Re-Awakening: I Ascend with a Legendary class

Chapter 686: Aftermath, The Race Against Time Begins

The announcement came before the dust had fully settled.

It rang through the perception of every soul on the field, and this time it carried no warning, no countdown, no threat. It carried a verdict.

[Congratulations on winning the event and securing the Star Mayhem Mountain.]

[The seal over the Mountain is broken. For the next one month, you may enter the Mountain and scour it for resources. There are mines, hidden groves, and myriad other places containing useful materials. During this time, the Doom Monarch may send his minions to disrupt and kill you.]

[After one month, the Doom Monarch will launch a war on the ocean, sending his armies against the four allied forces with the goal of extermination.]

[All the best in your endeavors.]

The notice faded.

For a moment, the four alliances stood across the Mountain in silence, each one reading the same words, each one arriving at the same conclusion. The defense was over. The reward was won. And the real shape of the event had just revealed itself.

One month. Then the Doom Monarch came for all of them.

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The Suryax-Regalon leadership gathered that night, back on the island, in the war room beneath the central palace where the genuine blueprints sat quietly in Almond’s vault.

Big D had the projection up before anyone sat down. The Mountain, the four alliance positions, the ocean, the mainland. Everything the event had become, laid out in light.

”So,” Aryan began, ”we have a month. Let us be clear about what that month is for.”

”Several things at once,” Rudra said. ”Which is the problem.”

Almond leaned forward. ”Walk through it.”

Aryan counted them off. ”First, the Mountain is open. Mines, groves, resource sites. Every alliance is going to pour people into it, and the good sites will be contested. It is a resource race. Second, we have four genuine Tier-100 blueprints sitting in the vault, undeveloped. A month is enough time to make real progress on them if we commit our best minds. Third, the other three alliances are almost certainly going to dive on the depths now that the defense is over, to acquire their own blueprints before the Doom Monarch’s war begins.”

Lily smiled slightly at that. ”And that is where it gets interesting.”

”Explain,” the Suryax King said. He had come for this meeting too, with two of his senior generals. He intended to be part of every decision now.

”The other forces will dive with everything they have,” Lily said. ”Full commitment. They will fight through the depth monsters, they will reach their blueprint chambers, and they will recover what is inside. And what is inside is a perfect fake. They will spend their strength, take losses, and walk away with a blueprint that will never work. They just will not know it until they start developing it and make some progress.”

”So they waste their power for nothing,” one of the Suryax generals said. ”While we already hold the real ones.”

”Oh?” Marcus blinked and said. ”If we play this right, the gap between us and the others becomes something they cannot close. We could use that. We could eliminate the other allied forces while they are spent and chasing dead ends.”

”We can, but with a little finesse to it,” Almond said.

The room turned to him.

He continued. ”Think about what this event is actually for. The goal is the destruction of the Doom Monarch. That is the win condition for everyone, including us. And there is a real chance we do not manage it if we thin the field too far. Look at what happened to Oblivion-Velkarion. The three other alliances ganged up and destroyed them, and in doing so, the whole field lost an enormous amount of power. People who could have been fighting the Doom Monarch are dead. Potential allies, gone. If we keep cutting the field down, we may win every fight and still lose the war, because there will not be enough strength left on this ocean to bring the Monarch down.”

The Suryax King nodded slowly. ”Then you are saying we need them alive.”

”Some of them,” Almond said.

Rudra picked up the thread. ”There is a distinction worth drawing. Each alliance is two parts. A participating kingdom, like Kezryx or Ronethis, that came into this world from outside, the way we did. And a native kingdom, like Virexion or Thalmyr or Celestara, that belongs to this world and will still be here after the event ends and the participants leave.”

He let that settle.

”The participating kingdoms are our rivals. They are competing for the same prizes we are, and they will leave this world the same way we will. The native kingdoms are different. This is their home. When we are gone, they remain. We have no reason to destroy them, and every reason to keep them intact.”

”So we target the participating kingdoms only,” Maya said, following it. ”Kezryx, Ronethis, the participants. And we leave the native kingdoms standing.”

”More than leave them standing,” the Suryax King said. He had understood where this was going, and there was something careful and hopeful in his voice. ”You could make arrangements with them. The native kingdoms are not your enemies by nature. They were paired with participants by the event. If the participants are removed, the natives are free. A kingdom that owes you its survival, and that has to keep living in this world after you leave, is a kingdom that might become an ally. A lasting one.”

Almond looked at him for a moment, and then he smiled.

”That is exactly it,” he said. ”Suryax is proof of the idea already. You are a native kingdom. We arrived as your participant ally, but we treated you as partners, and look at what you have become. If we can do with the other native kingdoms what we did with you, we walk out of this event having reshaped an entire world in our favor, instead of just having won a contest in it.”

The Suryax King inclined his head, and there was real respect in it.

”This will only be possible,” Rudra said, ”once we are far stronger than the others. Arrangements work when you are negotiating from overwhelming strength. If we try to make deals as equals, the natives have no reason to choose us over the participants they are already bound to. So before any of that, we widen the gap. We make ourselves so far ahead of everyone else on this ocean that the choice is obvious. But...if we saw discord recklessly, the participating kingdom would choose lose-lose.”

Lily nodded. ”That will be a problem. If they come to believe they will lose this event, then they would definitly try to sabotage our win.”

”We use it carefully,” Almond said. ”We open the gap, but we do not let anyone see how wide it is getting. If the participating kingdoms decide early that they have already lost, they stop competing and start sabotaging. A rival who thinks he can still win plays by the rules. A rival who knows he has lost stops caring about the rules and starts looking for ways to drag everyone down with him. We do not want that. Not before the Doom Monarch’s war, when we still need the field strong enough to bring him down.”

”So we stay quiet,” Lily said. ”We look like one rival among four, scrambling for resources like everyone else, while the real work happens where no one can see it.”

”Exactly. The two networks. Development stays hidden. Acquisition stays visible, and looks ordinary.” Almond looked around the room. ”We spend the month widening the gap in secret. When the time comes to make our move, the move is already finished before anyone realizes it started.”

The plan settled over the room, and no one argued with it.

By morning, both networks were moving.