Global Leaderboard Fury

"M-Mr. Vance—"

Kaelen smiled. He leaned back in his restaurant chair and cut in before she could spiral further into her nervous panic. "Mr. Vance sounds a bit distant. Just call me Kaelen."

"K-Kaelen."

His smooth, casual interruption acted as an immediate balm. Being cut off broke her anxious loop. He did not care about formal titles. He wanted her to hear the relaxed ease in his voice so she could loosen up.

Silence stretched over the line for a brief moment as Serena processed the shift.

She sat on the edge of her bed and took a slow, deep breath to sort through her chaotic thoughts. She needed to remind herself of her harsh new reality. She was his purchased mistress now. He had effortlessly paid the massive sum for her mother's critical medical treatment without a second thought. Because of that immense financial transaction, her life and body fundamentally belonged to him.

She gripped the phone tighter, feeling the cool metal of the casing against her palm. If she remained stiff, awkward, and reserved, he would not enjoy her company. If a mistress could not relax in front of her lover, how could he find any joy in keeping her around? What if her distant attitude made him unhappy? Her mother's future treatment costs were astronomical. She could not risk losing his favor under any circumstances.

She made a firm resolution right then and there. She would embrace her role without hesitation. She would provide him with whatever emotional or physical comfort he desired. Whatever he needed her to be, she would become.

Her tense shoulders finally dropped. Once she accepted her position, a heavy weight lifted from her chest.

"The hospital has already started the process," Serena said. Her tone underwent a noticeable shift. It was much lighter, softer, and far more natural than a minute ago. "They are running the preliminary tests tomorrow and the day after. If everything checks out fine, my mother's life-saving surgery is officially scheduled in three days."

"I got it," Kaelen said. "Do not worry about your mother's condition. It will be cured."

"Thank you, Kaelen," she replied. Her voice carried genuine earnestness.

"There is no need to thank me. Just make sure to message me right before she goes into the operating room."

"I will."

She did not ask why he needed to know the exact timing of the operation. She simply agreed, eager to follow his instructions.

Kaelen hung up the phone. He was satisfied with his investment. Serena was adaptable and smart enough to understand her position quickly.

Before he could even set the device down on the table, the screen lit up again. The ringtone shattered the quiet atmosphere of the empty restaurant.

He pressed the answer button and brought the phone back to his ear. "Valerie. It is pretty late. Why are you still awake?"

His tone was light and amused, expecting her usual late-night banter.

An explosive roar blasted through the speaker instead. "I am furious! I am so mad I could punch a hole in my gaming capsule!"

Kaelen pulled the phone a few inches away from his ear. "Whoa, Valerie. Who had the nerve to make you this mad? Tell me. I want to know which blind idiot messed with you."

His voice carried a playful tease. He wanted to diffuse her temper.

Valerie aggressively snapped back at him. "Who else? Those bastards from the rival servers of Valtoria, Xenora, and Baltonia!"

Kaelen frowned slightly. The world had not reached the stage of open global conflict yet. "Take a breath and explain the situation from the beginning."

"Clash of Immortals just released the All-Servers Twenty-Four-Hour Leveling Leaderboard!" Valerie complained bitterly.

The full picture became instantly clear in his mind the moment she mentioned the leaderboard.

Twelve hours had passed since the servers officially opened. The system had just launched the most crucial early-game ranking event.

Kaelen intimately knew the critical importance of this specific milestone. It was not just a vanity contest. It was a primary reference for how the game distributed vital main cities across the global servers.

In Clash of Immortals, every server started with identical baseline territory. No matter the population size, a server possessed twelve Level 3 main cities, four Level 2 main cities, and one Level 1 main city. As the game progressed, the system released different leaderboard challenges to reward additional cities.

During the beginner town phase, from Level 0 to Level 20, all ranking events rewarded Level 3 main cities. During the Level 3 main city phase, from Level 20 to Level 60, the rewards upgraded to Level 2 main cities. From Level 60 to 120, players fought for Level 1 main cities.

Once the Level 1 main city phase began, the servers underwent a massive reorganization. All servers merged together, igniting brutal wars between nations. The game shifted to distributing National Relics. Once all the National Relics were claimed, Clash of Immortals would physically merge with Blue Planet, bringing the apocalypse into reality.

The current twenty-four-hour leveling leaderboard heavily rewarded the top players with those vital Level 3 main cities and premium chests. First place received three Level 3 main cities and a Silver Chest. Second place received two cities and three Bronze Chests. Third place received one city and two Bronze Chests. Every player down to the one hundredth spot received a Bronze Chest.

This event jumpstarted a massive, server-wide resource snowball effect. One extra city meant one more resource hub for the nation. The more resources a server gained in the early game, the smoother and faster their subsequent development would be. This directly dictated a server's national fate and military power long before the eventual reality merge.

To ensure a baseline of fairness, the game developers had given every server fixed, identical starting towns. The map dimensions, resource nodes, and monster spawn rates were exactly the same everywhere.

This attempt at fairness created a crippling disadvantage for Elysium.

Elysium suffered from an overwhelming influx of hundreds of millions of players. The sheer volume of people flooding the starting zones resulted in severe resource scarcity. While foreign players leveled up effortlessly by farming monsters on uncrowded, pristine servers, Elysiumites were forced to desperately fight tooth and nail over every single low-level rabbit spawn. Ten players would cast spells at the exact same patch of grass the moment a monster materialized.

Foreign players like those in Xenora, Valtoria, and Baltonia had far smaller server populations. If a player there possessed the baseline mechanical skill, they found fields overflowing with targets. They could grind continuously without ever crossing paths with a competitor.

Elysium possessed top-tier gaming talent, but skill alone could not compensate for a physical lack of monsters. Trying to hunt higher-level beasts to avoid the crowds was impossible. With a beginner's bare-bones starting stats, fighting above one's level was nothing but a fantasy.

The inevitable, humiliating result mirrored Kaelen's past life perfectly.

Twelve grueling hours in, not a single Elysiumite had managed to crack the top one hundred spots on the global leaderboard.

The foreign leaderboard dominators had already hit Level 3 and were climbing fast. They were leveraging their empty zones to pull further ahead by the minute.

Meanwhile, Elysium's highest player was only a pitiful Level 2. They were already a full level behind the top rankers.

Surpassing the foreign competitors in the remaining twenty-four hours seemed mathematically impossible to the general community. The gap in experience points was too vast, and the starting zones in Elysium were still choked with millions of desperate players stealing kills from one another.

With Level 3 main cities on the line, no one on that leaderboard would dare slack off. Those sitting outside the top three would fight desperately to climb higher. Those already occupying the top three spots would grind until their eyes bled to defend their positions.

In his previous life, Elysium had tragically failed to place a single player on this crucial leaderboard. The server had suffered immense national humiliation. They started the global race starved for resources and territory, a brutal disadvantage that snowballed into massive, devastating casualties during the nation wars. When the game merged with reality, that early deficit cost millions of lives.

Kaelen stared at the empty skewers resting on his plate. His eyes sharpened with cold resolve.

This time, things were different.

Elysium would not suffer that humiliation again. He would not let his people fall behind in the crucial early resource race.

That was because this time, the Elysium server had Kaelen Vance.