Chapter 389: Addicted to Points

Inspired by Priam’s faction soldiers, the Ironweald Sect’s core disciples tried to apply the same logic of cooperation. Immediately, they felt a colossal leap in their combat power.

On a chaotic battlefield, teamwork was the great game changer. Fighting like scattered grains of sand turned any ten-against-one confrontation into an individual duel, where anything could happen. The number of enemies was much, much greater; so individual duels would slowly make the disciple army disappear.

Now, the Ironweald Sect’s army advanced, shredding through the hordes of Specters. As they learned to synchronize their movements, the core disciples forged a life-and-death trust. They were finally unleashing the true potential that Sages of their caliber were supposed to possess.

After all, they had never lacked talent. Priam had already checked the status of some of them: everyone’s Lineage surpassed the minimum mark of 85, and their average Anima and Wheel of Fate were ridiculously high.

The central sect’s selection system was strict and precise. Anyone below the level of a true genius was discarded. The sect’s great mistake, however, had been overprotection.

Knowing Dandara as well as Priam did, he was certain this wasn’t a directive left by the Sovereign Goddess, but a convenience created over the generations to preserve these "treasures."

The result? They became hothouse flowers, fragile enough to be knocked over by a winter breeze.

At that point in the Celestial Event, those unable to adapt had already turned to dust; the survivors, on the other hand, were molding themselves into true war monsters.

When they had first arrived, they could barely use half of their abilities due to terror. Now, they were drawing out one hundred and twenty percent of their power.

All thanks to cooperation. One protected the other’s rear; one covered their ally’s recovery; another created openings for attacks.

Now, they had complete control of the battlefield. After all, no matter how great someone’s lung capacity was, nobody could survive underwater forever. But if allies took turns sharing the air, the time they could remain underwater became unlimited. In an endless meat grinder with no end in sight, taking turns breathing was the key to survival.

From clumsy rookies to Sages who had mastered combat in just one month. The cruelty of the battlefield offered no middle ground: either you evolved, or you died.

"Looking at them reminds me of our army during the war against the Sorcerers..." Dandara commented beside Priam, watching the disciples’ ferocity.

Priam nodded. "Yeah. Back then, we were refining this method and had time to train everyone calmly, avoiding unnecessary losses. This time, we were forced to push them to their limits in just one month, which cost many lives... But it worked. I’m sure that after this baptism by fire, their understanding of life will be completely different. Only then will they be able to reach the true peak."

The central sect’s disciples fought with renewed fury. Instead of looking exhausted, they seemed more energized with every passing moment.

The more than two thousand members of Priam’s faction acted as the anchor of the battlefield, dictating the pace. As soon as they pushed the Specters back, Dandara ordered them to simply hold the line, giving the core disciples as much time as possible to adapt. They needed to be sharp when the real storm descended.

Without that first month of trial, if they had faced a battle of that level right from the start, they all would have been turned into minced meat. And even now, Priam and Dandara were still doing everything they could to give them room to grow.

After two hours, upon confirming that the line had stabilized, Dandara looked at Priam.

He simply nodded.

That was the signal. The next second, Dandara’s solemn commander demeanor disappeared, and she shot toward the front line like a missile, wearing a manic ear-to-ear grin, hungry for ranking points.

Priam sighed, shaking his head.

Without needing to command the army every second, Dandara’s Final Boss side simply evaporated. In its place appeared a crazed, scatterbrained woman, desperate to have the spotlight.

Priam knew very well that this side of Dandara had emerged because of the insecurity that had been consuming her. Now that they were together, Dandara had started feeling very inferior to Priam’s achievements, perhaps fearing that someone else might take her place beside him one day.

In short, she wanted to prove to him that she deserved to stand by his side, and just how good she was.

There wasn’t much Priam could do about it besides showing her that he was confident in her. Dandara was still a young woman around 30 years old, who had lived a life of study and training and had very little emotional intelligence. He, on the other hand, was her complete opposite.

