Alexander stood at the door again, but this time there was no room for any other thought except one, repeating in his head like a steady, restless pulse.
Win.
Then win again.
He didn’t think about Richard as an opponent carrying history or mystery, nor about that stranger and his unsettling questions about his left hand, not even the priests’ stares that had followed him since the end of his first duel. All of it faded, forced into a dark corner of his mind, leaving nothing behind but that single word, repeating like an internal war drum.
(Win... then win again. That’s all that matters now. No time to think about strangers, or secrets, or questions I don’t have answers to. Just win. Then win. Until no one is left who doubts who I’ve become.)
The door opened before him, and the crowd’s noise erupted again in one rising wave, but this time he didn’t hear it with the same clarity as before; everything sounded muted, distant, as though his mind had built a silent wall around that single goal he wanted to achieve.
He walked in with steadier footing than the first time, his steps less hesitant, as though this boy’s body was finally starting to grow used to confrontations like this. His eyes searched quickly for Richard, already standing in the middle of the arena, his sword hanging elegantly as always, that calm smile fixed in place.
On a platform close to the noble seats, Alexander noticed that heavily built man, the western representative with his carefully trimmed beard, standing right beside Richard’s family — closer than Alexander would have expected for an ordinary minister’s relationship to one of his region’s sons. His look wasn’t the usual one an elder gives a promising young champion — simple pride and eager anticipation. It was far heavier than that; a strict seriousness, closer to a man watching a risky investment than a relative cheering on family.
It seemed like Richard’s future didn’t matter to him just as a personal victory, but as part of some much larger calculation — political, perhaps, or maybe something deeper tying Richard’s family to the west’s own interests in a way Alexander didn’t understand yet.
(That’s not the look of a proud uncle watching his nephew, or a mentor watching his student. That’s the look of a man waiting on the return of a long-term investment.)
Alexander pushed that observation aside for now, trying to focus on the opponent in front of him instead of political complications that weren’t his concern yet, and took his position facing Richard, drawing his sword from its sheath with a calm motion.
The referee announced the start of the duel, and applause and cheers rose from every direction, but Alexander didn’t listen to any of it, his eyes fixed only on his opponent.
He suddenly remembered that first moment his father had taught him to use magic on his sword, that cold night at the camp, and decided to summon the same feeling now, trying to give his blade an extra edge before the clash began.
He raised his sword before him, focused his right hand on the blade, and said in a calm voice:
"Illuminate."
The sword glowed with a faint light, a white halo beginning to spread along the blade. Alexander felt a new weight fill his hand, that same feeling he’d known that first night at camp when his ordinary sword had transformed into something stronger with a single touch from his father.
He looked toward Richard with confidence, expecting to see at least a trace of respect in his eyes for that move.
But Richard didn’t move.
He didn’t raise his sword, didn’t reset into a defensive stance — he just stood there with that same calm smile, as though the glow lighting up Alexander’s blade were nothing more than a small candle lit in broad daylight, not even worth noticing.
It felt like he was mocking him in total silence, without saying a single word — just that calm posture, and those eyes looking at Alexander the same way an adult looks at a child trying to impress them with a simple toy.
(Why isn’t he moving? Why is he standing there like none of this matters to him at all?)
Alexander felt something like embarrassment creeping into his chest — that old familiar feeling he knew well from his early days in the ring, facing an opponent leagues above him, one who didn’t even need to raise his hands to make you feel the gap between you.
And he realized, for the first time since this competition began, that this particular opponent was completely different from Hendro — different from anything he’d faced in either his new life or his old one; a knight who seemed superior to him even before raising his sword.
Alexander didn’t wait any longer. He decided to break this humiliating silence with a direct rush, trying to make use of his glowing sword’s edge before its effect faded.
He lunged at Richard with a quick step, his sword rising in a sharp arc toward his left shoulder, a motion he’d trained well over an entire week — his confidence in that strike enough to make him expect a real impact.
