After A Billion-Year Torture, I Returned As A Transcendent Player

Chapter 37: World Ending Strike (3/3)

"People of Earth." The human woman inclined her head, and the gesture was almost respectful. "The contest is concluded."

Across the world, in a chamber full of Legendary Hunters who had just lost five straight matches and been saved by a sky torn open, nobody understood what was happening.

The four leaders spoke on.

"We came believing your world’s peak was its thirteen Legendaries," the first man said. "We were mistaken. It appears this world is home to a power we did not detect, and would not have challenged had we known." A pause. "We would like to speak with that power. With respect."

Silence.

The fleet, damaged and reeling, held its position and waited.

"Honored one," the elf woman said, and it was strange to hear that word from that cold mouth, aimed down at a planet. "We do not know your name, or your face, or why you chose to hide your strength among the small. We ask only that you speak with us, so that this may be settled between equals."

She waited.

The whole world waited.

But the honored one was not listening.

On the surface of a pond at a quiet estate, Aidan lay flat on his back on water that held him like a cradle, out cold, chest rising and falling slow.

He had poured a planet’s worth of borrowed despair and a billion years of his own rage into a single attack, and it had emptied him to the floor. He was asleep before the wave finished expanding, and he did not so much as twitch at the four voices calling politely across the sky for a Divine-rank powerhouse who did not exist.

Tom sat beside his head, tail curled around his paws, mismatched eyes half-lidded and unbothered.

"They’re calling for you, you know," the little Vaelith said to the sleeping man, dry as ever. "Very politely. Four of the oldest threads I’ve ever seen, all asking for an audience." He yawned. "You’d hate it. Bowing, titles, negotiations. Endless talking."

Aidan slept on.

"Mm. Thought so." Tom flicked his tail. "I’ll manage it."

The Vaelith closed his eyes, and did the one thing he was made for. He reached out along the tangled weave of the world and gently, thoroughly, tucked his master’s thread back into the dark where nothing could find it, erasing the last faint trail the attack had left pointing home.

To the whole of the Alliance, the world-ending storm would seem to have come from everywhere and nowhere. A Divine-rank shadow with no address.

...

In the flagship, after a long silence with no answer, the four leaders exchanged another look.

"He will not speak," the second man said.

"No," the elf agreed. "He has made himself clear. He acted to stop us, and now he withdraws. He does not wish to be courted, or thanked, or bothered." A thin, respectful almost-smile touched her mouth. "A powerful being who wants to be left alone. I can think of nothing more worth leaving alone."

The human woman nodded slowly and turned back to the waiting planet. ’But that also means there is someone who can, out of nowhere, out of our radar, thwart us and interfere in our missions.’

"People of Earth," she said. "Your world is stronger than our survey knew, and strength is the only currency our custom truly respects. In light of what we have seen, the terms are changed."

"Your world will join the Cloud Whirl Galactic Alliance," she continued. "Not as spoils. Not at the price of your people. You will enter as a minor civilization with standing, your sovereignty intact, your population your own." A pause. "The contest is void. Consider it never fought."

A stunned, disbelieving quiet spread across the planet.

"We will send envoys, in time, to discuss the terms of your integration properly, as neighbors rather than conquerors." The elf’s cold eyes swept the blue world one last time. "And to whatever power watches over this world from the shadows, we offer our respect, and our distance. The Alliance does not trouble those who so clearly could trouble it back."

The four faces inclined their heads, together, to a sleeping man who would never see it.

Then the hologram faded, the ships turned, and the crippled fleet began, slowly, to withdraw to a respectful orbit, no longer conquerors at the door but wary guests keeping their manners.

Earth had won.

Not with six matches.

With one.

...

At the estate, the pond was still. Tom dozed. Solenne, inside, felt the despair lift off the world all at once, the crushing weight in the air was simply gone.

’How is he so strong?’ Solenne wondered, her eyes holding utter amazement and shock. freewebnσvel.cѳm

And Aidan, who had saved eight billion people and slept through the applause, drifted in dreamless dark, spent to the bone, entirely unaware that a galactic civilization had just bowed to his shadow.