*BOOOOM!*

Dandara charged forward, attacking with grandiose strikes of the three elements, without using Miasma.

Seeing the vice-leader throw herself into the slaughter, Priam’s other six generals took it as an implicit green light. Their eyes lit up, and they abandoned the rear, leaving the troops on autopilot so they could go have some fun.

Of course, there was a golden rule Priam had imposed for this event: strictly forbidden to use more than 50% of their total strength. Releasing 100% of their true power would only be permitted with Priam’s express authorization.

Even with half their power, the generals began reaping Specters like enthusiastic farmers mowing down tall grass with a brush cutter.

Amid the central sect’s troops, the four prodigies of the Sacred Families were absolutely catatonic, jaws hanging open.

Their eyes followed a single figure in the sky.

Dandara cut through the air while manipulating three daggers: two in her hands and a third floating and orbiting around her like a lethal satellite, which she constantly repositioned.

Each dagger resonated with a different element, and Dandara intertwined them in a perfectly synchronized dance.

Nise — who had devoured every manuscript left behind by the Goddess and was a master of the wind element, specializing in daggers — was by far the most shocked.

When Dandara wielded the wind dagger, seventy percent of her movements were identical to the Goddess’s ancient techniques. However...

Despite the obvious divergence, the efficiency and fluidity with which Dandara executed the attacks made Nise’s ’100% pure’ technique look like a stiffened copy.

It was as if Dandara were a legendary entity from the Sacred Family itself, one who had spent hundreds of thousands of years refining those movements until she created her own perfected version — a variation adapted for real combat that surpassed the original in almost every scenario.

In the notes left behind by the Sovereign Goddess, there was a clear warning: those arts were merely a conceptual foundation for future generations to study. They weren’t perfect. The Goddess herself had deliberately left flaws for her successors to discover and develop their own style.

The other three geniuses of the Sacred Families, although they didn’t master the same style, had also studied the ancient texts and could see in Dandara the absolute pinnacle of that philosophy. She and the three daggers were one and the same.

*BOOOOM!*

An elemental explosion swept away hundreds of Specters across a radius of several kilometers.

"HAHAHAHAHA! IS THAT ALL?! BRING ME MORE!"

Dandara’s unrestrained laughter echoed across the entire battlefield as she shredded creatures as if she were harvesting vegetables from a garden.

From back there, Priam slapped his own forehead. Dandara looked like a completely unhinged psychotic tyrant... but he couldn’t hold back a faint smile.

Deep down, it was actually funny — and strangely cute — seeing his girlfriend’s ’point-addict’ mode kick in.

Three hours passed before Priam turned around and pulled up the inscription array displaying the score rankings.

"Dandara has already reached seventh place. Her pace isn’t bad at all," Priam praised.

Now that she was fighting personally — adding her points to the continuous slaughter caused by her beasts since the beginning — her ranking was climbing at a dizzying speed.

Dandara danced across the battlefield as if she were taking a stroll through a park. However, her efficiency was terrifying.

And she wasn’t the only one. The battlefield in the skies trembled with every charge from the six generals; legions of Specters exploded into mist with every strike, making it seem as though eradicating hordes was nothing more than a game.

...

Two hours later, Dandara’s name climbed to second place.

She was behind only the representative disciple from the Western Region, who came from a sect specialized in inscription arrays. That guy had held the lead from the very beginning, boasting a huge point advantage.

"Lord Priam, look! Someone is climbing way too fast!" Nise suddenly exclaimed, her eyes fixed on the panel.

The name on the scoreboard flashed at a frantic pace. Normally, a single flicker indicated a modest jump in the rankings, but that name kept shining without pause. Within seconds, it jumped from five hundredth place into the top 100 — and even after entering the elite top hundred, it continued devouring positions in a meteoric rise.

Priam stared at the panel indifferently.

Having studied the records of previous Celestial Events in detail, he was very familiar with this dynamic. The eruption was normally divided into two distinct phases. The first consisted solely of waves of lesser creatures with limited power.

