The Wyndham elders sat inside the dimly lit monitoring room, their eyes completely glued to the glowing tactical screens tracking the tournament's progress.
For hours, the air had been thick with tension. Now, it finally broke.
A few of them almost shouted in pure celebration as they watched the data feeds update. Their intended participants had finally managed to cross paths and gather up.
Well, almost all of them. Except for one.
The true Wyndham lineup consisted of Zephyr, Lennox, Isla, and Alex. But Alex's status feed was completely dark. He wasn't anywhere near the coordinates of the main group, leaving the family to assume the worst. He had likely been eliminated from the tournament entirely.
But where the main line fell short, the sub-Wyndham faction was stepping up. This auxiliary branch was a fake sub-clan the main family had cleverly engineered just to smuggle extra fighters into the competition. To everyone's surprise, every single member of this hidden line was still alive, moving, and fighting hard.
Now that Clifford had finally grouped up with them, the situation was shifting. His massive energy reserves were actively radiating outward, refilling their depleted pools and giving the survivors a major energy boost to stay in the game.
"Our plans are falling into place," Jim said, his voice straining slightly as he stared at the flashing monitors. His eyes grew somewhat watery at the sight, though he quickly blinked it back before any real tears could fall. "Maybe... just maybe, if we can avoid any more distractions and hold onto this sheer luck, our clan might actually pull this off."
A few of the high-ranking members around the table nodded, feeling a rare wave of relief and pride wash over them. However, Lucius remained completely stoic, staring at the map with an unreadable expression.
"With what has happened so far, and seeing how far our boys have lasted in the tournament, we should be classified as a mid-stage clan, right?" John asked, looking across the room for confirmation.
The answer came back immediately, cold and collected with absolutely no delay.
"No... Not yet," Lucius said.
The elders inside the monitoring room were completely stunned by his voice. It was dead cold. For some reason, even with their primary participants and the auxiliary branch finally grouping up together to survive, Lucius wasn't celebrating at all.
'What the hell is wrong with him?' John wondered.
Instinctively, John's eyes drifted downward toward Lucius' empty sleeve. The missing limb. Looking at that empty space, the sudden shift in Lucius' mood finally began to make sense to him.
'The bet,' John realized. 'The terms said that if our boys can last long enough to reach the mid-stage clan classification, Lucius will get his arm back. Is he actually worried?'
'Does his reaction mean we haven't officially reached that bracket yet?'
John didn't know how to check the live stage of the tournament right now. The data feeds were constantly changing. But he did know the basic classification rules. At a specific numerical threshold, once enough teams were completely wiped out, the remaining groups would automatically get classified as mid-stage clans. After that, the final ten surviving clans would scale into the high-stage bracket.
Without uttering a single word, John turned his head back to focus on the glowing tactical display in front of him.
Meanwhile, hidden completely underneath the heavy wooden table, Lucius' single remaining fist was clenched white. It was vibrating with pure, unadulterated tension.
---
Back inside the dangerous fog of the Ruined City, the Wyndhams had successfully finished off the mutated werewolf. The volatile combined blast had completely obliterated its physical form, leaving nothing behind but scattered, smoking chunks of flesh and scorched ground.
"Wow...!" Clifford said, slowly clapping his hands together as he walked over through the settling smoke.
He stepped over a pile of shattered pavement and turned his gaze directly toward Henry.
"Despite having a limitation in your magic affinity, you have really started gaining some power with the little you have," Clifford said, giving Henry an appreciative nod.
Henry dropped into a slight crouch, his chest heaving as he breathed heavily. Even though he had a fresh supply of raw energy from Clifford, forcing that much air to violently compress had been incredibly strenuous. His forearms throbbed with a dull ache. He didn't have a pain cancellation ring to dull the feedback, so he just had to stand there and take it.
Nearby, Zephyr let out a sharp scoff at Clifford's comment.
"Sure. Like he would have done any of that without my lightning Qi," Zephyr said, dismissing the praise.
Clifford glanced over at him but didn't say anything, keeping his expression completely neutral.
Turning his back on them, Zephyr broke away from the group. He started walking through the settling haze of dust, heading straight toward the charred patch of street where the mutated werewolf had stood.
Once Zephyr was out of earshot, Gavalich moved. Still maintaining his massive werebear form, the heavy, white-furred giant walked over to Clifford's side.
"You have to start being careful around them," Gavalich said. His voice came out as a deep, gravelly rumble, but there was an unmistakable undercurrent of genuine concern mixed into his beast-like tone. "They are still the direct descendants of the clan. He is probably the next person in line for real power after his people."
"What?" Clifford asked, looking up at the giant.
"I didn't say anything wrong," Clifford grunted.
Gavalich didn't bother to explain himself any further, simply turning his massive head away to watch the perimeter.
