Red pulled up his status screen. [ CURRENT RANK: 3 ]
[ STORED FAITH: 150,000 ]
For weeks, Red's followers had been praying to the Violet Flame with fanatical devotion. His faith reserves had skyrocketed past the requirements for Rank 4. But Red hadn't spent a single point of it to level up his core. He had intentionally bottlenecked his own evolution, freezing his valuation at Rank 3.
If he had ranked up to fight Aurelius, it would have been registered as a standard territory war. The payouts would be normal. But Red thought like a businessman. He knew that the System rewarded risk multipliers.
[ BATTLE LOG VERIFIED. ]
[ RANK 3 ENTITY HAS FORCIBLY DELETED A RANK 9 ENTITY. ]
[ COMBATANT RATIO: 600 vs. 13,000 (1:21 DISADVANTAGE). ]
The System paused, almost as if its algorithm was struggling to comprehend the sheer, statistical impossibility of what had just occurred. Then, the motherlode dropped.
