The receptionist didn’t seem to know what to do with herself anymore.

If Ri was in the top 100, that would already be hard enough to accept. But her rank? It just didn’t make any sense. And for her to reach that rank after just a single campaign?… It was unprecedented.

Stories of this past campaign had been spreading like wild fire. In fact, the receptionist even knew the name of the young man, or what his name should be – Dyon Sacharro. But, his name wasn’t on the list! Only Ri’s was!

‘There were so many stories about him though… Were they exaggerated?…’

Dyon didn’t seem to mind the receptionist’s scrutiny of him. Only a few people knew what name he campaigned under and only Ri knew what he had done to earn the rank he sat at now.

With a smile, Dyon brought Ri into the elevator, ignoring the stares as the black doors closed and they began moving slowly upward.

Unable to hold in her curiosity, Ri looked up at Dyon with her blue-silver eyes, seemingly questioning him with her gaze.

Dyon grinned. “You want to know what rank you are?”

“I want to know what rank you are.” Ri said seriously. She was well aware that whatever rank she had was due to Dyon siphoning away his deeds to her. She didn’t like that.

No one knew more than Madeleine and Ri how important stamping his name down on the Martial was to Dyon. It was Dyon’s goal to leave the biggest impact in memory of his parents.

Ri didn’t have a goal like that, she only wanted to find her father and mother to complete her family. Something like rank didn’t matter to her. And yet, Dyon had still done what he did.

Dyon wiggled his arm out of Ri’s grasp to wrap his hand around her slim and curved waist. “I’ve changed my perspective on a lot of things,” Dyon said softly.

“Even before this campaign started, I decided to campaign under the name Demon Sage, not to hide myself away, but to repay a man that gave up a lot for me. I owe a lot of people a lot of things, and although I won’t take the demon sage as my master, I still feel the need to repay him by taking up his name. 𝘪𝘦.𝘤𝑜

“Demon Sage wasn’t his original name. It was a title he gave himself in self-mockery. He was a man who wanted to do good but ended up sacrificing almost everyone important to himself to do so.

“I don’t take up the Demon Sage title to follow in his footsteps. It’s as a thank you for the reminder he gives me. A reminder that I’m still trying my best to remember everyday.

“I want to save all those dear to me, but I have to do it the right way. I have to be reflective on the consequences of my actions, and aware that maybe a win for me, isn’t necessarily a win for everyone else.”

Dyon shifted himself to stand in front of Ri as the elevator continued to slowly make itself upward, sliding his hands to rest on her hips.

“However, at the same time, I also don’t want the people who I care for to get lost in the nonsense of it all. The points I siphoned to you is nothing more or less than what you deserve.

“You spent months fighting with no rest. Slaying tens of thousands of basilisks on your own despite your disparity in cultivation. I only gave you the points you didn’t have a tracker to count for you.”

Ri listened silently to Dyon’s words, lost in the passion of his eyes as her small hands rested on his chest.

“Alright,” She said softly. “Then what ranks are we?”

A playful smiled appeared on Dyon features. “My little feu glance is in the top 30.”

Ri blinked.

“Top 30?” Suddenly Ri lightly pounded Dyon’s chest with her small fists. “You liar! You said you didn’t give me any more than what I earned!”

Dyon chuckled. “I really didn’t! I swear!”

What Ri had forgotten was how much the battle with the Phantus clan had swung things for degree of difficulty. Not only were the Scaled Elephants ranked highly in difficult beasts to kill, Ri had played a key part in taking down eleven of them simultaneously.

Then, with barely over a hundred other allies, Ri had survived the onslaught on hundreds of thousands of basilisks. In that span of time, those hundred had cut down the nearly four hundred thousand basilisks to a mere ninety thousand. And, Ri herself? She had been responsible for the death of at least twenty thousand. Because of the focus the army placed on the demon generals, Ri usually had much more freedom to maneuver. But, that wasn’t even the most potent point. With Ri’s void will, dealing with large numbers was vastly easier for than others.

So, when Dyon had come back to save her, those tens of thousands of basilisks he had taken out were all slid under Ri’s name. With the additional boost provided by causing the retreat of the Uidah King God Clan, Ri might have gotten a slight boost, but not large enough for a drastic rank change.

In the end, Dyon had stuck to his word. He really did only give Ri was she earned. However, to avoid having to do this on a later date, he used the configuration of his own tracker, to make on for Ri as well.

Thinking of something, Ri stopped hitting Dyon. “Wait. If I’m top 30, what about you? You know what, forget you, what about Big Sister Madeleine, I don’t care about you anymore you liar.”

Dyon smiled to himself, lightly stroking Ri’s hair and shifting back to her side. “Madeleine is in the top 20. I’m a lucky man.”

Because this was Madeleine’s second campaign, her accumulated merits had gained her a higher rank.

Every year, for every new campaign, some would retire and give up their high spots, allowing the young to slide upwards. Thus resulting in a natural cycle that balanced accumulated merit, and new merit.

Ri rolled her eyes at the grin on Dyon’s face as the elevator came to a steady stop.

The truth was, they didn’t need to talk about Dyon’s ranking… The answer was already clear to them.

Even if you ignored Dyon’s actions afterward, he had been directly responsible for the death of four hundred thousand enemy warriors in a single sweeping action. He had been the main reason the lotus alliance even survived for so to begin with.

But then, there was another even more important point…

Dyon had done something no one in modern history had done… He conquered Epistemic Tower. Alone.

Updated from .𝘤𝘰