It was early morning yet the Von Weise’s main island was packed full with all kinds of aspiring young heirs who hurried here from all around the world. The family was going to choose elite heirs and they knew this was their chance!

One by one, they headed to the family’s grand arena where the tests would take place.

In the Arena, on the top floor in a hall overseeing the entire event, all the high-ranking elders gathered to work as judges and oversee the situation. Many of them were hoping to help their descendants a little.

“Theodore, why are your sons not here?” a man who had thick glasses suddenly asked Theodore. His name was Primus and he was his oldest brother.

“Max refused to participate and Iris was forbidden by me as she is too weak!” Theodore said in a heavy voice. Lying through his teeth. His children had no idea what was happening here as he blocked all communication in his mansion. He was worried that Marcos might try something against him during the chaos.

“Oh… So you don’t want to risk the remaining ones…” Primus sighed, totally misunderstanding. “Don’t worry, your children’s life jades are still intact, I am sure they will be safe!” he said.

“I know…” Theodore said then sighed again as he looked down in depression. He was in fact checking the hall, according to his Mother, Marcos might try to create some kind of a fake coup to get rid of his opponents.

“Come on Theodore… Get yourself together, We have work to do…” Patrick, Theodore's other brother, said, patting Theodore’s shoulder. Although the relationship between them was a little hostile, they were brothers after all. And he could feel Theodore’s distress for losing his mother and two of his most gifted children. Victor was not counted, he was not gifted, but a granny-loving psycho.

“Yes…I know. ” Theodore said.

“Seriously Theodore, you are too sensitive…” one woman who was sitting beside them said.

“Octavia, his children, and our mother are lost… Can’t you show some compassion!” Patrick scolded. Her name was Octavia, and she was his and Theodore’s pampered little sister.
She rarely appeared in the family after having a fight with Ann over her marriage. She chose to disregard the family's arrangement for her and marry some poor guy whom she met in a dungeon. He came from an impoverished lower-player family who had an old hostile relationship with the Von Weise, and this angered Ann who stripped Octavia of most of her privileges and kicked her out after the marriage.

“Hopefully, she would live a long ‘eventful’ life in that dungeon,” she shrugged. “She might get some sense and humility would be beaten into her in the process…” she added in a low voice.

Theodore sighed looking at her. Octavia inherited their mother’s temper and arrogance. And this was what led to the fight between the mother and daughter in the first place. Those two didn’t know how to back down.

“Are those your kids?” Theodore asked, shaking the stupid thoughts out of his mind and looking at one boy and one sickly-looking girl down in the arena. They were looking around nervously.
Theodore could easily pinpoint them thanks to their hair that stood out in the sea of purple. The girl had purple hair that had many red strands mixed in, while the thin boy’s hair was gray with only one strand of purple.
Getting hair like this was very rare, it meant that although they had the family's bloodline, their other bloodline was interfering with it. Just like with Lara who got some silver and crimson strands of hair after her bloodline upgrade, but she was hiding them.

Anyway, those two kids clearly didn’t want to be here as this was the first time they came in contact with the other heirs who were not very friendly with them. He remembered reading a report that they had awakened using their father’s family method and didn’t get any good classes.

“They are mine…“ Octavia said with a tired smile. She had four children, of those, two managed to awaken as players. Unfortunately, both have only 2 points of authority due to the awakening method and this meant that they didn’t have a very bright future and their path would be very hard.

“Do you want them to get an elite ranking?” Patrick asked. “Father would never agree, they are not technically part of the family…”

“No, I just want to get them some family rank… And get them to know their cousins…” Octavia sighed.

“Did they find your husband yet?” Theodore asked. Her husband went to explore some ruins and got lost.

“No… Sadly their family can’t afford Life Jades so we don’t even know if he is alive…” she said, pouting.

“Octavia… By any chance, are you being bullied?” Theodore suddenly asked, grabbing his sister’s shoulder and looking her in the eye.

She chuckled, grabbing Theodore’s hand and then twisting it. “Who dares to bully me!”

“Och…” Theodore quickly took back his hand as he remembered that his sister was really strong. His level seemed to have improved a little.

