The stage was different this time.
The tournament organisers had clearly decided that whatever remained of their original arena budget would be better spent preventing another geological disaster. The new battlefield hung high above the landscape, suspended among the clouds by the combined influence of spatial forces and the artificial field surrounding the region.
Nathaniel hovered several metres above the platform, looking down at the distant terrain. The clouds drifted beneath his feet, their upper surfaces illuminated by the afternoon sun. Ethan floated opposite him, his posture relaxed, as though they were meeting for a casual conversation rather than preparing to fight.
"They really pulled out all the stops for this one," Ethan remarked, glancing around at their surroundings. "The field is an artificial effect generated by the rings surrounding this region. Some space-based mumbo jumbo involving spatial compression and energy conversion. It juices the area with certain energies, but I don't have the time to explain all that to you."
Nathaniel cracked his knuckles under the gauntlets.
"How considerate."
"Your last fight with Rayln caused quite the mess." Ethan's mouth twitched into a faint smile. "This place should be considerably more durable. The field extends across a fifteen-kilometre radius, so feel free to attack at full strength."
He paused, his expression settling as his eyes met Nathaniel's.
"You're going up against me, after all."
Nathaniel smirked, his eyes narrowing.
There was something unusual about the space around them. He had noticed it the moment he entered the field, but now that he paid closer attention, the sensation became more apparent.
He felt lighter.
Not weightless, exactly. It was more like floating underwater, except there was no resistance to his movements. The surrounding space seemed to accommodate him, allowing him to move freely without the usual relationship between his body's mass, gravity, and momentum feeling quite as restrictive.
Interesting.
He experimentally shifted his weight, rotating in place before extending one arm. His body responded with a smoothness that would have been difficult to reproduce under ordinary conditions.
The field wasn't simply holding them aloft. It was changing the conditions under which they moved.
And that presented opportunities.
Nathaniel concentrated, examining how the surrounding spatial influence interacted with his own energy. If he could establish regions of positive and negative influence around his limbs, he might be able to manipulate the forces acting upon them, accelerating his movements or increasing the effective power behind his strikes.
He wouldn't need to brute-force every movement through Kinetic Muscle alone. By letting the field assist with acceleration and manipulating the spatial conditions around his body, he could potentially achieve greater speed and impact while spending considerably less Uratsu.
It was an appealing prospect.
Especially against someone like Ethan.
Nathaniel rolled his shoulders, his smirk lingering as he continued to test the field's subtle assistance.
For once, the arena itself might actually work in his favour.
Ryker's voice cut across the broadcast as the cameras drew closer to the two combatants floating above the clouds.
"AND THERE THEY ARE! THE CROWNED HEIR OF THE AZERAN EMPIRE AGAINST THE MAN WHO JUST TURNED A MOUNTAIN INTO RUBBLE! I HOPE YOU'VE ALL FOUND YOUR SEATS, BECAUSE SOMETHING TELLS ME THIS ONE WON'T BE QUIET!"
The excitement in his voice was matched by the readings pouring across the observation systems. Uratsu saturation was climbing, the energy between the two fighters intensifying with every passing second.
Thin auras began to gather around them.
Orange coalesced around Nathaniel, clinging to his silhouette like heat shimmering above scorched ground. Opposite him, royal blue spread across Ethan's figure in a controlled, steady radiance.
Neither aura had fully flared, but the difference was already apparent. Nathaniel's energy seemed to gather in restless pulses, while Ethan's held a more uniform shape, its edges barely wavering as he hovered in place.
Ethan raised a hand and removed his glasses.
His irises glowed royal blue behind the lenses, the light sharpening as he fixed his gaze on Nathaniel. Without the glasses, there was nothing to soften the intensity of his stare.
Nathaniel met it with orange-lit eyes of his own.
For a moment, neither moved.
Ryker let the silence stretch, his six eyes shifting between the combatants as he drew out the anticipation for the audience. The broadcast displays tightened their focus, capturing every minute change in their posture and every flicker of energy gathering around them.
The crowned heir faced the challenger who had just defeated his sister.
And Nathaniel looked entirely too pleased with himself.
Ryker's voice dropped, the showmanship giving way to a tense, deliberate cadence.
"Fighters, prepare yourselves."
The two auras thickened.
"On my signal."
"BEGIN!"
Ryker's roar had barely left the broadcast system when Ethan moved.
The crowned heir smirked, twisting his palm toward Nathaniel. Royal-blue energy erupted from his hand, expanding into a turbulent field of telekinetic force that tore through the surrounding air. The atmosphere was dragged into the attack, compressed and violently agitated until ionisation sparked across its surface. Lightning crackled through the blue distortion as it surged toward Nathaniel.
