22 Gathering of World Champions

"Hello Mr. Doyle it's nice of you to join us. Please, have a seat while we wait on the other Champions to arrive."

I sat down at the end of the table, a bit further from everyone else. It's not that I'm scared of being next to them, I just can't be comfortable around people I don't know. As I sat down I took this chance to take another more clear look around the room.

The room itself was pure white but it was much more luxurious than the last white room I left. The floor was pure white with marble tiles. It shined brightly from the lights inside of the room, the decor inside of the room reflected back off of it. The walls were a very clean white with portraits of YGGDRASIL's nice view points inside of the game, along with certain portraits of people. There were only nine pictures of these people with one catching my eye, within the picture was a old bearded man, he had long white hair and his eyes were all white without a pupil.

Hearing the idle chatter of the two players further down the table, I looked back down towards the table and realized that there were luxurious tableware decorated along the table for nine individuals. Though it was there for us, I'm sure it's just for aesthetic purposes since players can't eat things in game.

"Hey."

Hm? I looked towards the direction the voice sounded from. It was the smaller build warrior in armor, from the sound of the voice and the body frame I can tell it is a woman.

"Wassup?" I said curiously. The woman scooted her chair a bit closer to where I was situated, though she was still on the opposite side of the table from me.

"You, You're Doyle? Sorry, I heard the Dev say your name.". Although she said sorry it didn't sound like she meant it at all.

"Yeah. I'm Doyle. You are?"

"Oh right! I'm Malice. I've been wondering for a real long time since I've seen you in the leaderboards though, Is Doyle your real name?" she said with her hand on the chin piece of her helmet.

"No.". I replied dryly. Jesus this girl...she's different from what I thought. She looked so composed earlier when I saw her.

"No? So you chose that name yourself? Not gonna lie that's kinda lame, why would you even choose Doyle? There are so many other cooler names out there. For instance my name, Malice." she said with a bit of arrogance.

I'm sure if she could see my face move my eyes would be twitching. What does she mean lame?! The name has a cool meaning behind it, besides at least my name isn't something like "soccermom69". Unlike other people, I chose my name with serious thought behind it, I bet she just went with whatever sounded cool in her head at the time.

"There's nothing lame about it. It's simple, has a special ring to it, and has multiple meanings that fits me." I said irritated.

"Malice quit bothering people. No one cares about what you think is cool or not.". This time it was the guy wearing the pitch-black armor who spoke.

Malice and I looked at him, he had already been on my side of the table. He walked closer towards me and reached out his hand then spoke.

"I'm Simboltitik, nice to meet you Doyle."

"You too." I said as I reached out my hand and shook his.

"Simboltitik, shut up your just saying that because your name sounds dumb too!" the girl said as she held her stomach laughing.

Dammit, this girl! She's lucky we're not out in the open world right now...

"Don't listen to her, she'll shut up sooner or later. Anyway which world did you fight in?"

Ignoring Malice's laughter I replied. "I fought in the Muspelheim World Tournament. You?"

"Muspelheim? Oh if I'm not mistaken, I had heard rumors of Shadow also participating in that tournament. It's honestly annoying because I wanted to fight him, it's the reason I went to the Jotunheim Tournament."

"Oh yeah, I fought shadow." I paused, thinking about me and Shadow's fight then continued. "He has good reaction timing, which makes me believe he practiced fighting in the real world as well."

Simboltitik stared at me for a minute then laughed loudly. "Hahaha! Of course he practices in the real world, how else would a fighter be so good! Where do you live, under a rock?! Hahaha!" He screamed.

What the hell is wrong with these people? I'm surrounded by idiots.

"What? Is it public knowledge or something? It was my first time meeting him, what do you expect?"

"Haha… Sorry, sorry it's just that I would have assumed you would know about it already, but hearing you sound so unsure made it obvious that you really are clueless." Simboltitik paused, then cleared his throat.

"Ahem, yeah he is a fighter in the real world. It's mostly because of his family, he has the benefit of learning how to fight while we are stuck inhaling the toxic air outside. Though I am well off it's because I worked hard to support my family and get there, while he just got handed those things. Everyone knows this, and it irritates me… it's the reason I want to fight him."

