211. Big Board

ᴛʜʀᴇᴇ ᴅᴀʏꜱ ᴜɴᴛɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ᴏᴘᴇɴɪɴɢ ᴏꜰ ᴛʜᴇ ꜰɪʀꜱᴛ ɢᴀᴛᴇ

ᴏʙꜱᴇʀᴠᴀᴛᴏʀʏ

ᴀᴢᴜʀᴇ ꜰʟᴀᴍᴇ ꜰᴀᴄᴛɪᴏɴ

Scout Haelin took a drag of pipe. He sat on a pale hunk of stone just outside the Observatory proper, thinking about what was to come.

Before him lay a barren moonscape. And beyond, the vast darkness of space. The Observatory lay on a moon in the far reaches of Azure Flame territory. There was no life here. No plants nor not even the tiniest of micro-organisms. No auras except him and his assistants.

This was by design. Too many would mess with the finely tuned instruments squared away in the giant steel dome behind him.

The scenes here were bleak and monotonous, for the most part. The only things worth looking at lay above.

He saw them spread out against the sky. The Outer Faction Planets.

First an orb of jagged reds and blacks, a seething bubbling place where great hunks of blackened coal floated atop seas of lava drifts. It housed those disciples who chose the Path of Core Magma. It was also home to another trifling few billion—the descendants of servants of long-gone disciples, built up over Chaos Cycles' worth of time. They had grown to have their own tribes, kingdoms, empires… aeons of history, of culture, forged in that merciless biome.

But they were mere ants to the true lords of that Planet: the Azure Flame Faction disciples, who were nearly revered as deities. They might as well have been compared to the common man.

A quarter of the way across the sky spun another planet. This one was covered in a bleak swirl of gray, flickering with intense yellows and reds, cascading over and over, spiraling toward a churning, frothing center. A supermassive firestorm raging across its surface. That place housed the Outer Faction disciples who took up the Path of the Inferno.

Then, another quarter away, a third massive planet. Mostly barren and blackened, though you could make out great cities striking out over its surface—the homes of certain disciples. The air shimmered and warped across its entire surface. A sign of the enormous temperatures there. It was for those who cultivated the Path of the Heatwave.

There were other smaller more fringe planets, for the more fringe Paths. But those were the biggest, with the most popular Paths. Each was home to hundreds of Outer Faction disciples. Each the cream of the crop in their Integration.

Beyond that, distant now, mere dots, Haelin saw the Inner Faction Planets. So much essence and aura drifted off of them they looked like little stars. But they paled in comparison to the real thing—the celestial body around which the whole Faction orbited.

The Phoenix Star. The greatest font of Fire Law this galactic cluster. It bathed everything in its signature light, made everything slightly red-shifted. All the planets felt its presence. It fed them an immense amount of essence. It spawned legendary treasures all over Azure Flame territory—hotspots of Law that were the envy of any Fire cultivator. Planets of ever-erupting supervolcanoes. Molten lands so rich with Fire Law True Dragons left their eggs there to incubate. Such treasures ran all over this galaxy.

Haelin watched those great heavenly bodies revolve in slow silence.

Haelin sighed. He was nowhere close to any of that—not anymore. And he was glad of it. He was too old, and he chose this life.

He was content in this little Observatory. Though sometimes he liked to sit out here, and ponder the skies, and feel a pang of melancholy.

He stood. Picked up his walking stick, took a deep drag of pipe, coughed, and shuffled his way back in.

The Observatory was an enormous Spirit Steel dome they'd purchased from the Steelheart Conclave. The building itself was an instrument—run over with so many giant glowing runic circles it looked like a site of demon summoning. It cost the Azure Flame Faction a small fortune in essence stones to power it daily.

The insides were even more chaotic. Scrying glasses matting every inch of wall, showing replays—all the essence recordings the scouts could scrape from what little they had access to pre-Superdungeon. Most of it was what weak signals they could draw from essence transmissions—snips of broadcasts coming from the planets themselves.

Lots of flashes of essence, some piddling Law, as their planet's elites—low Foundation fighters, mostly—dueled against Monster hordes. Lots of shouting. Lots of blood and explosions.

There were also a few recordings they got from the Auction, and that was all. It wasn't a lot to work off of, but it was all the scouts had, and they scrutinized every little detail. By now Haelin swore he could recount each one by heart. Just looking at them gave him a headache.

He would be glad when they all cleared up in three days' time—and they finally got access to some real data. The Superdungeon feeds.

One of his aides came up to him, scroll in hand. "I've made notes on the latest batch of recordings, sir."

"Anything interesting?" said Haelin.

"No, sir."

Haelin grunted.

He turned to the one chunk of wall clear of scrying glasses.

Just static pictures here. Hundreds of faces and names lined up one after another. Each with a number next to them: #1, #2, #3, and so on. Each with a 'max bid' assigned beneath. The actual offer they'd make to the candidate would be a mix of treasures. For simplicity's sake the Scouting team recorded its value in essence stones.

This was the Big Board. Every Faction had something like this. They would rank all the picks who showed affinities with their Laws—who started down the paths of their Faction.

At this stage things were still up in the air—all except for the first pick, that was.

Haelin walked up to the first picture. A baffled-looking human male. Their picture caught him in the middle of scratching his head.

#1. Zane Walker of Earth. Max bid: 10,000 peak Sky stones.

Behind him, #2, was Yulgar—a half-giant from Planet Thain, the other Ur-Planet in this Integration. Max bid: 1,300 peak Sky stones. And then Cain Hastings of Earth. On and on.

