Chapter 412: The True Value of Victory

“Oh god, I need to do everything to reach first place.”

That was the first thought that raced through Thalion’s mind the moment he saw what first place received.

There Can Only Be One

Reaching first place in my treasure hunt is one of the greatest accomplishments of your lifetime. The winner will be invited to an epic victory party in my separate dimension, outside of time and space. My domain has no restrictions when it comes to granting mortals items and information. While you will not be able to gain experience points, I will do my utmost to prepare you for your life in the system.

As I am not allowed to go into more detail—since it would not be approved by the system—here are a few random rewards to give you a rough idea of what is to come.

The winner of this system event will inherit my strongest title: Hunter of All.

You will receive a skill crystal for every single one of my skills, scaled to your current level.

Furthermore, your future evolutions can never decline in rarity.

This was far more text than the other rewards, and overall it sounded impressive—but that last point eclipsed everything else.

The other rewards were powerful boosts, but evolution was always the real bottleneck. With every evolution, maintaining the same rarity became harder and harder. From what Thalion understood, there were only two real approaches. Either you delayed your evolution for centuries in hopes of securing a higher rarity, or you evolved immediately and accepted the downgrade.

Most Chosen on New Earth wouldn’t give a damn about rarity. They would push forward as fast as possible just to be strong enough to fight other Chosen.

This reward changed everything.

With this title, you could push forward without ever losing rarity. At first glance, that didn’t sound too insane—but in hindsight, it dwarfed every other reward on its own. What were two thousand stat points compared to saving thousands of years spent stalling at C-grade just to preserve rarity?

Losing too much rarity with each evolution was disastrous. A high-rarity class already provided significant advantages in the lower grades—but at higher grades, the difference became overwhelming. And there was a reason for that. Achieving and maintaining a high-rarity class at advanced levels was brutally difficult and time-consuming.

During the tutorial, they had practically been gifted Legendary and Mythic classes for almost nothing in comparison.

This single reward could save Thalion hundreds of thousands of years in the higher grades. It was an opportunity to catch up to—and even surpass—the Chosen of this planet, especially since Thalion had done nothing but grind his class relentlessly.

Having a divine class in every future grade was outright absurd.

As a Shapeshifter, Thalion could even add more forms before evolving. Since his rarity could never drop below divine if he succeeded here, those forms would automatically upgrade as well. Future evolutions could become perfect opportunities to farm skills for his other forms.

And that wasn’t even the end of it.

Thalion immediately began to imagine countless ways to exploit every single evolution. All of that—from a single sentence.

Then there was the personal training by a god.

Thalion had already experienced the explosive growth inside the Golden Palace, and those instructors had only been D-grade or below. He couldn’t even imagine the progress he could make with a god teaching him directly.

Since he already knew that Ratgul was some kind of beastkin, there was a very real chance that the god could provide brutal, specialized training for the Crippled Eclipsari. A normal god might lack deep knowledge of beast combat—but Ratgul was the perfect mentor.

A fusion of beast and human.

That alone promised unparalleled insight.

And then came the next part—time.

He wouldn’t lose any time while training with the god. That alone was absurdly powerful. But Ratgul wasn’t planning to stop at training. No—he would grant access to treasures normally restricted by the system in the new universe.

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Maybe Thalion couldn’t bring them with him—but if they were consumables, or if he used the materials to forge armor or weapons, that should still work. Right?

Then there were the skills.

If Thalion remembered the statue of the lion-headed warrior correctly, he was confident he would find plenty of use for Ratgul’s abilities.

And finally, there was one more thing.

Something absolutely mind-boggling.

Something that wasn’t even clearly stated in the reward description.

What if Ratgul possessed a transcended or bloodline skill? What if he even had more than one?

If such a skill existed, Thalion couldn’t see how he wouldn’t be able to use it to its full potential in at least one of his forms. Ratgul’s statue hadn’t depicted him as a god wielding elemental powers or anything flashy. No—he looked like a straightforward warrior, someone who excelled at the fundamentals.

And for a god to claim that you would inherit his strongest title was insane.

After experiencing the sheer number of advantages his own title had already given him, Thalion knew it had to be something special. He couldn’t imagine a god handing out rewards like this only to give a useless title at the end. Thalion hadn’t met Ratgul yet, but judging by the wording alone, he seemed like a god who took great pride in himself.

Maybe Ratgul would even consider it a personal failure if Thalion were to die after winning his treasure hunt.

