Chapter 103 The leaderboard.
This large number of people could not move without it being noticed by others so of course the mass exodus was reported on the news. It was the biggest headline of the day.
'The blue star welcomes it's first immigrants.'
'Could the blue star be on the rise?'
'What could the move of former mecha warriors from the capital to the blue star mean?'
'Could this sudden move of mecha warriors that have lost their former glory to the blue star have a secret motive?'
'We will pay you to live here," the governor of the blue star says.
Some of the headlines were positive and genuinely reported the truth but others were maliciously written with the intention to smear the blue star or just plain click bait. But the new immigrants did not care because they were busy touring their new home.
A few eloquent people had volunteered to act as guides for the new ones. The large screen which played outdoor movies was playing a video on loop of Scarlet addressing and welcoming the new immigrants.
The volunteers made sure to pass by the so that everyone watched the video. Some of the volunteers were teenagers and others were the beautiful and cute little children of the blue star, Justin inclusive. The touring groups visited different sections at different times so as not to cause commotion.
Justin was showing a group of thirty people the rice paddies, "We sometimes play here and yesterday we saw these creatures, my mummy said they are called rice field frogs."?He run around, trying to catch one of the little frogs but it jumped away from him. The frog eggs and two adult frogs were dumped into the rice field by Scarlet in her attempt to change the ecology of the blue star. Her plan was to do it slowly, one animal at a time.
Most of the people were smiling because Justin was taking every opportunity to mention 'my mummy' over and over. It was almost as if if he did not specify that the governor was his mother somebody else would claim her.
The mummy he was talking about had locked herself in the bedroom for thirty minutes and swallowed a sleeping pill at Severus's insistence. She delivered souls and when she was about to exit the underworld, Severus stopped her.
"Why do you want us to stay longer?" she asked him.
"Just follow me." Severus said to her.
She followed slowly behind Severus, her eyes wondering around from side to side. She would smile and nod at every grim reaper that passed her way and they did the same to her.
"Everyone is friendly." she told Severus.
"That's because you have become quite a bit of a celebrity in the underworld. Everything about you has become a source of entertainment, even the deities have picked interest in you. Reapers are betting soul crystals on how quickly you will level up next, how many souls you deliver per week, whether you will ever deliver another strong soul, how wealthy you are and how strong you are.?Someone also raised the question about why you are not on the leaderboard."
"What's the leaderboard?" she asked.
They came to a a large hall with wide doors, it had the picture of a hound whose fangs were wide open. Severus tapped the gong and the doors opened. Inside, she saw what was a coliseum whose seats moved from the ground, all the way up to the ceiling of the hall. Some of the seats were occupied by grim reapers that were cheering or laughing. In the middle of the coliseum was an obvious fighting ring because two grim reapers were fighting inside of it.
Four other elderly reapers floated in the air like ghosts, around the ring. This was a very professional setting which included large foggy screens in the air and commentators.
"What's this?" she asked Severus, "WWE reapers." she said and chuckled as if her words were funny.
"I put you down for the next fight so I would laugh less if I were you and observe." Severus said.
"You did what!!" she screamed at him loudly.
"Keep it down." someone shouted.
"Sorry." she mumbled an apology. Then she turned to Severus and looked at him with fury in her eyes. "Why, Why would you do such a thing without asking me first?"
Severus looked at her with a serious expression on his face and said, "Because you are becoming too occupied with your human life and not concentrating enough on the underworld. You have to realize that this is a world where the strong are respected, what Ulysses did to you was a small sample. Every year one deity opens up a small world filled with resources that nurture reapers, sends out invitations and reapers enter the small world. Do you want to guess who gets the most resources?"
"The strong ones." she mumbled.
"Yes." Severus said, "The strong ones and it's not just that, in the small world reapers are armed with devices which allow them to take the soul strength of other reapers. One can go in at level five and exist at level three or infancy. Then you have to restart your cultivation from the bottom which can be humiliating. You are not ready to participate in these small world competitions yet but you have to start from the leaderboard."
"Oh boy." she said. She was partly worried but also kind of excited to engage in these fights but she did not feel the slightest bit ready.
"Are you interested?" Severus asked her.
"Uhm, yes." she replied after a two second hesitation. This was her reality that she could not escape, better to face it head on. She had fought zombies and survived, fighting other reapers in a controlled environment would not be the thing that frightened her.
"Great, but I lied you start next month not now, you need to watch the fights, learn and train. Every time you lose a fight you must pay a given number of soul crystals. This is the leaderboard," he pointed at a large scroll that had names which constantly kept rotating. The name at the top was highlighted in gold, the second silver and the third platinum. Beside the names were images to match the owners, the top ten she noticed appeared to be quite cocky in the pictures.?"The top ten has not changed for two years now."?Severus said. "Do you have what it takes to enter their ranks?"
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