The luxurious suite assigned to the Varisus team in Compartment No. 9 was suffocatingly quiet. The grand digital clock mounted on the wall ticked silently past midnight.

Claire sat alone on the plush leather couch in the center of the dimly lit main hall, her legs pulled up, resting her chin heavily on her knees. The rest of the team had retired to their respective rooms immediately after a tense, quiet dinner. Hopefully, they were actually sleeping.

But she knew better than that, no one was sleeping.

Rol had not come back with them after dinner. He had casually mentioned he was going for some "fresh air"—an excuse so paper-thin that Claire had barely suppressed an eye roll. But she wasn’t angry. She knew Rol better than anyone else in the team, they were childhood friends after all, saved by Maddox. He was a creature of the shadows, a spatial assassin who thrived on paranoia. He wouldn’t be leaving her knee-deep in this geopolitical shitshow. He was out there scouting the vast stadium infrastructure, making absolutely sure no rival syndicates were planning a nocturnal ambush.

But Rol wasn’t what was causing the agonizing migraine pounding behind Claire’s eyes. What truly kept her awake, tying her stomach into cold, rigid knots of pure anxiety, were two names: Hide and Maddox.

Hide’s disappearance was completely, fundamentally illogical. The silver-haired boy wouldn’t have just run away from the tournament. There was not even a single shadow of a doubt in Claire’s mind that if Hide had stepped onto that arena floor today, he would have won all of his matches with brutal, flawless efficiency.

As much as it made her pride as an elite Exterminator uneasy to admit it, that boy’s talent was something entirely out of fables. He was capable of doing absolutely anything! He could manipulate volatile dark mana, shrug off fatal curses, and even summon towering, autonomous Calamity Beasts to fight for him—a reality-breaking phenomenon that had never been seen or heard of in the history of humanity.

And as for the theory that some other international team had ambushed him and caused a problem? That, too, was potentially out of the question. Hide’s combat metrics were absurd. Unless an actual S-Ranker had directly intervened and played a role in his disappearance, Hide Volter was essentially untouchable by any competitor here.

Thinking about all this stuff made her head hurt exponentially worse. And then there was the second massive, glaring variable. Commander James Maddox was missing!

The old man had abruptly flown out to the Eastern Continent, to Tarita, under the guise of an emergency, and then never came back. Not a single update. Not even a scrambled, encrypted message detailing where he was going or when he would return to Ufrifa. That was entirely too suspicious for a man who manipulated global intelligence for breakfast.

Could the two cases—Hide vanishing into thin air and Maddox dropping off the grid—be connected in some way?

Hopefully, he just comes back before his name is announced, Claire thought, a deep, ragged sigh escaping her lips. They miraculously dodged the bullet on the first day, but it would be mathematically and politically impossible to do the same tomorrow if the automated brackets select him.

She stayed on the couch, dropping her legs and letting her head fall lazily back against the cool leather. She stared blankly at the pristine, vaulted ceiling of the suite. The soft, ambient hum of the climate-control system filled the quiet room, a stark contrast to the roaring chaos of her mind.

She hadn’t slept peacefully in the last two or three days. The sheer weight of acting as the captain for a fractured squad on the global stage was finally crushing her. As the exhaustion forcefully overpowered her racing thoughts, her eyelids fluttered, grew heavy, and she drifted into a deep sleep right then and there.

"Claire... Claire?"

The low, familiar voice broke through the dense fog of her sleep. Claire jolted, her red eyes snapping open as she suddenly sat straight up. Her breath hitched. Her face had stopped mere inches away from Rol’s. The assassin was leaning directly over her, his glowing grey irises wide with mild surprise at her sudden, violent movement.

Rol immediately coughed, clearing his throat, and quickly straightened his posture, stepping back to re-establish his usual aloof, deadpan demeanor.

"Everybody has gone to the spectating place," he told her, his voice flat. "You are late."

