"Do we go for a steal?" Blood asked. The contestants were allowed to, well, contest dungeons that another team was working on. They would have a formal duel, and the winning team would win the right to the dungeon while the losing team would have to back off. The most points were available for fully stabilizing the dungeon's mana, so even though the losing team would get some points if they had done some runs, it wouldn't be as many as the team that fully finished bleeding the excess mana.

"Not yet. Go next," Beth said with a shake of her head.

Blood didn't bother asking anything further or slowing any more than she had, pulling up and punching the thrusters before turning them for their next destination. Beth was fairly confident, with their power, skills, and experience, that she and Blood could wipe the floor with most teams in the competition, but there wasn't a real reason to take a chance like that this early. Besides, most dungeons were instanced, and they would have to sit around and wait for the team to get done with their current clear before even being able to challenge them, which could be a massive waste of time.

The next dungeon took them just under half-an-hour to get to at full speed, showing how far they would have to go to get to some locations. Thirty minutes of travel time normally wouldn't be all that much, but every minute was going to count in this part of the competition, and such sections of time would add up. The fourth dungeon on their list was, thankfully, clear of any other team, and they were able to land nearby, Beth packing up the ship before they fought their way to the entrance. This dungeon was full of beasts that were like giant, armored tarantulas, something that neither girl was at all thrilled at fighting, but bit down on their disgust and pushed through.

The first run of the dungeon took them six hours, though Beth was thinking some of it might have been their disgust slowing them down. That, and the fact that the dungeon was massive; not that it was full of enemies, just that in terms of space it took up a huge footprint. They spent a decent bit of that six hours just running from place to place, trying to get to the end and kill the final boss. At least the beasts, including the boss, played into Beth's strengths, with her having an easy time defeating slow, heavily armored enemies. Blood was now at a point where she was able to cope with such enemies, and the strategy of Beth breaking open the enemies' defenses and then Blood killing them still worked quite well.

Once they were familiar with the dungeon, however, their speed markedly improved, especially when taking into consideration that the point wasn't killing beasts but cycling the dungeon as much as they could. They were quickly able to get their clear time down to five hours, and even inched it down a bit further from there. It was still nearly a three-day effort for them to clear the place of excess mana, taking all of day five, six, and most of day seven, after which they rested for a few hours in Beth's gate. It was the very beginning of day eight, just after midnight, when they were back in the airship and heading for their fourth dungeon, the fifth on their list.

The dungeon rewards, as had happened in the first part of the competition, would be theirs, and this time they were making out like bandits. An advantage of dungeons overstuffed with mana was plenty of extra power and oomph to make quite good prizes on each clear, and the amount of potions and consumables they were getting was quite high. On top of that, they earned quite a few pieces of level one hundred fifty and two hundred equipment, though they hadn't found a piece with higher than epic rarity at this point. Beth planned to sell everything but a handful of the potions they had gotten so far, as none of the equipment was a very good fit for either of them. She figured it would bring in a few diamond coins, and that was just what they had managed to get their hands on in the first seven days; if they kept that streak up, they could likely earn ten or more diamond coins just from the 'junk' that they sold off.

The whole thirty days went like that, dungeon after dungeon, though they had tried to focus on things at or beyond their level after the rat dungeon. Taking between two and three days per dungeon, they cleared thirteen dungeons of excess mana, doing almost two hundred dungeon runs in thirty days. Their ability to sleep, cook, and relax in Beth's time dilated gate was a huge advantage in getting through so many runs in such a short time, as well as the fact they only needed to focus on killing the boss and cycling the dungeon, rather than going for a full clear.

Beth sorted through her necklace as they waited in the last couple hours of the final morning, sorting through all the junk she'd acquired. She and Blood had each amassed a huge pile of weapons, armor, random gems of various kinds, and potions. So many potions. The competition had started during a morning, and so it was presently a little after dawn on the section of planet where Beth and Blood were, the two of them having made a loop that kept them close to their start by the end. Beth combed her fingers through her hair, her gauntlets in her necklace, though separated from all the junk, catching a whiff of herself and wrinkling her nose. They hadn't exactly been focused on hygiene, and the final push had seen them wade through tens of thousands of beasts without a rest. The two of them were both rather rank, and she wasn't looking forward to even thirty minutes in the shuttle with other contestants at the same level of stink, and that was assuming they were the last pickup for that shuttle.

