Demonic Po*nstar System

Chapter 657: Forced Rivalry

Kaiden pulled up his competition artifact as they walked.

The holographic display bloomed in front of him, projecting the latest standings into the mountain air. He hadn’t checked since yesterday morning. Time to see where they stood.

[Mountain Range Convergence – Rookie Track Standings (Day 17)]

New Dawn – 97,880 P

Iron Halo – 89,100 P

Ashbound – 87,210 P

Silver Talon – 68,440 P ⬇

Runewoven – 62,390 P ⬆⬆

Black Meridian – 60,520 P ⬇

Ember Line – 53,100 P

Frostwake – 44,890 P ⬇

Riftward – — (Exited Competition)

Dawnfall – — (Exited Competition)

Stonewake – — (Exited Competition)

Verdant Coil – — (Exited Competition)

Hollow Crest – — (Exited Competition)

Night Bastion – — (Exited Competition)

Pale Covenant – — (Exited Competition)

Seven days ago, Runewoven had been dead last at 24,140 points. Tenth out of ten active guilds, trailing the pack by such a wide margin that most analysts had written them off as content creators who’d wandered into the wrong event.

Now they sat at fifth. 62,390 points. They’d nearly tripled their total in a week, leapfrogging Dawnfall, Riftward, Frostwake, Ember Line, and Black Meridian in the process. The double upward arrow next to their name told the story of a team that was no longer climbing. They were surging.

Two of those guilds had dropped out entirely, both mid-tier outfits that had calculated their odds, weighed them against the escalating monster density in the northern zones, and decided that discretion was the better part of not dying.

Kaiden grinned.

The gap to fourth was six thousand points. Reachable in two days at their current pace. Third was twenty-five thousand ahead, which was Ashbound’s number, and looking at it now, after what had just happened in that basin, the gap felt less like a wall and more like a countdown.

New Dawn sat alone at the top. Nearly a hundred thousand points. Still distant. Still dominant.

But the trajectory was right.

He dismissed the display and looked at his girls.

”Let’s just focus on this, alright?”

Five grins answered him.

They moved north toward the next monster cluster, a dense pocket of Ridgehowlers and Stoneclad Matriarchs that had been spotted congregating near a collapsed ravine. Good density. High point value. Exactly what they needed.

Aria raised a moonlit finger. Luna’s hands crackled. Nyx began compressing the space around the cluster’s flanks. Bastet’s feet settled, and the ground responded. Calypso rushed forward with a joyous grin, axe already swinging.

Kaiden entered the fight with Wrath still simmering beneath his skin.

For about three minutes, everything was perfect.

Then a pack of Ridgehowlers on the eastern flank exploded sideways as a massive blade of energy tore through them, scattering the corpses and stealing the kills before Nyx could finish funneling them into the pressure zone.

Kaiden’s grin died.

He looked east.

Ashbound.

Ash stood at the edge of the ravine with his weapon drawn, his three girls spread behind him in combat formation. Their stream was back online. The camera drones hovered. And Ash was farming the same cluster, cutting into the monsters that Kaiden’s group had been pulling, sniping kills that Runewoven had set up.

Not by accident.

By design.

They were here to steal points.

Kaiden’s gaze darkened.

’So that’s how you want to play it.’

He didn’t take the bait.

”Pull back,” he said quietly. ”Leave the cluster.”

Luna’s head snapped toward him. ”What? We had them funneled!”

”And now we don’t. Move.”

The girls disengaged without further protest. It cost them the setup, the positioning, and the kills they’d already softened, but Kaiden’s tone left no room for debate. They pulled out of the ravine and regrouped on the ridge above, watching as Ashbound swept through the remains of the cluster they’d abandoned.

Ash glanced up at them and waved.

Kaiden ignored it.

They relocated half a kilometer north and stopped at the edge of an open plateau with monsters below.

Kaiden waited.

One minute. Two. Five.

Ashbound didn’t follow. They were currently busy fighting the previous cluster of monsters.

”Hmm....” Kaiden murmured.

”They only come when we engage,” Nyx said, reading his thoughts. Her eyes were tracing the geometry of the terrain between the two groups. ”They’re not farming this zone. They’re farming us.”

”Parasites,” Luna spat.

”Strategists,” Bastet corrected, though her tone made it clear she didn’t consider the distinction flattering. ”They let us pull, set up, and commit. Then they rush in for the kills we’ve already half-finished. Lower risk. Stolen points. And if we retaliate, we break Association rules.”

”So we just let them?” Calypso’s grip on her axe tightened. ”That’s not-”

”Let’s test it,” Kaiden said. ”Turn your streams into thirty-minute delays. Replay one of our videos for that duration.”

They moved to a new location and began fighting a cluster of Vein Chargers congregating around a collapsed mine shaft. Different species from the Ridgehowlers. The Chargers were dense-boned quadrupeds that built momentum into devastating rushes.

Good points. Hard fights. Exactly the kind of encounter that rewarded coordination.

The girls spread into formation. Kaiden entered the cluster with Wrath cycling hot.

The fight was clean.

Two minutes in, a voice carried across the plateau.

”Miss me?”

Ash landed at the edge of the cluster with his weapon already swinging, cleaving through a Charger that Nyx had been funneling toward Bastet’s pressure zone. Brittany, Stacy, and Trisha fanned out behind him, picking off other monsters that Kaiden’s group had already softened.

The same play. The exact same play.

Aria’s head turned sharply. ”They cleared the previous cluster already?!”

”No,” Nyx murmured. The amusement she’d been carrying since the Luna-chat meltdown was gone. Her voice was flat. ”Leia, if you will.”

A beat passed, and a voice call came.

It was from Leia.

”Boss Nyx asked me to monitor Ashbound’s stream. Here’s what happened. The moment you began fighting, they abandoned the fight at the ravine without finishing the cluster. They didn’t collect the remaining kills, instead pulling out mid-combat so fast that Stacy nearly took a Ridgehowler claw to the shoulder. They don’t care about the points. They’re following you.”

Silence from the group.

”Their stream title changed, too. It now reads: ”Ashbound vs Sinners – The Mountain Range Rivalry 🔥”

Luna’s expression went from angry to disgusted. ”He’s using us for content.”

”He’s using us for everything,” Nyx said quietly. ”Points, content, relevance. If he can’t beat us in the standings, he’ll attach himself to our momentum and ride it.”

Kaiden finished off a Charger with a Wrath-fueled strike that split the creature down its spine. He didn’t look at Ash. He didn’t acknowledge the stolen kills.

He was thinking.

It was time to conduct some pest control.