Demonic Po*nstar System Chapter 695: Alone Time

The flap of the tent parted, allowing a woman dressed in the grey uniform of the Association to enter.

Youthful and composed in her professionalism, she appeared uneasy at the prospect of disturbing the five women who continued to bask in the thrill of observing their rivals' rankings plummet live.

Her gaze scanned the interior of the tent, noting the toppled chair, the hologram that persisted in flickering over Kaiden’s wrist, and the overall disarray suggesting a team fresh from a victorious battle.

Clearing her throat, she announced, "The investigation team requires separate interviews with every member of the Runewoven team who's here right now. This follows standard protocol for events of such magnitude."

Luna’s smile faded abruptly.

"Now?"

"I’m afraid so."

"We just got him back."

"Are you refusing to aid the investigation?"

Luna regarded the woman with a steady, unyielding stare. This representative from the Association either failed to gauge the atmosphere or lacked the interest to bother... Or perhaps her position forbade any flexibility.

’Yeah, I shouldn’t be complaining right now... We could be questioned in chains right now.’

"Go," Kaiden instructed. "Cooperate. Be polite. Answer what they ask."

With a grin, he appended, "After all, that’s what innocent people are supposed to do."

Each of the girls flashed him a grin in return, embraced him tightly for a prolonged moment, and before long, the tent stood vacant.

For a brief instant, Kaiden lingered in the quiet. Then, releasing a breath, he rose to his feet. A persistent, targeted ache throbbed through his body from expending excessive mana over a brief period, and remaining isolated in an Association tent struck him as utterly contrary to his current desires.

He craved fresh air.

...

Across the terrain, the camp extended in methodical groupings of tents and temporary setups, with Association shelters lined up in orderly fashion that seemed ridiculously refined considering the chaos that unfolded in the basin merely hours earlier. Personnel navigated among the outposts holding clipboards and capture devices, healers hurried between severe wounds, and a compact supply unit continued to inventory the slain beasts.

Keeping his hands tucked in his pockets and his gaze lowered, Kaiden traversed the area in the stance of someone hoping to avoid attention. No one halted him. Several personnel cast glances toward him, their faces showing anything from impartial detachment to thinly veiled intrigue, yet none drew near.

He couldn't determine if it stemmed from Eleanora's approval, their viewing of the broadcast, or simply no one's willingness to interact with the Paragon of Sin on such a day.

It mattered little to him.

His steps led him beyond the final line of tents and along the gentle slope toward the ridge.

That very same ridge.

Scorch marks lingered on the rock where the mana of his companions had slashed through it amid the assault. Subtle char lines followed the arcs of Luna’s lightning bolts, while a lengthy, shallow cut marked the eastern side from Calypso’s axe blow embedding into the stone. The atmosphere carried the scent of ozone mingled with an underlying meaty odor, the residual essence of creature blood drying under the waning afternoon light.

Approaching the brink, Kaiden settled onto the ground.

Dangling over the precipice, his legs swung with boots hovering above the basin's base, the site where he had recently directed an event labeled a rescue by the Association and slaughter by Magnus Ashborn.

Broad and serene, the panorama unfolded. Below lay the basin, dotted with debris from the clash, and farther out, the peaks dissolved into a misty blue beneath skies beginning to glow golden along the horizons.

He retrieved his phone.

Overwhelmed, the notification tally had abandoned precise figures for an icon indicating excess beyond the display's capacity. Dismissing the private messages, the group chats, and the sixteen unanswered calls from unfamiliar contacts, he accessed the news stream.

The clash with Magnus dominated every corner.

Major networks featured the video segment. Lesser ones did too. Numerous platforms that Kaiden doubted had operated prior to this day sprang up solely to feature the segment. Headlines vied for sensational prominence like competing bidders eyeing the identical artwork:

ASHBORN VS. THE ANOMALY: A CONFRONTATION ON THE RIDGE

KAIDEN GREY TELLS THE MOST POWERFUL GUILD LEADER IN AMERICA TO MIND HIS BUSINESS

’I DON’T ANSWER TO ANYONE’: THE ROOKIE WHO WON’T KNEEL

He continued scrolling.

In-depth examinations were already accumulating. Opinion articles from experts in awakened matters, ex-guild tacticians, and no fewer than two pundits typically focused on legislative sessions who evidently deemed the realm of the awakened more captivating this time around.

The widely circulated breakdown originated from an ex-consultant of New Dawn unfamiliar to Kaiden. Balanced and expert in tone, it posed the singular query Kaiden wished a million others would voice.

