Living Life As A Game: Through And Through 163 Needle In The Proverbial Haystack

"Elizabeth! We were so worried about you last night! What happened?" Without hesitation, Jane showered Elizabeth with as much care as she could. To her, Elizabeth was the closest thing to family in her life.

"Uh… I fell asleep from exhaustion. I'm completely fine now..." Not yet comfortable with such overt touchy-feely care and compa.s.sion, Elizabeth answered somewhat anxiously.

"Good!" Jane said, as she finally left some room for Elizabeth to breathe. She took a step back and said, "Now, I'm sure you're dying to know what happened after you… took your rest, right?"

Seeing Elizabeth nod, she continued, "Well, for the final Stage of the night, Atid managed to secure 50th rank for our faction with your help. He could have tried for a higher rank, but in the end, 50th rank was the highest we could achieve without you helping us… We only fought against one faction as Atid was being cautious; rightfully, too."

"See, having traded places with Simon's Dojo to get our faction to 50th place, Simon's Dojo carved a blood path to challenge us and take his spot back." For a moment, Jane paled as she recalled the events of last night, before she continued saying, " Luckily… Jhan had thoughts on stealing 50th rank from us as well, which lead to him having to withstand Simon's trump card."

"I have no idea how he managed to get his hands on a Spirit Grade Enchantment of that level as he is the head of a Martial Faction, but Simon pulled out the enchantment equivalent of a nuke. Even Jhan, an equal to Atid, was heavily wounded after being caught off guard. If not for the Arena's Defensive Formation, the Tournament Square would have been leveled..."

"In any case, he managed to make Jhan surrender at the cost of the Spirit Grade Enchantment. We were prepared for him to have another talisman even though he kept progressing through the ranks without so much as another Mortal Grade talisman being used. But when he finally caught up to us, having defeated the 51st ranked Faction, he and his disciples fought long and hard battles against us, losing in the end without another Spirit Grade talisman making an appearance."

"Our factions had three separate battles to decide the victor. The first was between a group made of Sun and I, against two of Simon's best Peak Phase King Stage disciples. But given that both of us placed higher on the King Stage Division of the Second Stage of the Martial Faction, we easily won; especially after finding out how well our fighting styles synergized."

"The second battle was between Gianluca, our Faction's second strongest proxy member, and Simon's Vice Master. Unfortunately, Gianluca was beaten as he couldn't quite match up to the second in command of a Martial Faction. He's only a guest elder of our faction, who specializes in business, enchantments, and formations, so it wasn't too surprising to see him lose. But, since Atid plans to make him our faction's second representative after the Tournament came to a close, he and Gianluca agreed, he should partic.i.p.ate in the Faction Stage to show his strength."

"Lastly, a battle between the heads of both factions brought an end to our defense of the 50th ranked faction as Atid and Simon rocked the arena to the point where the ground trembled every time they clashed. After a long five-minute stalemate where neither side seemed to be doing anything, Atid shocked everyone by revealing that he was holding back the whole time!"

"The clear True Qi he had been using to fight turned yellow, which made everything from his physical abilities, to his control over Water Qi to skyrocket and within a hundred strikes of his sword, he brought Simon to checkmate. You could almost feel the conflicting emotions in Simon's gaze as he stared both helplessly and hatefully after being defeated so soundly..."

Changing the tone of her speech to be less serious, Jane said, "After that, we just sat back and enjoyed the rest of the faction battles. Around midnight, the Tournament came to a close with one of the highest ranked members of the Martial Society, Sir Keter..." The rest, Elizabeth knew from the talk with her parents.

Still, she listened patiently and when Jane was finished, she said, "Well, before we leave… I'll pick up Sun and meet you in the lobby. I… There's something I want to tell you guys, but not here." Elizabeth succeeded in confusing Jane with her obscure language, but couldn't be bothered to say anything else until everyone she planned on disclosing her secret with was gathered.

Thus, she continued to Sun's room, while Jane retreated to the lobby. Picking up Sun barely took any time as Elizabeth had already learned everything that had happened after she blacked out from Jane. The two only shared an awkward greeting. "Eli-zabeth!? Y-you're fine?!" Because of his shy nature when it came to all things related to her, he stumbled through his words and acted more like an inexperienced child than the close-combat expert he usually carried himself as…

"Yeah..." It was as if he had infected her with awkwardness, as Elizabeth devolved into a quieter than usual voice as she continued saying, "Last night, I collapsed from exhaustion. I'm completely fine… Anyway, I saw Jane before coming to pick you up. So, if you have nothing else to do here, we should leave..."

