"The provincial qualifiers were meant to weed out the stragglers, but the capital's central brackets are populated entirely by monsters," Ria explained, her voice dropping into a tight, strategic register. "The scions of the high ducal houses, the veteran disciples of the royal academies—almost every single participant sitting in the primary draw has already breached Level 40. They are refined, fully built Tier II and Tier III combatants equipped with heirloom-grade arcana and entire lives spent in dedicated combat training."
A level 40 threshold was a terrifying benchmark. At that stage, a warrior's physical kinetic output or a mage's raw aether density reached destructive, localized-catastrophe levels.
