Chapter 169: Causing A Stir!
Zephyr floated for a while, letting the rapidly weakening sandstorm currents carry him until his feet finally touched the ground again.
The sandstorm had lost most of its power now. There were still harsh winds, but compared to the monstrous force that was able to lift him off his feet and into the air earlier, this was nothing.
He crouched low in the sand, letting his mana barrier fade bit by bit as he tested the strength of the piercing sands in the air.
It still stung slightly against his skin, but it was already very bearable, so he dispersed the mana barrier, breathing out deeply.
There was still some after-sting in his lungs from the dust he’d inhaled before putting up the barrier when the sandstorm started. The burn had been constant in his throat and lungs, but the last few minutes had been too high tension for him to even think about it.
Now though, he finally could. He spat to the side, clearing his throat as best he could, panting deeply as he cooled down from the high.
"...Fuck," Zephyr muttered, brushing off the thin coat of sand covering his arms. "That creature... what the hell was that?" he recalled how close he had come to getting swallowed... twice...
Host. Based on its size and strength, that creature was likely a natural apex predator of this desert sector. What you just faced was something no champion here should have been able to deal with directly. Aegis supplied its analysis promptly.
Zephyr leaned back on his hands, staring at the dark sky above. He could see the stars faintly again now that the sandstorm was thinning. His breathing steadied, but his heart was still racing.
"If not for the storm," he muttered, "I’d have been swallowed alive..."
Correct. The natural forces amplified your output. Without the sandstorm as a medium, your odds of survival would have been...
Zephyr waved a hand. "Don’t say it." He didn’t want to hear the odds.
Instead, he dragged himself back to his feet and dusted off his pants. The sandstorm had carried him to who-knew how far. He glanced around, trying to make sense of his surroundings, but the dunes looked the same in every direction. Only the stars above offered any difference.
"Aegis. Where am I right now? Which way is west from here?"
Already analyzing, host. I took star readings before the sandstorm hit.
Comparing the current positions...
Recalculating...
Zephyr nodded, using the moment to call up his ranking panel. He expected his rank to have dropped further from where it had been before the sandstorm. Last time he checked, he was at fifty-six thousand plus, and with the amount of killing going on in the various oases, he was sure he’d sunk even lower.
But when the panel lit up, he froze in place.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Rank No: 1
Name: ZeroOne Sovereign
Rep: Planet 7. J–22. 02–0038
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
"What..." His voice cracked slightly. "No way."
He rubbed his eyes and checked again. The result was the same.
Rank No: 1.
His pupils constricted in shock. From fifty-six thousand plus... straight to the very top.
"The fuck did I just kill?"
The Voice of The World hadn’t given a single explanation on how points were calculated, only that survival and progress mattered.
He didn’t even know that this would count towards his ranking. But now that he knew... It still wasn’t normal!
He glanced back toward the distant dunes where the monstrous worm had been fried to ash and molten glass.
"Was something like that even meant to be killed...?" His stomach tightened at the thought.
It is possible the creature was considered a natural force of this world. Your act of eliminating it may have been judged by the Voice of The World as a feat of extreme survival. That alone could justify this ranking. Aegis chipped in a thought.
Zephyr didn’t even respond. He just stood there for a long moment, staring blankly at the empty horizon, thinking of the implications of the kill... and his current ranking.
"Well, shit... at least I have an alias..." he muttered at last, dragging a hand down his face. "This is going to cause problems."
He wasn’t wrong.
Further away, somewhere in the sandstorm-beaten desert, Elara stared at her ranking panel... right at Zephyr’s alias, and her lips curved into a small smile.
It’s him.
She didn’t say it out loud, only keeping the thought to herself.
The elf dragonkin beside her was still panting, trying to dust off the sand that coated his whole body thoroughly.
He had dug into the sand and covered Elara with his body, acting like a shield immediately the storm had hit them.
The magic he had used to shield himself from the piercing sands the sandstorm carried along with it remained a mystery at this point... But the main thing was that they survived...
He glanced at her. "What is it?"
