The chairman looked exhausted. He was so done with the Ashborns.
So damn done.
Because Alice was registered as the seventh member of Kaiden's team for the competition, the Awakened Association, which organized and oversaw the event, knew perfectly well who she was.
However, the other partaking guilds, New Dawn included, weren't privy to this information. To them, she was still a mysterious entity.
The chairman hesitated before opening that feed.
When he did, there was no immediate spectacle. No overwhelming sensory hook. Just motion, fluid, adaptive, wrong in a way that made his instincts itch.
Kaiden shifted between forms without command words, without visible spell casts. One moment, he was striking, raw physical force amplified beyond baseline expectations. Next, he was absorbing impact. Then came magic, sigils, pressure, control, all cast without any incantation, without the telltale lag of system mediation.
The chairman leaned forward slowly.
