The Dragon Continent did not welcome the Zaiton fleet.
It assessed it.
Stone cliffs rose like judges along the coast, their surfaces etched with wards older than most empires. Above them, the air shimmered with draconic surveillance—ritualized scans layered atop instinctive dominance. Every arrival was weighed, measured, and priced before it ever touched land.
The Zaiton ships anchored anyway.
They did not request berths.They did not raise banners.They did not announce envoys.
They simply lowered boats and came ashore.
For centuries, humanity had arrived at the Tournament of Power as supplicants—seeking protection, alliances, relevance. Their representatives wore borrowed confidence and spent borrowed coin, hemorrhaging wealth on dragon ports, dragon food, dragon lodging. Every expense became a leash. Every debt became a future concession.
This time, there were no inns rented.
Tents rose instead—orderly, standardized, efficient. Livestock was unloaded. Grain stores were inventoried. Mobile forges were assembled with practiced speed. Fires were lit not for show, but for cooking. The shoreline smelled of roasted meat and salt wind rather than incense and coin.
It was a small rebellion.
And the Dragon Empire noticed.
High above, dragon sentinels circled, their senses flaring outward. Mana pressure washed over the camp in invisible waves, probing for spikes of cultivation, bloodline anomalies, dangerous intent.
They found none.
The humans moved like workers, not warriors. Their leaders did not radiate dominance. Their strongest figures barely registered above mediocrity by draconic standards.
Kaizen Zaiton stood among them, unremarkable.
The Zero Order Technique rendered him conceptually quiet—not hidden, not suppressed, but functionally irrelevant to detection. To the dragons' senses, there was nothing to lock onto. No contrast. No disturbance.
The report that returned to King Dragomof was brief.
"Humanity remains unchanged."
Dragomof laughed and placed a wager.
Princess Nala did not laugh.
She read the same report and frowned.
"Unchanged compared to what?" she asked softly.
Her spies—embedded everywhere from docks to betting halls—exchanged glances. One answered carefully. "Compared to previous human delegations, Your Highness."
Nala closed the report and leaned back, fingers steepled.
"That assumes the same incentives," she said. "And the same intelligence."
She rose and walked to a wall-sized map of the continent. Red markers indicated draconic assets. Green for elven interests. Black for orc strongholds. Blue for giant domains.
Human markers were almost non existent.
Except one.
A small white pin near the outer coast.
"They are camping," Nala said. "Not settling."
"Yes," a spy replied. "They are self-sufficient. No trade requests. No rental contracts."
"That costs them more up front," Nala mused. "Why would a weaker race choose higher initial expenditure?"
No one answered.
Nala smiled faintly. "Because it's cheaper later."
She turned sharply. "I want eyes inside that camp. Not force. Not intimidation. I want understanding."
Inside the Zaiton encampment, Elder Harnn was already moving pieces.
He was not a warrior but a schemer.
He did not attend sparring sessions or review battle formations. His domain was quieter—and more decisive.
Finance.
Elder Harnn had arrived with ledgers instead of blades, contacts instead of champions. While Kaizen focused on perception and preparation, Elder Harnn dismantled the Dragon Continent's economic assumptions piece by piece.
His first act was restraint.
No large purchases.No conspicuous investments.No sudden currency exchanges.
Instead, he sent emissaries—humble, forgettable men and women—to talk.
They spoke to neutral-zone merchants about storage shortages near the arena. To caravan masters about fluctuating escort fees during tournament weeks. To artifact brokers about how prices spiked not during matches, but during normal days of trading.
Plans were made and the final plot emerged.
The battle arena was not just a place of combat.
It was a gravitational center.
Everything bent toward it—food, medicine, weapons repair, mana recovery items, betting liquidity, transport. Whoever controlled the margins around the arena controlled more than the fights themselves.
Elder Harnn began quietly securing options.
Not purchases.
Options.
A warehouse here, rented months in advance at peacetime rates.A contract there, guaranteeing supply if certain conditions were met.Minor loans extended to small guilds—never enough to alarm, always enough to earn gratitude.
He never signed Zaiton's name.
Shell entities handled everything.
By the time anyone noticed movement, the groundwork would already be lawfully, contractually complete.
Nala's spies finally slipped into the edges of the camp.
They saw nothing incriminating.
Training was disciplined but unspectacular by some weak humans not worth their attention. No secret techniques on display. No hidden weapons racks. No forbidden rituals.
Kaizen spent long hours walking.
Not supervising.Not instructing.Observing.
That bothered them more than anything.
One spy reported, "there is no sign of a strong person."
Another added, "Or a powerful warrior, I think they came to participate in this tournament just to not be forgotten that they exist." Its pitiful.
Nala listened, expression unreadable.
"They are lying," she concluded. "But not about their strength."
She turned her attention to Elder Harnn. What's wrong with this old geezer, I cant understand him.
Reports of a mild-mannered human financier were surfacing across the continent—someone polite, precise, impossible to corner. Someone who asked the right questions and never pressed too hard.
"He's building something," Nala said. "And he's doing it legally."
That was dangerous.
Illegal schemes could be crushed. Legal ones had to be endured.
The other races began to feel the pressure in subtler ways.
Elven traders discovered that certain herbs needed for mana recovery had been pre-purchased months in advance by anonymous buyers. Orc supply lines found escort fees rising as mercenary companies quietly committed elsewhere. Giants noticed construction permits around the arena tightening—not blocked, just… unavailable.
No one could point to a culprit.
But the inconvenience was real.
Brontes Orcas snarled when he heard. "Coward's warfare."
Saron Sylvaris adjusted his portfolios and frowned. "Someone is pricing risk before it manifests."
Gorath Gigantos laughed again. "Smart little ones."
Dragomof rolled his dice and doubled down.
As fight day drew closer, the arena city transformed.
Tents gave way to stone. Stone gave way to gold. Gold gave way to chaos.
Prices tripled.
Then quintupled.
Those who had waited scrambled.
Those who had planned watched.
The Zaiton Empire did not move.
Because it did not need to.
Elder Harnn's contracts activated quietly. Warehouses opened. Supplies flowed. Independent vendors—technically unaffiliated—began selling at stable prices near the Zaiton-controlled zones.
Not cheap.
Just fair.
Crowds followed.
Betting halls noticed liquidity pooling in unexpected places. Medical tents found themselves better stocked near certain districts. Weapon repair queues shortened mysteriously in others.
It wasn't domination.
It was reliability.
Nala stood in a high gallery overlooking the arena district and finally understood.
"They're not here to win every match," she said.
Her aide waited.
"They're here to survive every outcome."
She exhaled slowly.
Kaizen's deception was not about hiding power.
It was about denying leverage.
By the time the first fight would begin, the Zaiton Empire would owe no one—and be owed by many.
Information would come to them.Resources would flow through them.Mistakes made by others would be their opportunities.
Nala smiled, a rare, genuine expression.
"So that's your lie," she murmured. "You pretend to be weak so the world forgets to watch its feet."
Far below, Kaizen stood at the edge of the camp, spear still wrapped in black cloth.
The arena loomed in the distance.
The stage was set.
And when the first blow would finally fall—
It would land in a world already shaped by Zaiton hands.