After A Billion-Year Torture, I Returned As A Transcendent Player

Chapter 79: Overlord-class Shelter, Party Time

The Overlord-class shelter didn’t look like a place built for danger. It looked like a place built to reward surviving it.

Aidan stepped through its outer gate still faintly dusted in ash from the battlefield, and the sheer scale of the place hit him before anything else did.

Towers of black stone and living crystal rose in tiers toward a sky untouched by any Tear, their upper floors wreathed in slow-drifting rings of captured starlight that never seemed to dim. Streets wide enough to march an army through curved between them, paved in something that hummed faintly under his boots, and every single face he passed carried the unmistakable weight of Epic-rank or higher.

Banners hung from the tallest spires, each one bearing a crest Aidan didn’t recognize, and fountains carved from single blocks of living crystal threw up water that glowed soft gold in the evening light.

’So this is where the grown-ups hang out.’ He whistled low, turning a slow circle to take in the skyline. ’Nice digs for people who spend their afternoons fighting things that eat continents.’

[Jovan: You’re one of those people now, technically.]

’Don’t remind me. I’d rather eat.’

Ordun led the way through the crowded main square like a man who’d walked it a thousand times, Kyrsa and Veshan flanking him, and the twin-blade Hunter from the Tear fight, introduced properly now as a sharp-eyed woman named Sella Marn, brought up the rear with a grin that hadn’t faded since the sky closed.

"All four of us answer to the same badge," Ordun said, catching Aidan studying the cloud-and-blade insignia stitched into each of their collars. "Cloud Whirl Allied Enforcer Department. No guild, no family crest, no house politics. Just the Alliance, and whatever fire needs putting out that week."

"Today the fire was a Tear the size of a small moon," Sella added cheerfully. "Yesterday it was a smuggling ring on three separate worlds. It’s a varied job."

"Explains why none of you flinched when I showed up uninvited," Aidan said.

"We’re professionally difficult to surprise," Kyrsa said, "though you gave it your best shot."

"There’s a house here that treats every Divine-rank arrival like a holiday," Ordun said, pushing open a set of doors carved from something that shimmered like frozen starlight. "Today, they treat you like one too."

The hall inside was already roaring with noise, long tables groaning under food that made Aidan’s whole plan for the day rearrange itself on the spot.

Roasted haunches of something the size of a small building, glazed dark and smoking, the meat falling apart before the carving knife even finished its first cut. Towers of shellfish pulled from waters that had never known an ordinary tide, shells shimmering faint violet under the hall’s floating lanterns. Fruit that glowed softly from within, and wine poured from bottles that hummed a low, contented note when uncorked, the sound rolling out across the room like a held breath finally released.

"Sit, eat, drink," Kyrsa said, dropping into a chair and waving at the spread. "You earned an absurd amount of this."

Aidan didn’t need telling twice.

He worked through the table like a man settling an old debt, and by the third helping of the smoking haunch, half the surrounding Hunters had stopped eating just to watch him do it.

"Where does it go?" Sella asked, genuinely baffled, watching him demolish a full rack of glowing fruit in four bites. "You’re built like a normal person."

"Fast metabolism," Aidan said, mouth full. "And a billion years of catching up to do."

Nobody quite knew what to do with that, so they laughed like it was a joke, and Aidan let them.

[Jovan: You say true things and let people file them under humor. It’s a good trick.]

’It’s the only trick that keeps working.’

The wine arrived next, the humming kind, and Veshan filled Aidan’s cup himself with the reverent care of a man handling something sacred.

"Century-aged," Veshan rumbled. "From a vineyard that only blooms once every twelve years. Drink slow."

Aidan drank it in one go, mostly out of curiosity, and the whole table went silent in collective horror.

"That’s..." Sella started.

"Really good," Aidan said, setting the cup down. "Got any more?"

Veshan stared at him for a long moment, then started laughing so hard he had to brace himself on the table, and the rest of the hall followed his lead until the whole room had dissolved into helpless noise.

Someone produced a set of glowing dice a few tables over, and Ordun dragged Aidan into a round of something called Overlord’s Fortune, a game that apparently involved betting stat-boosting reagents against the roll of dice weighted by the players’ own aura.

Aidan lost the first three rounds spectacularly, mostly because he had no idea what any of the rules meant.

