Chapter 94: The Records of Elyndor (Part 2)

Emily stared at the enormous record announcement hanging above the arena.

[NEW RECORD ESTABLISHED.]

[RECORD HOLDER: HUSBAND OF THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN IN THE WORLD.] [RECORD MESSAGE: AS EXPECTED OF MY WIFE. STILL THE BEST.]

Her face was still slightly red.

Without another word, she turned and walked toward the next testing area. An Authority official stepped forward on instinct, then thought better of it and let her pass. The machines were always active, and the moment Emily approached one, the display recognized her and lit up like it already regretted it.

Lily finally caught her breath. "She’s actually going to answer him?"

"Apparently," Maki said.

Yuna smiled at Emily’s retreating back. "She looks furious."

"She is furious."

"That’s even better."

The first machine in front of Emily measured raw physical power, a reinforced pillar wired into a display that still showed the old record glowing above it like it had no idea what was about to happen to it.

Emily raised her arm. Mana poured into it until the air around her fist started to bend, and a nearby official actually took a step back.

"She isn’t seriously using that much Mana for a punching test," someone muttered, like saying it out loud might stop her.

She wasn’t, and also she absolutely was.

BOOM!

The pillar shook like it had personally insulted her family. The old record vanished. The new number climbed, doubled, kept climbing, and finally settled at more than triple what used to be the best anyone had managed.

For a few seconds the entire evaluation center forgot how to talk. Then it remembered all at once.

"She tripled it!"

"That wasn’t even her Gnosis!"

"How much raw strength does she have?!"

Emily didn’t so much as glance at the noise. The record screen asked for a name and a message, the way it always did, and this time she already knew exactly what to type.

[NEW RECORD ESTABLISHED FOR PUNCHING POWER.]

[RECORD HOLDER: ANNOYED WIFE.]

[RECORD MESSAGE: WHAT IS UP WITH THAT NAME!?]

The arena went dead silent for one perfect beat before Lily lost it completely.

"She’s actually doing it!"

"They’re using the record boards to argue," Maki said, like she couldn’t quite believe the sentence coming out of her own mouth.

"And she’s already annoyed," Yuna added, shoulders shaking.

The crowd around them had no idea what any of it meant and were loving every second of their own confusion.

"Who’s the husband?"

"Wait, was that her husband who did the last record?"

"They’re talking to each other through a national database?"

Emily was already three steps toward the next machine and had zero interest in explaining herself to a crowd of strangers.

Across the facility, Reinhard read her message, grinned like a man who had just been complimented against his will, and shook his head.

"My wife really is cute when she’s angry."

He stepped up to the next test without a glance at the people filming him and finished it the way he finished everything, which was to say with no visible effort whatsoever.

The old record fell.

A new one took its place.

[NEW RECORD ESTABLISHED.]

[RECORD HOLDER: HUSBAND BEING HURT BY HIS WIFE’S ANGER.]

[RECORD MESSAGE: Tsk. Is that what you’re focusing on? I praised you and this is the thanks I get?]

Emily saw it the instant she reached her next station. Her eyebrow twitched like it was trying to escape her face.

"Oh, he made it worse," Lily said happily.

"He has no intention of stopping," Maki sighed.

"I don’t think he ever intended to," Yuna said.

The next test measured Mana control, and Emily poured hers in with surgical precision, sailing past the old record without so much as breathing hard. She didn’t hesitate over the name this time either.

[RECORD HOLDER: NOT-HAVING-IT WIFE.]

[RECORD MESSAGE: THANK YOU FOR THE PRAISE. NOW STOP MAKING THOSE EMBARRASSING NAMES.]

The message hit every screen in the building at once, and the crowd erupted for the fourth time in ten minutes.

"They’re actually fighting through the record board!"

"Is this the way new couples argue?!"

"They’re not even standing near each other!"

The board didn’t explain itself. It simply produced the next entry.

[RECORD HOLDER: HUSBAND WHO REFUSES TO STOP.]

[RECORD MESSAGE: Nope. I enjoy these names.]

Before the noise could settle, another record was broken with a new message like he was twisting the knife for fun.

[RECORD MESSAGE: Want me to stop? Beat me in record breaking.]

Emily stared at the screen without moving for several seconds. Lily was practically folded over the railing. Maki looked at Yuna with the expression of someone watching a war start over text messages.