"Nothing," she said quickly, hiding the look in her eyes.
But inside, she was fully certain. The guy she was after — Zephyr — and ZeroOne Sovereign were the same person. It made her even more certain of her... ’revelation’, filling her with more zeal to find him...
All across the desert sector, champions were frozen in disbelief as the ranking panel updated in real time. For a brief moment, the slaughter at the various oases slowed, and the rapidly changing rankings stabilized.
Even the most bloodthirsty champions had paused mid-swing to check what was happening as more and more champions became vacant gazed, only to exclaim in surprise a short second after.
ZeroOne Sovereign. Rank 1.
No one knew who he was, where he was, or how he had done it. But the fact remained. From seemingly nowhere, this person had suddenly leapt to the top spot, dethroning Queen of The Dunes, who hadn’t been shaken from her spot from the beginning of the convergence trial.
In most of the oases, keen-sighted champions had noticed that ZeroOne Sovereign was previously a part of the top three at the start of the trial, only to be booted out of sight.
The fact that he had been booted out immediately made the name look new to those that weren’t as observant, or simply didn’t care to remember anything other than the first placed champion’s alias.
But most people did.
ZeroOne Sovereign wasn’t some nobody who got lucky. He had been a contender from the start.
And now he was back again in a way no one could ignore.
Back in the western oasis Zephyr had left, Moonlight Sage had paused in his rampage to check the current rankings.
He, along with Braddox and other higher ranking champions of their faction had been battling over territory with an opposing faction non-stop since the end of the grace period.
The sands of the oasis were already colored red with the blood of thousands, giving it a grim visage.
The bloodshed had only been calmed slightly when a powerful sandstorm that came out of nowhere threatened to overtake the whole oasis, but was held back by what seemed to be an invisible, natural barrier surrounding the oasis.
They had resumed their battles immediately they found that they weren’t under the threat of the powerful storm...
And since then, they hadn’t stopped once...
Until now...
A blade that Moonlight Sage seemed to have gotten from who-knows-where dripped with blood as he tilted his head at the name displayed in his ranking panel. His smile widened slowly, eyes glinting with intrigue.
"ZeroOne Sovereign..." he whispered like he was savoring the name. "Interesting."
"He’s someone worth paying attention to..." Braddox, standing knee-deep in corpses not far from him, grunted in approval before frowning. "But how did he do it...?"
This was the point that bothered most of the champions, making them pause in their fighting.
ZeroOne Sovereign overtaking Queen of The Dunes was a surprise, yes. But that wasn’t enough to make everyone stop.
It was the fact that he had come from nowhere... not even within the top hundreds or thousands.
Those that were keeping track knew that he had been booted to the tens of thousands last time they checked.
So, just how many people had he killed within a short period of time that made him shoot up to the top.
In fact that was also wrong.
If he had killed a lot of people, his rise would have been gradual, and people would have seen him shooting up the ranks rapidly...
But there had been nothing of the sort.
ZeroOne Sovereign had just appeared abruptly... and not at the No.3 or 2 spot... but No.1!
Even Moonlight Sage and Braddox that had been killing non-stop were still at the No.17 and No.9 positions respectively.
So that meant that there was no way he had gone about it the regular way...
They had all realized that there was another means to shoot up the rankings other than killing other champions...
A faster, better means...
No one in the various oases had done anything new... anything that could warrant such a rise in rank...
So that meant...
Moonlight Sage, Braddox, along with every other notable champion in all the various oases turned their gazes towards the desert.
The opportunity lied in the desert itself...
Meanwhile, Zephyr, or ZeroOne Sovereign as he was known by all the champions in his sector now, was just trudging across the desert as he followed the direction Aegis had given him.
Westward.
Without any idea as to the extent to which he had just shaken up the entire sector.
His heart was still unsettled though. He had opened and closed the ranking panel over a dozen times within the last few minutes, a part of him hoping to see his rank drop down to No.2...
But it was right there, staring at him in the face. No.1
He hissed, rubbing his face in exasperation, "This is gonna be a pain..."