While the team-building event proceeded steadily.
Outside the competition grounds.
Seated in his chair, Purple Tribulation watched the proceedings and casually used a tentacle to pick up something from the snack platter beside him. It looked a little like an oversized caterpillar, only more vividly colored, and he stuffed it into his mouth.
As he savored the juicy burst in his mouth.
He praised Orsaga beside him:
"It seems your true strength is even greater than I thought."
At that, Orsaga merely shook his head, his expression unchanged:
"So what if I'm a little stronger?"
"What practical significance does that have at our level?"
"None at all."
"It's still hard to determine a winner, and just as hard to aspire to a higher level..."
Having said that.
He looked at the Seats of Power overhead, each radiating tremendous pressure, with undisguised ambition in his eyes.
Faced with his answer.
After a moment of silence.
Purple Tribulation also sighed, sounding somewhat dispirited:
"True."
"A little stronger or a little weaker means very little to you and me..."
"Our strength is more or less confined to this range..."
"Ordinary Abyss Lords are far beneath us."
"But an infinite distance separates us from Abyss Princes."
The so-called threshold beings.
Were essentially nothing more than a classification for those caught between levels.
Looking down on those below.
Looking up at those above.
They glimpsed a shadow of those higher beings, or rather, the footprints they had left behind, yet still felt they were impossibly distant. Even jumping upward with all their might only let them glimpse something utterly nebulous...
After sighing.
And falling silent for another while.
Purple Tribulation looked at Orsaga beside him and said candidly:
"Still, I envy you."
"I can feel the ambition in your heart."
"That burning, frenzied, irrepressible ambition..."