It was sadly not to be, as they were the very first pickup this time around, and Beth suspected whether that was from their overall high score or because the admins had been watching their progress much more closely during the second half. Either way, that meant they got to sit and wallow in their stink for a couple hours until everyone had been picked up, many of the other contestants in a similarly ripe state from their final pushes, before returning to the starship. Even once back onboard, they were again brought to the main hall to go over their results before they could get any rest, which led to a lot of muttering, and not just from the contestants.

"We understand you are all rather eager to rest and rather…weary, from the second half," the same man spoke once everyone was gathered. "We would like to go over the scores first so there are no questions or, if there are, we can adjudicate them over the next few days rather than have protests once we are back to Helion IV."

At the frustrated but consenting grumbles around the hall, the man continued, "We have monitored everyone's progress over the last few weeks, checking dungeons and clear times, clears, mana normalization, and more. We will display the scoring for the second half of the competition by team, and then the scoring for the combined total results, showing every team's place."

After announcing such, the screen behind and above the man lit up and began listing the teams, starting with place fifty-five and scrolling up from there. The bottom teams weren't really any surprise at this point, as it was a bit of shuffling around of the same teams that had placed at the bottom in the previous round. There was more murmuring and hushed discussion as the names continued to show up, people surprised at how many, or how few, points certain teams had gotten in the second half. The board kept on scrolling, names appearing and points listed next to them, Beth and Blood waiting to see how well they did. By the time they got to place twenty, Beth was pretty sure they were the overall winners while also being surprised that they had done so well in that half. She figured if anything, there would be quite a few teams that were far more experienced and trained than the two of them were in dungeon delving, but that didn't appear to be the case.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

The screen just kept going, and the points scored were getting ever higher, Beth just a bit shocked that it looked like they would be in the top ten. That was where Val's team was, placing a quite respectable sixth and, considering their overall score before that and the shuffle up amongst top teams, they had quite a good shot at the top five places overall. Beth and Blood were already guaranteed the number one spot overall unless there was a team that had done something truly unimaginable, but Beth wasn't seeing it.

It turned out that that unimaginable team was theirs, as they secured spot number one for the whole second half. The top five teams scored twenty-one thousand, twenty-three thousand, twenty-eight thousand, twenty-nine thousand, and forty thousand points, with Beth and Blood scoring the forty thousand points. Their grand total for the two months was now over one hundred thousand points, putting them more than twenty-five thousand points above the team in second place in combined total.

This created quite a bit more furor than their previous placing had, as the results were now set. Beth and Blood had won, and the only way that could be wrong was if the scoring itself was incorrect. A lot of people seemed shocked at the outcome, but it didn't look like anyone was very keen on openly challenging the results. Well, everybody was happy enough with the results except for a young man on the second placed team.

"I cannot accept this!" the short, muscular man challenged. "There is no way an unknown, unskilled team achieved that many points."

"Are you questioning the judging panel?" the man at the podium asked in a slightly foreboding tone.

"I'm questioning how a no-name can possibly beat teams that we've known for years!" he cried. "She handily beat even the representatives of the Young Scions, who were also contending for first."

"I see nothing wrong," Val immediately replied coldly, taking some of the wind out of the man's sails.

He got rolling again in only a moment, shouting, "There has to be an accounting of their skill!"

"I would suggest you be careful of making demands that you cannot back up," the administrator admonished again.

"We have a right to Satisfaction of Doubt," the young man proclaimed. Beth noted his teammates weren't backing him up, but nor were they shying away or denying his allegations.

"What about this?" Beth asked, striding forward and speaking before the administrator could. "If I beat his whole team's asses right here and now, will that expel any doubts?"

"Who are you?" the man exclaimed angrily.

"The person you were just shit-talking," Beth replied with an exaggerated eyeroll.

As was a natural thing everywhere, everyone in the hall had moved to the edges and circled up, ready for an impending battle. The man's team was behind him, two other men and a woman, by their looks, but Beth did notice there was a distinct distance. Still, her challenge seemed to have done enough to firm their support of the leader, or to piss them off, as they didn't leave, but stayed behind him, their hands drifting to their weapons or hanging loosely, ready to teleport a weapon from storage. As they were squaring up, Blood staying in the circle of observers, the head administrator demonstrated his level of power and control by hovering up into the air over the circle. Several other administrators set up a temporary barrier field, readjusting the strength upward after several glances at Beth, her smile at that hidden by her armored mask.

