Kyle looked at his two assigned teammates.
The brown-haired guy was just frowning and looking at nothing in particular, while the silver-haired woman just looked at him with a friendly smile.
'Why is she always smiling like that?' Kyle thought. 'Whenever I look at her, she's looking at me with a knowing smile. Pretty sure she's not from the Cult.'
'Does she want to look mysterious? I doubt it's some form of physical attraction. Literally every Transcendent is fucking beautiful and handsome due to the Energy going through us, and we've barely talked, which means my personality can't possibly attract her.'
'I think she literally just wants to seem mysterious or something.'
Kyle was reminded of the first time he had come into contact with Horatio.
Back then, he had also constantly smiled like some experienced and kind elder.
"Since your teams have been assigned, we will be leaving now," the Fusion Realm Seeker said as she led the six of them to a Teleportation Formation Array owned by Archon.
Naturally, a big organization like Archon not only owned the Teleportation Formation Arrays of the planet but also had their very own, exclusive for only their people.
The hefty costs associated with maintaining and running such a Formation Array were not significant to them.
The group entered a beautiful building with even bigger Formation Arrays than the ones Kyle had seen so far.
They walked through the building and entered the biggest Formation Array out of all of them.
This one was also made very differently. The lines between the components were drawn in a strange way that didn't seem to follow the rules of the other ones.
'This one is probably owned by the Array of Stars.'
Kyle had learned that some extremely powerful Teleportation Formation Arrays could even teleport people across Dimensions.
Of course, if one were teleporting to a higher Dimension they were not eligible for, they would just be sent back by the world.
The Formation Array could bring them to the Dimension, but it couldn't keep them there.
After the seven of them entered, the Teleportation Formation Array started up, and an unreasonable amount of Energy gathered around it.
It started to hum loudly like it was some kind of huge industrial machine that was powering up.
The next moment, the Energy around Kyle distorted and was thrown into turmoil.
His Energy Sense was thrown off, and he felt like he had entered a dryer.
Everything was spinning and distorting. BANG!
And the world materialized again.
Kyle frowned a bit in disgust.
If he had had food in his stomach, he would have entered a desperate battle with it in an attempt to stop its escape.
The other Transcendents didn't fare any better, but they were no pushovers. At most, they just grimaced.
'The farther the teleportation, the stronger the feeling of vertigo,' Kyle thought. 'This teleportation must have taken us insanely far away.'
As Kyle regained his bearings, he looked around.
Compared to the last time, he didn't end up in a reception cabin but in the middle of… nowhere?
There was just grey ground everywhere.
No buildings, plants, Formation Arrays, or whatever.
But that didn't mean that this place was empty.
Quite the contrary.
The Energy in this place was unreasonably dense. The difference in Energy density between this place and Orchis was like the difference in density between the Tertiary World and Orchis.
And the reason for that was quite obvious.
People.
So many fucking people.
As Kyle looked around, he saw thousands upon thousands of people.
All of them were in groups between one and 60 members.
Sectors all had different sizes, and the size of Archon's Sector was near the minimum required number to be counted as such.
Meanwhile, there were organizations with Sectors tens of times bigger than Archon's Sector.
It was not surprising that these organizations would have more available recruits than Archon.
BANG!
The Energy, a couple of meters away, exploded, and another group of people appeared.
Shortly after, another explosion of Energy appeared.
A new group was arriving almost every second.
As Kyle looked around, he saw several other people also looking around.
Naturally, everyone was an enemy here.
Everyone was a competitor.
Since the Fusion Realm Seeker hadn't given any other orders, the group just waited.
Over the next two hours, more and more groups arrived until the frequency dropped significantly.
'Seems like everyone that arrives now is either cutting it very close or being late.'
Then, no more groups appeared for five minutes.
BANG!
At that moment, Kyle was shoved to the side by an irresistible force, but he wasn't the only one.
Everyone on the planet was shoved slightly around.
Kyle found himself standing close to his two teammates and far away from the others.
'Ah, it's the Fusion Realm Seekers that are doing that. They probably got an order to show the teams. '
The next moment, Kyle saw a bunch of people taking to the sky, but from how they were acting, it was clear to him that this was not consensual.
Even more, the people who were lifted were either alone or in pairs.
'Well, not every power gets a number of recruits perfectly divisible by three.'
The unassigned people were all gathered in the sky into a big ball before they simultaneously moved into teams of three.
'Makes sense. If you don't have a team, you get assigned one.'
In the end, only one guy was left alone.
For a second, nothing happened.
Then, a random person from one of the teams vanished, and the single guy was shoved into that team.
'Huh, wonder if that guy was recruited immediately or sent away.'
'Or killed.'
Finally, all the teams were put back onto the surface of the planet.
"Welcome to the Star Seeking, Seekers," a friendly but older voice came from the atmosphereless heavens.
"Seek the stars or turn into dust. This is your opportunity."
"Realize your destiny or meet your fate."
"The heavens watch."
The next moment, emblems appeared in front of every participant.
"Forsake your team, and you will be forsaken."
As Kyle saw his emblem, he gritted his teeth.
The teams were numbered, and the emblem showed the number of his team.
The number of his team?
696968.
(Why not 67 :sob:)
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