- What the fuck is going on in Ulverra? @Patlinger(Verified, R2)

  - There is no way I’m hearing this right. A realm two, a freaking realm 2, caused a localized red alert, and they got away?! IN ULVERRA?!?!?!?:!!?!?K!lksdjlkjrLKAW @Mackingley (Verified, R8)

  - Enforcers MIA? Hello?? Leaflegend60 (Realmer)

  “Is the old man going to be okay?”

  Gamielle materialized, floating next to him in her usual, showy position. They were deep in the Leafstalkers’ forest now. Ryan jogged and hopped over roots to make good pace, hoping it’d keep any pursuers firmly behind.

  “Yup, you might’ve hit him a bit too hard, but I don’t think there’s any serious internal bleeding.”

  Ryan had hit the old man in the solar plexus to make him stop coming after him. What felt like a light tap was strong enough to immobilize the old man until Ryan ran out of sight. Honestly, he couldn’t believe the veteran. He was pretty sure Jecharim just wanted to follow him just so he could drag him down.

  That was the last time he’d ever try kidnapping a veteran. Ryan turned to Gamielle.

  “You’ll watch over him, right? In case there's any monsters?

  “A favor for a favor, Ryan.”

  Gamielle put out a palm. She still wanted his guns. The [Rogue], being asked for his weapons, scoffed at her then just kept jogging ahead.

  “Forget it. If he gets eaten, that’s on you, not me.”

  The [Mage] floated next to him, tilting her head, curious.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever met a newbie adventurer develop so much cheek so quickly. This has got to be a record.”

  As a response, he just ignored her and continued to run ahead. Gamielle wrinkled her nose and floated in front of him, and Ryan ran right through her and scoffed. She then kept a constant pace in front of him, blocking his vision entirely with her very curvaceous, very fake figure.

  Now that was cheating. He stopped and looked at the silly [Mage]. She had less humor than before. Clearly disliking being ignored.

  “Drop the guns.”

  “Why do you keep pretending to be Gamielle, Witch Tyrant?”

  Instead of accepting her request he went in for a blind accusation. It was something he’d been thinking over. He knew [Witches] could form covens and empower themselves. But could someone really just borrow a Legendary skill like that?

  Gamielle didn’t even seem phased by his suspicion.

  “Only half right, drop the gun.”

  “What do you mean, half right?”

  “I’ll tell you if you drop them right now.”

  Ryan thought for a second, then dropped his pistol to the ground… Then immediately picked it back up.

  “There, now you have to tell me.”

  Gamielle straightened from her lying position and put her hands on her hips.

  “That is the most childish thing I’ve seen, and I’ve had to pick up after the Passive Tyrant.”

  She pondered in thought, then shrugged.

  “But fine, a promise is a promise, the truth is I’m mph-mphh.”

  Gamielle’s lips closed, her mouth literally unable to be opened as she kept trying to talk. All that happened was that she made similar sounds to Jecharim when the old man had been gagged.

  Then a presence descended into the area. It heralded the arrival of the Witch Tyrant as she descended from the skies.

  This time, the grass started to blacken as the trees themselves stopped swaying in the wind. Was all of this an illusion too? Or was she projecting her aura from outside the leveled zone?

  Or was it all the working of her illusory Legend?

  The Witch Tyrant stood before him, next to a gagged Gamielle. The Witch in white robes looked down at him, archly. She seemed larger than she should have been.

  "You wished for a discussion. Drop your firearms, and you shall have it.”

  The [Rebellious Rogue] paused. She was definitely using her aura to try to throw him off. He crossed his arms.

  “No, you said we’d have a discussion if I managed to escape Ulverra. I did that, now are you going to go back on your word?”

  Gamielle’s eyes widened in surprise as she looked at her mother and started laughing, still with her mouth shut.

  “mmhmmm hmhmhmmm”

  The Witch Tyrant pressed her lips slightly then smiled at him.

  His [Dangersense] exploded.

  Goosebumps rippled across his skin as the hair on his neck rose. His brain screaming in all directions as his own skin started to pale.

  For a moment he thought she was going to kill him.

  Ryan pushed that thought away and stood strong against the aura. Logically, she wouldn’t kill him, not like this.

  The Witch nodded.

  “You have my attention little [Rogue], three mental threads instead of one, more than most will ever get. Name the price for the firearms.”

  Ryan met the Witch Tyrant’s eyes, refusing to back down.

  “Answer the question about the Manager and make me a promise.”

  “Name the promise.”