The reasoning proved straightforward.

Such actions were not expected from Magnus Ashborn.

Leaders of guilds avoided direct clashes with newcomers. They dispatched underlings. They lodged official grievances via Association pathways. They refrained from descending upon ridges before active broadcasts to berate young adversaries in their twenties who offered no real danger to their enterprises.

New Dawn deployed twenty official combatants into the fray, the majority surviving. Any could have submitted a proper protest. Yet the head of the guild materialized on the ridge almost immediately, faced Kaiden head-on, and issued intimate warnings to an audience exceeding one million live spectators.

As the piece wrapped up, it highlighted the evident inquiry that Kaiden Grey had posed directly on video: why would New Dawn's guild master invest such intense concern in a novice?

Kaiden skimmed beyond it. The solution was already clear to him.

Online discussions handled the remainder.

The leading reply boasted fifty thousand upvotes from user GoblinModeActivated, with more accumulating: "Because it’s personal. Full stop. That wasn’t a guild leader making a jurisdictional complaint. That was a man who HATES Kaiden Grey for reasons he can’t say out loud. Watch the clip again and look at his eyes."

ManaSensitiveNipples: "so what are we thinking, an ex-girlfriend situation? Kai stole one of his women? lmao"

3KidsNoMana: "Bro Kaiden has five women already and Magnus has Vespera. Who would dare cheat on THE Vespera Ashborn?"

VesperaMyEvilQueen: "bold of you to assume Vespera’s off the table. have you SEEN the way that woman looked at Kai during the ChronosX coverage? she was interested."

ShadowMommyIssues: "Vespera Ashborn leaves Magnus for a 22 year old rookie and hands him New Dawn’s guild charter as a breakup gift. I’d watch that movie."

TinfoilDungeon: "the timeline works too. she stops appearing next to Magnus in public right around when Kai starts rising. just saying."

From that point, the discussion spiraled into ever more intricate speculations regarding Kaiden luring Vespera Ashborn from her spouse and claiming North America's premier guild via pure amorous triumph, as Kaiden fixed his gaze on the phone display, his face torn between amusement and dismay.

He settled on a mix of the two.

’That’s my mother,’ he reflected, bypassing an impressively crafted fan image merging him and Vespera together with a heart symbol in the middle. ’The internet wants me to steal my own mother’s heart.’

Shaking his head with a chuckle, Kaiden failed to grasp the fixation on stealing wives from the outset. Online communities hailed it as the height of male prowess, the supreme tactic, implying no greater feat than claiming another's partner.

In his view, any woman inclined to betray her spouse simply wasn't deserving of his attention.

Knowing the individual involved had once tended to his diapers rendered the notion far less enticing.

He shut down the discussion prior to its further decline. It was plummeting rapidly.

Memes had advanced swifter than the breakdowns.

One edit synced Magnus’s theatrical arrival with carnival tunes, surpassing the raw footage in viewership already. Another looped the instance of Magnus's speechless pause following Kaiden’s query for half a minute, captioned: "Loading... Loading... Loading..."

A side-by-side montage juxtaposed Kaiden’s curt "Noted" to Magnus’s menaces against sequences of global figures facing harsh rebukes with matching stoicism, entitled "MEN WHO CHOSE PEACE (compilation #4)."

A captured image of Kaiden atop the ridge surveying his perishing foes transformed into an inspirational graphic: "I DON’T ANSWER TO ANYONE, BE THEY S-TIER COMBATANTS, MASTERS OF THE MOST POWERFUL GUILDS, OR THE PRESIDENT HIMSELF. - Kaiden Grey."

That particular item had circulated sufficiently for Kaiden to anticipate its appearance on genuine products.

Venturing further, he moved beyond initial responses into the discussion boards inhabited by the dissecting enthusiasts. Sites where enthusiasts assembled chronologies, verified videos, and viewed awakened intrigue as an audience diversion laced with intrigue-laden predictions.

The majority echoed the queries of the established experts, albeit rougher and wilder in conjecture. Certain paths explored enmity. Others pursued corporate motives.

Yet a single post bore an alternate heading, authored by ’MyExLeftMeNowITrackGuilds’

Nestled three pages in on a moderate-scale forum for awakened conjectures, uploaded forty minutes prior, it held six hundred and thirteen upvotes. Modest enough to overlook. Substantial enough to draw eyes.

"Kaiden Grey is an Ashborn."