The first match of Team Nemean waited for no one.
The league machine had already started moving, and once it did, even cosmic horror, unstable science, and murder plans for billionaire fathers had to get in line behind the schedule. So on the day after tomorrow, counting from the draw, Team Nemean boarded a plane before dawn and reached New England at exactly seven in the morning.
The airport had been half-converted into a league checkpoint.
Security in black suits, volunteers in crisp jackets. League banners draped over temporary rails, brand logos on every screen. The mood was not like a normal sports event. It was sharper, hungrier, every camera angle knew divers could kill people. Every sponsor smile knew heroes and monsters were now often the same person from different news cycles.
Emma handled it like breathing.
Dominic handled it like an old fight week.
Alex handled it by becoming colder the more people looked at her.
Phong handled it by sticking close enough to the team that nobody could separate him for too long.
The pre-game interviews were held in a glass media room overlooking the stadium district. Reporters sat in clean rows, mics raised, tablets open, questions ready before Team Nemean had even fully taken their seats. Emma sat at one end with the confidence of a woman born into rooms like this and knowing how to handle these situations before she even knew how to suckle. Dominic took the center without trying to. Alex sat to his right, posture straight, face unreadable. Phong stayed slightly behind them as coach, trying not to look like he wanted to crawl into the ventilation system.
Questions came quickly.
About the delayed start after Professor Ulrich. About Team Nemean's rise. About Emma's official integration. About Alex's relationship with Phong.
They answered enough and no more. Then one interviewer, too pleased with his own timing, asked about the group stage format.
"Thoughts on one-versus-one fights?"
Emma did not even hesitate.
"With Alex," she said, folding one leg over the other, "Team Nemean has every confidence in going undefeated through the group stage."
The room reacted exactly how she expected. Some reporters grinned, some scribbled harder, other looked at Alex for a reaction. Alex gave them none. She only sat there with the kind of silence that made bold statements sound less like arrogance and more like weather forecast.
By the time the interviews ended and the team reached Hadlock Field, the whole East Coast league stream had already turned Emma's line into a headline.
The venue itself was old baseball ground remade for dungeon-era spectacle.
Hadlock Field had kept its bones: brick exterior, broad concourses, steep rows of seats, the feel of a place meant for summer noise and local loyalty. But inside, the field had been transformed. A combat ring sat over the infield dirt, circular and reinforced, its perimeter etched with suppression arrays and safety inscriptions woven by Formation Masters and Architects. Large screens hung over the stands. Drone cameras—modified league models, likely with Mr. Zero's quiet blessing—floated around and captured every angles. The crowd was loud already, wrapped in coats, scarves, and branded team colors.
The housing team for the first match was the Maine Vikings.
They came out to a much warmer roar than Team Nemean got at first, which was only natural. This was their home ground. Their fans knew their names, their styles, and their family history. The Jameson were local blood, and the cameras loved them because they were easy to sell.
Quadruplets. All level 37. All Beast Soul Barbarians. And yet, outside the shared class line and the family jaw, they did not look like copies of one another.
The eldest by minutes was Brennan Jameson, bearer of the Bison Soul. He wore his hair shaved at the sides and braided back at the crown, with a thick neck and a broken-nose heaviness that made him look built for the front of a charge. His gear leaned practical: layered leather, fur mantle, reinforced boots, dark red wraps around his forearms. No jewelry. No flair. He looked like a man who trusted impact more than style.
Next was Callum Jameson, the Alligator Soul. Leaner than Brennan, darker-eyed, hair slicked back and tied low, with a smile that never quite reached his eyes. His combat vest was scaled with green-black plating shaped to evoke a reptile without crossing into costume. Of the four, he looked the most like someone who had learned that a Barbarian did not have to be stupid if the audience expected stupid.
The third was Eamon Jameson, the Eagle Soul. Taller, cleaner, almost handsome in a sharp-featured way, with skin dyed by the ocean wind and a long coat cut short at the sides for movement. His blond hair had been left longer and tied high. He wore feather motifs at the collar and wrist, but tastefully enough to look like homage instead of branding. His gaze stayed restless, always moving.
The youngest was Rory Jameson, the Bear Soul. Broadest shoulders, thick beard despite his age. Sleeves cut off entirely, tattoos visible down both arms. Dark blue kilted over-layer over black fight trousers, a compromise between modern practicality and the team image. He looked like the one fans would expect to scream first and think later.
Phong watched them during warmup and understood immediately why they had been chosen as an opening match.