  He took a breath. He’d been thinking about this, it was what had driven him to take an old man hostage. There needed to be a line in the sand, one that he could believe.

  “You won’t harm or threaten my family or friends or anyone else I’m close with on Earth. Promise that to me with the spirit of the agreement, and not the wording of the agreement. Your word on it.”

  Ryan wasn’t going to make a stupidly long worded promise with the Witch Tyrant. Ryan knew he was outmatched in wits. But an argument like this? There was no way to interpret this in any other fashion.

  The next time he met with the Manager, it was going to be done in the same way.

  The Witch Tyrant’s expression gave nothing away. Her head tilted a little.

  “So, this was what you wanted, more than money or even the Manager’s motives. This was your true goal.”

  Then the Witch Tyrant leaned in, looming over him. The whole forest went silent. The Witch Tyrant’s presence became larger and larger—until she encompassed the entire world.

  “It’s good to know what you truly value. What if I just took your parents hostage instead? Poor old Robert and Linda Robinson? What would you do then?”

  He went cold. Ryan uncrossed his arms as he gave the deadest stare at the Witch. He had expected this.

  And I am still fucking pissed.

  “Mutually assured destruction.”

  The Witch Tyrant simply tilted her head the other way, her pointy hat moving slightly.

  “You don’t make the agreement, and I will post everything I’ve learned, step by step, online.”

  The beautiful, impassive elven features gave way to disappointment. She shook her head. Even her white hat seemed to radiate disappointment somehow.

  Ryan bared his teeth. His cold fury encompassing his entire being as his Epic activated on its own.

  [Aura of Unrelenting Intimidation]

  “Then I will never take another step into The Realm. The moment you hex or touch a single hair on my family or my friends. I will stop. I will simply walk into a Trial and never walk out. My word on it.”

  “Ah.”

  The Witch drew back, and no longer pressed her aura down on him. No longer was she disappointed. She smiled faintly, satisfied that she wasn’t talking to a complete idiot.

  The Witch Tyrant cared little about getting exposed. She did not care about throwing the son of two dragonslayers into a deathmatch. She didn’t care about the mess he’d made in the Archmage Tyrant’s city.

  The one thing she did care about?

  If the little pawn from the Manager stopped trying because of her own actions.

  If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  His defeat of Zedart, his success in the Trials, his Epic skill and his daring escape from Ulverra.

  All bargaining chips to increase his own value, making it more likely that he was the valuable last piece that the Manager had hinted at.

  All of it would go down the drain if he stopped right now. That was the only piece he could play, and he had to have conviction. He had meant every word, and the Witch knew it too.

  His unwavering aura stood firm amidst her aura of rot.

  The Witch Tyrant nodded.

  “As long as you continue to perform, then you will have no issues with me targeting you or your loved ones. To the spirit of the agreement. My word on it.”

  Gamielle burst out of her magical gag.

  “You idiot! Mom wouldn’t do that! She doesn’t attack civilians like that. Idiot! Idiot!”

  Ryan looked at Gamielle. Whether this was a prank or to make a point that the Witch Tyrant had won the deal… no that didn’t make sense. Gamielle really was her daughter, who else could be so blind to their mother’s actions?

  “Then what do you call Zedart and me if not civilians? Compared to your mother, everyone’s a civilian.”

  Gamielle stopped calling him an idiot, then looked at the ground, then at her mother, and didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to. The hesitation said it all.

  Ryan threw his gun into the woods. It disappeared in midair. The Witch’s illusion, no doubt. It was probably still on the ground somewhere, he could probably follow the trajectory and pick it up from the ground. Not that he would.

  A deal was a deal after all.

  The Witch Tyrant stared down at him, her eyes bore into his little trick. Unamused.

  Ryan sheepishly shrugged and took out Jecharim’s revolver strapped to his back. He threw that one away too.

  A deal was a deal after all.

  The Witch didn’t say anything. Like it was beneath her to chastise him for it. She stepped back and summoned a chair and a small circular table. The Witch sat and Ryan took a seat on a nearby root. A cup of tea illusioned up in front of her.

  She took a sip of the tea.

  “Now then, shall we discuss what the Manager truly wants? I do warn that knowing this secret will give you no advantage. People have broken under the weight of what I’m about to impart. We normally wait for dragonslayers who have proven themselves worthy. Knowing all that, do you still wish to know?”

  “Sure, hit me.”

  The Witch Tyrant’s upper lip curled at that. She found it distasteful that he was being so casual while she was trying to be so dramatic. She raised an index finger from the hand that held the tea.

