B6 Chapter 699: The Proving, pt. 1 (Patreon)

After a brief, yet somehow infinite moment of disorientation, Kaius found himself standing on a scorching bed of pink sand. It was soft and giving in comparison to the solidity of the wood that had been under his feet less than a second before. Who knew how far they’d been transported? 

He drew his blade almost as fast as he had been teleported. Scanning the dunes, he found nothing — but his wariness did not abate easily. For a full minute, all of them watched for signs of movement in the canopy above, ready for an ambush as they sat in their stances.

Only when they had found nothing, and the golden gleam of Ianmus’s Rising Dawn keyseal glinted off the scintillating grains, did Kaius stand a little more easily. He could admit it didn’t seem quite the System’s style to teleport them into a battleground unannounced, but their vigilance was as much habit as it was good practice at this point. I

“Seems we’re safe,” Kaius said, standing straight but keeping his blade in a low-ready position.

“No sign of what we’re supposed to do, though,” Kenva replied.

“Yet,” Ianmus said.

As if the mage was a prescient herald, a cavalcade of notifications thrust themselves upon Kaius, pulled open in front of his eyes without his say in the matter.

**Ding! The first Qualifying Phase of the Proving commences!

Throughout the Shardworld, eligible participants have been teleported to the edge of a tier-appropriate competition zone. These competition zones are few in number, with each being seeded per Standard Population Unit in a given populated region. In [Vaastivar - Central] there are 2 seeded zones, out of a total of 7 for the greater world. 

Due to this wide distribution of competition zones, participants may expect to interact with others from further afield than the locale of their immediate Greater Gate, up to and including participants from foreign regions that lacked the minimum population size and density to be assigned a local competition zone. 

For the next six weeks, the Greater Gates will remain closed, until the first qualifying phase of the Proving has concluded. This will be followed by a further six weeks of open access, then another qualifying round, until enough participants have been selected for the Global Competition to occur.

Standing at the edge of your competition zone, your path lies directly ahead — wherein you will find numerous trials scattered through your competition zone that will test your courage, intellect, might, and wisdom. 

Each trial will award those who complete their challenges a variable number of Quintessence Chips, corresponding to the Metallic Rank of the trial itself. At the end of the qualifying round, each possessed Chip is worth a single point, which may be exchanged for variable rewards when the Global Competition concludes. For those who participate in multiple qualifying phases, your Point Total is not cumulative. Only your single best performance will be taken. For those who are especially daring, Chips of a higher Metallic Rank are worth double for a single rank, triple for two ranks, and so on. For the slovenly, Chips of a lower Rank award no points.

Entrance to trials of a lower Rank is barred.

Trials deeper in the competition zone as a general rule are more difficult, award more Chips, and may be attempted by larger numbers of challengers. Certain trials will require minimum numbers of participants. Multi-participant trials may award Chips to all who complete them, or only to a single victor. Certain trials may place participants in direct competition.

At the end of the six week qualifying phase, any participant who has accumulated more than 50 Chips will have qualified for the Global competition, and will be barred from participating in further qualifying phases.

Qualifying Phases will continue until either 50,000 second-tier Participants, 5,000 third-tier Participants, or 500 fourth-tier Participants have qualified for the Global Competition.

Participants who are not walking the Path will have their Aspects formed if they earn more than 10 Chips in a single Qualifying Phase. If they earn more than 20 Chips, they will receive direct guidance to aid in safely achieving Aspect Ignition. If they earn more than 30, this will include Aspect Embodiment. If they are accepted into the Global Competition in spite of their handicap, they will be guided to achieving a minimum standard of Refinement, where-in they can choose to continue, or begin to form their Reliquary if they have reached the Third Tier. 

For the Chosen Paragons of the world, know this: opportunity waits at the centre of your competition zone, and the way will open in the final week of the Qualifying Phase. It will be a trial unlike any other, but success will double your number of points at the end of the phase. 

For the [Desert of the Blushing Heart], participants of Platinum Rank or below can make pilgrimage to the centre of the jungle to bear witness to the final spasms of the Blushing Heart and bask in its dying magnificence. Mythril and Celestine Participants may enter the Ulvaloo Catacombs from the centre of the inner plateaus to seek the walking bones of Tassivos, Hero of Kashata and Warden Against the End. Adamant and higher Participants, if they exist, may enter the Sea of Wisdom beneath the sands to grapple with the remnant, maddened Will of Ingwa, the Godly Amalgam.

Good luck.

“By the gods,” Kaius whispered as he bowed under the deluge of information.

His mind raced as he soaked in what it told him. Both he and Ianmus had the highest Intelligence, so he had a few moments until his team finished their own.

The implications were staggering, and broad reaching — far beyond just the Proving itself. The sheer bloody minded scale of it all! But did it really matter that Vaastivar made up less than a third of the world's population, when there was so much at stake right now?

Six weeks. That was how much time they had, with gods’ knew how many trials it would take them to reach at least fifty Chips. Each. It wasn’t like they would be able to stop there, either.  That was the gods’ damned bare minimum when the System somehow expected to find fifty-thousand participants in the second tier who could achieve that much. They would shame all of their efforts if they weren’t at the top of that pack with all of their advantages. Still, the number was mind-boggling. A city just a bit smaller than Deadacre, populated entirely of people in the second tier. Not just any, either. The system had called this the Proving for a reason, Kaius was confident it wanted only the elite.

Did that many of them even exist? Vaastivar was immense, with millions upon millions living in its reaches — but classers who reached the second tier were rare. Just how long would this stage of the integration take?