"He’s challenging her now."

"Apparently," Yuna said, still smiling.

Emily’s eyes narrowed to something dangerous, and she turned on her heel toward the next machine without another word, which the crowd correctly read as a declaration of war.

"She’s going to answer him again."

"She’s going to break another one."

"Oh, she’s furious, this is going to be good."

The next test measured reaction speed.

Targets flared to life around her faster than most eyes could track, and Emily simply wasn’t there when they tried to land, turning before a target had even finished forming. And catching the final one before the machine had fully registered its own creation.

The result flashed and climbed past the record like it was embarrassed to still be attached to the old number.

She didn’t flinch at the name field this time either.

[RECORD HOLDER: DEAD MAN.]

[RECORD MESSAGE: YOU’RE ON.]

The entire arena lost its collective mind.

Lily nearly went over the railing for real. Maki closed her eyes like she was praying for patience. Yuna finally gave up trying to look composed.

A cluster of Authority officials exchanged the specific look of people watching their evaluation protocol die in front of them.

"This isn’t an evaluation anymore."

"They’re competing through the record board."

"Are they even paying attention to the actual tests?"

Halden watched Emily storm toward her next machine and laughed. "Oh, they’re paying attention."

An official next to him sighed as she rubbed her temple. "Just not to us."

That was the part that finally landed.

Emily and Reinhard weren’t performing for the crowd. They weren’t putting on a show. They were simply doing the tests, breaking every record in sight, and using the result screen as a group chat that the entire city happened to be cc’d on.

Elsewhere, Reinhard read Dead Man, laughed out loud, and looked completely delighted about his own impending doom.

An evaluator finally worked up the nerve to ask, "Are you seriously going to keep doing this?"

"Of course."

The evaluator had no follow-up question prepared for that answer.

Reinhard moved to the next station, a reaction and movement test, and cleared it the way he cleared everything.

[NEW RECORD ESTABLISHED.]

[RECORD HOLDER: HUSBAND WHOSE WIFE THREATENED HIS LIFE.]

[RECORD MESSAGE: I’m beginning to think you don’t appreciate my affection.]

The crowd erupted again.

Emily’s expression went several degrees colder. Lily was laughing too hard to form words. Maki looked thoroughly defeated by life. Yuna covered her mouth and gave up pretending otherwise.

"She’s going again."

"She’s not even looking at us anymore."

"She’s actually going to keep answering him."

Someone stared at the growing wall of record names and asked the question the entire arena was quietly asking itself.

"Who are these two?"

Nobody had an answer. The records kept coming anyway.

[RECORD HOLDER: IRRITATED WIFE.]

[RECORD MESSAGE: You’re making this worse.]

[RECORD HOLDER: SHAMELESS HUSBAND.]

[RECORD MESSAGE: I’m having fun.]

[RECORD HOLDER: WIFE WHO IS SERIOUSLY CONSIDERING MURDER.]

[RECORD MESSAGE: That sounds dangerous.]

[RECORD HOLDER: HUSBAND WHO FEARS NOTHING.]

[RECORD MESSAGE: I trust my wife.]

By now the crowd had stopped treating this like a sideshow to Emily’s comeback and started treating it like the main event. People drifted away from their original stations just to keep up with the scrolling wall of names.

The strangest part wasn’t the jokes.

It was that every single record attached to them was real. Emily was shattering numbers in punching power, reaction speed, and Mana control without slowing down for breath, and Reinhard was matching her step for step without so much as loosening his collar.

Underneath the bickering, the entire building was slowly realizing it was watching two monsters warm up.

Then the tone shifted, just slightly.

[RECORD HOLDER: MOST HANDSOME.]

[RECORD MESSAGE: See you at the final test.]

Emily read it and, for the first time in a dozen records, smiled instead of narrowing her eyes. She didn’t answer with another insult. She simply kept walking, and something about that silence worried the crowd more than any of the names before it had.

By the time she reached the final testing area, nobody in Elyndor was asking whether Reinhard was really competing.

They knew.

The final hall had two entrances built for simultaneous testing. Emily walked through hers. The crowd packed into the observation deck above. A moment later, the opposite doors opened, and Reinhard walked in like he owned the building and was already planning the redecoration.

The arena went completely silent.

Emily looked at him. He smiled at her like none of this had cost him anything, which, infuriatingly, it hadn’t.

