"How harsh…?"

"What's the penalty going to be?"

"Twenty-five points?"

"No, too light, maybe fifty?"

"I think ten makes more sense!"

The speculation piled up quickly as people wrestled with the idea. Losing members wasn't uncommon in dangerous zones; in fact, it was the norm, but enforcing punishment for deaths? That was unprecedented.

And then, answering the crowd's frantic guessing, the screen flickered.

A new line faded into existence beneath the point tiers, written in stark red lettering that stood out on the display:

Death = -10,000

A cold chill slammed through the staging hall.

Dozens of people stiffened.

Hundreds inhaled sharply.

Several outright cursed.

"Ten thousand?!"

"He's insane…"

"That's… that's brutal."

Magnus didn't need to explain it further.

The message was clear.

Crystal clear.

This wasn't a game.

This wasn't entertainment.

This wasn't for glory.

This was a national-strengthening initiative, and if you lost your people, you lost massively.

"The competition begins soon. Prepare accordingly."

And then came the part everyone had been waiting for. The unspoken question that had been forming since the moment Magnus said "competition."

What do the winners receive?

Magnus did not announce it yet.

He let the anticipation build.

He let the awakened lean forward.

He let the country hold its breath.

This, right here, was where the prize would define the stakes. Money alone wouldn't cut it. Not for top guilds. Not for awakened risking their lives against Apex-class monsters above level one hundred.

Four fingers rose. The hall went still. "First," Magnus began, "every surviving member of the winning team will receive personally crafted gear from the Association's top-tier smithing division."

A shockwave of gasps rippled outward. Someone cursed. Someone else almost dropped their weapon. The stunned murmurs that followed were not the excited kind, but the disbelieving, holy-shit-are-we-hearing-this-right kind.

The Association never crafted gear for outsiders. Their armors and weapons were practically myth. Sleek, brutally efficient, and impossibly durable, a cut above the things the open market could dream of. Everyone had assumptions about their rarity, but Magnus confirmed them with a casual bomb thrown into the silence.

"They guarantee a minimum rarity of Epic, with a chance for Legendary."

The reaction was instant.

Even the calmest awakened sat forward as if their souls were being yanked out of them. Epic gear wasn't something you bought easily; often, it could only be attained by venturing into dungeons and looting there. The Epic-rarity gear on the markets tended to be niche in its use, but an armor handcrafted for them individually would be the exact opposite of niche.

Smelted, runewoven, custom-fitted, perfectly balanced. The kind of equipment people would murder for. The kind of equipment wars could be fought over.

Magnus lifted a second finger. "Second. Each surviving member of the winning team will receive one million Chronos. Individually." He made no effort to soften the next part. "Their guild leaders will not have access to these funds."

This time, the hall didn't gasp. It detonated. The awakened competitors went wide-eyed, some visibly trembling, jaws unhinged, their expressions somewhere between shock and raw, ravenous greed. Meanwhile, on the guild balconies, several guild masters stiffened in indignation, outrage, or both.

One million Chronos - equivalent to a hundred million dollars - per person. Not split among the guild. Not taxed. Not siphoned. Directly wired to the awakened themselves, bypassing all established guild structures.

It was blasphemy against the usual order of things. Guild members were obligated to share gains. Guild leaders held financial claim rights through the contracts people had to sign if they wanted to join. But what Magnus just announced made it clear the Association was overriding those clauses entirely - or, to be more accurate, if the guilds wanted to participate, they would have to waive this clause in their contracts.

For the first time in history, awakened would get a monumental prize with zero guild interference.

Magnus raised a third finger. "Third. The winning guild will be granted twenty dungeons of their choice."

This landed like a meteor. Guild leaders who moments ago were bristling now displayed a bright gleam in their eyes. Dungeon rights were the most expensive commodity on Earth after the loyalty of strong awakened people.

Tens of millions of Chronos per dungeon, sometimes hundreds, and even then, the Association released them in tiny, stingy batches. Even the giants, New Dawn, Crimson Dominion, and Radiant Order, rarely held more than a couple of dozen at a time.

But twenty dungeons? Of their choice? That level of control was unheard of. It meant choosing difficulty tiers. Choosing monster types. Choosing ideal farming conditions. It meant leveling storms for months, possibly years. It meant economic dominance from the monster drops. The guild masters looked like they were trying to restrain drool, and some were failing.

Magnus lifted a fourth finger. "Fourth," he said, and the atmosphere in the hall shifted into full predatory attention. They were already sold. Already committed. At this point, whatever came next was just gilding on a golden tower. "The winning guild master will be granted a single favor from New Dawn."

There was a moment of absolute silence.

Then three guild leaders literally fell backward out of their chairs.

One rolled further than dignity should have allowed.

Someone on a balcony choked on their own spit.

A ranking officer from the Silver Reavers dropped his clipboard and whispered, "Holy fuck."

This wasn't a reward. This was a divine blessing.

The hall was shaking with excitement and dread simultaneously.

And then a voice from the crowd cracked through it all.

"W-Will the Shadow Monarch participate?!"

Silence slammed down again. Even the guild masters froze, because the implications were immediate and brutal. New Dawn was here, one of the first guilds to arrive… They weren't just sponsoring the event. They were competitors. Which meant they were the instant favorites to claim the association's prizes while reclaiming their own.

They would not hold back.

Everyone knew what it meant to fight New Dawn.

It meant…

To fight her.

Magnus' stoic expression broke for the first time. His lips curled into the faintest dry chuckle.

He lifted a fifth finger.

"Vespera Ashborn will not participate in the competition."

For one heartbeat, there was stunned silence.

Then the entire hall erupted in explosive cheers, some people screaming with relief like condemned prisoners receiving last-minute pardons. It was a brutal display of one woman's reputation being so overwhelming, so suffocating, so feared that her absence was enough to make hundreds of awakened celebrate like they had survived a lethal invasion from a hostile world.

Magnus let the chaos rise, then settle.

The competition had not even begun, and it was already one of the most important events the awakened world had seen since the apocalypse.

But there was a group, many groups in fact, who weren't excited.

Kaiden's Sinners was one of them.

They were people below level 50, meaning they had no chances of winning.

This competition was for the strongest guilds' top 50 members to partake in.

'Guess it's fine. We'll just farm on our own as we intended to,' Kaiden shrugged.

But then, as if sensing his thoughts, Magnus' voice sounded again.

He was staring right at Kaiden.

"Lastly, this competition will have two tracks, featuring the exact same rules and rewards. One for the veterans…"

He grinned.

"And one for the newbies."

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