But Richard barely moved from his spot — a small sideways step, almost imperceptible — while raising his sword with only one hand, his other still folded behind his back, making no attempt to use it, as though he considered it entirely unnecessary for a match like this.
The blades clashed with a sharp metallic sound, and Alexander’s sword recoiled with a force he hadn’t expected — not from the violence of the counter-strike, but from its cold precision, as though Richard hadn’t exerted any real effort at all, just moved his wrist enough to deflect the blow and send it right back at its owner.
Alexander didn’t give himself time to hesitate, lunging again — this time with a quick horizontal strike aimed at the ribs, then a vertical one straight at the chest, one after another without pause, trying to overwhelm his opponent with a speed Hendro had never been able to match.
But Richard handled every strike with that same maddening calm; a sidestep here, a slight lean of the torso there, one quick parry with his sword whenever a strike came too close, his left hand never once moving from behind his back the entire time, as though it were restrained there purely by his own will, not by any real disability.
Alexander felt cold sweat break out on his forehead — not from physical exhaustion, but from the growing sense that every strike he threw was being read and anticipated before it even landed, as though Richard could see his movements before he’d even thought of them himself.
(He’s not fighting me... he’s just keeping me at a distance, with one hand, like I’m a kid waving a wooden stick at a grown man.)
Alexander tried changing his approach, slowing his movement for a moment, attempting to fake a strike toward the shoulder before suddenly cutting toward the leg — a trick he’d learned from one of his old boxing matches, when deception sometimes beat raw power.
But Richard beat him to it by a fraction of a second, his foot lifting slightly off the ground, a smooth dodge as though he’d predicted the feint before it was even executed, then settled right back into that same calm stance, no change in his expression at all, as though nothing had happened.
Alexander stopped for a moment, breath quickening, while Richard’s breathing across from him hadn’t shifted in the slightest, still standing with the same relaxed ease he’d started the duel with, sword raised in one hand, the other still behind his back, waiting in silence for Alexander to decide his next move.
"What’s wrong, farmhand... are you done?"
Alexander caught his breath with difficulty, but raised his sword again in front of him, refusing to show any sign of surrender before this infuriating calm.
"Not... not yet. I’ve still got energy left to fight."
Richard gave a faint smile, one carrying no anger, just something closer to the pity of a man looking at a stubborn child who refuses to grasp the gap between them.
"No need to keep going... my turn to attack starts soon. I’m giving you a chance to surrender."
Alexander heard those words and felt something like fire ignite in his chest — not open anger, but that old kind of stubbornness he knew well from his worst days in the ring, when he’d heard that exact same tone from opponents confident of their win before the first round had even ended.
(A chance to surrender? Does he think his words will break something inside me? I heard this exact sentence, in almost this exact tone, right before I lost everything in my old life. I won’t let it beat me twice.)
Alexander tightened his grip on the sword’s hilt and stood firmer, his eyes still locked on that calm face that hadn’t changed an inch.
Richard looked at him for one last moment, as though offering him a final chance to reconsider, then said in a coldly calm voice:
"So you won’t surrender?"
Alexander raised his sword higher, his eyes carrying no hesitation despite the mounting exhaustion in his arms.
"Never."
Richard shook his head slowly, as though the matter had been settled in his mind long ago, then said in a tone laced with lethal coldness:
"Alright then. Another farmhand dies by my hand tonight."
That last sentence hadn’t even finished settling in the air before Richard’s left hand vanished from behind his back — and at almost the same instant, he himself vanished from where he stood.
Alexander felt no warning at all — no shift in the feet, no lean of the torso preceding a lunge, the way he’d learned to read in his opponents. Just empty space where Richard had been standing, then his sudden appearance to Alexander’s right, closer than should have been possible.
Alexander barely managed to raise his sword to block the first strike, a violent metallic clash shaking his entire arm up to the shoulder, and before he could regain his balance, Richard had already moved again — this time from the other side, a second strike coming at a completely different angle, so fast that Alexander didn’t even see the blade itself, only felt the air shudder in front of his face before he stumbled back a forced step.
