EarthOne week later

Emily smiles as she walks down the sidewalk of the main street within the capital, vaguely listening to her friends from Lion’s Heart talking alongside her.

“Did you hear? Another professor quit teaching.” One of her friends, a girl named Julie with long black hair and a short size, albeit still taller than Emily, says with her usual gossipy tone of voice. “This makes twenty professors that have resigned from the university in just the past week!”

“Well, what point is there for them to stay now?” Elizabeth, another friend of Emily’s, comments with a slightly haughty but also gossipy voice, retorts. “Most of them stayed at the university for priority on the Fractures. But now that demons aren’t crossing the Fractures anymore, there isn’t much point in working there.”

“Don’t most of them have a fortune large enough to live off of now anyways?” Another friend points out, making all of them nod.

Emily just continues walking without saying anything as the four friends walk alongside her talking.

“I’m more worried about how we’re going to continue living without the demons life force to fuel our life spans,” Jessica says, making the others grow silent at that.

That does seem to be most of the Guardians main concern…

Emily looks up at the sky, raising an arm to stop snow from falling into her eyes.

Ever since the Demon King returned from wherever he was, immediately ordering the end of the war between humans and demons, life has changed all across Earth. The demons even gave Demon Isle back to the humans, although they and the Knights agreed to let the demons keep the Arctic since most humans don’t have any interest in living there anyways.

And to add to that, the demons stopped entering the Fractures that are still opening up across the planet. The Demon King even made a direct order, banning demons from entering the Fractures and making the only viable ways through to Earth the Gates.

At this point, Emily is pretty sure everyone is just trying to adapt to the significant changes to society. Since there are no longer any Fractures, and no longer a way for Guardians to get EXP or to extend their life spans, everyone – especially the Guardians – are all trying to figure out what they should do.

Emily doesn’t feel worried about it though. Amelia had already told her and the others in her team that the Demon King was planning on allowing humans to enter the Gates spread across the Earth to fight demons on Tartarus.

After all, Tartarus already allows demons to kill demons, albeit with some restrictions. Why shouldn’t they allow humans to join in as well?

He did add some restrictions on it though. But they aren’t any restrictions that the demons there don’t already have.

Emily glances at a nearby skyscraper that has a massive screen on the side of it facing the street right when the screen changes from an ad to show a live news discussion. One that starts with a beautiful woman standing with a mic next to the Black Knight of Humanity.

“Hello, everyone! I’m Jasmine with Arcadian News and I’m here with the Black Knight of Humanity, one of the prominent participants in the upcoming Fae Tournament! And I want to address more than a few interesting facts I’ve learned about the tournament so far!” The woman’s voice echoes throughout the city street, making more than a few people briefly pause to look up at the screen. But then most of them continue walking to wherever they were going.

Emily continues watching out of curiosity, and her friends are the same.

The screen changes to show forty three different images.

“These are the forty three different competitors in the Fae Tournament for the Throne, all coming from vastly different origins, and all at vastly different levels,” Jasmine continues, sounding more than a little excited.

Emily looks through the list and quickly finds Scarlet at the very top center of it. But she also vaguely recognizes three of the four Demon Lords on the list from the textbooks in class, along with the Knights of Humanity, and some Class V Guardians, a couple lower Class Guardians, and a couple of her friends. Arthur and Belle for example.

“For those of you who haven’t been keeping up with the details about the tournament, here’s the Black Knight to fill you in!” Jasmine exclaims, passing the baton to the Knight next to her who is grinning from ear to ear.

“Hello everyone! I’ll start it short and simple, if that’s alright with you all!” He says, sounding a little too excited in Emily’s opinion. “As ordered by King Oberon of the Fae, the Fae Tournament will be shown across all of Earth and Tartarus. The tournament itself will be based on a point building system, where various competitions are held and each give points for first, second, and third place within them. Competitors will have multipliers and handicap free points given based on their circumstances, such as level caps, and can opt in for an anti-death mode that will take away the free multiplier every competitor gets for having it disabled. Opting for the anti-death mode will make it so that if they ‘die’ within the artificial universe His Majesty created, they will just be sent back to where they were before entering the tournament.”

Jasmine takes over from here, accepting the mic back from Black before she says, “But onto what I’m sure everyone’s wanting to hear!” A drumroll begins to play from the screen before most of the images of the competitors disappear, leaving only nine remaining. “The rankings!”

Oh. I forgot the various news stations were going around making a list of who they believed would win the tournament, along with the rankings, ranking each of them by an assumption on how they’ll place.

The remaining nine images, including three of the four Demon Lords – The Reaper not having a fae apparently – and the five Knights, along with Scarlet, begin to spin around the screen.

“The rankings were rather difficult to determine, but I personally think we did as good a job as we could with what information we have,” Jasmine says before snapping her fingers, making a flash shine from the screen. Then the nine images reappear descending from the top in the form of a pyramid, with the Blood Calamity on the very top.

Emily hears more than a few displeased voices from the people watching on the streets, many complaining that Scarlet is only around rank number six on the list.

“Now, I’m sure you’re all not very happy about how we placed our beloved Princess, but please consider her level in comparison to the others,” Jasmine says with a light apologetic bow of her head.

If what Amelia told me she’s doing is true, then this news reporter is in for a rather large surprise.

As if on cue, a wave of power spreads out from the East, over the ocean. And along with the power is a bright red flash of light that illuminates everything.

Everyone stops what they’re doing to look in the direction of the light, but no one is able to clearly tell what it is.

Emily, on the other hand, just grins.

Right on time.