an encirclement of thousands, all seemingly waiting for the start announcement to tear him to shreds.

There seemed to be a drastic difference between them and Dyon. They wore armors and wielded elaborate weapons. Some had even already drawn these weapons, ready to fight for the remaining 790 spots. But, Dyon was the picture of calm. Even as he protected Delia’s floating figure, his hands remained in his pockets as his bare feet graced the hard stone of the arena floor.

“We have one more thing to tell you brave heroes before you fight!”

The tense atmosphere around the warriors was peaking. Some barely heard the words of the elder even as the crowd’s noise increased again and again.

“As you all know, there are meant to be 2300 of you. Unfortunately, due to the selfishness of another, this number has been increased to 2301. This is of course highly unfair to all of you since the spots are being maintained as 790. So, in the interest of balancing the fairness, we’ve made a new rule.

The person to land the finishing blow on the cowardly demon will be automatically admitted into the final rounds regardless of how many there are left.”

The eyes of the remaining geniuses flashed. Although they hadn’t been focused on the words before, they sure were now.

“In addition to this, a review panel will be watching this match to gauge how you contributed to said final blow. Should you be among the top 100 in inflicting damage to the cowardly demon, you will also receive an automatic spot regardless of how many there are left.”

Hearing these new “fair” rules, Madeleine and Ri couldn’t help but grit their teeth in anger. This was nothing less than forcing Dyon to battle all 2300 alone!

“The last tidbit is for the audience! Betting has opened up early! You can big on who you think will be among this 100 to inflict the most damage and also on how long the cowardly demon will last!”

Cheers erupted as the betting monitors started going off wildly. The world tournament made use of array naming plates to teleport bids to a set location and automatically record them. With the announcement of Elder Den, the crowd had begun wildly bidding. Some big on who would make the top 100 in damage, but most bid on time.

In the end, the over-under on Dyon length for survival was set to 1 minute.

Suddenly, Dyon cleared his throat. “Just wondering about something,” a small smile playing his features.

Elder Den turned a sneering glare toward Dyon, “Would you like to back out? We won’t stop you, of course.”

Dyon snorted, “As if. Against competition like this?”

Dyon’s words sent a new wave of anger through the 2300 contestants, but he completely ignored that even as the boos of the crowd joined.

“Am I allowed to bet?”

“Of course not. If you bet 0 seconds and then quit immediately, won’t that be too convenient?”

Dyon laughed. “I’m not betting on length of time unless I can bet on how long it will take me to beat them all.”

Hearing the words of Dyon’s, even the patriarchs began to sit at the edge of their seats. Was this boy really all talk? Or was he really worth the number one spot? Was he being so arrogant to prove a point?

King Belmont stroked his dark purple beard, staring intently at Dyon’s figure.

The ranked geniuses watched Dyon as well. Aside from those who had seen him in action at Chaos tower, the others were curious to see if he could really do this.

Zabia leaned toward his wife, Ulu. “This is the boy, right?”

Ulu nodded.

“Let’s see if he can do something other than talk then… It’s not as though he can use that tall warrior in this battle.”

Elder Den snorted, “Here.” Throwing a betting array toward Dyon.

“This isn’t big enough.” Dyon frowned, “Ah, no matter, no matter. Just one more question though. Say I bet more than the other bidders can cover, who will compensate me? After all, the odds are against me something like 1 in 10000, I’m worried about wasting my time with this bid.”

Elder Den frowned. “As if you can bid more than tens of millions of people can cover. If we include the other four planets and those watching, who also have bidding plates of their own, that’s even into the tens of billions of people. But, in the event that you have some dog ** luck, the Chaos Bank will cover you.”

“I don’t really trust the Cavositas honestly. You have something better than that?”

“You…” The veins in Elder Den’s neck were threatening to burst. This kid had to be riling him up. Even if he bid entirely in dao stones, with tens of millions of people bidding, even if they only used profound stones, it would definitely convert to hundreds of thousands of dao stones.

