General POV

The Instance Seven concluded with numbers that made absolutely no sense to anyone watching.

Theodore Lockheart won first place with three hundred and seventeen points. Jason Kormack was in second place with two hundred and eighty-two.

The third place holder barely scraped past one hundred. And from fourth place onward, the gap was way too big.

Regardless, the gap between Theodore and Jason was so absurd that several officials checked the counting enchantments, convinced there had been some kind of malfunction.

"Theodore won?" a merchant whispered in the crowd, staring at the display crystal like it might change if he looked hard enough. "The Theodore? The one they threw in Seven?"

"Must be a mistake," his companion replied. "Check it again."

But it wasn't a mistake.

The recording crystals flooding the market showed everything.

From the prince systematically hunting Rank 4s, absorbing their attacks, that strange severing force that cut through techniques that should have been unblockable.

Heck, the Chronicles had exclusive footage from eliminated competitors who'd sold their recording crystals for quick coin, and by evening every tavern in the capital was playing the highlights on repeat.

The public digested this impossibility the only way they knew how: by explaining it away.

"He never fought Jason directly," became the common refrain.

In the betting houses, men who'd lost fortunes on sure bets consoled themselves with this truth.

"If they'd met, it would've been different."

"Obviously, the prince got lucky with the Instance layout. Avoided the real threat entirely." Another agreed, tearing up his betting slip.

"Besides," a nobleman added, swirling his wine, "Jason basically let him win. You could see it in the recordings—he wasn't even trying for first place."

This narrative spread through the capital like wildfire.

Theodore had won through luck and circumstance, nothing more. After all, winning Instance Seven meant nothing. It was the lowest bracket, the garbage heap where failures and embarrassments were sent to fight over scraps.

Only Jason was worthy of being talked about, because he had been sent there due to a noble family's shady tactics.

Theodore? So far as the public was concerned, he was right where he belonged. After all, years of reputation didn't wash away just because of some rumors about him turning over a new leaf from some backwater border town.

Regardless, though, the real competitors were in the upper instances, and when the next event began, reality would reassert itself.

The Chronicles building buzzed with activity as reporters scrambled to make sense of what they'd witnessed. Most had already written Theodore off, their articles focusing on the upper brackets where "real" competition had taken place.

Instance One's winner had broken through to Rank 5 mid-battle. Instance Three had featured a duel between two sword masters that left a part of the arena in ruins. Those were stories.

Theodore winning Instance Seven was a curiosity at best.

Simon watched his colleagues dismiss the biggest story of the tournament with barely concealed frustration. He'd pulled every frame of footage, analyzed every technique Theodore had displayed, and the picture that emerged wasn't one of luck but of dominance.

Granted, his colleagues had stopped mocking him three hours ago when Theodore broke two hundred points, and then they'd watched in stunned silence as the prince dominated what everyone had written off as the garbage bracket.

But that had been it.

They'd been quick to dismiss everything afterward.

After all, it was just Instance Seven.

The story, though, was writing itself in Simon's head.

He'd already drafted three different angles, each one designed to maximize shock value and drive sales through the roof, but the real story, the one that would either make his career or destroy it completely, was still percolating in the back of his mind.

Something that could make or break his career, if he dared bet on the chance.

Something bold, something nobody would expect, something that would make Kaeden choke on his morning tea. So he wrote the article.

Kaeden felt that familiar mix of pity and resignation that came with seeing young talent about to overreach when he saw what article the boy Simon was about to publish.

The boy had gotten lucky with that Jason-Theodore encounter, sure, had ridden that wave beautifully, but now he had that hungry look that meant he was about to do something spectacularly stupid.

Theodore winning Instance Seven wasn't really a story—it was a curiosity, a footnote, something people would gossip about for a day before moving on to the real brackets where actual competition happened.

But Simon didn't understand that yet, couldn't see past his own reflected glory in those sales numbers, and Kaeden had seen enough careers implode to recognize the warning signs.

The article Simon published hit the capital like a thunderclap.

"Theodore Lockheart Will Win The Tourtnament—All Of It."

The reactions were immediate and visceral.

"Has the Chronicles lost its mind? Theodore barely survived Instance Seven!"

"He won by luck! If Jason had found him—"

"When

Jason had found him he probably took pity on the prince. You know how these merchant types are, always calculating the political angles."

In the taverns, the response was even more colorful.

"This Simon fellow's been drinking the palace's wine. Theodore? Win the whole tournament? There are six instances above him filled with stronger warriors!"

"Boy probably paid for the article himself."

The public reaction was immediate and vicious, readers sending howlers to the Chronicles demanding to know if they'd lost their minds, if Simon had been paid off by the Lockheart family, if this was some elaborate joke at their expense.

Theodore barely won Instance Seven due to luck, they said, had he encountered Jason he would've lost, and besides, he was in Instance Seven to begin with while there were six instances above him filled with actual competitors who weren't there as punishment or by accident.