She gave him a look that carried several different emotions and not one of them was mercy. "You’re enjoying this far too much."

"I think it’s been fun." Reinhard laughed.

"Of course you do."

Between them stood the final machine, a massive dual interface built around a single measurement core. An official explained the test from the platform above, voice carrying the specific exhaustion of someone who’d given up trying to predict what these two would do next.

"This final test measures total Mana capacity and output. Both candidates place their hands on the interfaces at the same time. The machine measures and compares against the existing record."

Emily and Reinhard stepped up together and placed their hands on the machine.

It activated.

Mana poured out of both of them at once, climbing past the D-Rank threshold, then C-Rank, without either of them appearing to try. Emily glanced sideways.

"You’re still smiling?"

"Should I stop?"

"It seems you lack preservation instincts."

"My wife would never hurt me~"

"You must not know me."

"Ahh, no need to pay hard to get."

The numbers kept rising.

The machine began to shake. The officials traded the kind of look that meant nobody in this building was getting paid enough for this. The readings pushed higher, approaching the ancient record that had stood untouched for longer than anyone in the room had been alive.

Neither of them had reached it yet.

Emily’s Mana surged.

Reinhard’s answered half a heartbeat later, like he’d been waiting for the cue.

The reading crossed the ancient line and kept going, and the machine started flashing warnings that nobody had time to read before the whole arena shuddered.

Then—

BOOM!

The machine exploded. Both interfaces shattered at once, and the released Mana slammed into the surrounding defensive formations before they could fully absorb it. The crowd didn’t make a sound. Smoke rolled off the wreckage in slow curls while the main display flickered back to life.

[ANCIENT RECORD SURPASSED.]

[NEW RECORD HOLDERS: A TIE]

A tie.

For a moment, neither of them spoke. Then Reinhard laughed, the easy kind, like he’d just finished a light workout instead of detonating government property.

"That was fun."

Emily just looked at him, still catching up to the fact that he’d meant it.

He walked to the ruined interface first. For once, he didn’t reach for a ridiculous title. He typed his actual name.

[RECORD HOLDER: REINHARD ASHCROFT.]

[RECORD MESSAGE: THAT WAS FUN, BUT YOU WIN, MY DEAR WIFE.]

Emily blinked at the screen and read it twice. After an entire evaluation of husband being hurt by his wife’s anger and dead man and every other name he could invent to annoy her, this was the first time all day he’d simply used his own name and handed her the win without a single joke attached.

She looked at him for a long moment.

Then she smiled, walked to the interface herself, and started typing while the crowd leaned in, fully expecting another weapon-grade title.

[RECORD HOLDER: WIFE OF THE MOST HANDSOME MAN IN THE WORLD.]

The arena went silent again, this time for an entirely different reason.

Reinhard blinked.

Lily’s mouth fell open.

Maki stared at the screen like it had personally betrayed her.

Yuna pressed both hands over her mouth.

Somewhere on the officials’ platform, several grown adults forgot how to breathe.

[RECORD MESSAGE: YOU WIN. I’M PROUD OF YOU.]

Emily stared at her own words like she couldn’t quite believe she’d written them in front of an entire city. Then she looked up at Reinhard, face slowly turning the color of her own record title.

Reinhard stared at the message, then broke into laughter loud enough that it echoed off the ruined machine. Emily looked away, thoroughly embarrassed, but she didn’t delete a single word.

He crossed the floor and took her hand. She looked down at it, then back up at him, and didn’t pull away.

They walked out together while the crowd stayed frozen behind them, still staring at the two names glowing above the wreckage.

Emily Ashcroft and Reinhard Ashcroft.

They’d walked in as a legendary returning Awakener and her unreadable husband.

They walked out having broken records across half the evaluation floor, running an entire argument through a national scoreboard in front of the whole city, and tying a record that had stood for centuries without either of them seeming to notice the audience at all.

They’d simply been talking to each other the whole time.

And now, across Elyndor, one question kept spreading from person to person faster than any record could.

Who exactly were the Ashcrofts?

[Fame Increased!]

[10,560 —> 33, 245]

[Current Fame: 33, 245 / 1,000,000]

[Description: A shocking event made Emily viral, now she is on the mind of thousands. But if that wasn’t enough, many are gearing up to replicate the viral scene]