"What?" Claire was entirely dumbstruck. She scrambled to look at the digital clock on the wall, her heart hammering against her ribs. Her eyes widened in absolute horror. "Why didn’t anyone wake me up?!"

Rol shoved his hands deep into his pockets, shrugging his shoulders slightly. "You fell asleep there, so they all thought it was good to not wake you up as you were tired. You looked like you needed it."

"Thanks, Rol," Claire sighed, the panic momentarily warring with a brief pang of genuine appreciation for her team’s bizarre attempt at empathy. "Go ahead, I am coming."

She stood up quickly, her muscles stiff and aching from sleeping at an awkward angle. She rushed into the suite’s luxurious bathroom, aggressively combing her messy, red-tipped blonde hair back with her hands and splashing freezing cold water onto her face to force her nervous system fully awake. She didn’t have time to properly adjust her uniform or check her gear.

It was already thirty minutes past the exact time the second day of the tournament was supposed to start.

She burst out of the compartment and sprinted down the colossal, winding concrete corridors of the stadium. The deafening, muffled roar of three hundred thousand screaming spectators vibrated through the floorboards, guiding her toward the arena. Despite her enhanced physical stats and desperate pace, navigating the labyrinthine security checkpoints and VIP elevators still took her another ten agonizing minutes.

When she finally reached the heavy security doors of their designated spectating box, she pushed them open, panting slightly as the brilliant stadium lights washed over her.

Evelyn, the team’s tactical analyst, was sitting near the front, her glowing tablet resting on her lap. Claire quickly made her way down the tiered rows, exchanging a few hurried, breathless pleasantries with Evelyn as she sat down.

As her breathing leveled out, her eyes rapidly scanned the layout of the room. She immediately froze.

There were three chairs currently empty. One of them was obviously hers, which she had just occupied. The second was Hide’s, which remained a glaring, terrifying reminder of their missing member. But it was the third empty seat that made Claire’s stomach drop.

Gideon’s seat was empty as well!

The realization hit her just as the colossal stadium amplifiers crackled to life. The charismatic voices of the two impeccably dressed commentators boomed across the roaring crowd, officially announcing the names of the two contestants for the current match.

And indeed, it was Gideon Vance representing Varisus! The dark-skinned giant was standing proudly on the red side this time.

"And stepping out of the blue gates, from the Northern Continent!" the male commentator bellowed, his voice dripping with absolute hype.

The heavy blue steel doors on the far side of the arena hissed open. A tall, incredibly imposing woman stepped out into the simulated sunlight. She was dressed in sleek, lightweight combat leathers, and trailing dangerously from her right hand was a long, jagged, and faintly glowing serrated whip!

Gideon clearly blinked as he saw the whip, as if he was struck with some wild idea.

Claire leaned forward, pressing her hands against the smart-glass as she analyzed the newly generated battlefield. The environmental manipulation of the World Tournament had entirely reset the stage from yesterday’s dense forest into something far more treacherous.

The ground was vastly different than before. A wide, beautifully simulated sandy beach stretched across both the red and the blue starting zones, dotted with a few massive, jagged coastal rocks that could serve as heavy physical cover. But the most prominent feature of the map lay directly in the center. A colossal, dark stone tunnel breached the middle of the arena, and from its depths, a massive, violently rapid river was flowing outward. The foaming water moved aggressively toward the central Altar where the flags were to be mounted, effectively cutting the battlefield entirely in half.

Down on the red sands, Gideon cracked his thick neck, his massive frame rippling with anticipation as his heavy iron gauntlets materialized over his fists. Across the roaring river, the tall woman casually cracked her glowing whip against the sand, the sharp SNAP echoing clearly through the stadium microphones.

"Contestants, prepare yourselves!" the female commentator’s voice echoed, reaching an absolute fever pitch.

With a final, electrifying scream from the lady commentator that sent the crowd into a state of absolute, unhinged fanaticism, the match finally kicked off.