Their class name sounded easy to mock. Their actual team discipline was not. The league rules for the group stage were displayed on the big screen before the announcer spoke them aloud again for the crowd.
1v1 fights.
Each team sent a challenger. Whoever won stayed in the ring until defeated, or until the opposing team either ran out of fighters or surrender the fight. Because Team Nemean had a larger roster available for this stage, the match count would effectively play as a best-of-five, taking the Jameson into account. Whoever won 3 fight automatically counted as winner, regardless of the available fighter of the opposing side.
A match win earned two points.
A perfect win—meaning the team won without losing any member—earned three.
A draw gave one point each.
Any fighter defeated in a round was banned from entering the next team match to ensure recovery time. If a team lacked any member to field, they automatically forfeited and the opposing side received two points immediately.
It was a format designed to reward dominance and punish bad roster management.
Emma had called it before breakfast: Alex made the format cruel. When the official asked Team Nemean for their first challenger, Dominic did not even look back.
"Alex."
The crowd reacted the moment her name was announced. Cameras zoomed, commentators loved how Dominic fielded their heaviest hitter without hesitation, the home fans booed politely because they knew who she was and hated what that meant for Maine's odds.
Alex stepped into the ring in simple black combat gear with white trim. No Bai Hu's storm, no psychic tiger, no overbuilt spectacle, not even the medium armor the Greencap bunnies had made for her. She entered with only her usual arsenal in mind, and somehow that looked colder.
Across from her, Maine sent Brennan first.
Bison Soul.
A smart choice, in theory. If anyone among them could survive a first clash with Alex and test how seriously she intended to play, it would be the brother built like impact given a family name.
The horn sounded.
Brennan did not rush blindly.
That was the first thing that impressed Phong.
He opened with lateral movement rather than recklessly charged in head first like his class suggested. Short steps, body center low. He was reading her weapon setup before committing. Around Alex, psychic constructs formed into readiness: spear, Dragon Slayer, two shields, two bows, vajra, a whip and a rapier. Her total arsenal had risen again after training with Vân in the bog filled with undead dinosaurs on floor 3.
Brennan activated Beast Soul in layers.
A spectral outline of a bison rose over him, not fully solid but heavy enough to distort the air. His shoulders broadened, the line of his spine lowered. Every step after that he looked like Godfrey at home.
He tried to win the first exchange through pathing rather than smashing through the front.
He feinted to Alex's left, baited one shield outward, then stomped hard enough that the ring floor shook under her footing. It was smart. He used the Bison's momentum trait, its earth-rooted pressure, to create a fractional opening.
Alex answered by throwing the spear at the ground where his second step had to land.
Brennan saw it too late. He twisted away from being impaled, but that broke the clean line of his charge, and Alex punished the half-beat immediately. One bow construct loosed at his face. The other targeted the knee. Brennan took the first arrow on a forearm guard and avoided the second by sheer athletic violence, but the exchange had already turned.
Alex had enough experience to fight with opponents like him. Vân was an unstoppable, unbreakable locomotive disguise as a person, Dominic was a tank with attitude and a rail gun in the form of Eyeless Heaven, Samir was basically killer croc. Compared to them, Brenna was breakfast.
He tried to reset with a full rush then.
The bison aura thickened. Hooves of force seemed to pound in the air behind him as he drove straight through the centerline, arms crossed to crash through Dragon Slayer if necessary.
Alex stepped aside by less than a foot, pivoted, and let one shield slam into his flank while the whip wrapped around his ankle and pulled backward. Brennan stumbled. Dragon Slayer came down across his back like a falling wall. It was not enough to cut him in half, because Alex was not trying to kill him, but enough to fold his whole body into the ring.
Every hit from Arbiter Mindblade made the body ring, pain flooded directly into Brennan's brain, making him gasped for air despite his body was still more than capable of holding on.
The crowd shouted.
Brennan tried to rise at once. A respectable act given how many hit he had taken from an Arbiter Mindblade.
Alex let him.
That was what Phong noticed next. She was not merely winning, she was making a point.
Brennan got one knee under himself, bison aura flickering. Alex appeared in front of him, projected forward with terrifying speed using her telekinesis. She slowed down, waiting for her mana to catch up, then slammed Dragon Slayer sideways into his guard. Brennan's block held for half a second.
Then it failed.
He skidded across the ring and crashed against the boundary ward hard enough that the barrier flashed. The referee stepped in. Brennan was conscious, furious, and unable to continue without eating another beating.
Winner: Alexandra Vogel.
The home crowd went quieter after that. The stadium felt like it had been turned into a library by a single woman.
