Blue River Continent, Aethelgard Megacity, Central Academy Ring. Aethelgard Academy. The Grand Dueling Circle.
The Dueling Circle was a pit of hungry eyes. The sand in the center had been magically compressed until it was as hard as granite. It was stained by the mana scorches of the forty-eight students who had already been filtered out of the Great Arcane Sifting. Now, the Proctor’s voice echoed across the marble stands. It carried the weight of a death sentence for one of the competitors.
"Final Match of the Second Bracket: Sterling Greyjoy of House Greyjoy versus David Silver of House Silver!"
The crowd did not just cheer; they laughed! It was a cruel and melodic sound that rippled through the silver-clad elite. To them, this was not a duel. It was a public execution. Sterling was the golden boy of the Academy.
He was a Tier 4 combatant with a lineage that stretched back to the founding of the Empire. David was the Static Core loser who had somehow survived the gravity trial by some freak accident involving dense bones and luck.
David stepped into the circle and felt the heat of the sun on his neck. He could see his parents in the minor noble stands. His father was gripping the wooden railing so hard his knuckles were white. His mother looked like she was whispering a prayer to every god she could remember.
They knew what was at stake here. If David was humiliated in this ring, the Greyjoy petition to strip their title would be signed before the sun set. They would be commoners by dinner time!
Even if one were to ignore the tension in the air, every boy in the stands was paying attention to the VIP booth for two simple reasons, Boobs!
Teacher Rain was sitting there next to the Headmaster. She was a wonderfully blessed woman and she had to rest her heavy chest on the marble railing to relieve herself.
She was not very pretty and her beauty was a 4/10, but those racks elevated her to a 20! Even the Headmaster seemed distracted by the way the railing groaned under the weight.
"I am going to enjoy this, Silver," Sterling said as he stepped into the ring.
He was not wearing his usual arrogant smirk. Instead, his eyes were cold and fueled by the humiliation of his shattered gravity artifact. He drew his sword. It was a masterpiece of enchanted quicksilver that hummed with a sharp and predatory blue light.
"I am not going to just beat you," Sterling hissed. "I am going to break your core so thoroughly that you will spend the rest of your life as a vegetable. You will be a noble footstool by the time I am done!"
"Standard noble banter," David muttered. He felt his hand twitching toward his waist. "Do you guys have a handbook for these lines? Or is it just a natural talent for being a cliché?"
Sterling did not respond with words. He lunged!
The movement was a blur of Tier 4 speed. The quicksilver blade whistled through the air and aimed directly at David’s shoulder. David pivoted. The Flash-Step mastery he had gained in the Below Floors allowed him to see the blade’s trajectory in slow motion. He leaned back and the tip of the sword missed his chest by the width of a coin.
"Too slow, Sterling," David drawled. He danced back toward the edge of the circle.
Sterling snarled and his mana erupted in a violent flare of blue light. "You think dodging is going to save you? You are a rat in a cage and I am about to lock the door!"
Sterling reached into his tunic and pulled out a small and obsidian-carved sphere. It pulsed with a sickening grey radiance that seemed to swallow the natural light of the amphitheater.
This was not a standard Academy tool. It was a Tier 5 Nullification Field! It was a restricted artifact usually reserved for suppressing high-level mana beasts during capture.
"Father said you might have some hidden trick," Sterling hissed as he crushed the sphere in his palm. "So he gave me this. Say goodbye to your luck, Silver!"
BAM!
A dome of absolute grey energy erupted from Sterling. It expanded until it covered the entire dueling circle. The air inside the dome turned stagnant. The vibrant and humming mana of the Academy grounds was suddenly gone. It was replaced by a suffocating void.
To the spectators, it looked like a grey veil had been dropped over the fight. To David, it felt like his lungs had been filled with wet sand. It was a very bad feeling!
[Warning! Tier 5 Nullification Field Active.]
[Detection: All external mana sources have been severed.]
[System Note: This field is designed to ’freeze’ the flow of mana in a core. To a ’Static Core’ like yours, it should be an instant knockout.]
David felt his heart rate spike. The Static sludge in his core felt heavier than ever. It was pinned down by the grey law of the Nullifier. Sterling, however, was still moving just fine.
He was wearing a specialized ring that protected him from his own field. His quicksilver blade was glowing with a malevolent and protected light.
"You cannot even cast a spark now, can you?" Sterling laughed.
He walked toward David with measured and lethal steps. "Your core is locked. You are just a commoner in fancy clothes. Now let us see how those dense bones handle a Tier 4 sword strike!"
David looked at the blue status screen flickering in his vision. Even the system interface looked slightly dimmed by the field. It was like his battery was at one percent and someone had stolen the charger.
"System," David thought. He gritted his teeth. "He is cheating. Use the 100,000x multiplier. I need a shield. Now!"
[Analyzing...]
[Skill Selection: Static Shield (Tier 1).]
[Description: A basic, stationary mana-shell used to block pebbles or light training strikes.]