  “The Manager wants one thing and one thing only. It wants the completion of the Trial System.”

  “What? That’s it?”

  She let him fester in his confusion for a moment, then two. Then took satisfaction as his eyes went wide at the implication.

  “Did you think that we Tyrants were capable of completing the Trial System? That we would go to that vaunted promise and make the Trial System available to all?”

  That was always the promise. The Trial System promised everything and anything.

  If you could complete it.

  The Tyrants had promised to complete the Trial System in its entirety and promised that they would choose that as their reward.

  The idea that they couldn’t complete the Trials?

  That hadn’t even been up for debate.

  If the Tyrants couldn’t complete the Trials, who could?

  “Mezhar isn’t the final piece.” Ryan muttered.

  The Witch nodded.

  “Indeed. We believed we were infinitely closer with his Legend, but the lack of messages in the last few years had become... concerning.”

  Ryan’s mind was racing ahead, the implications of a failure to complete the Trial System. What did it even mean? His mind went back to his last encounter with the Manager, something it had said that didn’t seem relevant until now.

  “Wait, hold on. Has the Manager never completed the Trial System?”

  The Witch lowered the cup of tea. Her eyes seemed to pierce right through his hood. Naturally, a minor [Shadowed] enchantment couldn’t do anything to block her gaze.

  “Now that is an interesting question, and how, pray tell, would you have known to ask that?”

  “How many iterations have there been?”

  The Witch Tyrant lowered the tea onto the table entirely. If he’d known that knowing this was so important to her, he would have used it as a bargaining chip.

  “So, the Manager has told you that too? Hm, you should have mentioned that sooner. There’s been hundreds of iterations. Perhaps thousands, and not a single one has completed the Trial System.”

  “That’s…”

  Ryan didn’t even know how to respond to that. Hundreds of worlds and all of them had failed? Surely, each world had its own Tyrants and Mezhars.

  And not a single one had succeeded?

  There was a feature in the System that he’d been ignoring. Just because it just hadn’t crossed his mind. It just didn't seem that important. Until now.

  The Thirteenth Trial was currently the Highest Trial available in The Realm. Unlike the lower Trials, the Highest Trial would only have one entrance, and would always be scaled to ten people. The Tyrants had never let anyone else attempt the Highest Trial before. They fiercely defended the entrance and slaughtered anyone who dared to contest it. A lot of people believed that they were hoarding special rewards for themselves.

  Forty two days were left.

  Ever since the completion of the Tenth Realm, they had always waited until the timer reached the last seven days.

  Their justification had been to give The Realm the greatest amount of time to prepare for the Realm expansion.

  Now, it sounded like both theories were wrong. The Tyrants just wanted to maximize the time to raise stronger adventurers to their level.

  “You aren’t expecting me to become a dragonslayer in forty-two days, right?”

  The Witch laughed lightly. “No, we aren’t worried about the thirteenth Trial.”

  “It’s the Fifteenth Trial, isn’t it?”

  The Witch Tyrant took a sip of her tea but didn’t answer. It made sense, every fifth Trial was where the true bosses lay. The Kings and Queens of the Fifth Trial, a dragon in the tenth… the fifteenth. There were too many theories about what it could be. Unfortunately, the Witch Tyrant either didn’t know herself or she wasn’t planning on giving him an answer.

  He asked a different question instead.

  “What happens when the timer reaches zero?”

  The Witch Tyrant took another sip of her tea. She was enjoying Ryan’s look of mortal understanding. His heart pulsed, waiting for her answer.

  “The Trial System will go away.”

  This time, Ryan couldn’t help himself.

  “That’s it?”

  She sighed. Then, raised another finger. Oh, that was strike two. Oh shit.

  “That. Is. Everything. No more System portals, no more classes and Trial skills and no more connection with Earth. Trialists will be stuck with whatever learned skills they have, and they must survive in whatever world they end up in when the timer reaches zero.”

  That… still didn’t sound too bad. While it would suck not to have access to The Realm, he could still see himself relaxing on Earth with all his adventuring wealth. Meanwhile, Realmers could finally stop having to worry about Earth trying to invade again.

  It sounded like a peaceful solution?

  The Witch Tyrant sneered at him

  “If you are thinking that there won’t be an issue, then you are a fool.”

  The Tyrant wrinkled her nose slightly, but didn’t raise another finger. Ryan took a breath, too curious to be arrogant.

  “Apologies, but I’m not following.”