The attack swallowed the space between them.
Nathaniel held his ground.
The impact detonated against him with a thunderous crack, the collision sending ripples through the surrounding field. His combat suit tore across the shoulder and upper arm, the damaged material peeling away to expose the skin beneath. The force drove against his frame, threatening to send him tumbling through the clouds.
Yet Nathaniel's smirk never disappeared.
His body bulked up slightly as Kinetic Muscle engaged, dense muscle fibres tightening beneath his skin. Orange energy ignited along his limbs, branching into jagged, crackling lines that spread across his exposed flesh and converged around the point of impact.
The air around him shuddered.
For an instant, the royal-blue assault continued to grind against his orange-lit frame, lightning crawling over the turbulent field as Nathaniel absorbed and resisted the incoming force.
Then his expression sharpened.
He had felt the attack's weight, the pressure, and the way Ethan's influence had dragged the surrounding atmosphere into the collision.
This wasn't Rayln's approach to telekinesis.
Ethan had thrown the entire environment into the attack with him.
Nathaniel felt the muscles in his right arm twitch as he concentrated energy into them.
He didn't need much.
A slight push was enough.
The artificial field responded to the force, and Nathaniel shot forward at Mach 6, crossing the distance between them in a fraction of a second. The speed was absurd for such a seemingly trivial movement, but the space around them had changed the equation. With the field assisting his acceleration, he could turn a minimal expenditure of energy into a devastating burst of momentum.
His fist stopped inches from Ethan's face.
A royal-blue field caught the blow.
The collision sent a shockwave bursting outward, rippling through the clouds and shaking the nearby camera drones. Their stabilisation systems struggled to compensate as the two forces ground against each other, orange energy crackling against royal blue.
Ethan's smile widened slightly.
"Got to admit, you're stronger than you were yesterday, Alderman."
He could feel the pressure pushing against his defence. Nathaniel's punch had carried far more force than its brief acceleration should have allowed, and the prince was already beginning to appreciate just how effectively his opponent was exploiting the artificial field.
Nathaniel grinned back at him.
"I don't have to waste power or concentration maintaining my flight anymore. The field handles that for me."
His free hand began to glow.
"Which means I can devote my full attention to blowing you to kingdom come."
Uratsu gathered in his palm, churning violently as Nathaniel forced it into a tightly compressed mass. Orange radiance intensified around a darkening core. The surrounding air distorted as the unstable energy condensed, forming the beginnings of a Pseudo Hellcore.
Ethan's expression sharpened.
Nathaniel thrust his free hand forward.
The sphere erupted outward.
Unlike the previous day's demonstration, the Pseudo Hellcore expanded with startling speed, its plasma-like mass surging toward Ethan with a violent bloom of orange and crimson light. The discharge spread across the space between them, carrying a substantially greater volume of energy than Nathaniel had displayed against Rayln.
"I'm operating at a hundred and twenty percent compared to yesterday!" Nathaniel called out.
Even as he spoke, his eyes tracked Ethan's response.
There.
A slight opening in the prince's defence, created as his telekinetic field shifted to meet the incoming blast.
Nathaniel didn't hesitate.
He twisted through the turbulence and drove a kick into Ethan's blocking arm, targeting the gap before the royal-blue barrier could fully adjust.
The impact landed with a sharp, explosive crack.
Ethan felt his arm buckle under the force of Nathaniel's kick.
His expression tightened. The royal-blue field around him rippled as he redirected his defence, abandoning the weakened section to protect his centre. He drove a fist into Nathaniel's gut.
The punch landed before Nathaniel could fully recover from his follow-through.
Air burst from his lungs as the impact folded him forward. Ethan's left gauntlet came apart at the same instant, separating into twenty individual components of exceptionally durable, prohibitively expensive material. Each piece caught a royal-blue glow, the fragments spreading around the prince before abruptly accelerating toward Nathaniel.
Mach twenty.
The projectiles tore through the intervening distance.
Nathaniel was still reeling from the gut punch when they struck. His body was hurled backwards, orange energy flaring across his frame as he struggled to brace against the combined impacts. Six of the twenty pieces lodged in different parts of his body, piercing through gaps in his damaged combat suit and embedding themselves in flesh. Blood welled from the resulting gashes, trailing behind him in thin crimson streaks as the remaining fragments streaked past.
The projectiles curved through the air and returned to Ethan, several of them settling into orbit around him while the others hovered at the ready.
Ethan flexed his bruised arm, wincing as a bead of blood slipped down his skin.
