{A total of 250 ranked princes will participate in the competition. The winner will be qualified to challenge Princess Eshala Starlight. They could also challenge the princes.}
With a brief introduction, the duels started.
"Hey you."
Varian's first opponent was a sleazy guy holding a broken sword. 35th Prince, nicknamed Wine Sword. During his days of ascent, they mistook him for a weak drunkard with a crappy sword. They learned truth the hard way when his sword split open their guts.
"I don't really like you." The swordsman took a few gulps from his wineskin and licked his lips with a predatory smile.
"What a coincidence?" Varian clapped with bright eyes.
Out of the 250 contestants, this man was in the top 100. If someone didn't deliberately messed up with the matching, he managed to bag an incredibly rare chance.
"Coincidence? The coincidence is you reaching peak rank 1 without any great combat experience."
The wine master slashed his sword.
"Say whatever you want." Varian's eyes glittered with greed. Space-Time shards!
It's illegal for one ranked prince to snatch from another. The gravity of the place shook violently at once before an intense gravity wave enveloped Varian.
His body began to vibrate violently, each and every particle making up his being was on the verge of being split apart due to tremendous gravitational pull.
When victory seemed assured, a crackling sound rang from Varian.
The space distorted at once and his body dissolved. "Wait, no!" The body was just a carefully constructed aura form!
Varian's real body had already—
A heavy force reached the back of his neck. The wine swordsman barely dodged at the last moment by pulling his body away using gravity. But due to the sudden pull, his insides were badly impacted.
The attack missed striking his neck but it didn't miss entirely. If gravity could bend, so could space.
But Varian didn't bend space as it was too slow.
He violently exerted power and split the space wave into two.
The space wave that was about to strike the neck exploded in two directions, crashing in a more violent, explosive way.
The swordsman's shoulder, arm and half of his torso vanished under the space wave. It wasn't a serious injury by itself. However, the tiny space particles powered by divine aura that settled in his body thanks to the attack surely were.
"Arghhh!"
The swordsman gulped down the entirey of his wine and his aura reserves soared up, reaching almost his peak state.
Yet, it was already too late to escape.
Instead of eating up his body by digging in, the space particles embedded themselves into his aura channels.
It was a different move from what space awakeners typically did. And it's something the swordsman didn't really have any idea about.
Concluding that this was a different move, he decided to strike and injure Varian first before forcing out the space particles.
The channeled divine aura manipulated the gravity around Varian, intending to explode everything to create a small but powerful blackhole.
And yet, when he's on the verge of success, the space particles did something incredible.
They teleported him to another stand.
"Argh?"
"Whaat!"
Two unlucky contestants were directly incapacitated.
The 7th Prince frowned. There were restrictions in place created by a strict formation. Heck, there were restrictions over the entire avenue not allowing anyone to leave or enter recklessly.
It wasn't for enemies, of course. It's if things really went south and Eshala tried to escape.
The formations were created to trap her in.
They wouldn't work if she's as strong as them. But if she's really weakened, these formations would play a critical role.
'He noticed their loopholes while in a match, used them to teleport away his opponent?'
The 7th Prince rubbed his eyebrow, a look of solemnity on his face. Teleporting an enemy who wouldn't cooperate with your space power was a difficult feat in itself, especially when the said enemy was near your power level.
As the strongest space awakener of the empire, Samael was more aware of this than probably everyone else. Yet, Varian did something that should be impossible so casually. Even if he was boosting up the space particles until that moment, it'd be less difficult but near impossible to pull off nonetheless.
What's even chilling was his ability to analyze the formations and exploit their loopholes to his advantage.
'Is Eshala telling me that her blade will break the formations and let her escape if things really go south?'
Samael couldn't help but analyze the hidden intent behind Varian's actions.
The intent really was—
'Ah, that was so cool!'
[Embedding your soul power in space aura so subtly to study the formations is a genius move indeed.]
Varian was just enjoying a good fight, meaning nothing else.
But a scammer would always suspect others to be scammers and a political person would always look at others for their political actions.
The 7th Prince ended up in the same trap.
'He could've defeated the opponent without resorting to these methods. But he did. It's definitely a message from Eshala. A challenge from her blade. What arrogance!'
The ordering of the next match changed with a single message.
"How did you even send me ou—mfff!"
The wine swordsman returned to the stage and was about to launch an attack in rage and confusion.
In response, Varian punched him in the face by covering his fist in dense space power that made it as hard as the reinforced floor material.
A few more punches and kicks later, he was knocked out. "I'll keep these, thanks."
While the help team arrived to take him away, Varian bent down and placed his hand on the opponent's heart.
When everyone thought this crazy bastard was going to initiate a forbidden kill, he just pulled out a few glowing strands.
"That's…!" "One, two, three…,twenty two, twenty three!" Varian nodded in satisfaction to himself. The ranked princes watching the match flinched. It was frowned upon for someone to snatch sliver shards. They were symbol of one's rank and usually were only gifted after one became a ranked prince.
It's fine if Varian took them for that reason. But that had a procedure and a set of rules to follow. After all, the shards he deserved would be determined by the full extent of his strength.
Anyone could see he didn't give his all in this match and hence the number of shards were lower than his true rank.
So what he's doing now wasn't claiming the shards as a newly ranked prince. No, he's just straight up robbing his opponent.
They wanted to object. But the weaker ones didn't want to step forward. The strongers ones wanted to let their fists do the talking.
Moreover, if they defeated Varian a while later, then they would naturally have the justification to take over those looted sliver shards. All the blame would fall on Varian. And all the sliver shards would fall into their pocket.
It's a win-win.
As such, Varian was allowed to get away with his behavior.
Some expected the 7th Prince or 2nd Prince should've intervened.
The 2nd Prince was simulating the upcoming battle with Eshala in head and had no interest in paying attention.
The 7th Prince, on the other hand, thought this move by Varian as a political challenge by Eshala and decided to answer it properly.
Moreover, he might've stopped it if at least some people stood up against it. But no one bothered. Why should he?
Anyway, this blade of hers was going to be broken soon.
{The next match…}