  The Witch sighed. She produced a small, ornate vial with viscous red liquid. The bright red sludge sparkled with what looked like little orbs of purple light. Ryan sucked in a breath at the most expensive consumable he’d witnessed, illusion or not.

  Over two hundred million a pop.

  A regeneration potion. It could restore limbs, cure afflictions, scars and return the user to peak physical health. Yes, return to peak physical health.

  It was also known as the potion of youth.

  “Do you know the true reason why Earth stopped escalating their war against us?”

  He nodded.

  “I’ve heard the theory. Some people say that it was because you managed to cut off the flow of regeneration potions to the rich.”

  “Exactly. We cut access, then we negotiated with each oligarch behind closed doors. Until they caved, one by one. That is the truth. You who have grown up in peace do not know how terrible the old really are. They allow this little peace because it suits them. After all, they believe they can enjoy forever. You call us tyrants?”

  The Witch sneered, her voice dripping with venom as the grass turned to dust around them.

  “Would you like to see how quickly that changes when those old bastards realize this is no longer a flowing resource?”

  The Witch Tyrant smashed the vial onto the table. Ryan winced, even though the bottle was an illusion. The liquid ooze spread across the table as if it were pouring from her hand. She lifted the hand, covered in the ooze of immortality, and started dripping some of it into her tea.

  Ryan wanted to deny her argument. Earth had enough nukes to annihilate civilization, Dragonslayers could level cities single handedly. Surely the modern world wouldn’t let old people wage war just for their own selfishness? He wanted to believe that.

  He almost wished he were that na?ve.

  People complained that too many resources on Earth were thrown into supporting adventurers and The Realm. Ryan used to believe that it was just the natural order of things. After all, The Realm had magic, monsters and so much more potential than boring old Earth.

  But how much had that investment actually benefited the people on Earth? Everyone Ryan knew had a quality of life that was worse than even the poorest of Realmers. Magic, potions, even Trialist slots trickled up, not down.

  The Witch nodded in satisfaction, then continued.

  “They won’t tell you they’ll be waging war for regeneration potions. It’ll be the true reason, but not the one you will be conscripted under. It will happen, my word on it. Longevity is too dear for even the most selfless men and women. And these old folks are not selfless men.”

  That sounded like she had no hope for Earth’s future. That wasn’t something he wanted to hear.

  “And the Tyrants leave Earth to destroy itself while you all get to keep rule over The Realm?”

  “No.”

  The Witch Tyrant paused with her teacup raised. She glanced at Gamielle, and the daughter just shook her head at her mother.

  “Too much, too early, Mom.”

  The Witch raised a wicked smile then directed it at Ryan. She flicked two of her fingers.

  A massive projection appeared above them. Filling up his entire view.

  The Realm in its entirety lay before Ryan.

  A massive land on a flat plane that defied the laws of physics. Its surface area estimated to be nearly nine times the size of Earth’s. He had never seen such a detailed map of The Realm before. It was far too large, and proper satellites could not be set up. Not with the gravity, the monsters and the continuous expansion.

  Even if you got all the dragonslayers to work together, making a map like this would take decades, it would cost lives. It should have been impossible.

  Yet he didn’t doubt that he was looking at the most accurate map of The Realm in existence. Impossible landscapes lay before him. Floating islands the size of countries. A never ending thunderstorm, mountains that peaked far above the clouds. There was even a creature visible in the twelfth sector. Something that shouldn’t have been possible considering how zoomed out the map was.

  It might have been the size of California.

  Encasing the magnificent projection of The Realm was a thin fabric. A veil. Purple glitter sparkled across the veil. Similar to the bits of solidified mana in the sky.

  “If you believe that The Realm will be safe while Earth destroys itself then you couldn’t be more wrong. When the Trial System leaves, so too will its protection.”

  The veil lifted from The Realm, and then the realm started vibrating. Each Sector of The Realm, each expansion of land, started shaking and giving off waves that spread into its surroundings. It rippled further and further into space until finally an eye, as large as Ryan’s fist, opened above. Then, more eyes started appearing among the ripples. They opened until the projection was surrounded by different eyes.

  All of them looking right at The Realm.

  First came a golden ship shimmering with runes, then a futuristic warship the size of a continent. More ships arrived, some tore through space while others appeared silently, barely a ripple around them. One thing wasn’t even a ship it was just a blob of black void and far, far too many eyes. It gave him a headache just looking at it.

  More and more weird and fantastical creations and creatures arrived until they blotted out the sky.

  Then they started firing.

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  [Begone Cliff] wielders: Roer121 (x1)