"I meant, who are you?" the young man asked again, taking the circling of the spectators and the actions of the administrators for granted.

"The competition winner," Beth replied, getting a rumble from the watching crowd.

"I see there's no use talking to you," he said.

"Yet, you're still doing it," Beth said, to another light laugh.

"Rules," the man huffed, looking up at the hovering administrator.

"Standard," the administrator said. At a word from one of the sponsors of one of the other groups, he clarified, "This is a team-versus-single battle. We will follow standard CRA rules for this fight, including the arena pylons teleporting out participants who they register would have taken fatal damage. I will be overseeing this proceeding."

"And you have the authority?" Beth asked, showing her Silver Emblem to the man before he could retort.

"Yes," he replied calmly, matching her with a Gold Emblem.

"I'm prepared," Beth said, bowing to the judge.

"We're prepared," the young man said, bowing shallowly to the head administrator.

The head administrator was clearly well-versed in officiating duels, as he started the countdown after getting the contestants' confirmations before signaling the start. Beth held nothing back in this fight; after talking a big game, she was determined to back it up with an overwhelming performance. She dashed forward with all her buff skills at the maximum power and, just as the cocky young man closed with her, she teleported behind him with a massive punch infused with Celestial Annihilation. Her fist crushed in and vaporized the back of the man's head, his helm and defenses not nearly enough to withstand her incredibly powerful strike.

Three left.

Beth turned and teleported again, disappearing from the space she had just occupied before the man's shocked teammates could muster a proper response. It became very evident in the next few moments that while these might be rather competent fighters, they were not very competent duelists. They didn't react quickly or properly to Beth's attacks or movements, unable to rationalize with a powerful, fast, intelligent being that was way more than any beast they had ever fought could hope to be. The two other men appeared to also be some kind of swordsmen, one wielding a sword and shield while the other wielded a single longsword, and the woman was some type of archer. Beth figured the ranged fighter would be the most annoying if she let them have free reign, so she made her next teleport destination right next to her. The woman had some type of skill to rapidly move away and fire an arrow, but that didn't fully get her out of danger as Beth had used Celestial Annihilation, the attack firing a beam that still slammed into the opponent.

The archer was hurt and Beth took a step forward, then another, teleporting on the second. The archer leapt away in anticipation while the other two charged her location…except, Beth didn't appear there, but beside the shield user. She caught him totally off-guard, the man expecting her to try to kill the archer and not attack the most defensively geared of the remaining three. As such, he took a full-powered Crush right to the sternum, his chest armor practically exploding from the force as his ribs staved in. The single blow wasn't enough to send him out, but that was quickly corrected as Beth, moving in a blur even to the other duelists, pulverized the man's head with two rapid punches.

Two left.

She teleported again as the archer started rapid firing, throwing the other two off again as they both immediately leaped and looked, wary of Beth showing up right next to them. Instead, she showed up on the other side of the enclosed space, firing off a dozen attacks with Celestial Annihilation in under a second and targeting both of her opponents. Both were forced to move and dodge, weaving around the attacks, though the swordsman made the mistake of trying to deflect one of them and found part of his blade missing. As he was staring at the stump of his sword in shock, in that brief second of inaction, Beth appeared next to him and hammered his head and neck with a rapid series of punches. The archer tried to interfere, but Beth had put the woman's buddy's body between them, making it very difficult for an arrow to find her. She Spatial Stepped away as the man's body disappeared, moved out of the temporary ring.

One left.

The archer leaped as soon as Beth disappeared, looking around wildly, eyes darting and head snapping back-and-forth as she tried to find her opponent. Beth had anticipated the leap and had only moved about an eighth of the way around the arena into an area she thought the woman wouldn't immediately observe, finding her guess correct as she had that critical part of a second where her last opponent was looking a different direction. She teleported again as the woman frantically scanned the ring, appearing right beside her with Beth's leg already in motion. It was only a split second later when her shin, empowered by Crush, slammed into the archer's torso, with accompanying snapping sounds. The woman was a bit better than Beth had given her credit for, firing off a close-range shot that slammed into Beth's shoulder, digging into the joint in the armor in a way that let Beth know it was backed by a skill. She simply ignored the shot, registering the surprise in the archer's eyes as she swung that same arm, the surprise disappearing behind Beth's fist as it mashed the archer's face into pulp.

None left.

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