Getting down from the castle was a bit of a hassle. The magic circle, called the Nifelgar, created a strange bubble of para-reality, warping gravity to an extent. Drekar said this was the least it could do, depending on your resources.

So to get down, Faust had to create a tunnel of the sphere of reality from the castle to the ground.

"Magic circles are the domain of the system," Drekar explained. "Installing this here required us to find some materials and complete tasks for the system. After that, we were given access to an Interface. It took us weeks to remember how to code a Nifelgar."

"That sounds like it sucked," Zen muttered. "All that extra work while stuck in that sulfur-choked, cold wasteland."

Drekar smiled bitterly. "It was a good life."

Faust turned back with twitching eyes. "No, the fuck it wasn’t. All this cope instead of just saying what you feel."

They landed in the Novice Village a few minutes later. The rest of the players were fighting their way back to the portal; apparently, people watching the streams had warned them of Vi’s trick.

The Players jumped out of the gates and saw the jagged, black castle floating upside down over the village. Thankfully, Faust only had to explain to Diego what had happened. News spread between streams quickly.

Most viewers subscribed to only five players, unless they wanted to spend Stream points to watch more. But they shared info in real life, so other viewers brought summaries of what was happening in different chats.

Some were copy-paste explanations, others were just misinformation or straight lies. But at the end of the day, most people knew how the event was beaten.

They muttered and complained to themselves, saying they didn’t expect Vi’s deception. They blamed Jason and Flawless, who had so adamantly said that the tunnels were the way. This dulled the magnificence Jason started the fifth wave with.

Others cursed Red God and his ability to consistently steal victory from them. They accosted people with the same color hair as him and theorized on how he was cheating.

Faust looked down on some of them from Sergio’s store, drinking mango juice that Sergio was obsessed with making right now. Some players were harassing some random guy with red hair. He wondered what they’d do if it was actually him.

"Forget about them," Nirvana murmured, leaning against him. "We’ve been fighting for the last two days. Don’t you get tired?"

"It wouldn’t really be a fight. Just me beating them up for fun."

Nirvana rolled her eyes and returned to her thick, yellow drink. The sun was peeking over the horizon finally, sending blinding rays into Faust’s eyes, painting the sky in brilliant purples and blues.

The digital world reflected the end of the event. The rain and darkness were chased into the distance by the sun.

The smell of ash hung in the air from when Faust fired the golden beam from the castle. He missed the village by just a bit, but he could see the smoke rising from the black line in the earth.

He lied to Diego that Vi shot that at the village, and he just barely stopped her from hitting it.

Faust smirked slightly and turned back to the full table. Zen sat across from him at the other head of the table, Spider and Greg were on his left and right. Meanwhile, Nirvana and Thalia were beside Faust.

Nirvana pulled her seat closer to his to rest her head on his shoulder, occasionally saying something funny or strange she noticed during the fifth wave.

Faust noticed that the five of them never stopped talking, even though Drekar was standing in the corner of their terrace, sipping his mango juice quietly.

"Can you find a seat?" Zen asked.

"I’m fine standing," Drekar said simply.

Thalia was pretty good at pretending to be calm, but her annoyance crept into her voice when she said, "Can the system announce what’s going to happen with you already?"

Unfortunately, they had to wait a few more minutes until the gate closed. Zen finally forced Drekar to sit, and not long after, the system chimed.

Ding!

[Wow... what an end to our first event. I’m still investigating some things, but congratulations!]

[The Beast Tide event has ended!]

[Click here to see our top 1000 players before the fifth wave...]

[Before we proceed to the award ceremony, one of our sponsors would like to speak. A founding member of the Aural Council. You can consider him the father of our tiny planet. The Sovereign of Eternity, Vox Galdara!]

"What the hell," Thalia muttered, sitting up.

The system screen closed and opened again, revealing a video of a man standing under a starry sky.

The man’s hair glowed silver like the abnormally bright stars. His face was hidden behind a black mask with golden lines depicting a bestial visage. Royal purple robes hung from his shoulders, and on his chest, a white surcoat depicted a golden sigil of a twelve-pointed star.

[Greetings, bastard children of Earth.] 𝙧𝙚𝙚𝔀𝒆𝓫𝓷𝙤𝓿𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝙤𝓶

Faust turned to Nirvana and Thalia; they all shared a flabbergasted look on their faces.

[Destruction comes upon you, and may the system punish your families.]

"He says this like we should be honored to hear it," Spider muttered.

The man in the video paused, listening to someone speaking in his ear, then he let out a hearty chuckle.

[Oh, I’m sorry. I seem to be using those words wrongly. Hopefully it makes sense in any language other than English.]

[But essentially, you are my bastard siblings. My father, Yalnova, was the one who began the Earth project all those years ago.]

[And destruction does come to you; most worlds don’t survive their integration. But I hope the system punishes you and the ones you love, because those that prevail through those punishments will be strong.]

Greg narrowed his eyes in confusion. "Thank you?"

Vox leaned forward, locking his fingers in front of him.

[To many of you the integration may seem abrupt, but understand the time of your creators works differently from yours, so please be understanding.]

[The continuation of existence is built on the labor of our players and sponsors, so I hope you will do your best.]

People were screaming and yelling on the streets, but the video went on, unconcerned. It must have been prerecorded.

[The next stage of this game will take place on your world, before we return here for the server merges. Then we can find out who are Earth’s mightiest players!]

[For now, congratulations on completing the first wave! I wish you destruction in your events going forward!]