Support your family huh? I sat in silence for a couple seconds before I replied to him.

"You should stop complaining over jealousy, at least you have a family." I said before losing interest in this conversation. I could here Malice trying to enter our small conversation but I just ignored her annoying cries.

"Hm? What do you mean?-" said Simboltitik with confusion.

"Hey! Stop ignoring me!-" I got up ignoring Simboltitik, and Malice's non-stop talking and walked toward the quiet Dev at the end of the table who had been just watching without saying anything this whole time.

"May I help you Mr. Doyle?" Said the Dev. For some reason I could sense nervousness inside of his voice, or maybe it was my imagination?

"Yeah. I was just wondering when is the other going to arrive? It's been over 10 minutes already."

As soon as I asked this I could hear Malice behind me talking. "Looks like the others are arriving now. Finally!".

I turned around to see a bunch of portals that looked like doors. Then the dev finally replied.

"Sorry for the wait, the tournaments from each world ended at different times due to the amount of participants in that world. We should be starting now."

What's up with this guy? Why does he seem so nervous? I looked back at the dev as I walked back to my seat however there was no facial features on his face which made it hard to confirm my suspicion. As I sat down the other champions started to walk through the portals.

As they appeared one by one the dev stood up with his hands behind his back professionally and announced out loud for everyone in the room to hear.

"Now that everyone has arrived we can begin. Can everyone have a seat at the table."

I looked around at the players who walked towards their seats and found touch me. Although he wore a different armor I could easily distinguish between him from everyone else because of the insect features of his character. He had some sort of antenna or horns that was inside of his armor helmet.

I also looked for another certain person, Luci★Fer. Honestly, I didn't know if he would make it here, but with his strength now he should have been able to at least put up a fight. That's unlucky. Well, it still doesn't change things, my plans are still going accordingly. After everyone sat down the Dev continued his speech.

"Congratulations to all of you for your victory. There were many contestants, but all of you put in hard work to get here. I know all of you must be confused as to why you were brought here instead of back to the open world and that's because of this...". Saying this the Dev lifted his arm to press some thing on his status menu that only he could see then a notification appeared in front of me.

[ You have received the special title and job class { World Champion }! ]

Hehe... I can't help but feel happy with this reward. I looked around at the others at the table and it's obvious that they all received the same notification as me because they are also looking towards their status menu. Before too much longer the Dev spoke once more.

"This is the special class 'World Champion'. You nine champions are the only players in the game who will own this class, unless a certain circumstance happens. This means that this special class is exclusively only for you nine players present at this table.". After saying this the Dev stopped and looked around, allowing his words to be processed. It didn't take long before a group of players began to lowly celebrate. However, there was one who couldn't hold back their excitement...

"Exclusively for me?! That means I'm special! I have a class only for myself!" said Malice as she hugged herself.

"Dammit, didn't you hear it's for all of us, not just you..." said Simboltitik correcting her while rubbing his head tiredly.

A couple laughs were heard after this, but I wanted to see Touch Me's reactions so I looked in his direction. I thought he would have been celebrating as well but instead, he still hadn't taken his eyes off of his status menu, he was focusing solely on the virtual window in front of him. After a couple more seconds the Dev continued.

"Winning the World Tournament is no small feat, so we had to reward each champion with rewards befitting a champion. With that in mind, we have prepared another reward for all of you, this is also a reward exclusively only for the nine of you. Every one of you will have a chance to put in a blueprint for an item. You will not only be able to give us the design you want, but also you can tell us what abilities it will have, it's lore behind it and more!"

This time everyone celebrated, including Touch Me. The Dev then snapped his fingers and another notification appeared in front of me. This virtual screen was very familiar to me since I had once used this same screen before. It was the window that players used to create items. It the same screen I once used to make my one and only divine item { Ring of Secrets }. However, the difference with this virtual screen was that we didn't have to use materials, and could instead make what our hearts desired without any material inefficiencies.