"Static Shield? That will not stop a Tier 4 blade! Especially not in a Nullification Field!" David screamed in his mind.
[Trust the Multiplier, David. You are a ’Static’ user. Use the nature of your core.]
David slammed his hands together. "Static Shield!"
[Passive Multiplier Activated: 100,000x!]
Inside David’s core, the immovable lead of his mana did not flow. It did not circulate. Instead, the 100,000x multiplier forced the Static mana to vibrate. It was a motion so microscopic and so fast that it defied the laws of biology!
A thin and shimmering translucent shell formed around David. To the crowd, it looked like a pathetic and flickering Tier 1 bubble. Sterling laughed and raised his sword for a decapitating strike.
"Die, trash!"
Sterling swung the quicksilver blade with everything he had. The sword hit the Static Shield with a sound that was not a thud or a clang.
It was a scream!
The high-frequency vibration of David’s shield was so intense that it acted like a molecular buzzsaw. The moment Sterling’s Tier 4 sword touched the shield, the quicksilver blade did not just stop. It began to disintegrate!
The vibration traveled up the sword and through Sterling’s protected ring. It went directly into his arm.
"What?" Sterling’s eyes widened.
He tried to pull the sword back, but the Static Shield was acting like a magnetic vacuum. The vibrations locked the blade in place while it pulverized the atoms of the metal. It was a terrifying sight!
David looked at the shield. He could see the grey Nullification Field trying to freeze the shield. But you cannot freeze something that is already vibrating at 100,000 times the speed of sound. The Law of the Nullifier was being hammered by the Law of the Multiplier!
"My turn to break something," David whispered.
He pushed his hands outward and expanded the shield.
[Vibration Frequency: Overclocking...]
[Result: High-Frequency Resonance.]
The Static Shield did not just grow. It hummed with a pitch so high it caused the marble stands to crack. The vibration hit the grey dome of the Nullification Field.
For a second, the two Tier 5 forces warred against each other. Then, with a sound like a thousand mirrors shattering at once, the Nullification Field exploded!
The grey veil did not just vanish. It was pulverized into nothingness. The shockwave of the field’s destruction sent Sterling flying backward. His quicksilver sword was now nothing more than a handful of metallic dust in his hand. He hit the marble wall of the amphitheater with a sickening crunch! His protective ring shattered under the stress.
The silence that followed was heavy. The Nullification Field was gone. The sun beat down on the ring again. it illuminated David Silver, who was still standing in the center of a perfectly circular patch of pulverized sand.
David lowered his hands and the shield vanished. He felt a strange and cold clarity in his chest. He looked up at the VIP boxes. Headmaster Hallowell was standing at the railing.
His face was a mask of disbelief and dawning realization. Next to him, the Inquisitor was already reaching for his communication crystal.
David looked at Sterling. The golden boy was slumped against the wall and gasping for air. His golden armor was cracked and dull. Then David looked at his parents. They were staring at him. They did not look relieved. They looked at him with a terrifying kind of awe.
In that moment, David realized the truth. He had tried to be the lucky loser. He had tried to blend in and be ordinary. But Sterling, the Council, and the very world he lived in would not let him. They would keep pushing and keep cheating. They would keep trying to harvest him until there was nothing left!
If he wanted his family to be safe, he could not be a rabbit hiding in the tall grass. He had to be the fire that burnt the grass down. He had to be the one who everyone feared.
[Seal Progress: 5.0% Cracked.]
[New Mindset Detected: Dominance.]
[System Note: About time. The ’loser’ act was getting really boring to calculate.]
"David Silver is the victor!" the Proctor announced. His voice was trembling.
David did not wait for the applause. He did not even look at Sterling. He turned and walked out of the ring. His footsteps echoed on the stone. As he passed the first row of noble students, they instinctively pulled back. Their previous mockery was replaced by a chilling and silent fear.
’Fine,’ David thought. His eyes were glowing with a faint and purple-black light. ’If they want a monster, I will give them a monster. But I am going to be the one who decides who gets eaten.’
He walked toward the tunnel. His mind was already racing. Rachel would be coming for him. The Council would be calling for an interrogation. And Sterling’s father would likely move from petitions to assassins. It was going to be a very busy week.
"System," David whispered as he entered the shadows of the tunnel. "How long until I can master that High-Frequency vibration for my offensive spells?"
[With a 100,000x multiplier? Roughly three seconds of practice.]
"Good," David said. A dark and relatable chuckle escaped his lips. "Because I have a feeling the Imperial Games are about to get very, very loud."
As he disappeared into the darkness, the broken shards of Sterling’s obsidian artifact lay in the sand. They were a silent reminder that the Static had finally started to move. And it was not going to stop until the world itself was reshaped in its image. David felt a strange sense of control.
He did not want an out-of-control ability, but he knew he was the only one who could stop the coming storm. He just had to make sure he did not blow up the city first. That would be very awkward to explain to his parents. He smiled to himself and kept walking. The hunt was just beginning!