The true masters preserved their energy for the second phase, where the real slaughter would begin. However, that high-level Sage had decided to get a head start.

"He must be aiming for the top ahead of time, so he can enter the second phase with a safety margin. It’s an exhausting strategy, but he seems willing to pay the price. As for us, we’ll continue at our own pace," Priam instructed calmly, but his voice carried to the ears of all his allies.

In less than half an hour, the unknown person’s name had claimed second place.

"Damn it! Is he forcing me to go deeper?!" Dandara cursed from high above, fuming with rage upon hearing that her newly acquired second place had been taken, sending her back down to third.

Priam smiled inwardly, amused by her competitive side. He then turned toward Dandara and calmly commented, "Look to the East. They’re sending us offerings."

At the same instant, Dandara’s expression lit up with a radiant smile.

Her reaction was the complete opposite of that of the core disciples, who looked toward the East with pale faces.

On the eastern horizon, above the abyss, the fabric of space subtly distorted. A moment later, a colossal tide of Specters burst forth wildly, charging directly toward their army.

"Those bastards!" Safira growled, clenching her fists in fury.

Priam merely nodded slightly. Those Specters hadn’t appeared there by chance. The dirty games of the other sects had already begun some time ago, but now it was their turn to receive. They were channeling and diverting the hordes toward neighboring territories in an attempt to collapse enemy lines.

However, to Dandara and her Generals, that wasn’t a threat — it was a banquet served on a silver platter.

...

Three days passed.

At the top of the scoreboard, first and second place remained unshakable. Dandara, however, firmly established herself in third place, gradually closing the gap with the second-place holder.

Meanwhile, Priam’s other six Generals had already entered the top 30. Flaris, Shione, and Lumiere led the group, occupying 14th, 16th, and 17th place, respectively.

"Why did that person’s name suddenly darken?" Nise exclaimed, breaking the silence.

The name of the Sage who had shot up to second place began losing its glow, fading until it disappeared completely from the panel.

"It means he died," Priam stated, bluntly stating the obvious.

"But how is that possible? Someone that powerful... dying to these Specters?" Nise could hardly believe it, since even the core disciples were now dealing with the monsters without much risk.

Priam let out a nasal laugh. "And who said the Specters killed him?"

"Wait... you mean..." Nise held her breath, turning her horrified eyes back toward the scoreboard.

A completely new name had just appeared directly in the top 10. Moments earlier, it hadn’t even been among the top hundred.

"Exactly," Priam continued. "Eliminating other participants isn’t prohibited in the Celestial Event, although it isn’t openly encouraged either. In theory, it’s safer to farm points by killing Specters, since all participants are elite Sages protected by armies. However, if you manage to assassinate a competitor, you’ll inherit half of all their points. That rule has always been active."

Priam explained naturally. In past editions, direct and open confrontations between participants were rare, but traps and assassinations from the shadows happened constantly.

Under normal circumstances, the effort and risk of a real battle between Sages wasn’t worth it. However, that logic fell apart if the target was worth a fortune in points.

There had been an event in the past where the first-place contestant accumulated ten times more points than the second. In that scenario, hunting them down — even if it meant waging a bloody and exhausting war — guaranteed the top of the rankings immediately.

That was why, near the end of the second eruption of that historic event, a widespread massacre among the Sages for first place broke out.

Currently, however, the leader didn’t even have twice Dandara’s points. And the gap between them was shrinking, albeit slowly.

For now, a bloodbath on that scale wouldn’t happen organically.

But if the opportunity didn’t arise on its own... Priam would find a way to orchestrate it. He already had the plans mapped out in his mind.

Peace wasn’t an option.

*BUZZ!*

Suddenly, the space around them cracked violently. Terrifying, crushing auras erupted from the void, making the air so dense that it seemed ready to bring the heavens crashing down.

"The real battle begins now." Priam’s expression turned stern as he stared at the space shattering before him.

The second phase of the eruption had finally arrived.