"You’re doing this on purpose," Ordun accused, sliding a small mountain of winnings toward himself.

"I genuinely have no idea what’s happening," Aidan admitted. "I just like watching the dice glow."

By the fourth round he’d somehow started winning anyway, aspects he wasn’t even trying to use bending outcomes in small, unconscious ways, and Kyrsa eventually banned him from the table entirely amid loud protest from everyone who’d been betting against him.

"Cheater," she declared, dragging him toward the drinks instead.

"I don’t even know the rules!"

"Exactly. That’s the cheating part."

The evening rolled on loud and easy, and somewhere in the middle of it, a musician took up a corner of the hall with an instrument that looked like a harp made of frozen light, and the noise softened into something warmer.

Aidan found himself leaning back in his chair, full, mildly drunk on hummed wine, surrounded by people who had no idea what he really was and liked him anyway, and something in his chest settled that hadn’t settled in longer than he wanted to think about.

...

The disturbance arrived a little past the hour the music had softened, riding in on a wave of sudden, unnatural quiet.

A tall man in dark violet robes swept through the hall’s doors flanked by two silent attendants, and every table he passed dropped its voice half an octave without seeming to notice it had. A crest glittered at his collar, a coiled serpent wreathed in thorns.

"Nevelrot clan," Sella murmured.

The man’s gaze swept the room once, bored, until it landed on Aidan, out of place in his scorched battle-worn gear among the shelter’s usual polished company.

He raised a hand, and a thin lattice of light unfurled from his fingers, sweeping over Aidan in a slow, invasive scan.

[Digicard status: accessed.]

The lattice hung there a moment, displaying its findings for the man alone, and his expression curdled from bored to openly offended.

"No contribution points," he said, voice carrying easily across the now-silent hall. "No leaderboard placement. No record at all, in fact, beyond a bracket win in some backwater Legendary tournament nobody’s heard of." His lip curled. "Legendary-rank, and this is what he has to show for it."

Ordun’s spear hand tightened on the table’s edge, but the man wasn’t finished.

"Enforcers." He turned that same bored contempt on Kyrsa, Veshan, and Ordun in turn. "Is this what the badge has come to? Dragging strays in off the battlefield and seating them at Divine-rank tables?" He gave a short, displeased snort. "This shelter has standards. I’d have expected you three, of all people, to remember that."

The hall stayed frozen, waiting to see how this landed.

Kyrsa rose halfway out of her seat, silver rings already brightening, but Aidan’s hand found her shoulder first, easy and unhurried.

"He’s not wrong," Aidan said, mild as anything, swirling the wine in his cup. "No record. No rank on your board. Nothing to show."

The Nevelrot elder’s contempt flickered into something almost like satisfaction, the confirmation he’d been fishing for.

"Then perhaps you understand your place after all."

"I understand it fine." Aidan took a slow sip, unbothered, and set the cup down with a soft, deliberate click. "I just don’t understand why a man who wasn’t in that sky today feels entitled to an opinion about who earned a seat at this table."

The silence that followed had teeth in it.

The Nevelrot elder’s attendants shifted uneasily, and something in the man’s composure cracked just slightly at the edges, contempt souring fast into something colder.

"Watch your tone with me, boy."

"I’ll watch it." Aidan met his eyes, calm all the way down. "Right after you watch yours."

For a long moment nobody in the hall breathed.

Then the Nevelrot elder turned on his heel with a final, disgusted noise, robes snapping behind him as he swept back out the doors he’d come in through, attendants scrambling to keep pace.

The hall exhaled as one, conversation slowly clawing its way back to its earlier volume.

Ordun let out a low whistle, sitting back with something between amusement and concern. "You’ve made an enemy of an old, wealthy family in under a minute."

"I collect them," Aidan said, refilling his own cup this time. "Balance is important."

Kyrsa studied him for a long beat, then shook her head slowly, a reluctant smile tugging at her mouth despite herself.

"You’re going to be exhausting to know," she said. "I look forward to it. But there’s no need to worry. You got our backs today, so we’ll get yours when you need it."

Aidan chuckled. "That’s reassuring to know. Thanks."

"But you should update your Digicard, Garen." Veshan grinned. "You helped hunt Divine-rank Terrors. That’s going to reflect very nicely in your card."

"Yeah. With what you did, I’m sure you can buy a solid Divine-rank item or weapon of your choice."