Chapter 159
The main tournament had finally begun.
One by one, those who had managed to draw their swords climbed onto the training ground.
Leon looked at the qualifiers, who didn't even fill half the arena, and let out a dumbfounded laugh.
[Hah... where did all those people go, nya?]
[Are these seriously the only ones who passed, nya?]
Suhyeok looked down at the eliminated participants leaving in despair.
Naturally...
Baek San, the Flowing Cloud Sword, was among them.
"Keugh...."
It was an understandable result.
The swords True Man Cheongheo had planted in the ground couldn't be moved through ordinary means.
A high cultivation realm alone wasn't enough.
Neither was raw strength.
There was only one condition for drawing the sword.
One had to become completely one with the blade.
What a shame.
If he'd abandoned his stray thoughts, he would've passed easily.
Baek San hadn't failed because he was weaker than the people who passed.
There were several qualifiers who were clearly weaker than him.
As Cheongheo had explained...
One had to become one with the sword.
Not even the slightest distracting thought could remain.
But Baek San's mind hadn't been focused on drawing the sword.
He'd been thinking about how everyone around him saw him.
And beneath even that...
There had been arrogance.
That was why he'd failed.
Suhyeok slowly looked across the people remaining on the training ground.
Most were unfamiliar faces.
Which was only natural.
The martial world held far more hidden experts than the ones known publicly.
Even among those standing here...
Suhyeok could see several.
They were deliberately suppressing their qi to avoid drawing attention.
But Suhyeok could still see it.
Immense concentrations of Rank, gathered together like enormous waves.
...It wasn't like this before the regression.
Was the 50th floor always this strong?
No.
He could say with certainty that it hadn't been.
Compared to before the regression...
Everyone here was incomparably stronger.
This already felt as though they'd exceeded the level the 50th floor should permit.
Before the regression, there had occasionally been exceptional individuals who stood outside the norm.
But once they reached the natural limit of their floor...
They could go no further.
A resident of a floor could never surpass that floor's limit.
That was an absolute rule established by the world.
No.
By the Tower.
Then why now...?
This probably wasn't happening only on the 50th floor.
Other floors were likely experiencing similar changes.
Which meant...
The boundaries between floors were gradually disappearing.
Suhyeok looked toward Leon.
Leon had clearly noticed something strange too.
He looked just as confused by what was happening.
[This is... really strange, nya.]
[Something like this should never be possible....]
Through Leon's eyes as an Upper Administrator...
The Rank flowing through the surroundings was changing abnormally from moment to moment, almost like a game suffering from a system error.
It hadn't been visible before the preliminaries ended.
So why had everything suddenly begun changing now?
Suhyeok looked at the unusually quiet chat window.
Maybe this is connected to the Constellations disappearing.
Before the regression...
When Mihyeon and the other raid members died.
When Bong Taesu died to the Dragon of the End.
When Suhyeok chose regression on the 100th floor.
Whenever major changes occurred within the Tower...
The Constellations had always been there.
Leon.
You still haven't found out where the Constellations went?
[I don't know either, nya....]
[All the channels suddenly closed, and every Constellation is showing as offline, nya....]
If even Leon, now an Upper Administrator, didn't know...
Then something was definitely happening.
They'd probably find out soon enough.
"...?"
At that moment...
Suhyeok spotted a familiar face among the distant crowd.
Namgung Geon.
The same man they'd encountered at the White Dragon Inn the previous day.
"H-Hiek...!"
The instant their eyes met...
Namgung Geon immediately looked away.
After being knocked out in one blow yesterday...
And then seeing Suhyeok draw Cheongheo's sword earlier...
He had clearly lost most of his swagger.
He looked like a tiny dog exposing its belly the moment it saw a large one.
Cheon Sohee glanced toward him.
"Oh?"
"So he isn't merely all talk."
Considering the disgraceful behavior he'd shown at the White Dragon Inn...
His presence here really was unexpected.
He inherited the Alliance Leader's physique.
His martial talent is clearly exceptional too.
Apparently...
His skill was genuine.
The children of the other Five Great Families who had been with him yesterday were nowhere to be seen.
They'd probably all failed the preliminaries.
That would explain the sour expressions on several Elders sitting in the spectator seats.
Meanwhile...
"H-How exactly did you pull the sword out...?"
True Man Cheongheo stood frozen in front of Bong Taesu.
His eyes were trembling.
"Haha..."
"You're staring so openly that it's a little embarrassing."
Taesu scratched his cheek awkwardly.
For some reason...
He was attracting an enormous amount of attention.
The sword in Bong Taesu's hand hadn't merely been drawn.
A massive chunk of the floor around it had been ripped out along with the blade.
Cheongheo stared back and forth between Taesu...
And the huge piece of flooring still attached to the sword.
Then...
"D-Did you pull this out using nothing but strength...?"
"What in the world..."
"Hahaha...."
He stroked his beard and laughed in disbelief.
Apparently...
This was the first time anything like this had ever happened.
He remained dazed for quite a while.
Lee Yumi stared at Bong Taesu with an expression that practically screamed, What the hell is this?
"Seriously..."
"How did you even do that?"
"You learned qi control while working with the Alliance."
"I drilled it into you until I thought I'd die."
"So where did all of that go?"
"Why did you just rip the whole thing out with brute force?"
"Haha, well..."
Taesu looked embarrassed.
"I tried doing it properly, but it wouldn't come out."
"Everyone else seemed to be drawing theirs, and I started panicking because I thought I'd be the only one who couldn't...."
"No, even if you panicked, why would you rip out the entire floor?"
"You're seriously causing trouble for everyone."
"S-Sorry...."
"Why are you apologizing to me?"
"That floor looks expensive."
"If you're going to apologize, apologize to whoever manages the Alliance's finances."
Right on cue...
A middle-aged man was being dragged away from behind the spectator seats.
His face was bright red as he shouted something furiously.
Several people around him were desperately covering his mouth.
"...I think that might be the head of the finance division."
Bong Taesu suddenly became very conscious of everyone's gaze.
He quietly crouched down and tried to place the sword back where it had been.
Creeeak.
Of course...
Putting it back didn't magically repair the floor.
If anything...