This Simon fellow had clearly gone mad with his one successful prediction, was chasing glory with wild claims that would make him look like a fool when reality reasserted itself.

The betting houses laughed openly at anyone who tried to place money on Theodore for the overall tournament, offering odds so astronomical they were basically saying it was impossible.

Theodore's chances of winning the overall tournament set at impossible odds against him.

A few desperate gamblers threw aurums more as a joke than any real hope of return.

But in quiet corners, a few people wondered.

"Did you see how he caught that Rank 4 assassin? The spatial displacement was perfect. That's not something artifacts can do."

"And the power absorption he had going, when he absorbed attacks. He was storing the force from every strike, then releasing it in controlled bursts. That's..."

"So you think the article might be right?"

"I think there's more to this than luck."

These voices were drowned out by the overwhelming chorus of dismissal, sure, but they existed.

The Chronicles board of directors, meanwhile, didn't care whether Simon was right or wrong. They cared that their evening edition had sold out in three hours, that nobles were sending servants to buy multiple copies, that every conversation in the capital somehow circled back to their article.

Sales numbers climbed higher than they'd been in months.

Simon watched the fury build with satisfaction that bordered on ecstasy, because negative publicity was still publicity and the Chronicles' sales were going through the roof.

Every angry letter, every outraged noble demanding a retraction, every tavern argument about his article just drove more people to buy copies and recording crystals to see what the fuss was about.

The board of directors who'd been ready to fire him that morning were suddenly talking about permanent positions, about giving him his own column, about letting him cover whichever bracket he wanted for the remainder of the tournament.

They didn't care if he was right or wrong—they cared that he'd turned Instance Seven into the story everyone was talking about.

"Give the boy a raise," the board chairman declared. "And his own column."

"But if he's wrong—"

"Then we'll fire him and blame youthful enthusiasm. But until then, ride the wave."

Kaeden shook his head internally as Simon received his promotion, already seeing how this would end.

The boy had made himself the face of an impossible prediction and played this perfectly in the short term, had leveraged one lucky break into temporary success, but Kaeden had seen this story before and knew how it ended.

When the tournament concluded and Theodore inevitably lost to someone from the upper instances, someone would need to take the fall for the Chronicles' bold predictions, and it wouldn't be the board of directors who'd profited from the controversy.

It would be Simon, the ambitious young reporter who'd staked his reputation on an impossible outcome, who'd have to bear the humiliation of being spectacularly wrong in public.

The promotion they were giving him now would just make the fall that much harder, that much more visible, and Kaeden felt a twinge of something almost like sympathy for the boy who didn't see the axe being hung above his head.

Simon didn't care about Kaeden's doubts or the public's scorn or even the possibility that he might be wrong. He'd watched Theodore fight, and so he had seen something in those battles that went beyond Rank or training or even talent.

He saw a story.

Meanwhile, the recording crystals of Instance Seven's highlights spread through the capital like wildfire. The footage of Theodore dismantling the twins, his clash with Cassius's [Sword Aura], and the way he'd caught that assassin girl mid-strike—it all looked impressive until you remembered this was Instance Seven.

The bottom tier.

"Look at them getting excited over basic combat," an Instance Two competitor scoffed, watching the recordings in his family's manor.

"The Chronicle's lost its mind," his father agreed. "Comparing Instance Seven to real competition is like comparing a street fight to a war."

But the footage kept selling.

Vendors couldn't copy the crystals fast enough.

Every tavern wanted the exclusive recordings, every noble family wanted to see what had really happened.

The Chronicles made more from Instance Seven footage in one evening than they usually made from a week of normal coverage.

When asked about why this was so hot in the capital at the moment, a vendor explained to his supplier.

"It's the controversy. Everyone wants to see what the fuss is about. They buy it to laugh at it, to argue about it, to prove their friends wrong."

"But they buy it."

"Oh yes, they buy it."

As midnight approached, the capital's atmosphere had shifted completely.

What should have been a footnote—Instance Seven's results—had become the primary topic of discussion. After all, the higher Instances' participants didn't do anything extraordinary yet, as most of them were busy making sure nothing major leaked about their abilities. After all, this first event could be fatal.

Regardless of that, though, arguments raged in every establishment about whether Theodore was lucky or skilled, whether Jason had let him win, whether the Chronicles article was insane or insightful.

"I almost feel bad for him," a noblewoman confided to her friend. "All this attention, this false hope. When he faces someone from Instance One..."

"It'll be a massacre."

"The Chronicles will have to publish an apology."

"That reporter—Simon?—he'll never work again."

But Simon wasn't listening to the doubts.

He was pulling up more footage, analyzing, documenting, and thinking up new articles.

There was something there, something everyone else was missing because they were too focused on the Instance Seven label to see what was actually happening, and since he'd bet his career on Theodore anyway, he'd be damned if he didn't do his best to generate as much controversy and hype surrounding him as possible.

***

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