Meanwhile, Zephyr had finally arrived at the exact spot where the werewolf had been destroyed.
Isla and Lennox approached from the front, their heavy boots crunching softly against the loose stone debris. Zephyr didn't pay them any attention. His eyes remained fixed entirely on the scorched earth beneath his feet, scanning the wreckage.
The combined explosion had done a thorough job. Scattered across the dark, ruined asphalt were various shredded pieces of the mutated werewolf. Thick, dark blood was still actively dripping from the jagged edges of the flesh, pooling in the cracks of the road.
'When I transformed back into a human, the ring completely wiped the DNA of the Griffin I used before,' Zephyr thought, his eyes tracking a decent-sized chunk of remains. 'If I want to use its power again, I need to harvest a fresh sample right now.'
He bent over, lowering his hand toward the wet debris. He firmly pressed the cold metal of his shape-shifting ring directly into a bloody, raw piece of the werewolf's body.
A faint, pale light immediately pulsed from the ring's core. The fresh beast blood vanished from the surface of the meat, cleanly sucked into the artifact to be stored for his next transformation.
"That was a pretty massive kill for us, wasn't it?" Lennox asked, looking over the steaming crater. He wasn't really speaking to anyone in particular, just trying to break the heavy silence left by the detonation.
With the immediate threat completely vaporized, the scattered group slowly gathered closer together. The adrenaline was finally fading, replaced by a mutual need to figure out exactly what they were dealing with. Standing in the middle of the ruined street, they decided it was time to catch up on everything they had encountered since the tournament started.
Henry and Jimmy were the first to speak, laying out their grueling experience inside the misty streets.
"Wait... you guys have seriously been stuck inside this exact sector the entire time?" Lennox asked, his eyebrows raising in genuine surprise.
"Yes," Henry answered with a tired nod. "We've been running and fighting from building to building since the start."
Lennox let out a low, breathy whistle, shaking his head. "You're incredibly lucky you didn't try to cross the borders and escape. It is much worse out there."
Henry and Jimmy exchanged a brief, exhausted look. Neither of them knew exactly how to respond to that. To them, the Ruined City had been an absolute living hell of constant danger. Hearing that the open areas outside were even more terrifying was something they couldn't even imagine.
Once the local survivors finished their summary, Lennox stepped up to share their side of the story. He quickly started laying out their brutal sequence of experiences: how they had barely survived the initial Griffin assault, their tense first encounter with the Anakim faction, and how they eventually crossed paths to group up with Isla.
He didn't stop there. He went on to describe the chaotic, life-or-death fight against Rhyssa, and the sheer effort it took to survive the Anakim's second ambush before they finally managed to break away and locate the city.
--4
"Shit... You actually met and fought with the Synapse Circle," Jimmy said, running a tired hand through his hair as he processed the news. He looked at the smoking remains of the werewolf, then back at them. "Maybe they aren't that strong after all."
Lennox, Isla, and Zephyr exchanged a brief, heavy glance. None of them spoke up to correct him. They knew exactly how close those fights had been, but there was no point in arguing about it now.
Breaking the awkward silence, Gavalich stepped forward. His deep, beast-like voice rumbled through the quiet street as he quickly laid out their own chain of events, explaining how they had navigated the outer sectors and managed to slip into the city limits.
Once the explanation was over, the tension relaxed slightly. The group shifted their weight, about to change the topic and look for a building to hole up in. But before anyone could speak, Clifford cut through the movement.
"Wait..." Clifford said, his voice flat as he raised a hand, pointing a finger directly at Isla.
Everyone stopped. Clifford's expression remained completely unbothered as his eyes locked onto the front-liner.
"We were all paired up in twos for the initial deployment," Clifford noted, his tone analytical. "Lennox and Zephyr were dropped together. That's clear. Which means by default, you must have been paired with Alex."
Clifford took a single, calculated step forward.
"So where is he? What happened to him?"
The casual mood vanished instantly. Isla's face contorted, a visible, deep frown twisting his features. A heavy, suffocating silence fell over the ruined street, the crackle of distant embers the only sound left in the mist.
Isla gritted his teeth before he finally spoke. "You just have to ruin the mood by asking me about that weakling, don't you?"
"I can't help it," Clifford replied nonchalantly, offering a slight, indifferent shrug. "After all, we are currently stuck inside the Ruined City, aren't we? It pays to know our numbers."
The sour expression on Isla's face deepened, and the negative energy quickly radiated through the rest of the squad. Zephyr and Lennox crossed their arms, their jaws tightening as matching frowns crossed their faces. They clearly didn't want to dig up whatever had happened back there.
Meanwhile, Gavalich shifted his massive weight uncomfortably, his eyes darting between Clifford and Isla. He looked incredibly nervous about the volatile situation brewing right in the middle of their camp.