“Still, my husband's family is not the most generous kind… The kids are having some hard times…” Octavia confirmed Theodore’s guess as she looked at her children down on the Arena floor. If only Ann wasn’t so stubborn she might have been able to make them awaken in the family.

“Ah… Do you need any help….” Theodore whispered.

“Don’t worry about it… In the last year, I got some business contracts with the Von Geldstadt family by coincidence. Things are getting better!” she said tapping his shoulder. Her little brother always had a soft side. Not just soft, it was very mushy. Perhaps this was because Ann pampered him too much, but who knows.

“After this test… Bring them to Vein City to see me… I might have something good for them,” Theodore thought for a moment and said. “Bring your other kids too, I think it is good for them to meet up with some of mine…”

“Oh… Thanks guess…” Octavia smiled a bit.

Theodore, who didn’t know what she was thinking about, had other thoughts. He was pondering why Marcos called her here. He never cared or tried to help her before, why now?
The only thing he could think of was that he planned to kill her too. Could it be that she also was not his daughter? Possible…. His mother was a slut it seemed. Marcos had probably used the DNA tests after Aria’s incident as an excuse to check his leakage. That’s what Ann believed.

Still, Octavia’s appearance here meant one thing. Marcos planned to begin the purge here during or right after the test.
Thankfully, Ann had already prepared for that and the guardians would be deployed... Hopefully, things will go as planned.

“THE PATRIARCH IS HERE!” one butler suddenly announced making all the elders who gathered look back at the entrance as Marcos entered followed by the two newly appointed supreme elders Tolin and Jonathan who wore purple gilded robes.

“We greet the Patriarch… We greet the supreme elders…” everyone said simultaneously as they bowed.

“You may rise!” Marcos said as he quickly took his seat in the center of the hall. All the other elders quickly sat down too.

“Father…” Patrick wanted to say something.

“Later!” Marcos said, giving Octavia a cold glance and then looking at the butler who was filling in for poor Olaf whose injury turned out to be very severe and couldn’t be here. “Where are Frank and Cassius?” he asked.

“Supreme elder Cassius called sick…” the butler replied. “And supreme elder Frank left in a hurry after his grandson got castrated…….”

“Oh… Sneaky lying bastards, let’s see if they can be arrogant after today!” he said, nodding to Tolin and then turning to the large glass window. “Begin the broadcast…” he added.

Quickly a few servants brought a large spherical orb and placed it in the center of the hall before a few elders activated it by placing a few Gems around its base.

Suddenly in the Arena below, a huge projection of the high hall could be seen reflected in the sky,
making all the gathered heirs look up in shock.

“GREETINGS FAMILY MEMBERS!” Marcos said as he smiled watching his big reflection in the sky. “Today, as many of you know, we will hold the test to choose the next elite members! Those who will be chosen will not only get all the family’s privileges but will also get the right to represent the family in the coming tournament!” he said. “After consulting the elders, we have decided to allow everyone who has our family’s blood to compete… Everyone will have an equal chance!” he said, then watched as many heirs began to cheer up. The poor bastards had no idea that most of them were here just for show, for his real children to take this chance.

“YOUR FUTURE WILL DEPEND ON THIS!” he said finally, “Now I will let elder Jonathan explain the rules…” he added. It was time for his plan to start!

…
..

Doing something repeatedly makes you very efficient at it.

Victor relearned this fact on the second day as the speed at which he grabbed corpses and shoved them into his trusty cauldron increased.

He found out that he can use the cauldron as a vacuum cleaner of sorts, holding it sideways, he made it suck up all the corpses in the radius of a few feet around him as he flew around.

This increased his efficiency incredibly. The only drawback was that this consumed a lot of energy, but he had enough energy bars to compensate for that! And strangely enough, those energy bars tasted really good on his tongue. Was this the effect of his dragon bloodline or demon bloodline? He had no idea. He just hoped that he would not acquire some depraved fetishes.

Anyway, by the end of the fifth day, when he reached the bottom of the gorge that was covered by a thin layer of dried blood, Victor could only sigh in relief. He finished taking about two miles of corpses that went 300 feet deep.

