"Don't believe me? Wait until we get out of here and check the damage stats. We'll see who really carried!"
Leon replied.
Not only did he resolve the war, but he also made the Reignbow Arbiter withdraw Their arrow, reducing the Xianzhou's originally catastrophic losses to a minimum.
Isn't that contribution enough to be the carry?
Just because he wasn't present for the whole thing and his teamfight participation rate wasn't high enough, you're going to give him a 3.0 rating?
Then later, we'll look at the results and, oh wow, the Xianzhou Alliance is the MVP, and Leon was just a freeloader who got carried!
I'm telling you, you can't count Brother Leon out like that!
"There's no need to doubt his abilities. He is a new Heavenly General."
While Jingtian was still suspiciously wondering who on earth he was, Yueyu, positioned directly above, suddenly spoke, her tone filled with surprise.
"Huh? A Heavenly General? Me?"
Leon pointed to himself, confused by the term.
What the heck is a Heavenly General?
Does it refer to the Xianzhou's common title for those who walk the Path of The Hunt?
If that's the case, then he is indeed one.
But is that really so rare? To use such a cool-sounding name?
He remembered that there were quite a few Xianzhou characters on the Path of The Hunt in the game.
"So, you're one too?"
Leon looked up at the fox-eared girl.
That's a cool-looking white fox behind her. Is this the legendary "Stand users are drawn to each other"?
"Yes."
Yueyu replied.
It was precisely because she was also an Emanator of The Hunt that she could keenly sense the Reignbow Arbiter's blessing on the bow and concealed within Leon's body.
Without this prerequisite, no matter how you looked at him, Leon seemed like a harmless, wide-eyed university student.
His earlier boasting would have seemed like a gross overestimation of his own abilities.
But an Emanator was clearly a different story.
"A Heavenly General?"
Jingtian choked on his words of doubt. He glanced at Leon a few more times, never having expected him to be such a powerhouse.
A powerhouse from the direct lineage of The Hunt, no less. How ridiculous is that!
"Aren't there only seven Heavenly Generals plus one Arbiter-General in total? Where did this eighth one pop out from?"
After learning his identity, Jingtian found it all a bit bizarre and began to ponder his origins.
The Reignbow Arbiter's illegitimate son? Interesting.
"Why not just ask him and find out?"
Yueyu glanced down at him.
Why go to all that trouble?
Leon had shown a friendly attitude from the very beginning. Besides, he was one of their own; surely he wouldn't mind being asked a few questions.
"That's true."
Jingtian saw the logic in that and immediately asked, "Young friend Leon, when did you become a Heavenly General?"
"About five minutes ago."
Leon didn't know the exact time.
At a critical moment like that, every second felt like a year. Who had the spare time to worry about such things?
But his personal feeling was that it hadn't been more than ten minutes.
"You mean just now, when the Reignbow Arbiter descended?"
Hearing this, Jingtian's eyes widened in disbelief.
"Yeah, we're bros. I called out to Them, and They passed Their power on to me."
Leon nodded. He had nothing to hide.
"The Reignbow Arbiter is a pretty cool person, and Their price was very reasonable."
He called Lan 'bro', and They gave him a bow. They really are a good person.
The payment required was just to help Them quell this war. The price was indeed reasonable.
Is there a problem with that? No problem at all!
"?"
Jingtian's jaw dropped so wide you could fit an egg in it.
It was the first time in his life he had ever heard such an irreverent way of speaking...
This guy is too bold!
"...The Reignbow Arbiter glanced at you?"
Hearing this answer, Yueyu's voice rose slightly, trembling with shock.
Although she also felt this peculiar way of speaking wasn't great, she was more concerned about something else right now.
The Reignbow Arbiter's Gaze.
It was equivalent to being an Emanator personally chosen and promoted by Them.
The value of that was far higher than that of their seven generals.
You must understand, the Reignbow Arbiter's Heavenly Generals don't become Emanators through the usual path of gaining an Aeon's approval. They are a rather rare type of hereditary Emanator.
The Reignbow Arbiter's boon is for the Xianzhou as a whole, not for any individual, so most of it is manifested in the guardian spirits.
The advantage is that the Xianzhou can replenish its high-end combat power at any time. The disadvantage is that the generals themselves are somewhat like tag-alongs.
But Leon was different.
What was he?
He was a true-blue lord of The Hunt, far nobler than these stinking outsiders!
"They did look at me a few times."
And even gave me a beginner's tutorial.
Leon thought to himself.
"The commotion with the Ketu-Mirage just now... was that your doing?"
Yueyu asked hesitantly. She felt that this answer must be the truth.
If the Reignbow Arbiter had truly acted, it would never have been so understated.
The spectacle would surely have been dozens of times grander than what just happened, and so would the losses.
"It was nothing."
Leon didn't initially know what a Ketu-Mirage was, but upon thinking about it, he realized it must have been that giant black sphere above their heads earlier.
"That was you?"
Jingtian had felt something was off, and now the case was solved.
"Hold on, let me get this straight."
Jingtian started brainstorming. "So, in other words..."
"We did indeed summon the Reignbow Arbiter, but They chose not to act personally, instead opting to promote another Emanator to resolve everything, is that right?"
Jingtian recounted the events with a strange expression.
"What? Emanator? Aren't I a Heavenly General?"
Emanator. Leon remembered seeing this term during arguments with his online group, but he had long since forgotten all about it.
His brain didn't have much storage capacity. It was already a struggle to remember all the stats for the game; there was no room for so much useless stuff.
"Isn't a Heavenly General an Emanator?"
Jingtian shot him a look of surprise, his face a mask of confusion.
"So I'm an Emanator?"
So many nicknames. Leon was getting confused.
"You weren't one before?"
He doesn't even know if he's an Emanator?
Haji-Leon, you guy!
"Am I?"
Leon had thought he was just a Pathstrider.
"...You really don't know what an Emanator is?"
Jingtian could see he wasn't joking around and was asking seriously, which just confused him even more.
There are very, very few people in the universe who don't know about Aeons or Emanators, and from the way Leon spoke, he didn't seem like one of them!
"I don't know, but the name sounds really powerful, like a must-pull character."
Now that he asked, Leon did recall something.
In the game, there was indeed a promoted power level called 'Emanator-tier' in terms of strength.
The developers deliberately hyped it up. Characters not confirmed as Emanators weren't necessarily weak, but confirmed Emanators were always overwhelmingly strong, in a league of their own.
Thinking about it that way, and considering his own 'Tier 0, extra-large' stats, it seemed pretty reasonable that he was an Emanator.
Leon had an epiphany.
"So, an Emanator is someone who receives an Aeon's gaze and is then granted power by Them, right?"
Leon activated his world-shaking intellect and reverse-engineered the correct answer from his own experience.
"Correct."
Jingtian didn't understand how he suddenly got it, but it saved him the effort of explaining.
"Then what's a Heavenly General?"
He said a Heavenly General is an Emanator. Is there a difference between the two?
"Each Path has a different title for its Emanators."
Jingtian explained, resolving his confusion.
"The Hunt calls them Reignbow Arbiter's Heavenly Generals, while The Destruction calls them Lord Ravagers."
____
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