Maine's coaches huddled fast. They sent Callum second.
Phong could see their strategy. Alligator Soul was different from Bison in all the ways that mattered against Alex. Lower center of gravity. quick and powerful acceleration, crushing rotational strength.
Callum entered with no smile now. He had watched what happened to Brennan. He was not here to test her. He was here to solve the difficult puzzle named Alexandra Vogel.
The second fight was nastier from the start.
Callum activated his soul and changed the rhythm of the ring entirely. The spectral alligator that wrapped his movements lengthened his silhouette and made every shift look wrong to the eye, as if his body wanted to stay human but his momentum had become amphibious. He stayed low, circling, forcing Alex to choose whether she wanted range or line control.
He targeted her footing first.
Short lunges, sudden stops, were prioritized. His hands touching the ring floor to redirect his body in angles no ordinary boxer or grappler would choose. Twice he ducked under the path of her projected arrows by dropping flatter than a man should drop and springing sideways like a reptile snapping off a riverbank.
"Better," Dominic muttered.
Phong nodded.
Callum and Brenna both fought quite intelligently, which was not what people would expect when they first heard which class the brothers had.
He deliberately invited the spear again, then cut in when Alex sent it, trying to get inside the zone where her larger constructs needed room to matter. A Beast Soul Barbarian with Alligator traits did not need to out-swing Dragon Slayer. He only needed to get to the body controlling it for a dead roll.
For a moment, it almost worked.
Callum slipped between one shield and the spear's return path and came up at Alex's right side with a short curved blade and clawed off-hand, aiming not for a dramatic hit but for tendons, balance, and disruption.
Alex met him with the vajra and one knee.
The psychic weapon cracked into his shoulder from above while her leg, empowered by telekinesis and mana, drove up into his midline. Callum absorbed both better than Brennan had. He twisted into the pain and actually got hold of her wrist for a second.
The crowd roared.
This was the first real danger. Then Alex changed hands on Dragon Slayer and brought the flat of the giant psychic blade down on his arm like she meant to hammer a nail into the earth.
Callum lost the grip instantly due to a shock burst of pain assaulting his brain out of nowhere.
Alex followed by splitting her offense in a way only an Arbiter Mindblade could. One bow fired point-blank into his thigh. The spear pinned his retreat angle. The left shield body-checked him hard enough to spin him half around. The whip strangled Callum neck. Then the real blow landed.
Dragon Slayer came sweeping up into a horizontal arc. It still moved without real heft, like it weighed nothing. Alex hadn't managed to mimic real weight to the attack yet. But, by waiting for her mana to catch up, she crept dangerously close to something that actually hit like a truck.
Callum got both forearms up.
It did not matter.
The impact lifted him fully off the ground and sent him rolling twice before he hit the ward. Callum still tried to stand, which won him some cheers from home fans.
Alex let him get all the way upright this time. Her face never changed.
Callum, breathing hard now, understood something then. He could keep going. He could also lose badly enough that one match of rest would not be enough to recover, which could cost his brothers more than just this match.
Alex must have seen it in his eyes, because when she spoke, only the front rows and the cameras nearest the ring caught it.
"You guys should forfeit."
Callum stared at her.
She did not taunt him, she just told him the truth.
"You know it's pointless to keep going," she said, "save your players for the team after us."
That was brutal in a different way. Alex was saying to his face that she could run through all three of them by herself, and with only one member available, Maine's Vikings would be caught between a rock and a hard place on their next match.
The Greencap Captain wasn't joking when he said an Arbiter Mindblade was nearly invincible in 1v1.
Callum looked toward Eamon and Rory at ringside. Then toward the coaches. Then back at Alex.
He spat blood to one side, not at her, and raised one hand.
"Forfeit."
The referee called it. Team Nemean earned the perfect win. Three points. And the crowd at Hadlock Field, which had come expecting a fight, got instead a lesson.
Phong watched Alex leave the ring without a scratch and knew exactly what she had done. She was telling the world what happened if someone threatened her loved ones.
Josh had tried to kill Phong.
Olen had hunted him.
Powerful men kept circling what was theirs with money, cameras, and violence.
So Alex stepped into the first public match of the league and defeated two level 37 brothers so completely, so decisively, that even mercy became another form of pressure.
That was the message: touch her people, and there would be consequences.
Phong sighed softly, half tired, half moved, as Alex returned to the team under camera flashes and commentary noise. He did not need her to explain it. He understood. And soon, Josh and Olen would understand that true when they inevitably watched team Nemean's first match.