Warren adjusted the heavy leather cuffs on his wrists, his calm, measured gaze remaining fixed on the glowing leaderboard outline. "Three Talented in the Top Five overall. Four in the Top Ten.
"Those are the conditions to qualify for the Veilrend Games, right?"
"No pressure, right?" Xander chuckled, though his eyes narrowed with intense focus, staring at Warren.
"Try not to trip on your own ego on the first platform, Gray," Edmund remarked coldly, though the faint frost crystallizing around his knuckles betrayed his own rising adrenaline.
The arena was a colossal, hollowed-out stadium suspended over a void of localized gravity fields.
Thousands of spectators filled the surrounding tiers, their cheers roaring like thunder as giant holographic projection screens hovered overhead, displaying real-time leaderboards, biometric feeds, and split times.
Above the roar, the announcer's voice boomed through the spatial amplification arrays:
