Chapter 557 - Enormous

Back inside the living room, I find only Dennis and Aaron. They are doing some of their training, but that’s not what catches my eye. It’s the two items on the floor that they clearly keep a distance from as if they were worried even the vibrations from walking around might cause something.

A gift from my beautiful sister. Two thermonuclear warheads, each in its own wooden box, each around half my height and probably as wide as my arm.

Glancing at the twins who are carefully watching me, I move toward the box and then kick it.

Immediately, they shudder and jump up.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Nat!” Dennis shouts in a tone I’ve never heard from him before.

So I kick it again, eliciting the same reaction.

A bit of my stress falls from bullying them this way, but I also notice a different part of me, hoping it will explode. Vic said she survived one, right? Could I do it as well? I already thought of a few ways that could allow me to face-tank it, but for now, they remain only theories.

“Don’t worry. Vic said they aren’t designed to be used outside of the missiles that carried them, and it took months for these Hell difficulty soldiers to come up with a way.”

“Yup, didn’t help one bit.” Aaron shakes his head.

I shrug and open the box. “How did Lily and Jean end up?”

“That muscular Baldie? Well, it ended up 1:1. Lily lost the first one but beat the shit out of him in the second one. I think she would win the third one as well, but that little shit Lucien grabbed Baldie out of nowhere, and they left,” Dennis explains.

Aaron nods, “Lily and Jean totally destroyed the sparring area. I think a dozen or two Easy and Normal difficulty guys died from the shockwaves, and they weren’t even close.”

“Did you record it?” I ask.

“Yup!” Dennis confirms. “As you asked before, we bought as many cameras, phones, and memory cards as we could. Sometimes, we even offered some upper-rare or low-epic items to people from Easy who still had some, and I could swear they almost lost their eyes, heh. There was a bit of a problem with Adam trying to do something similar, but Gareth made him stop before Lily got to him.”

“I’m just surprised they still have some.” The box is now open, revealing a compact metallic case. It’s smooth but reinforced with thick plating and a lot of warning labels. I try to lift it up, and I can, but it’s surprisingly heavy. Probably as heavy as Jean? I can use that man as a weight measure, right?

I close the box again.

Aaron breathes out in relief, “We think people from Easy difficulty wanted to keep their phones and cameras, but the further we are into the tutorial, the more they see of it and the abilities of people from Hell and Beyond. It looks like they’re trying to create a good impression and join the stronger groups. At least Channeler said so.”

“It makes sense,” I agree. “Do you need more items to trade in?”

“Not for now. We already have plenty, and Channeler got his ‘harem’ to record everything so he can blackmail our beautiful country when he gets back. Stuff like: ‘You see this shit? Kill me or mess with me, and this crazy guy will make hell out of your life.’” Dennis giggles.

Aaron smirks as well, “I told him to just give it to the media if our country won’t be cooperative, and he said he might ‘leak’ some if there is a need to.”

“Sounds good.”

“Nat?” Dennis’s voice becomes a bit more careful. “Is there even a need to hide our names anymore? People were recording stuff even during the first tournament, and sooner or later, once they get out, I’m sure they’ll be able to match our faces to our names.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if it already happened. But just going by our real names won’t give us anything right now, and using aliases will just increase the chance that people might not know. I think this tournament just keep them hidden so Channeler and others can return and protect our families and friends, and then during the third tournament, just do whatever you want.”

“Sounds reasonable. By the way, do you want to use a warhead during the tournament?”

His trust in me, believing I can find a way to activate it in just a few days when it took the entire group months, warms my cold heart, but I still shake my head.

“Even if I could, I won’t. These babies will go with us back to the 7th floor for examination.” This time, I slam the top of the box with my palm, making both twins jump up once more.

While listening to their immediate curses and complaints, I can’t help but enjoy them very much.

***

The second part of the 1st event will start in 1 hour!

The rules will remain largely unchanged. All five rounds will take place on a single map, each with its own fortress to defend, with every fortress differing from the others.

The event will span 24 hours, divided into 12 hours for preparation and 12 hours for the clash.

Your objective is to either eliminate all participants from the other rounds or accumulate the highest number of points.

The winner will be decided in two possible ways:

1st - Only one group remains standing with no other round member alive.

2nd - The group with the most points after 24 hours have passed.

Note: The round that has its King killed and its throne room captured will be eliminated, and its members will be removed from the event.

To take over your opponent’s throne room, you have to stay inside it for 1 hour. It will also reward you 10,000 points.

All winners of their round’s first tournament will be classified as [King]. Defeating the King rewards 5,000 points. If the winner of the tournament isn't present, the position of [King] will be passed on to the next in line according to the tournament placement.

Points will also be given for defeating your opponents as follows:

Easy difficulty attendee – 1 point

Normal difficulty attendee – 5 points

Hard difficulty attendee – 10 points

Hell difficulty attendee – 20 points

Beyond attendee – 100 points

Just in case, I reread these rules to see if there might be something different and head toward the center of our common area.

Just in time, a notification that the sale of my 1st wave of items has ended rings.

Congratulations, your items have been sold through the tournament shop! You have gained 93,264 shards. Ten percent will be taken by the system.

First, fuck the system and its 10% cut, and fuck the rule that only lets me use materials from the system shop to sell items.

Second, the next wave of items should bring in similar numbers, and after that, I can shorten the auction duration.

There seem to be plenty of people interested in my items, and just from checking, there is no one pumping out as many of them as Tent Creep. Even Miwa is in 5th place currently.

The first one is me, but I’d say it’s thanks to the sheer number of items; the second one is someone called Mateo, and I checked he has only four items in the shop, and each of them is upper epic. The last one was placed there, likely a few minutes ago. Unlike me, his auction duration is set for 1 week.

