Chapter 326: Beast Wave and New Rankings!

Smoothly, Uhtred switched to a condescending tone, putting his plan to action. “Sigh… I marvel at your audacity. To be able to ask — no, demand for a duel after I beat you squarely in a fight already… If it wasn’t for your damned Sponsor, would you even be alive to demand such a thing at all?!”

“Watch your mouth, human!” Elion Silverwood’s aura flared, his eyes turning deadly.

“No! You watch your mouth, elf!” Uhtred shot back, stepping forward menacingly. He didn’t even need to act; the Eternal blood running through his veins spurred him on, almost delighted at finally getting to show his dominance in the face of such a “noble elf.”

“You think this is your right? That you are deserving of a duel with me?” Uhtred scoffed, his eyes cold. “You think I don’t know what this truly is? You think I can’t see you for what you are…?”

Uhtred’s words made the fire in Elion Silverwood’s eyes tremble briefly. He had clearly struck a vital chord.

“A heart demon,” he said, letting out an evil chuckle as he watched Elion’s expression tremble despite his best efforts to hide it. “The reason why you want to fight me so desperately is not because of some… elven pride like you said… No… It’s because you know down to your very bones that if you do not defeat me in battle now, I will forever be a stumbling block on your path of ascension…”

Uhtred stepped forward again, and this time Elion Silverwood couldn’t help but take an involuntary step back.

“You were scarred so badly by your loss that you nearly killed yourself coming after me — all to purge the heart demon rooting itself in your mind…” Uhtred paused, holding Elion Silverwood’s shaky gaze. “…Yet you still dare to stand before me and demand?”

By the side, the Awakened Realm powerhouse — Awakened Otis, as Elion Silverwood had called him — observed the exchange with a strange glint in his eyes. A trace of surprise, pride, and distant longing flickered within them. Looking at the confrontation between the two prideful and powerful youngsters, he seemed to reminisce about a time long past.

That was the first real expression that had crossed his face so far, yet Uhtred didn’t catch it. His gaze was instead focused on Elion Silverwood. He’d gotten the elf where he wanted him now.

Seeing the look of fury, but also resignation in the elf’s eyes, he leaned back and scoffed. He said nothing else, simply returning to his seat to meditate as if nothing significant had happened. He expected Elion Silverwood to understand his meaning:

If you want a duel, then you’re going to have to give me something of immense value in return…

Uhtred didn’t say what this “thing” was, he didn’t need to. There was still enough time for he and Elion to hash that out over the course of the next few days. Not to mention, Uhtred didn’t feel comfortable revealing what he wanted here.

Awakened Otis was a proper Awakened Realm powerhouse, and while he was being amicable — something that still bugged Uhtred till now — he might not remain so if he saw Uhtred demanding that Elion Silverwood show him how his elemental affinities worked, only for Uhtred to miraculously gain those same affinities the next day.

If it were any other Nascent Realm powerhouse, Uhtred wouldn’t mind as much. Even if they became suspicious and decided to openly probe or attack him to find out how he did it, he was confident in his ability to stand his ground or at least escape…

But against an Awakened Realm powerhouse? Uhtred would rather wait till the beast wave was over and settle his matters with Elion Silverwood well away from here, out of Awakened Otis’ sight.

In the meantime, though, he would try to get to know more about the man. Awakened Otis was also one of his targets to gain something from, after all.

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Two days went by and the peak of the beast wave finally passed. It hadn’t ended yet, but the worst of it was gone.

Under the watch of Awakened Otis, Uhtred and Elion Silverwood had been ordered to stay indoors the night before. Even atop the mountain, things hadn’t been safe. The night sky had been painted an even deeper black, choked with swarms of berserk, flying beasts.

Naturally, neither Uhtred nor Elion Silverwood could sit idle as ordered. They joined the fray, reaping the lives of so many beasts that the killing ceased to feel like a fight and became purely mechanical.

It was a good lesson, in a way. It allowed Uhtred to understand how far he could push his core before it could give nothing more. At the same time, his proficiency with his multi- elemental spells, lightning constructs, and other basic spells improved significantly. He had come to a better understanding of how to fight while expending the least amount of essence he possibly could.

The same could be said for Elion Silverwood. The proud elf sat cross-legged in meditation atop a heap of beast corpses that had nearly buried Awakened Otis’ cottage, pondering the gains he had made overnight.

Speaking of Awakened Otis, the man had been a terrifying force during the best wave.

That domain thing…

Uhtred’s eyes narrowed as he looked at the man. He stood at the edge of the mountain, overlooking the sea of beast corpses trailing all the way down.

At the end of the day, that is what separates an Awakened like him from me.