(What was that? I didn’t see him move... I didn’t see him at all.)
Richard gave him no more time to think, lunging a third time, his sword moving in a series of consecutive strikes, each faster than the last, as though his body didn’t follow the same laws of motion Alexander’s did; no preparatory steps, no readable moment of anticipation, just raw speed shifting from total stillness to explosive motion in a fraction of a second.
Alexander stumbled back, step after step, his arms trembling from the force of the successive impacts, his sword barely keeping up with each incoming strike, while something like a cold certainty crept into his chest amid all that rapid chaos. This man hadn’t been fighting him at full strength from the start.
The next strike came faster than anything before it, a single sharp line cutting through the air toward Alexander with no warning at all.
Alexander raised his sword with the last of his remaining strength, trying to block it, but the force of the impact was more violent than anything he’d felt so far; his entire arm shook, his foot slipped on the dirt of the arena, and he fell onto his back with a dry thud that knocked the air out of his lungs in one go.
He lay there for a moment, the gray sky above him spinning slowly, the crowd’s noise around him beginning to reform in his ears, but they weren’t the same sounds he’d heard moments earlier.
The people around him stared, thousands of eyes fixed on him from every direction, but what he saw in those stares wasn’t what he’d expected; not the admiring looks he’d seen after beating Hendro, not even the eager anticipation that had followed him walking into the arena. These were looks of pity — that same look he knew all too well from his previous life, when he’d fallen in the ring in front of a crowd murmuring quietly, "poor kid," instead of chanting his name.
(Pity... again. Even here, in a new world, in a new body, I’m still seeing that exact same look.)
Memories flooded back suddenly — not this body’s memories, but his own, Tai Hong’s, lying on the floor of some cheap ring in a back alley, the faces of bettors looking at him with that same pity, before one of them turned to collect his winnings from the losing bet placed against him, without even waiting to see if he’d get back up.
Something boiled up in his chest, an anger he’d never known the limits of before, an anger not directed at Richard alone, but at every single pitying look he’d ever received across both of his lives.
He rose with a sudden motion, his muscles trembling but still holding him up, and gripped his sword with both hands hard enough to nearly crack the joints of his fingers.
"Illuminate!"
The sword glowed as it had before, but he didn’t stop there. He shouted the word again, without waiting, without thinking about what he was doing.
"Illuminate!"
The glow intensified further, white light beginning to creep from the blade up toward the hilt, then into his hands, a faint heat starting to run through his arms unlike anything he’d felt before.
"Illuminate! Illuminate!"
He suddenly remembered, amid those repeated shouts, his father’s voice that cold night at camp, warning him about his black sword: "Everyone who’s ever wielded this sword went blind within two years of owning it." And he remembered too, in a fainter voice, a passing conversation he’d overheard between his father and Daron days earlier, when they’d spoken with unusual seriousness about the danger of pouring too much Illumination energy into a single weapon all at once, how the body might not be able to handle it, how the heart itself could stop if its owner kept giving without pause.
(Then let it stop. Let it stop. I won’t.)
He kept shouting, one word repeating like a relentless war drum, while the light pouring from his sword grew bigger and bigger. It was no longer the gentle glow the crowd had seen the first time — it had become a blinding beam, hard to look at directly, lighting his face from below in a way that made him look more like an enraged specter than a boy fighting in a competition.
The crowd began recoiling with one collective gasp of shock, many hands rising to shield their eyes from that rising light, while the sword in Alexander’s hands transformed bit by bit, its dull metal vanishing beneath a layer of pure white light, until it no longer looked like a blade of iron at all, but a piece of the sun itself, pulled down and fitted with a wooden hilt.
Even Richard paused for a moment, his calm smile finally gone, replaced by something closer to genuine focus for the first time since the duel began, raising a hand in front of his eyes trying to block out that light, which no one in the entire arena could look at directly anymore.