Chapter 1660: 7th Prince's Deduction

Two arenas were formed.

On one stood twenty-two ranked princes not selected by Varian. Divided into eleven stages, they were fighting it out at full force.

It looked like they received instructions to hasten the process and achieve a result as soon as possible.

As for why such an order was given? To deny Varian a chance to fight the weaklings of the bunch and appear at least a bit strong.

Samael Astreas was a petty prince. He didn't like others questioning him, much less openly defying his words.

He tolerated Varian's actions so far for Eshala. But if he could make him suffer, if only a bit, he'd gladly do so.

'He'll face hell once Eshala is dealt with. Whether Guan takes over or someone else, I'll have to get the key files in her faction.'

Samael wasn't planning to let Eshala go under any cost. Even if he had to sacrifice his entire faction just to kill her, he was ready to do it.

The letter from the anonymous source had a few lines at the end which were the biggest reason Samael came this far.

[Eshala sent an assassin to kill this boy from province which wasn't even recognized back then. It's called Solar System. Yeah, a stupid name. Every star system is a solar system.

Anyway, the predominant race is human, a bunch of weaklings unfit for anything worthy.

The same boy is suspected to be involved in an incident of Eshala's soul fragment.]

When Samael checked the star system, a small piece of news stood out. [Formerly one star system, turned into two star system and back into one star system a thousand years ago.]

It's a line mentioned in the passing with no great importance. But Samael's head nearly burst reading it. A thousand years ago, the God Emperor summoned them regarding the appearance of slivers!

{They appeared in Lumen Empire...in a poor region, inside a double star system...full of bugs.}

Pala was in Lumen. And this new province was in Pala! As for bugs, the humans were so weak they're bugs even for a typical celestial, much less the God Emperor.

And double star system!

Everything clicked together and Samael realized what his innocent sister had been trying to do behind his back.

She's trying to grab the slivers!

And if his guess was not wrong, the Primal Union Bodies that appeared back then were also related to the slivers. There's no other way!

'If she succeeded, she'd get her wish fulfilled. After that, there's nothing I can do to bargain with the God Emperor. Meaning, my family will never get resurrected.

Eshala, your actions would've kept my family dead forever.'

Of course, he knew she didn't intend it that way. And he's fully aware that this was a competition. An open, brutal competition that spanned millions of years.

But that's precisely why he had no hesitation in eliminating her.

And that's why he'd continue to tolerate Varian, as long as Eshala could be dealt with.

Unaware that the 7th Prince was actually looking for him, Varian waved his hand at the ten contestants he picked.

"Aye, aye! No need to line up, we don't do that here. Come at me together."

The ten contestants' faces distorted in humiliation and they glanced at each other.

"I paid a great price for you lot! It's not one on one, come together."

[...] Logos would've liked to comment how weird that sentence sounded but it wisely shut up.

"Hey, do you think I'm here to entertain you one by one?" Varian's hand shook slightly and a near-transparent spear condensed in his palm. With a blur, the spear slammed the floor, cracking it open.

A floor that only a few peak rank 1s could break and this guy was doing it since the start. It finally hit them that they were not dealing with a powerhouse personally hidden by Eshala.

Still, they felt reluctant. Even if they really fought together and won, they wouldn't get any praise for ganging up and winning.

"If you really don't doubt your strength, come up." Varian grinned.

A slimy humanoid took a step forward and tapped the ground with her feet.

A glowing circle built of dense runes popped on the floor and shot at Varian almost without no delay in time.

'A time prison.'

The slime woman, 27th Princess, was notorious for combining her racial talent of soul suction into time prison.

Once anyone fell into her time prison, at an opportune moment, a spirit attack would strike their soul. But instead of damaging it, the attack would simply place a portion of time power on the soul. This creates different time flows for soul, body and surroundings, making the opponent very vulnerable to attacks.

If it was anyone else, they would've dodged such attack.

Varian straight up jumped into the time prison and allowed the glowing pink circle to envelop his body.

The changed time flow in his body made it difficult for him to control the surrounding space to attack the enemy.

But Varian struggled only for a moment before he spun his spear, creating a space ring through its tips and slammed it forward with the handle.

The space ring shot out with great speed. The near-transparent structure split into thousands and thousands thinner structures. The 27th Princess placed herself in a time dome and was ready to skip a forward seconds to escape the attack.

Unfortunately for her, Varian's space rings didn't directly attack. Rather, they broke the space-time fabric in particular locations to particular degrees.

The space-time fabric fluctuated violently for a moment, intervening with her time skip.

Using that window of opportunity, the space rings linked together to form a large chain that coiled around the time dome. Varian clenched his fist.

With a click, the chain crushed inward, breaking the dome. The space rings split from the chain and opened up, turning into small cubes.

Tens of thousands of these cubes fell onto the slime princess, imprisoning her body separately and completely incapacitating her.

With a snap of fingers, glowing strands were extracted out of the princess and fell into Varian's hands.

The whole process ended in two seconds.

Two seconds was a significant time period for divine rankers, one where a battle could be fought.

However, unless there was a great disparity, a fight wouldn't end.

But it did now.

What it represented was obvious to the remaining nine.

They had grim expressions. Even though their pride still resisted them from grouping together, the harsh reality was telling them to do what's necessary.

Varian, on the other hand, laughed out loud. The audience thought it was because of his victory. The 7th Prince attributed it to Varian successfully establishing Eshala's prestige.

The 2nd Prince, however, frowned. There was something off about the whole battle. He couldn't put a finger on it, but his intuition was snapping, whispering that a play was being arranged in front of his eyes.

"Well done, Blade." Eshala's voice rang from high above, pride evident in her haughty tone.

When Varian looked up, she was looking down at him with an intense gaze. 'What's wrong with her?'

Varian felt goosebumps all over his body.

He felt like a prey that's stared at by a predator. 'Maybe my performance was so good she decided to let me join her faction for real.'

It's a possibility he already considered. But it's happening too soon. Even though he won, she shouldn't be impressed just yet.

As the leader of a faction, her words carried too much weight!

"Yes, Blade is the trump card for a reason."

"He's going to kick them all."

"Who the fuck is this guy?"

The loyalists in her faction sighed in relief while the rebels grew scared and desperate. On the other arena, the twenty two people had already fought it out and eleven passed to the next round.

These eleven people didn't seem to care about this match's outcome and proceeded to the next round.

Interestingly, three people didn't need to participate at all. Samus from 7th Prince's camp.

Tegya from 2nd Prince's faction.

And the neutral contestant, the crowd favorite candidate, Guan.

Without these three even mentioning it, the eight people decided to select the strongest among them for having a chance against those three.

'I should also hurry up.' Varian wanted to end his match as soon as possible so he could challenge more. [Shards: 23 (16+7)]

Even though this woman was in the top 50, she only carried 16 shards. That's surely better than a measly 7 shards by a top 100.

But just these many weren't enough. He needed more shards and moreover, more fights were actually helping.

'Status'

[Dragon: 51/100

Titan: 51/100 Phoenix: 51/100 Order: 51/100 Chaos: 51/100 Space: 27/100 (+2)

Time: 27/100 (+2)]

Even though the other paths were stagnant other than the gradual daily increment, the space-time paths were quickly growing. 'A few more fights and I can tell Samael why rose are red.'

Varian walked out of the dissolving time prison and hung the space spear over his shoulder. "If you really want to get beaten up one by one, be my guest."