"You fucking fire bastard. You took us all for a ride. You son of a…"
William yelled in anger when he saw what Eren did. The latter maintained his smile while pointing upwards with his finger.
"Zero!
All the contestants and dear viewers, please note that the Titus tournament concludes at this point. The contestants are prohibited from performing any offensive activities. Any prohibitory action will result in contestants losing their place in the top 10 list."
William stopped in his tracks when the announcement was made by a rigid, feminine voice. His facial expressions changed from anger to frustration to disappointment to acceptance in a matter of moments.
The rest of the rankers were too stunned to speak or act at this point. Rankers like Silvera and Wilder weren't even aware what had happened because they were only paying attention to the battle between two Top Three contestants.
Soon after, another announcement was made by the same feminine voice as the spectral display got updated.
"The top 10 placeholders of this year's Titus tournament, starting from place 10, are as follows.
10th Place- Silvera Rehrook
9th Place- Ray Rinehart
8th Place- Bianka Bluedust
7th Place- Ketsu Hasu
6th Place- Wayne Wilder
5th Place- Lily Geist
4th Place- Katalina Reich
Congratulations!"
The spectator displayed the place holders from 10th to 4th positions and stopped. It then changed colors and layout and displayed the next set of names with bolder and bigger fonts.
"Following contestants have made it to the Top 3 segment of the tournament.
3rd Place- William Shanks- 609,6969 Titus Points
2nd Place- Drin Dawn- 829,7935 Titus Points
Congratulations!"
Displaying till here, the spectral screen got completely blank before bursting with any eye-catching theme of orange fire and Fire Wings. This was a personal touch the organizers had provided to him for his position.
The alchemy products embedded inside the arrays went off and soared the skies, both inside the subspace and at Arangar colosseum. They splashed a beautiful vista of colors by using the evening sky as their canvas.
A visual rendition of Fire Wings was displayed over all the screens that were available for all the viewers to see. The most epic moments in Tuan's battle scenes also started replaying in reels in the background.
This visual rendition of Fire Wings could be seen getting reflected in every viewer's eyes as they stared at the live telecast with fervent gazes. Soon those eyes saw the name they knew was going to get displayed.
"1st Place- Tuan Aag- 831,5789 Titus Points
Tuan Aag wins this year's Titus Tournament. Congratulations!
Contestants will be summoned back to the Arangar Colosseum in: 3… 2… 1… 0."
******************
"Sorry to keep you away from your limelight, Tuan. Please bear with us. Can you tell me what happened with Tim Westmoor and Langdon Lark?"
While the rest of the contestants were teleported to the Arangar Colosseum to receive applause from their fans, Tuan was summoned to a different place away from the cacophony of stadium's noises.
The question about Tim and Langdon's whereabouts was asked to Tuan by Gladius Red. he was the same guy who had acted as the host of this year's Titus tournament. The same guy who had introduced the contestants to the audience one by one.
This was a spacious room with runic luminescence creating a pleasing ambiance. Uan was sitting beside a large work desk in a comfortable sofa chair. Gladius was sitting on the opposite side of the table with his locked hands placed over the table.
Tuan was ready for such questions from the moment he had decided to digest Tim and Langdon as his gains. He sighed in a melancholic tone before speaking out.
"Sir Gladius, I don't know what happened to them. But I can tell you events that took place after they started chasing me."
Tuan knew that the organizers couldn't see how they entered the distorted space or the activities inside it. So he started telling Gladius the chronological order of events by mixing facts with his blend of bullshittery.
Tuan told Gladius that he and his pursuers had entered a weird space when they continued their chase. He also made some bold claims.
"Sir Gladius, I can say for a fact that Tim and Langdon were cultists. As soon as they found out they couldn't be monitored by you guys because of the distorted space's peculiarity, they started casting weird spells that didn't seem to belong to our usual kind.
They also wanted to silence me for good after I recognized that they were cultists. And they would have succeeded in doing so had I not found a spatial tear that led me to the Field Boss's territory."
Tuan conveniently made up Tim and Langdon's cultist identities on the fly. He knew that the distorted space and the now-ruined library was eventually going to get found out after the two rankers' deaths. So he told them the location of the distorted space himself while blaming the potential existence of his spells' unusual mana residue on Tim and Langdon.
He also told Gladius that Tim was a weird summoner class user and that he claimed that he could kill the monsters and use them as his summons using a special procedure.
Gladius raised his eyebrows when he heard Tuan speak. Frankly, he felt that a normal cultist wouldn't talk so much about themselves to the guy they were going to silence. But then he reasoned it out himself while saying 'you never know with those cultist punks' in his head.
Tuan then blamed most of the happenings inside the distorted space on Tim, knowing full well that his actions as the summoner class individual were also going to get pinned on him.
Gladius didn't say anything for a while after he heard Tuan speak. He waited for the incident report by his men that had gone on preliminary investigation. It was soon delivered to him on his ID stone's spectral screen.
Almost everything about what Tuan had claimed was reflected in the preliminary incident report. He furrowed his brows when he saw the mention of one potion in the report.
Gladius stomped his open palms on the desk hard before commenting.
"Damn it. My personal historian is in critical care. Who the fuck made this wretched Format History potion? And some evil, greedy bastard has started selling it in the black market, making it difficult for anybody to track them down."
Gladius lost his cool in front of the same evil, greedy bastard he was talking about.