The more he went down the more he discovered about this world’s history. This place was like a record of some sort.

On the top, it was full of layers of humans and elves. Between them, he found most of the skill books and artifacts, proof of wars between them and demons.
The more he went down, the fewer artifacts he was finding. They were replaced by monster corpses and the occasional unlucky adventurer who fell here.

Down below at the bottom, he found the real good stuff, like some types of huge wyverns and dragons with the corpses of strange-looking humanoid creatures that he had never seen anything like before. At first, he thought they were normal humans until he noticed the strange gems protruding from their skulls like small horns. They seemed to be the original owners of this world, and after a war with the elves and humans, they were eradicated.
The weapons they held didn’t seem like artifacts, but they seemed to be able to hold magic of some sort, but they were not functional.

He had a hunch that those could be the artifacts from before the system entered this world. As this was just like what would happen in his world, Trilaria when firearms would stop functioning after the Reckoning.

Just how old was this gorge? He had no idea, but he needed to sort them out.

He considered giving this mission to the girls in the cauldron, but fearing the corpses might contain some sort of remnant Death Energy, he decided to leave this for later as they were not even players…

Wait, what would happen if he let them out here? Would they become players? Yes… This was not a dungeon, and the world would probably turn them into players as soon as they left the cauldron that was shielding them at the moment.

He needed to try this as soon as he found some safe place, as he was not sure if the dark scion, Mavis, would cause a disaster or not. He was not even sure if this world would consider her a scion, to begin with.

Leaving this for later, and giving the now empty gorge one last look, he began to fly up.

Too bad that this place had all of this death energy, or it would have been a perfect place for a secret base. He needed to give it another visit once he had some free time. For now, he had an auction to take care of.

...

The road back to the border town was very smooth.

Victor, who reached the surface, quickly disguised himself as the old man again then headed back to the bridge where a different guard greeted him.

“Ah… Where is that good young fella who was here a few days ago?” Victor asked as the guard used an artifact to scan him for demon energy. This method was only 10% effective but it stopped some demons disguised as humans from crossing the gorge.

“He kicked an iron plate!” the talkative guard said. “It turned out that he marked travelers, and two days ago, some bigshot crossed here disguised as a woman and the guard had the audacity to grope his ass…” the guards sighed.

“Oh… Poor thing… “ Victor sighed, damn it… He would have wanted to see that.

“You are clear… You better hurry if you want to put your things to be auctioned, the auction is tomorrow morning and the auction house will close in two hours!” the guard warned.

“Thanks, kid…” Victor threw the guard a silver coin and then quickly hurried away toward the town.

On the way back, Victor made sure to use the same method the old guard told him about, by staying to the side of the road.

“STOP THERE!”

The method didn’t work. It was only for leaving, not for those who returned.

In front of Victor, a group of 9 gangsters stood. Most of them were half-humans with various kinds of bloodlines. It seemed like they all decided to come live here on the border.

“Can I help you, young men?” Victor asked.

“Give us everything you have got!” one sneaky man said licking his knife. It was a bad habit.

“Oh… That’s what your mothers said to me ages ago in that orgy… Who would have thought that I would hear that line again from my own sons….” Victor said, sighing.

It took the men a moment to get it.

“Ahh…. FUCK YOU!” “KILL…” “Kill……………”

The men were all dead as Victor who was behind them at this point whipped his sword with one of their corpses before collecting them into his cauldron. At least they might work as fertilizers.

Now… Where was that town again? Ah yes…. That direction!

Victor quickly returned to the road. Or that is what the few guys who were shaking behind one big rock thought before they also lost their heads.

“Idiots…” Victor sighed as he collected the corpses then paused as in front of him a system announcement appeared. It was something he had been waiting weeks for.

He naturally stopped the corpsed cleaning and pressed YES quickly and nervously. He had no time. Once his target managed to enter Trilaria his skill might no longer work, so he had to do it quickly before the full summoning ritual occurred! After that, he would not be able to control it before returning.

He pressed YES while crossing his fingers.

...
..
.

Victor finally breathed in relief.

That last line was his pure imagination, but from now on he shall call it Astran.