A circle of pipe smoke puffed over Zane's face, framing him. Haelin considered him with a frown.

Three days to go.

In all his years scouting—not once had he come across a man quite like Zane Walker. That was the consensus across every scouting department he got news of. The other superstar of this Integration was a dark-and-water-affinity catkin from Planet Thain, and he came a distant second.

If this young man turned out to be the real deal…

Haelin sighed.

Best not to get his hopes up. He knew how this ended all too often.

Just then, the front door burst open.

It was the other senior Scout, Scout Zhang. He practically flew over—nearly knocking over an aide as he came, arms flapping wildly.

"The funding package came in," he gasped. "It's been approved—one of the Great Elders insisted on it! If—when—Zane Walker makes it through the Superdungeon, we'll have a king's ransom to throw at him!"

"Hold on," said Haelin. "All of it?"

Zhang nodded. "Every stone."

Haelin stared at him. "Well. I'll be damned."

"Mount Thunderclast's been censured. They're out of the running," said Zhang. He was so eager Haelin thought his mustache might wobble off his face. "Which means we've just got to outbid those bastards at the Conclave—we're this close!"

"That's a big ask," grunted Haelin. "Those bastards are rich as hell. They've got all the precious metal under Heaven—and if he's truly a millennium talent, as he seems…"

"How could he not be? You saw him, you have eyes!"

Zhang spread his arms all the way out as though to portray Zane. "And that footage from the Monster Knight fight… he's the one. He's got to be!"

"We'll see," said Haelin, noncommittal. "The Superdungeon will be the real test. How many would-be geniuses have we seen crushed in that slaughterhouse? And with how badly they'll want to off him…the odds are well against him."

"He'll make it," Zhang insisted.

"We'll see," said Haelin again, turning away. "I'm not getting my hopes up. Neither should you. Recipe for disappointment."

Zhang said something about him being an old fart. Haelin ignored it.

Despite himself, though he would never admit it to Zhang, he felt a smidge of hope. It was impossible not to, thinking about what Zane could become. He clenched his fist. "May Fate smile upon you, Zane Walker," he muttered under his breath.

A pause.

"Say," he said, turning a side-eye on Zhang. "Which Elder pushed that funding through?"

Zane was some prospect. But 10,000 peak Sky stones would be among the biggest offers they'd ever made.

"Don't know," said Zhang, shrugging. "They stayed anonymous. But something about him's caught their eye, clearly."

"Hmm."

***

ꜱᴛᴇᴇʟʜᴇᴀʀᴛ ᴄᴏɴᴄʟᴀᴠᴇ

Light-years away, scouts at the Steelheart Conclave were diligently at work too.

Their Observatory, much like the Azure Flame Faction's, stood on a distant moon. Everything there was cast in monochrome—a consequence of the steely-gray light shining from their home star.

Naturally their Observatory was a good deal more advanced than the Azure Flame Faction's. Their Artificing was the best in the galaxy, and they saved the most advanced runes for themselves. A chunky antenna reached out from the top of the dome, rising so high it seemed to scrape the surface of space. It hovered up signals from dozens of light-years away.

Its insides were nothing like the Azure Flame Faction Observatory's. No haphazard spray of mirrors here. Each scrying glass was cut to the same length, side by side in a perfect grid. A small team of scouts observed each one, making careful notations and real-time updates recorded in a neat stack of scrolls.

Their big board lay behind them. The faces and figures changed almost hourly. The #1 draft pick had stayed the same this whole time, though. The one among billions to whom they had allocated nearly half their total budget. The picture was of a man ramming facefirst into a cliff.

They did not pick out these pictures. Their arrays took a random snapshot—it was simply that this man spent a disproportionate amount of time being whacked in the face.

In big block letters underneath—ZANE WALKER.

The scouts scribbled away diligently, quietly. The Observatory hummed along, a well-functioning machine.

Then came the explosion.

It sent scrolls flying. Made half the machines go screeching, the other half dissolve into fuzziness—the scouts all jerked up wide-eyed. The twenty-ton door burst open.

In walked an old man. Lean but big-boned. You could see by his proud bearing the warrior he'd once been. He still carried himself like a man twice his size. Thick white scars lanced down his body.

"Is it true?" he rasped. "Have you found him?"

It took a moment for the scouts to identify him. Which was natural. He had hardly left his home planet in the Inner Faction in centuries—they only knew him by the statues.

"Grand Elder Barbarian Sage!" they cried. They dropped to deep bows, heads so low they nearly touched the ground. It was incredibly rare that a Grand Elder himself would deign to visit the Observatory. It'd been millennia since the last time this happened.

The Sage snorted. "No need for that. Stand, stand! Tell me—has someone truly taken up my Inheritance at last?"

The head Scout rose, still bowing. "Yes, Elder!"

"Who? Wait—don't tell me."

The Elder perused the wall.

A pause.

Then he jabbed a pointer finger right at Zane's face. "He's the one."

"Yes, Elder!" said the head Scout. "How did you know?"

"Good bones," said the Sage. "Strong bones! Strapping young lad, isn't he? You can tell he's a bull of a man just by looking at him! And of course—the Inheritor of the Titan Rhino would be nothing less than number one."

He nodded, satisfied. "I approve. How does sponsorship work this cycle? I forget. It's been ages."

"We can offer the candidate any item under Sky as soon as they advance to the second floor."

"And what have you chosen for him?"

"A block of peak Earth-grade Imperial-Gold Ore—"

"To hell with that." His eyes lit up. "I've got just the thing."