Curious strategy. I will do something similar with a few better-performing items.

“Noname,” Samuel slides closer and walks by my side, taking me out of my thoughts, “can we talk?”

I glance toward the center where the last meeting is going on, then stop and turn to the former soldier guy.

“If you could be quick about it…” I gesture at him to continue.

“Thanks. I wanted to ask if you could talk to Grumpy. Ever since the start of the tournament, she has been…”

I interrupt him, “I know, I told her to do it.”

Samuel blinks a few times, “You… did?”

I nod, “Yup. If it were up to me, she would be harsher. But hey, you can’t have everything. Plus, it’s good for you as well. If she didn’t do that, it would be me doing it.”

“You do realize we have to work together to beat the other rounds, right?”

“Look,” I wave at him and start walking again, “if Sset were here, she would go about things differently, just like in the 1st tournament. I would scare people, and she would use me to threaten others. But I’m not Sset, as you can see. As the twins would say, your wannabe coalition, other groups, and whoever else are all swinging their dicks around to see whose is bigger, but Samuel, group 4’s dick is fucking enormous.”

I stop walking. “OK, that might sound weird, but you get the gist of it. You probably have some info on me and know me a bit. If not provoked, I just do my stuff, but in this tournament, I’m easy to provoke. It would be different if it were me who was in danger, but this time, it’s someone I care about.”

Samuel sighs, “We got it. Even though your group is tight-lipped, we figured something had to have happened to Sset, and you don’t want to or can’t talk about it.”

“Who knows. Just enjoy your tournament and don’t do anything that could cost us the event, and we’ll all be good.”

“Sure, we can drop this subject here. I also wanted to give you a warning. Some of my people checked on other rounds, and a few have skilled veterans. They even spotted highly modified antimateriel rifles, inscribed and made with altered metals, likely enhanced with skills and special bullets. I suspect those will tear through barriers with ease and move far faster than standard ammo.”

“Got it. Thanks for the info.”

After that, he separates, and I reach group 4, who are slightly to the side together with Brainiac and Lootenant. Both of them are noticeably stronger than before and even seem a bit older, even though not much time has passed. Especially Brainiac, who now doesn't feel that much weaker than Gareth and is likely around Min-Jae’s level.

“Is this the [King] in the flesh?!” Brainiac shouts excitedly and smirks brightly, “How the fuck did you break that barrier? They spent 10 hours on it and had dozens of people powering it!”

Acting like his handler, Lootenant pokes the young man, but Brainiac ignores it. Immediately, I can see why the twins, Min-Jae, and these two spend so much time together.

“Trade secret,” I answer.

“Sure. By the way, you remember that thing about you getting paid for teaching some people from our round, right? I think you asked back then for ten thousand shards to teach 10 people for 1 hour. I think I could find a lot of them willing to pay!”

Is he naive, or what? This world is cruel.

I answer, “That was back then. Now I would ask about…” I pause to calculate the worth of my time for selling and how much more training I could do while giving lessons compared to crafting. Then, I also consider the mental damage I would take from such interactions, and the price jumps by a lot.

“Probably around 10 thousand shards per person per hour.”

“What the fuck! That’s 10 times more! Dennis and Aaron said they’re getting lessons mostly for free.”

“But you aren’t Dennis or Aaron.”

“Fuck. You know what’s crazy? I think I still could find some people.”

That makes me shake my head. Just who the hell would pay that much?

“Did you guys learn any info on the remaining tournament winners?” I turn to Dennis and Aaron.

Dennis nods, “Yup! The 1st round is CarrotCake, obviously. By the way, did you know that even though CarrotCake is the strongest, he’s probably like 5th in rank when it comes to decision-making?”

Aaron giggles, “Even that little shit you call SpacePup has more say in decisions, and CarrotCake doesn’t mind as long as he can fight. It seems like they have some smart people, or at least ones more reasonable than CarrotCake, but that’s not exactly a high bar."

"He and 2nd [King], that redhead in armor with the giant ax, clashed, but he won in the end. She apparently has high strength but also uses something strange. Sometime,s it looks like fire, sometimes like smoke or liquid. It’s blood red and sticky, likely mana-based, and corrodes everything it touches, making it difficult to remove. She also has extremely fancy armor and collects a lot of equipment. Apparently, she was using axes, bows, swords, and daggers. We will try to find out more!"

For a moment, I’m proud of these two. They truly are good at this kind of stuff.

“What about other rounds?”

Dennis looks around and checks on the barrier I made so no one would listen. “Your sister threw her finger into the enemy fortress, captured the throne room, and killed nearly all of their Beyonders and Hell difficulty fighters alone. Meanwhile, the enemy [King] was taken down and killed while attacking her fortress at the same time she attacked theirs. There were rumors about him being tricked or lured into a trap.”

Aaron waves to get my attention, and I turn to him. "It seems like the 3rd round [King], who went went against her round, uses void energy, and it has something to do with disruption. It's apparently much stronger than mana-based disruption and can even interfere with primordial energies."

Yup, another thing I want to learn about is disruption that isn’t mana-based and can affect primordial energies.

Count me in. I want to see that.

***

Next Chapter

***
Patch Notes:

Chapter 556 Updates:

• Adjusted wording regarding thermonuclear warheads. Terms like "lost some" were changed to "lost most of them" to clarify that the submarine group did not carry all 120 warheads with them, and the number they managed to bring through the floor was way lower.

• Revised wording to avoid implying that they used a lot of (maybe dozens) of warheads against the poor poor Colony.

• Nerfed thermonuclear storage. Vic now possesses only 9 warheads instead of 21 and took all of the warheads from the submarine group instead of just "most."