Kyle reached Headquarters One after around 1.5 months of continuous travel. Headquarters One was pretty much in the middle of Ayuvar, but also closer to the frontlines.
Shortly before Kyle arrived, he was stopped by his Emblem, which had activated by itself.
"Entry refused," it showed.
'Well, it's not time for my big show yet,' he thought. 'Guess I will just wait outside of the Formation Arrays.'
Kyle couldn't sense Headquarters One yet. The only thing he felt were the waves of Energy, representative of powerful Formation Arrays. Since Headquarters One was so important, almost nobody was allowed to enter. Only people who wore the red of Humanity were allowed inside, and only if they had explicit permission.
Trialists, Representatives, and Aspirants were not allowed inside unless there was a very important reason and someone much higher in rank told them to go there.
Lieutenant Generals could enter, but they had to register their visit. Only Generals, Protectors, and Overlords could come and go as they pleased.
Of course, since this was a special occasion, Kyle's friends would be allowed to watch him perform. At least, Kyle assumed that they were allowed to. They did say that they would come.
Kyle stopped flying and sat down in the middle of the air, closing his eyes.
He wasn't nervous at all. Anyone who was inside the Headquarters had probably already sensed his arrival. While his Energy Sense couldn't reach Headquarters One, a powerful Spirit Lord could sense it. However, the actual range of the Sensing Formation Array was even further. Any Spirit Lord who came this close to Headquarters One would have already been picked up by the Sensing Formation Array.
Kyle's arrival had probably triggered an alarm in one of the Formation Arrays. After all, everyone knew that one wasn't allowed to approach Headquarters One without permission. So, any Crusher or stronger who came here had to know that they were not allowed to be here, which meant that they were consciously breaking the rules.
Usually, such intruders were immediately eradicated. They wouldn't even know that they had been sensed before they died.
Yet, Kyle's Emblem had just told him that he wasn't allowed to be there. This essentially meant that they knew why he was here, but also that he was too early.
Kyle needed to kill some time until the start of his show and just decided to watch a couple more Mortals. While there were no strong Seekers close to him, there were still some Mortal Empires.
'I bet this guy will be needlessly sarcastic, and I bet the other guy will notice but act like he hasn't noticed,' Kyle thought as he watched two Mortals talking.
Sure enough, the conversation went as he had predicted.
This was what Kyle was doing to kill time. He predicted how interactions between Mortals went and checked if he was correct.
If he only predicted the next couple of seconds of the interaction, his accuracy was almost perfect, but his accuracy fell quickly when he tried to predict what would happen several minutes from now.
There were simply too many changes that could happen within several minutes, and even more, it seemed like there was a degree of randomness as to how much Karma changed.
Kyle didn't learn a lot while playing this game, but it was a nice and fun way to kill time.
"Hey, I'm first. I mean, second, but first, you know?" Sebastian transmitted to Kyle as he arrived beside him.
Kyle looked at Sebastian and smiled a bit.
Sebastian's aura was casual but loyal. In a way, one could say that Sebastian's aura was similar to Kyle's aura when he had been younger.
"Yep, you're first," Kyle transmitted. "Guess you're not allowed to enter."
"Nope, stuck out here," Sebastian transmitted back. "Anyway, how have things been? You're confident, right?"
"Yep, and things have been pretty good. You could almost call them... hopeful," Kyle transmitted.
Kyle and Sebastian talked with each other, sharing their experiences.
"You're already here," Star Genesis transmitted as she showed up some time later.
"Hey, how's it goin'?" Sebastian asked casually.
Star Genesis glanced at Sebastian. "Still stuck with some things, but I think I'm mostly done. If everything works out, we'll have another thing to rely on."
"What are you even working on?" Kyle asked. "Is it still the same thing as back then?"
"Yes," Star Genesis answered. "I don't want to share my progress yet since there's still a chance that this entire thing turns out to be a waste of time. I don't want to unnecessarily disappoint you."
"Now, I want to know even more," Kyle transmitted.
"And I want to know how powerful you are," Star Genesis answered neutrally.
"...Fair point," Kyle answered. "Guess we both just want to surprise the other one."
"Maybe," Star Genesis answered.
The three of them started talking about several things, and time passed.
One day before the start of the event, Manny arrived. "Sorry that it took so long," he transmitted. "I had to keep working. I can't leave work easily."
"I get it," Kyle answered. "You're probably pretty busy, but you've still arrived before Swamp Dragon. Although he's probably also very busy. He must be swamped with work."
"Shut the fuck up, Kyle," Sebastian transmitted with a roll of his eyes, huffing in slight amusement.
Manny laughed politely. "Yeah, it's even worse for him. He's on the frontlines, and his work is more time sensitive. Same thing is true for Fierce Breaker. They will probably arrive just minutes before the event starts."
The group entered a casual conversation as they all talked about random things. Eventually, the topic landed on what they had seen of Humanity and what they thought of it.
The consensus was that Humanity was actually performing as well as one could reasonably expect. There were still some things that could be better, but it wasn't reasonable to expect more. With the few resources Humanity had available, the current situation could only be described as miraculous.
As they kept talking, Kyle felt a mix of comfort and excitement. He was comfortable with their presence, and he was a bit excited to talk with them in a casual setting.
When they had arrived in Ayuvar, the team had been fractured and distant, but after working towards the same goal for almost 40,000 years, they had all gotten familiar with each other.
Their true allegiances were essentially in hibernation as their allegiance towards Ayuvar took priority. For now, all of them were on the same side, and because of that, they could even call each other friends.
As the talks continued, Kyle's perception changed a bit. The complex colors of Karmic Lines appeared in front of him, but he could only see the ones of his friends.
The Karmic Line between Sebastian and Kyle was green. Both of them liked and supported each other.
The one between Star Genesis and Kyle was also green.
The one between Manny and Kyle was green as well, but the green was noticeably weaker than the other ones. As Kyle looked at it, he got a feeling of distant goodwill. It was like Manny wished Kyle well, but he also didn't want to get too close.
This specific color felt familiar to Kyle.
This was probably how he had viewed his friends in the Tertiary World.
He had liked them and really enjoyed their time together, but if one of them died... oh, well... whatcha gonna do?
Then, Kyle noticed two additional Karmic Lines appearing.
"Hope we made it in time," Fierce Breaker transmitted as he arrived with Swamp Dragon.
Kyle looked at the two new Karmic Lines.
The one between him and Swamp Dragon was not surprising. It was brown.
Yet, the one between him and Fierce Breaker was surprising.
The two of them hadn't had a lot of contact, but they had worked together smoothly and without issues. On top of that, Fierce Breaker had even sacrificed his wish for Kyle.
And yet, Fierce Breaker's Karmic Line was brown, but somewhat of an intense brown. It was aggressively neutral.
Kyle could sense why this brown felt so different from the brown between him and Swamp Dragon.
The result was the same, but the things that created the result were different in intensity.
If one compared the two kinds of browns to a scoreboard of a popular game like soccer, both of them would be a draw.
One scoreboard read 0:0.
The other one read 5:5.
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