The first thing he came face to face with was sunlight, streaming down through cloudless skies, and carrying with it a warmth that seeped into his bones, calming his animalistic rage as his transformation was reversed. And then what came next was the smell of summer, a wispy breeze that spoke of new life and young love. Divyat took in all of the sights in front of him, a wide panoramic view of hundreds of land masses floating in the sky, many of them connected to a massive central island that had a gleaming golden pagoda the size of a mountain on it.
The landmasses were all connected to the massive island by ways of massive chains that gleamed silver and red at intervals. On the chains themselves were the desiccated corpses of quite a few unfortunate individuals who had went on ahead in an attempt to master this next leg of the trial. Divyat took pause, looking around himself as he noticed the looks he was receiving. The landmass he was standing on, had less people on it than any other landmass, which pretty much explained why they were all looking at him in revulsion, especially at his bloodied form.
But he didn't understand why, there was a counter counting how many people could get through the entrance on the cavern ceiling, yet when he took a closer look, he noticed that many of the people if not all of the people he had left behind were also all here. And that was when he felt a light tingle on his forearm, he raised it up to see a black tattoo; a skull with thorns on it appear over his skin. He noticed that a significant amount of people both on the landmass he was on, and off of it on other landmasses had also had their attention drawn by tattoos appearing on their bodies, obviously these where the people who had made it through.
But there was something weird though, Divyat was noticing that there were more people than what he started the trial with, in fact from the couple of dozens he started with, they exploded to thousands back in the caverns, and now it was in the hundreds of thousands. Almost as if they all were funneling themselves from different parts of the Ghadovara mountains. Until they were all just one massive group. But before that there was a process of elimination, funneling them all until the group with the tattoos were found, though what meaning these tattoos had currently eluded Divyat.
"Ladies and gentlemen you all have done well!!!!"
An intense yet ominous voice seemed to resound across the floating landmasses. The voice itself was scratchy and was speaking at what would and should be considered barely above a whisper with the tone of what Divyat imagined to be an old crone. But regardless, the voice was still loud enough that everyone here could hear it, so Divyat just took it in stride, but still kept his guard up.
"Many of you have fallen, and by the hands of each and every one of you. If there's an individual right now without blood on their hands, then it is obvious you will be dying soon. There are sixteen clusters of trial takers, and each clusters has at least and at most 5000 trial takers. Except for cluster seven, they only have 1755 trial takers, looks like your run in the caverns were a lot more brutal than envisioned." At the mention of that, almost everyone that was a part of Divyat's cluster turned to look at him, but the human boy remained unshaken.
"Either way, there are five hundred seeded Trial takers, they have what we like to call the seal of doom and authority. With that seal, they are to form a bandit band or group of no less than 10 contestants, and no more than 5000 trial takers. The other trial takers on the clusters have a chance to become what we call Apprentice Bandit Bosses, by attacking and defeating any one of the seeded trial takers that holds seal of doom and authority.
And alternatively, the seal holders, aka the seeded contestants, can challenge each other to increase the ranking of their seals from [Apprentice Bandit Boss]>>>[Apprentice Bandit Chief]>>>[Apprentice Bandit Lord]>>>[Apprentice Bandit King] each rank needs 100, 150, and then 250 defeated seeded contestants to get to the highest rank. You are free to subjugate your clusters as you see fit, or form alliances as you see fit. Should an [Apprentice Bandit King] show up in any of the clusters, then automatically, he becomes the defacto leader of that cluster….or whatever remains of it.
After that the chains will reveal the path to the central island, where each clusters will gear up and fight for the right to be a recognized bandit group. Only three groups will be recognized, and everyone else would be relegated to civilian duty and more training. And from those three clusters, their leaders aside, another competition would be carried out to funnel the top 30 fighters amongst all of you. Then the leaders will fight amongst themselves to see who will become the number 1 rookie bandit boss of the year? And they have their pick of subordinates from the top 30 fighters. Now you guys should run along with it, there will be prizes to be won."
The voice vanished just as quickly as it had appeared. Divyat cursed softly as all eyes on his cluster were on him, all of them eying the tattoo on his forearm. Enough of them had seen what he was capable of and just how dangerous he was, and because of that, of how much of a threat he was; Divyat had caused something unprecedented to happen. He made a small army of demi-humans and demons band together to bring an end to a single enemy, a sense of unity that not a single one of these races and their individual species have ever been able to muster.
Truly he was the wild card in the trial, and they wanted to do everything in their power to get him not just off the playing field, but dead, very dead. Because when it comes down to it….Divyat had the highest chance amongst all of them, to actually win this thing. And with the knowledge that a human could participate in their sacred trials and actually win did not sit well with them, it absolutely sucked. And because of that…there was no other way to solve it.
Divyat….MUST DIE