"Lucky blow."
The words came out sharper than intended.
His gaze followed Nathaniel's distant figure, irritation replacing the easy confidence he had worn at the beginning of the match. The prince had expected resistance. He had even anticipated that Nathaniel might find a way through his defence.
He hadn't expected the bastard to make him bleed this early.
Ethan's fingers curled.
The fragments orbiting him accelerated, their blue radiance intensifying until the air around each piece began to crackle.
"Let's see you get through that again."
Nathaniel steadied himself in midair, his body rotating once before the artificial field caught his momentum and brought him to a halt.
For a moment, he simply looked at the six fragments embedded in him.
One protruded from his side. Another had buried itself in his thigh, while the remaining four had found purchase across his torso and shoulder. Blood trickled down his skin, staining the torn edges of his combat suit.
He flexed his fingers.
Mach twenty. Remote control. Independent trajectories.
His eyes narrowed behind his glasses.
And expensive enough that he'd rather retrieve them than leave them behind.
Nathaniel's lips curled.
"You're awfully touchy about that arm, Your Highness."
Across the distance, Ethan's expression darkened.
Nathaniel raised his right hand and gripped one of the embedded fragments. With a sharp pull, he extracted it, watching blood follow the metal before the wound began to tighten under the strain of his body's recovery.
He tossed the fragment aside.
It didn't fall.
The piece abruptly changed direction, shooting back toward Ethan's orbiting formation. Nathaniel watched it go, his orange eyes tracking its movement with unnerving precision.
"So you can recall them too."
Ethan rotated his wrist. The returning fragment slipped neatly into formation with the others.
"You're welcome to keep testing what they can do."
"Tempting."
Nathaniel's orange aura pulsed. The jagged lines of energy crawling across his body brightened as he shifted his posture, drawing one knee forward and angling his shoulders toward the prince.
He had already learned something useful from the exchange. Ethan's projectiles were fast enough to punish a conventional approach, but their trajectories weren't the real problem. It was the combination of acceleration, remote control, and the prince's ability to alter his defence without interrupting his offence.
Trying to outrun all twenty would be wasteful.
Trying to block them would be worse.
Nathaniel rolled his neck, then spread his fingers.
The air between them stirred.
"All right, Ethan." His smirk returned. "Let's make this interesting."
Nathaniel's eyes narrowed.
Authority flared.
The telekinetic force surrounding him gathered close to his body, stabilising into a defensive field reminiscent of the barriers used by the Azeroth siblings. Royal-blue influence wasn't the only thing capable of shaping such a defence. Nathaniel adjusted the distribution of force around himself, allowing the artificial spatial field to support his position while Authority maintained the structure.
With his other hand, he began extracting the remaining fragments embedded in his limbs.
One by one, the shards came free. Blood streaked his fingers, but he paid it little attention. His gaze remained fixed on Ethan, who had begun dismantling his right-hand gauntlet.
The number of floating projectiles doubled.
Nathaniel's smirk returned.
From a concealed pocket, he retrieved three small orange cores.
The same cores he had taken from Rayln the previous day.
He had kept them hidden ever since their strange transformation, and now seemed an excellent time to find out whether they could be put to use.
Authority spread through his fingers. Heat gathered around the components as Nathaniel agitated the stored energy within the cores, carefully combining it with his own Uratsu. The fragments he had extracted from Ethan's gauntlets joined the assembly, along with several smaller components from his own equipment.
The process took seconds.
Metal softened, reshaped, and fused around the cores. Guide ports and miniature vents shifted into position, their arrangement drawing upon the mechanisms Nathaniel used to redirect Hellcharge and propel himself at jet-like speeds. The materials adapted under the combined influence of heat and Authority, forming something that belonged to neither sibling alone.
Ethan's projectiles surged forward.
Nathaniel watched the incoming volley.
"AZEROTH STYLE: AEGIS VOLLEY!"
The first fused core settled against his chest like a medallion.
A secondary shield unfolded around him, its surface glowing orange and royal blue as it reinforced the defensive field maintained by Authority. The other two cores separated, their housings unfolding into miniature turrets that positioned themselves over either shoulder.
Then they opened fire.
Stored energy erupted from their barrels in rapid sprays, orange and royal-blue bolts streaking into the incoming barrage. Each turret adjusted its angle independently, intercepting the fragments Ethan had launched while the medallion's shield reinforced Nathaniel's own defence.
The interaction was far from simple.
Rayln's agitated reserves supplied the stored energy. Nathaniel's own Uratsu supplemented and stabilised the output, while the components taken from Ethan's weapons provided a familiar framework for channelling Azeroth energy patterns. By incorporating the vents and guide ports from his own gauntlets, Nathaniel had also given the construct a means of adjusting its output and directing its discharge.