"R-right..." Sun didn't even walk back into his room as he had long since prepared his things in Storage Enchantments as had Jane. Sun locked his room and walked alongside Elizabeth to the lobby where her three other trusted confidants and two tamed beasts were waiting for her with an atmosphere even more awkward than the one between her and Sun.

Silently, Sun and Elizabeth went up to the receptionist to turn in the keys to their rooms; Jane had done so before the two arrived. Then, as the group left for the Keter Estate, Elizabeth explained her relationships with everyone as she was the only thing that connected the group together.

There was a bit less friction in the group after arriving at the Keter Estate while getting to know everyone's circ.u.mstances on the way, but there was only so much a bit of talking could do. Elizabeth a.s.sured herself since these people were the type to follow her, they would sooner or later learn to get along, especially after the Cataclysm came to force them into fighting for the same cause.

In any case, as per her parents' instructions and circ.u.mstances, Elizabeth's group was moved by a maid of the Keter Estate as Elizabeth's siblings were called. Every moment that pa.s.sed was one where Elizabeth felt her heart approach death. With her sense growing numb and only the feeling of her heartbeat growing stronger and louder as if to drown out her other senses, she really felt like dying.

Fortunately, these symptoms of a murmuring soul were easily resolved with the conscious exertion of her soul's energies. That being the case, it bothered her to no end, knowing that by herself, she couldn't handle a "small" reveal like this. 'Why the f.u.c.k...' Suddenly, the idea to stop forcing these emotions and instead embracing them to find the root of this anomaly crossed her mind and with her obsessive-compulsive desire to be perfect and stoic tendencies, it only remained an idea for a couple fractions of a second before being put to practice.

After taking a deep breath, Elizabeth looked up to the group of people seated before her and stopped manipulating her soul to suppress her emotions. Immediately, the itch in her heart began growing exponentially, so without wasting another moment, Elizabeth's consciousness sunk into her Soul Land leaving her unmoving in the outside world.

Retaining the bit of hesitance and anxiousness she had from looking at the faces of the people shared about and imagining only the most negative of possible reactions to her reveal, Elizabeth took about ten seconds to calm down after returning to her Soul Land to return to her normal self. There, at the core of her soul, she went about inspecting everything from the murky blackish-yellow ground to the starry sky in search of any possible anomalies.

Periodically, she would activate her body's sense of sight while remaining in the Soul Land to probe the anomalous feeling. But because she could only handle a couple seconds before becoming affected in her soul form, it seemed she wouldn't be able to figure out the source of the feelings before the time to actually conduct her reveal came. After all, with her soul being nourished along with her body every time she practiced Chaos Requiem, by now her Soul Land had grown to several times its previous size.

It instantly became apparent that the anomalous interference in her soul was relatively high level as Elizabeth's status as the ultimate ruler of her Soul Land couldn't use her power of Domain to scan the thing instantaneously. Instead, having to comb through her Soul Land inch by inch…

In the blink of an eye, five minutes pa.s.sed and something unexpected happened… Coincidentally, as Elizabeth was reaching the end of her rope and planning to give up on exercises in futility, she just so happened to turn on her sight the moment her family members had begun entered the room.

At that moment, there was a spike in her worrisome feelings unlike anything she had ever felt before and she came dangerously close to ending up unconscious again. As her face to the outside world paled, in her Soul Land, the voice of her tired soul form could be heard mumbling, "Two?" Sparing not a single moment even though she was confused, Elizabeth teleported before an inconspicuous cyan light that was hiding within the manifestation of her affinity for Time. She quickly used her ability to manipulate the soul in conjunction with her status as the ruler of her Soul Land and quarantined the foreign cyan light through a soul sealing inscription before repeating her actions by the manifestation of her affinity for Death. Upon temporarily dealing with the anomalies in her soul, Elizabeth returned to the outside world to confront her friends and family. She would deal with the anomalous ent.i.ties in her soul some other time.