The girl to his left had finally had enough. She grabbed him by the collar and pulled his ear close to her mouth, whispering something.

“I have? No, I haven’t. They just got here, I haven’t seen them…”

Siris’ mouth hung open for a long moment before he swallowed visibly. “Good sir, if it’s not too much trouble, could you show me your right hand?”

Lindon had kept most of his hand hidden as best he could, to avoid attracting attention. Now, he raised it, wiggling the five white fingers on his Remnant hand.

Most of the table quieted and turned their eyes to Yerin. She gave them another grin.

Lindon caught the word “Uncrowned” whispered from several directions.

“Ah, it’s as I suspected!” Siris said with forced cheer. “I recognized you immediately, of course, that was just a little humor. I wanted to welcome you to your table myself, and I took the liberty of ordering your first course.”

There was enough food on the table to stuff twelve people, and some of it had already been eaten, but Sha Siris stood and began shoving his friends out of their chairs.

“Get out,” he muttered to the table, and most of his guests jumped up as though they couldn’t wait another second to leave. They dashed out of the room one at a time, stopping to bob their heads to both Lindon and Yerin as they left.

Siris went from one of his remaining friends to the next, urging them up. He was clearly unwilling to leave before everyone had been cleared out. Some still looked confused. One man held a half-eaten chicken leg.

Yerin tilted her head and looked to him. “You looking to exercise?”

Sha Siris choked out a laugh that sounded like he had swallowed a mouthful of chalk. “He’s not, I’m sorry, he’s tired out from his training today.”

“Didn’t train today,” said the man with the chicken leg. “And I wouldn’t mind putting you back in your—”

Sha Siris grabbed a fistful of the man’s hair and hauled him to his feet. “I told you, you’re tired.”

Amazingly, the man still looked baffled. “What about our food?”

“Leave it.”

When he had finally pushed his guests away, Sha Siris ordered the servants to bring whatever the Uncrowned wanted, insisted that the room would be available whenever Lindon and Yerin decided to return, and used a movement technique to disappear down the stairs.

Lindon was impressed with his speed.

“Sobered up fast, didn’t he?” Yerin noted as she sat down and started helping herself to the leftovers.

The servers were already replacing the partially eaten dishes with new ones, but Lindon grabbed one of the remaining dumplings. The Iron Heart had increased his appetite, and at the moment he felt like he could finish off everything on the table.

“Apologies. I was unprepared.”

Yerin stabbed some meat and raised it to her mouth. “You didn’t plan for a baby Sha to throw himself on our swords?” She bit off a chunk and chewed. “Shame his friends had eyes. I think we could have gotten him in the ring ourselves.”

He pictured the drunken Sha Underlord facing them in a dueling arena only to recognize them when the fight began, and he laughed.

Yerin joined him, and the conversation flowed smoothly from there.

There was only one thorn stuck in Lindon’s thoughts.

They had recognized Lindon, but it was Yerin they had really respected. Siris’ guests had spoken of the Uncrowned in hushed tones, and he had invited the Uncrowned back whenever she wanted.

Lindon had fought well, but in the end, he wasn’t Uncrowned.

He focused on the story Yerin was telling. She was getting into it, tracing lines of Forged sword madra in the air by way of illustration, and Lindon kept his mind in the present.

He wasn’t here to moan over what he’d lost.

But to enjoy what he had.

Lindon, Yerin, and Mercy sat together to watch the next fight of the Uncrowned tournament: Yan Shoumei of Redmoon Hall against Blacksword of Redmoon Hall.

No matter who won, Reigan Shen was getting a representative among the Uncrowned.

Now that most of the core Akura members were gone, Mercy could join the ordinary audience of the Akura faction. Everyone else with purple eyes had surreptitiously slipped out of their seats in a circle surrounding Mercy, but she didn’t seem to notice.

In a red arena filled with stalagmites that oozed blood, the two members of Redmoon Hall flitted around each other.

Yan Shoumei, the ghostly girl that Lindon had faced in Ghostwater, looked like a pale specter with long black hair that hung down into her face. When the match began, she had audibly complained to Northstrider when she saw that he had pitted her against someone from her own sect.

Lindon understood how she felt.

The Monarch had paid her no more attention than a boulder.

Her opponent, Blacksword, was a strapping man wielding a huge, two-handed blade. Unlike what Lindon had expected from his name, his sword was bright red, sheathed in his Blood Shadow. When he attacked, the Shadow whipped out and added reach and force.

He chased after Yan Shoumei, a lash of blood smashing through a stalagmite.

With every step, ripples of light appeared beneath Blacksword’s feet, allowing him to run in midair. His shoes had been gifted to him as one of his prizes, allowing him maneuverability that Shoumei couldn’t match.

Lindon had researched him, as he had all the remaining competitors, and had expected this to be a short match. Yan Shoumei had always been one of the fighters expected to reach the top eight, but not Blacksword.

“I owe him an apology,” Lindon said, as they watched him carve a canyon into the floor with an attack that Shoumei barely escaped.

“That’s true and a half. Juggling a Blood Shadow and two bindings and your own techniques isn’t simple as I make it look.”

Lindon had heard it said that Blood Shadows counted as a second sacred artist in battle, but he had never seen that to be true. Yerin came the closest, and her Blood Shadow still didn’t quite match up to her.

But when Blacksword swung his blade, his Blood Shadow lashed out, his own Striker technique followed in a beam, and a rain of jagged Forged madra fell like daggers. All the while, he kept dancing on points of light.

Little Blue gave a gasp like a whispering breeze and leaned forward on Lindon’s shoulder.

Yan Shoumei’s breathing was rough, and her spirit was growing disordered. Her Blood Shadow hung around her like a cloak, as he’d seen it in Ghostwater, but it now surged and boiled as she moved. It looked as though something within it was trying to escape.

Mercy cupped her chin in one hand. “She can’t get close enough to take a bite out of him. I’ve watched all her records, and she’s terrifying up close, but he figured out a way around her. Good for him!”

[I have a model ready for Blacksword whenever you would like to take a look,] Dross said. [We had information on him from the previous rounds, but we didn’t really see what he was capable of until now, so now I have a solid model. Pretty solid.]

What is pretty solid?

[It’s an absolute work of art that should be studied by future generations as the apex of all predictive models.]

He must have been sending that into Mercy and Yerin’s minds as well, because they both looked to Lindon with varying degrees of amusement.