Either way, even if the first-place reward felt a bit more suspicious than those for second and third place, it was vastly more potent. That final sentence alone was worth more than the rewards for second and third combined—and that was just the beginning.

Still, before he could think any further about the payout, Thalion needed to focus on actually winning the treasure hunt. And for that, he had to perform well in this stage.

Until now, he had been so distracted by the system notification that he hadn’t paid much attention to where he had arrived.

White clouds surrounded him on all sides. Snow fell almost endlessly from the sky, swirling around Thalion. He was high up in the air, and between the snowflakes and the fierce winds, he couldn’t even see the ground. That also meant others wouldn’t be able to spot him easily.

After this system notification, everyone would be coming for him. First place was simply too enticing—so absurdly rewarding that no one would dare ignore it. Being first meant skipping thousands upon thousands of years filled with constant, life-or-death battles.

From now on, Thalion would have to be extra careful.

In this stage, he should still be fine. But in the next one, things could become truly dangerous. Thalion suspected that the chances of running into other trial-takers would be much higher there, compared to massive stages like the one he was currently in.

His immediate problem, however, was visibility.

He couldn’t see very far, and seeing was kind of a requirement if he wanted to find the great storm. The fact that the entire stage was one massive snowstorm was more than a little annoying. How was he even supposed to locate the coldest point?

At the moment, the icy winds weren’t bothering him much at all—which likely meant he was still far from the grand treasure. The winds weren’t too strong either, allowing Thalion to bring out the skyship and set sail toward a better vantage point.

With no real point of orientation in the snowfall, he decided to descend first. If he could spot landforms or mountain ranges, he might be able to determine where the coldest place of all lay.

<--

Liraeth had been trembling with rage. This had to be some kind of joke. How could this human be so lucky—again—gaining another massive infusion of leaderboard points? Just what was he doing?

And the rewards for the top positions were simply too good to be true. She had hoped they would be items—something she could take from their corpses. But no. Stat boosts and skills. How unfortunate.

At least that brute Eric wasn’t getting any of them. They had already discovered that his base was somewhere nearby, and if he survived the treasure hunt, he would be one of the first human Chosen she would kill on New Earth.

Still, there was some good news.

One of her scouts had finally found another Chosen—one who had already lost all of his people. That wasn’t ideal, since his patron was one of her mistress’s greatest rivals. Even so, having another Chosen at her side would make this stage far easier, especially since Kaelir could constantly warm the air around them. That alone was invaluable in this storm.

And even if they didn’t like each other, there was one person they both hated far more.

“I can’t believe a human can gain this many points every stage,” Liraeth complained loudly as they trudged through the deep snow. “Not a single one of us Chosen can keep up. And who is that First Daughter, anyway?”

Kaelir walked beside her, looking as though he wanted to say something, but for now he kept quiet and continued warming the air around them as Liraeth vented her frustration.

“I’m also disappointed in our fellow elven Chosen. Someone should have run into that Daughter—or Thalion—by now. How are they still alive?” In her frustration, she launched a gust of wind to the side, strong enough to form a small tornado.

Her subordinates were smart enough not to respond to her tirade, but Kaelir finally couldn’t hold back.

“True. But I wonder where he spawned on New Earth,” Kaelir said calmly. “I suspect he’ll exit at the end of this stage to claim the best reward. An F-grade can’t hope to stand against someone of our caliber.”

“Yes, there’s no way he can—” Liraeth stopped mid-sentence and turned to Kaelir, her eyes narrowing. “Wait. How do you know he’s F-grade?”

“Uh… I heard it from another human I killed,” Kaelir said after a brief pause. “I was unlucky and didn’t run into him during that stage.”

“Hm.” Liraeth’s anger slowly began to rise again. “Say… how did you lose your party, exactly?”

“In that stupid poison stage,” Kaelir snapped. “We figured it out too late and didn’t collect the corpses, which forced them to leave early. Now stop bickering. We need to find more of the others and make sure that in the higher stages, only elves remain at the top. No more Thalion. No more Daughter. And no more other Chosen—especially those damn humans and orcs.”

His voice grew louder with every word.

Liraeth continued to watch him suspiciously, but she didn’t press the issue further.

“True,” she finally said. “At least now we have a way to track the others. This treasure hunt will belong to us. Once we’ve gathered a few more, we can start planning how to efficiently eliminate the remaining Chosen—and claim the planet for our patrons.”