Of course, Awakened Otis was inherently stronger. But his domain — or rather, Pseudo-Domain — was the true gulf between them. While Uhtred and Elion Silverwood had reaped Nascent Realm beast lives by the dozens, the man had slaughtered them by the hundreds, if not thousands, when he was truly going at it.

Somehow, seeing how powerful his Pseudo-Domain is makes me feel like Zara’s not going all out with her own domain, Uhtred thought. Is she trying to downplay her strength or can she not feed her domain enough essence yet?

One had to remember that Zara had a full-on domain, and not a Pseudo-Domain. If a Pseudo-Domain was already so powerful, then how much more a full version?

Uhtred let out a sigh. Shaking his head, he put away those thoughts. It was now one of his priorities to learn how to make a domain, but for the meantime, he focused on checking his gains.

With a thought, he pulled up the Scenario Leaderboard to check his current rank:

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Rank No: 40

Name: Uhtred

Race: Human

Scenario Points: 16,019

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From his previous rank 70, he had jumped thirty steps all the way up to rank 40. Finally, a human had crossed into the top 50.

However, he wasn’t the only human to do so.

From their previous ranks 51, 52 and 58, Perfection, King Alexei and Black Sun Mateo had all shot into the top 50. They now sat at ranks 43, 41 and 49 respectively.

Not only that, but the general trajectory of every human ascender was now headed upward, rapidly.

Antoine Blanc sat at rank 55, Zara right behind him at 56, Diya at 60, White Raven at 62, while Hasan Al Malik and Isolde Castiglione sat at ranks 65 and 66 respectively.

Even the other new arrivals had shot up the ranks — a surge Uhtred could only attribute to the beast wave. Wherever the rest of the human champions were scattered across the Scenario, they had clearly managed to capitalize on the beast wave to an extent.

The same could be seen across the board. Just like Uhtred, the top ascenders on the leaderboard had all gained a lot. Elion Silverwood had even risen from rank 20 all the way into the top 10:

[Scenario Leaderboard]

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Rank No: 1

Name: Ignis The Mighty

Race: Dragonkin

Scenario Points: 114,390

━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Rank No: 2

Name: Drakus The Terrible

Race: Dragonkin

Name: Ryukis Dragonblood

Race: Dragonkin

Scenario Points: 72,800

━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Rank No: 4

Name: Bizzaro

Race: Dragonkin

Scenario Points: 65,000

━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Rank No: 5

Name: Azreal

Race: Dragonkin

Scenario Points: 60,200

━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Rank No: 6

Name: Pyroth

Race: Dragonkin

Scenario Points: 54,300

━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Rank No: 7

Name: Broadus

Race: Dragonkin

Scenario Points: 53,122

━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Rank No: 8

Name: Goroth

Race: Dragonkin

Scenario Points: 47,800

━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Rank No: 9

Name: Duskscale

Race: Dragonkin

Scenario Points: 46,790

━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Rank No: 10

Name: Elion Silverwood

Race: Elf

Scenario Points: 46,190

━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Rank No: 11

Name: Eileen Ra’Elis

Race: Elf

Scenario Points: 45,500

━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Rank No: 12

Name: Drakehorn

Race: Half Dragonkin Half Elf

Scenario Points: 41,700

━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Rank No: 13

Name: Theron

Race: Half Dragonkin Half Elf

Scenario Points: 40,300

━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Rank No: 14

Name: Draven

Race: Dragonkin

Scenario Points: 39,800

━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Rank No: 15

Name: Ignis

Race: Dragonkin

Scenario Points: 38,950

━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Rank No: 16

Name: Lyra Starweaver

Race: Elf

Scenario Points: 38,320

━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Rank No: 17

Name: Balthazar

Race: Dragonkin

Scenario Points: 37,707

━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Rank No: 18

Name: Aerith Moonwhisper

Race: Elf

Scenario Points: 37,205

━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Rank No: 19

Name: Faelar Leafsong

Race: Elf

Scenario Points: 36,400

━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Rank No: 20

Name: Voron

Race: Dragonkin

Scenario Points: 36,005

━━━━━━━━━━━━━

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This Ignis guy just keeps fucking off, Uhtred cursed internally, seeing the points the number one ranker had gained. Suddenly, it made his own insane leap feel less impressive. Seeing it reignited the fire of competition in him even more. He felt an immense urge to get a move on and truly begin competing.

“I guess this is it then?” Uhtred said aloud. He spoke to no one in particular, but both Awakened Otis at the mountain’s edge and Elion Silverwood sitting cross-legged in meditation understood what he meant.

Elion opened his eyes just as Uhtred strode forward, stepping over the heap of beast corpses. He headed toward the mountain’s edge, stopping right behind Awakened Otis.

“Yesterday, you said you didn’t accommodate us for free… that all things come with a price,” Uhtred said. “Well, we’ll be leaving soon. Isn’t it about time you told us what that price is?”