“Ah, whatever. I don’t need your money anyway. I’m doing this to prove a point.”

Dyon turned his gaze toward 2300 angered warriors. “You all seem to think that if you get angry enough, if you get riled up enough, maybe if you get enough incentives placed in front of you, you’ll be able to beat me, hm?”

Dyon’s eyes flashed with gold as the bidding plate in his hand expanded to a ten-meter radius.

Then, under the shocked eyes of the crowd, Dyon began to pour dao stones, allowing them to disappear in sets of hundreds, then thousands.

The breath of the crowd seemed to be taken out. This kid was wealthier than an entire planet!

“1000. 10000.” Dyon began to count faintly. “100000. 1 000 000. 10 000 000. I think that’s enough for now.”

The truth was Dyon only had a handful of dao stones left after this. But, they didn’t need to know that.

“I hope you all understand what 1 in 10000 means. If I don’t see 100 000 000 000 dao stones after this, I’ll start looking down on the Cavositas.”

Dyon was hoping they could pull it off, actually. A hundred billion dao stones was the equivalent of 100 000 transcendent stones, something he wanted to see if he could trade for in the future.

“Now I’ll make something very clear. My number one rank was earned and you’re all nothing but the first step in proving that.”

The initial shock of the sheer amount of the bet was washed over by Dyon’s words. So what if he was rich? He was disrespecting their entire beings. He didn’t deem them worthy.

The truth was that no one there was more angered than Dyon. They had trampled over his name, ignored his hard work, and fabricated all sorts of stories to make it seem as though they were the ones in the right. Dyon smiled and shrugged it off, but Madeleine and Ri both knew how he really felt. This would be a massacre.

The laughter of Elder Den boomed as a message was transmitted into his ears. “Listen here. As long as he is defeated. You will each receive 100 dao stones. This is our guarantee.”

The competitors shook at the sheer amount of wealth on the table. 100 dao stones? That was enough to become the riches non-God Clan family on earth in an instant.

Dyon stepped into the air, hands in his pockets as his entire demeanor changed.

“BEGIN!”

The rage of thousands of warriors erupted into the air. Techniques of fires, winds, ice, earths and waters raged toward Dyon.

However, Dyon barely moved as a massive weapon’s pagoda appeared at his back.

“This won’t last even ten seconds.” Dyon said faintly.

Suddenly, thousands of magnificent arrays appeared in the air. The intricate patterns of gold and purple nearly blinded the audience even as the red-black and dripping aura of the weapon’s pagoda flashed.

Spears of unparalleled power raged outwards from the pagoda’s doors, finding their way to each array and becoming perfectly centered even as they began to spin viciously.

Dyon moved not a single inch even as he calmly watched the thousands of attacks the careened toward him.

Connery Sapientia grit his teeth, grinding his throne to dust under the surprised gazes of the Sapientia. ‘He’s too powerful!’

Connery had noticed something anyone with high enough cultivation had. Each and everyone of the weapons that Dyon brought out of his pagoda matched to his soul level. Meaning… Each and every one was a grandmaster level weapon.

“This is the difference between you and I.” Dyon was no longer gazing at the 2300 before him. His eyes trailed along the ranked geniuses, letting them know he didn’t put any of them in his eyes.

And then, the weapon’s hell arrays unleashed.

It was nothing short of an annihilation.

2300 attacks were pierced through and shredded to nothing. Brilliant silvers and whites spun viciously from thousands of arrays as a spear of unprecedented power landed before each and every contestant, exploding the ground before them with such force that the stadium itself trembled.

2 seconds had passed.

There was only silence in the arena as every present genius could only stare at the spear that landed before them, trembling as their lives flashed before their eyes.

Each and every one fell to their knees, bowing their heads and unwilling to look at Dyon’s figure in the sky.

Dyon didn’t even bother looking at them as his bidding array flashed with his winnings.

Dyon snorted. “Coward, huh?”