They needed a plan. Worse, they were standing wide out in the open, exposed to anyone who had half the mind to look — and they’d just had half a continent's worth of elite delvers dumped on their doorstep! 

“To the nearest tree, we can take cover in the roots!” Kaius hissed, nodding to a trunk that was only a few hundred longstrides away. “We need to plan, preferably without getting ambushed before we have our feet under us.”

“Shit, you’re right,” Kenva swore as they took off running. “This is going to be a brawl, isn’t it?”

Kaius nodded grimly, kicking up a spray of sand behind them as they wove through the outer roots to reach the base of a jungle-giant. 

The elite of half of bloody Vaastivar had just been dropped into the jungle, and the System itself had warned them that some trials would bring them into conflict. Even amongst the honourable and fair, there were no pushovers at their rank — and there were plenty of blackguards who reached Silver and beyond too. 

How many might spot a team unawares, totally unaffiliated with any power from their region, and might seek to knock off a bit of the competition when they could?

Snaking walls of tree roots enveloped them, growing higher until they soared well overhead at the base of the trunk. They stopped, silent for a moment as each of them glanced back to the notification they had received. When Kaius blinked his closed again, it was clear that his friends’ minds were racing. 

A burning urge to move roared through his heart, but he knew listening to the impulse would be folly. As much as he wanted to rush out there and get started immediately, they had six weeks — a little thought and care now could well save them heartache later.

When Kenva’s eyes snapped up to the branches of a distant jungle-giant, Kaius stiffened and raised his blade. If she’d seen a threat, he was ready for it.

“There,” she hissed, pointing.

A team ran along one of the massive branches that laced the canopy like city roads. Dark skinned, each of them was dressed in loose, tawny robes of linen, decorated with strips of brightly coloured, knotted twine. He didn’t recognise them, and their dress was strange — but the group were heading away from their position, and when the archer at their rear spotted them, they only sped up as they pushed deeper into the jungle.

“Well, that all but confirms that we’re going to be running into far more people then we are used to. Why are they dressed like that?”

Ianmus frowned, tracking the distant figures. They were close enough that the man could see them with his honed senses, if not with Kaius’s crystal clarity. A moment later, Ianmus’s eyebrows shot up in surprise.

“Those are the robes of the people of the Sandveil Mountains and Liragana Desert wear — that’s on the other side of the continent!”

Kaius blinked; that was where Arc was from — far to the northeast of Greenseed. If there were only two of these challenge zones on Vaastivar, just where were they placed that the group had been taken here as the closest option? Assuming that it wasn’t random, or the team hadn’t been travelling far from home.

When the distant desert folk ran out of sight, Kaius turned his attention back to more important matters. 

“Planning time!” he said, clapping his hands to get his teams attention. “On the basis of the monster of a notification we just got, it’s obvious that this is important. We knew that — but there was a lot there. Did anything jump out that might materially change our approach for this next six weeks?”

Kenva nodded slowly, leaning back against a root behind her. “The number of participants for this global competition, for sure. Fifty-thousand second-tier participants is insane, especially if the System is being stringent in its selection. This could take decades — and it's not something we can hurry along.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Ianmus replied, shaking his head. “It’s well within the realms of possibility. One in a thousand might reach Silver on Vaastivar, not insignificantly more if we include any hidden Dynasties that might exist, and the various high-mana societies. Vaastivar alone has a population of more than two hundred million, maybe even up to four, given how spotty records can be. That, apparently, is less than a third of the populated world. Maybe significantly less, given what the System said about scattered populations that were less than a ‘standard unit’ not being assigned a challenge zone.”

Kaius just stared. That had to be, what, half a million second tiers? Double that? That was…immense. He struggled to wrap his head around it, so much so that he forced himself to set it aside. 

“Even with that kind of pool to draw on, it could still well take years before the next stage of the competition starts,” Kaius replied. “Who knows how many will seriously attempt it?”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Porkchop said with a hungry growl. “If these Chips can be exchanged for rewards, and the System is offering straightforward access to the Path, the masses will come flocking. It all depends on how tough it is to win enough Trials. Besides, five thousand third tiers is much more forgiving, five hundred fourth-tiers even more so. I doubt it will take that long.”

While they talked, Kenva watched on silently, her face growing somber. Kaius shot her a curious look.

She sighed. “Obviously, we intend to win, or at least go as far as we can. Even if we weren’t fighting for the world, none of us are the type to back down from a challenge — let alone one with rewards.”

Kaius just tilted his head at her curiously. Where was she going with this?

“But this global competition… The competition will be stiff. More importantly and rather obviously, it’s global. From everything we know, the quality of classers in Kaius’s homeland far exceeds here. Kaius has a complete set of Legacy Skills, and from what we know the Unterstern house were only one group amongst peers. I think it's fair to say that when we make it there, we are likely to come into contact with other surviving Risen Houses, if they exist.”

Kaius froze, his heart going cold. That included his family's killers. He’d been so caught up in the immediacy of it all that he hadn’t even considered it. Kaius firmly gripped the hilt of his sword, a long-nurtered coal of spite warming the blood in his veins. 

“Good.”

He didn’t know who they were and it didn’t matter — they would just have to crush all of them.

A/N: I might not be as bad as some xianxia authors at understanding basic facts about orders of magnitude (looking at you IET), but damn big numbers are hard. I flopped between like 4 different variations of world population, rates of reaching silver, and targeted competition numbers. It was difficult to strike a balance between it being a thing of hyperrealism with a large world size (both physically and from a doylist perspective), and...200-400 million people being a lot of people. I seem to have independently discovered the Big PlanetTM problem of this genre. What about gravity you say? ....magic?