Free Web NovelChapter 41: Aurenfall Xl
The royal platform was a different atmosphere entirely.
King Theodric leaned back in his seat with the particular satisfaction of a man watching exactly what he wanted to see unfold exactly as he’d hoped. His eyes tracked Cedric’s drone footage with undisguised pride, the corner of his mouth pulled into something that on a less composed face would have been a full grin.
Beside him Queen Iseult watched with quieter pleasure, her hands folded neatly in her lap.
Cassian stood slightly behind his father’s chair, arms crossed, watching the screen with a small smile.
"He’s not even pushing himself," Cassian said, more to himself than anyone.
"Good," Theodric said simply. "Let them see the gap."
Talia’s footage appeared briefly on one of the secondary screens, wind gathering around her as she dispatched another cluster of beasts cleanly. freewёbn૦νeɭ.com
"Fourth," Iseult noted.
"She’ll climb," Theodric said.
The king looked at the leaderboard. His son at the top by a margin that was only growing. His daughter holding fourth. The other S ranks chasing numbers that Cedric was making look ordinary.
He was satisfied.
...
Several seats away, Arlott sat with his eyes on the main screen.
He’d been there for some time now, quiet, expression giving nothing away in the way it usually didn’t.
Selene Vorn sat beside him.
She’d been quiet too, for a while. Watching the footage. Watching the leaderboard shift. Watching Cedric pull further and further ahead of the field with the kind of ease that made the rest of the top ten look like they were working considerably harder for considerably less.
The silence stretched.
Then she broke it.
"You see it now, don’t you," she said.
Arlott said nothing.
Selene continued anyway.
"Prince Cedric is in a different league entirely. He’s not just ahead of the field, he’s showing the other S ranks that there’s a gap between them and him." She looked at the leaderboard briefly. "Your daughter is doing well. Second place. You should be proud of Lena."
Still nothing from Arlott.
"But your son." She let that sit for a moment. "He’s not even in the top twenty. He’s not in the top fifty." She checked the screen. "He’s not in the top hundred, Arlott."
She said it without cruelty. Just plainly.
"I don’t hate the boy. I’ve never hated him. But this is exactly what I’ve been trying to tell you." Her voice was measured. Reasonable. The tone of someone making a point they felt they’d been making for a long time without being heard. "You have this confidence in him that I genuinely cannot explain. And maybe that’s a father’s right. But look at the screen."
Arlott’s expression hadn’t moved once.
Selene clicked her tongue.
"Fine," she said, and turned back to the screen herself. "Don’t respond. But the numbers don’t lie and—"
"Selene."
She stopped.
Arlott finally looked at her.
His expression was exactly the same as it always was. Calm. Unhurried. Giving nothing away.
"Enough talk," he said simply. "Just shut your mouth and watch."
She stared at him.
Her jaw tightened. She turned back to the screen, spine straight, and said nothing else.
’We’ll see,’ she muttered under her breath.
Meanwhile in his own head, Arlott’s thoughts were considerably less calm.
Leon had told him clearly he was going to participate. And given what Arlott knew about his son, what he’d seen in that hidden room over years of training, there was no version of this where Leon was genuinely sitting at zero because he couldn’t compete.
Which meant something else was happening.
He watched the leaderboard.
Waited.
’What are you doing,’ he thought. ’Leon.’
---
Hosk’s voice cut through mid sentence.
"Wait. Wait wait wait—"
The feed on the main screen shifted.
Cedric’s footage disappeared, replaced by something the drone had caught almost by accident, a blue streak moving through the forest at a speed that made the camera struggle to track it properly. It was there for half a second then three hundred meters away then gone again, leaving a trail of dead monsters and stunned candidates in its wake like a storm had passed through.
"What is THAT," Hosk said.
Vera leaned forward slowly. "Is that... a person?"
The drone chased it desperately, barely keeping up, catching fragments. A cluster of C rank monsters, hundreds of them packed into a dense section of the forest, and the blue comet didn’t slow. It didn’t go around them. It went through them, and by the time the camera caught up every single one of them was on the ground, dead, the whole clearing looking like something had made a decision about it.
Execution. That was the only word for it. It was as if death announced itself.
Then the comet slowed.
Descended.
Still floating, still trailing that azure light, but dropping gradually, and as it did the camera finally caught up properly and the drone zoomed in.
A boy no older than eight.
Snow white hair. Sapphire eyes. Two ice blades in his hands, one in each, both trailing wisps of cold that curled upward and dissolved into the morning air.
Still hovering above the ground by a margin that should not have been possible.
He’d stopped above Lena Silford’s position, looking down at her from the air with an expression that was completely calm.
Then the leaderboard moved.
It didn’t climb gradually. It didn’t tick upward the way everyone else’s had. It shot, ripping through the rankings like the numbers meant nothing.
1,000.
800.
500.
400.
300.
200.
100.
50.
20.
10.
5.
4.
3.
2.
1.
---
RANK 1 — LEONIS SILFORD — 6,240 pts
---
The continent lost its mind.
In town squares people were on their feet before they’d decided to stand. In guild halls every conversation stopped dead. In homes people grabbed the arms of whoever was sitting next to them.
"He was flying."
"Did you see that speed? What was that speed?"
"He wiped out hundreds of C ranks without stopping."
"Doesn’t he have an E rank talent?"
"Has he been hiding this whole time?"
"That’s not hiding that’s a completely different person."
"Someone tell me I’m not seeing things."
Hosk had both hands on his desk.
"LEONIS SILFORD," he shouted into the microphone. "RANK ONE. OVER SIX THOUSAND POINTS. WHERE DID HE COME FROM—"
Vera was gripping her notes so hard the paper was creasing. "I. Have no words. I genuinely have no words right now."
...
In the stands, Yuki was already on her feet.
Both hands raised. Tails moving with zero composure whatsoever.
"YES," she said, loudly, to the significant discomfort of everyone sitting near her.
She didn’t care even slightly.
She’d seen Leon do things that dwarfed this completely, things that would have made this entire continent go silent for a week. But this was different. This was her master, in front of everyone, finally being seen.
Even if only a little.
She watched the screen with bright golden eyes, ears all the way up, grinning.
’A walk in the park,’ she thought. ’And they’re already losing their minds.’
’If only they knew.’
...
Leon descended slowly, the azure light fading as his feet touched the ground a short distance from Lena.
The ice blades dissolved into cold mist at his sides.
He looked at his sister.
She was staring at him.
