Tyren didn’t waste a second. He dumped every banner in his inventory into a heap on the scorched earth. Beside him, Nina’s face was a mask of suppressed rage, but she followed suit, her hands trembling as she surrendered her loot.
Calder didn’t even spare them a glance. With a casual wave, the pile vanished into his storage.
[Notification: SSS-Tier Conquest Banners: 11]
[Notification: SS-Tier Conquest Banners: 20]
Inventory saturation. His haul was a statistical impossibility, a clean sweep of the highest-value assets on the field.
“Holy sht! He actually did it!”
“Calder is a god! A literal god!”
“Sector 911 represent! Let’s go!”
Back in the safe zones, the players of Sector 911 were losing their minds. The roar was deafening, enough to shake the foundations of the viewing halls. Ray sat in his classroom, staring at the screen with a hollow, stunned expression. The turn of events was so violent, so absolute, that his brain couldn't process the shift from despair to total domination.
The global chat was a localized hurricane.
“The Ember Republic just birthed a monster.”
“Ellis, Nina, Kaito Miura… he dismantled five ranked players like they were tutorial mobs.”
“Is that an SSS-Rank Class? It has to be.”
Back on the blood-stained soil of the Warground, the atmosphere was suffocating.
Calder’s Chain Scourge remained active, the three jagged links binding the trio together in a humiliating heap. He hadn't executed them, but he hadn't let them go either. Ellis, being the lowest on HP, had just enough slack to move, but he stayed frozen. He wasn't stupid. Nina and Tyren were wrapped so tight they couldn't even twitch a finger.
They watched Calder with wide, terrified eyes, trying to read the man behind the chains. They knew he wasn't afraid to kill—he’d just puppet-mastered Kaito Miura’s death using Ellis’s own hand.
The silence stretched until Tyren cracked. "Just do it!" she spat, her voice cracking with the pressure. "Kill us and get it over with, you bastard!"
Calder’s eyes flicked toward her. Ellis winced, mentally screaming at Tyren to shut her mouth before she got them all erased.
But Calder didn't raise his blade. Instead, he began pulling the banners back out, lining them up on the ground with the clinical precision of a merchant.
"Starting now," Calder said, his voice cold and terrifyingly calm. "I’m auctioning twenty-two banners. Highest bidder takes the prize."
The silence that followed was absolute. Ellis, Nina, and Tyren stared at him like he’d grown a second head.
"Huh?" Ellis blurted, his brain short-circuiting.
"You're... you're turning a Warground into an auction house?" Nina’s eyes were dinner plates. She had been braced for a cold blade to the throat; instead, she was being offered a sales pitch.
Calder ignored the confusion. He picked up a shimmering SS-Tier Conquest Banner. "Opening bid: 100 Chrono. Speak up or lose out."
Ellis was the first to snap out of it. "100... uh, 101?"
Calder nodded, his gaze shifting to the two suspended in his chains.
Nina’s survival instinct kicked into overdrive. "110! I need that flag!"
"120!" Ellis barked, glaring at Nina. "Don't you dare touch it!"
He wasn't bidding for points anymore. These banners were life insurance. He didn't care if Calder was scamming them; he needed the hope of a way out.
"152.5 Chrono!" Tyren screamed. "That’s every last cent I have!"
"Fck!" Ellis hissed. 120 had been his limit, a combination of his starting capital and class-change rewards.
Calder tossed the banner at Tyren’s feet. "Yours."
He didn't pause. He grabbed the next SS-Tier Conquest Banner. "Same deal. 100 Chrono."
"120! Give it to me!" Ellis shouted.
But an auction wasn't about who spoke first. Nina eventually sniped it for 125, having realized Ellis was tapped out. She overpaid by a few coins just to be safe, catching a glimpse of Calder’s unreadable expression. In the end, Ellis managed to snag the third banner for exactly 120.
They expected him to stop there, but Calder turned away from the "elites" and faced the crowd of common players who had been watching from the periphery.
"Open floor. 100 Chrono starting bid. Come and get them."
The "extras"—the players who had been hiding in the shadows, waiting to be slaughtered—froze.
"Wait, us too?"
"Is he serious? That’s an SS-Tier flag!"
"Pool your Chrono! Everyone, empty your pockets!"
The battlefield turned into a frenzy of desperate trading. One group managed to scrape together 180 Chrono for a banner. When Calder handed it over, the players collapsed to their knees, sobbing openly.
"We got it... we actually got it!" one man wailed, clutching the fabric to his chest. "Mom, Dad... you didn't die for nothing!"
These were players from a weak Novice Zone who had overreached by picking an SS-Tier Unclaimed Waste. They had been trapped in Warground 95, waiting for the end. This wasn't just loot to them; it was the survival of their entire community.
Calder watched them with a detached indifference, moving on to the next item. "100 Chrono. Next."
The bidding grew louder. The desperate scrambled to find partners, merging their meager funds to buy a future. The spectators watching the broadcast were paralyzed. The "War" had vanished, replaced by a bizarre, high-stakes market.
Ellis watched it all with a growing sense of dread. He looked at Calder—the man standing at the center of this chaos—and felt a chill that had nothing to do with the wind. The entire flow of the Warground had been bent to this man's will. What they saw as a life-or-death struggle, Calder treated like a schoolyard game of keep-away.
He had taken everything, and now he was deciding who was allowed to survive.
By the time the dust settled, all ten SS-Tier Conquest Banners were gone. Calder checked his interface. He had cleared 1,650 Chrono.
In the late stages of the game, 1,650 was pocket change. But right now, in the early days of the Apocalypse, it was an astronomical fortune—the kind of capital that could jumpstart a kingdom.
Finally, Calder pulled out the crown jewel: a deep crimson SSS-Tier Conquest Banner.
The air grew heavy. A Novice Zone could only claim ten territories, and Calder had an extra.
"Is he really selling an SSS?"
"Get the money ready! Whatever it takes!"
Before the crowd could bid, a cold wind swept across the clearing. A black blur manifested a few meters from Calder.
"That banner is mine," a voice like grinding ice announced.
Edward. The top-ranked powerhouse.
The crowd backed away instinctively. Soon, the rest of the heavy hitters arrived: Cha Seung-won, Hodgson, Grann, and Kelly. The survivors of the high-tier slaughter.
Edward stood at the front. He had recently "parted ways" with his temporary allies, Grann and Kelly, by trying to kill them both. He currently held five SSS-Tier and four S-Tier banners. One more SSS-tier would make him the second-most powerful winner in the zone.
"Highest bidder takes it, Edward. You don't just 'get' it," Grann growled, his face bruised from their previous scuffle.
Edward let out a low, mocking laugh. His arm shifted under his cloak, and the thick stench of iron and rot filled the air. Grann and Kelly flinched. They knew his tricks—they weren't sure they could survive a second round.
"Smart move," Edward sneered at them. He turned his gaze toward the others, his eyes glowing with a faint, predatory light. "Anyone else want to try me?"
He didn't get to finish. A black streak of the Chain Scourge whistled through the air, aimed directly at his teeth.
Edward’s pupils constricted. He dissolved into a red mist, reappearing a few meters to the left.
Calder raised an eyebrow. "Blood Shadow Step? So your class is Vampire. What's the rank? Viscount? Or just a lowly Baron?"
Edward’s arrogance flickered. "How do you know that?"
"I know your 'Blood Shadow Step' is a half-baked parlor trick," Calder said, his voice dropping an octave. "Sit down and be quiet before I decide your blood is better off on the grass."
Edward bristled, but as he looked into Calder’s eyes, he felt a "Lock-On" sensation so heavy it felt like a physical weight on his chest. He knew, with terrifying certainty, that if those chains moved again, no amount of mist-shifting would save him. He swallowed his pride, his back slick with cold sweat.
"Good," Calder muttered. "You’re not as stupid as you look. Though, if I were you, I’d ditch that Vampire class as soon as possible."
Edward’s jaw tightened. Ditch an SSS-rank class? The man was insane. His stat growth alone was over 400 points.
Calder didn't bother explaining. The Vampire path wasn't "bad"—the Sanguine-kin of the Eternal Race had taken it to the pinnacle. But the path was narrow. In the Eternal Dominion, if you weren't born into the peak lineages, you were just a battery for those above you. By choosing that path, Edward was unknowingly submitting to a hierarchy he could never climb. He was sprinting toward a dead end.
Calder turned back to the crowd.
"Final banner. I don't want your Chrono for this one. This is a barter."
He scanned the faces of the desperate "elites."
"I want Veiled Sanctum Fragments. Opening bid: 10."
The crowd murmured in confusion. "Fragments? What the hell is that?"
But the true players—the ones who had actually pushed themselves during the Novice Trials—stiffened.
"I have eleven," a voice called out from the back. "Found them in a hidden chest."
"I've got two! Who wants to pool with me?"
Even the ranked leaders turned to their subordinates, frantically demanding fragments. They didn't dare try to rob Calder; the bodies of Ellis and Nina were still dangling as a grim reminder of his reach.
Calder watched them scramble, his eyes roaming over the transformed Warground. The killing had stopped. The slaughterhouse had become a bazaar.
In the original timeline, this place had been a tomb. Ellis, Nina, Tyren, Cha Seung-won—they should all be dead. Edward should have been the lone, bloody victor, walking a path of eventual obsolescence.
Calder had rewritten the script. He had saved nearly half the players in this zone, not out of the goodness of his heart, but because it was more profitable. He wasn't a saint. If someone was useless to him or the future of Azura, he’d let them rot without a second thought.
But today? Today, the butcher was open for business.