He was using their own principles against them.
And, more importantly, he was beginning to understand them.
Nathaniel's senses spread outward.
His focus sharpened until the battlefield seemed to stretch around him. The clouds, the distant drones, and the flashing projectiles all separated into distinct points of movement. His compound mantis shrimp sight parsed the barrage while his mind tracked each fragment's trajectory and the fluctuations in Ethan's control.
The world appeared to slow.
Thirty-seven projectiles.
Each moving at Mach 100.
Nathaniel tracked and tagged every one.
His expression brightened with genuine excitement as the Aegis turrets continued firing around him.
There you are.
For the first time since the duel began, he could read the underlying rhythm of Ethan's attacks. Not perfectly, and certainly not without effort, but enough to recognise the patterns connecting the prince's influence to each guided fragment.
The incoming barrage was still closing.
Nathaniel had only just begun to respond.
Nathaniel's senses spread outward.
Thirty-seven projectiles.
Each travelling at Mach 100.
The realisation stripped the amusement from his expression.
At that velocity, he wasn't dealing with ordinary guided ammunition. Every fragment carried enough momentum to punch through layers of reinforced armour before most opponents could register the attack. Even a glancing hit could tear through muscle, shatter bone, or send him tumbling out of the sky. A direct strike to the head or chest could end the fight before the audience understood what had happened.
And Ethan had sent thirty-seven.
The first wave arrived.
Nathaniel's Aegis turrets erupted in orange and royal-blue fire, their rapid discharges meeting the incoming fragments in midair. The collisions produced sharp flashes that rippled through the clouds, but interception wasn't as simple as matching projectile against projectile. Ethan's weapons corrected their trajectories while travelling, slipping around incoming shots and accelerating through gaps that should have been too narrow to exploit.
One fragment evaded the turrets entirely.
It struck Nathaniel's secondary shield.
The impact sounded like a thunderclap compressed into a single instant. His defensive field buckled inward, the orange and blue layers distorting as the projectile drove through them. Nathaniel felt the force travel through his entire frame. His shoulders jerked back, and the spatial field beneath him rippled violently.
The fragment stopped only after piercing the outer layer of his defence.
Another came from below.
Nathaniel twisted aside. It missed his ribs by centimetres, leaving a pressure wake that tore the damaged fabric along his flank. A third struck the edge of his shield, sending a violent shudder through the medallion at his chest.
Then the rest arrived.
The sky around him became a lattice of blue streaks.
His turrets fired so rapidly that their separate discharges merged into continuous streams. Explosions of light erupted around him as fragments collided with bolts, ricocheted off altered trajectories, or slipped through the barrage. Every successful interception forced Nathaniel to account for the resulting debris, because even a broken fragment retained enough velocity to become dangerous.
His shield flashed repeatedly.
Each impact threatened to compromise the structure. Authority could redistribute the force, but it couldn't simply erase the momentum of thirty-seven projectiles arriving at Mach 100. The artificial field gave Nathaniel freedom of movement, not immunity from physics. If his defence collapsed at the wrong moment, he would be exposed to the full barrage with little time to react.
And Ethan was still controlling the attack.
Across the distance, the prince watched with his right hand extended. His expression had lost its earlier amusement, his focus divided between the flying fragments and the subtle adjustments he made to their trajectories.
He wasn't merely throwing projectiles.
He was herding Nathaniel into the paths of the others.
A fragment swept toward Nathaniel's head, forcing him to tilt away. Two more immediately converged on the space his body would occupy if he completed the movement naturally. His Aegis turrets intercepted one, but the other slipped past their firing angles.
Nathaniel caught its trajectory at the last instant.
He shifted the force around his torso, dragging himself sideways through the field.
The fragment grazed his shoulder instead of piercing his chest. Pain flared as it opened another gash, and blood scattered into the thin air before the artificial field caught the droplets.
His teeth clenched.
Thirty-seven. All independently guided. Mach one hundred.
His mind continued tracking them, but maintaining that level of focus was becoming a battle in itself. Every fragment demanded attention. Every correction changed the geometry of the next exchange. His compound vision could identify the trajectories, and Authority could help him respond, but neither made his body infinitely fast.
He needed to stop treating the barrage as thirty-seven separate attacks.
He needed to find the pattern governing all of them.
Another cluster slammed into his shield.
The medallion shuddered against his chest. Cracks of orange light raced across its surface before the fused core stabilised, drawing on the energy stored within the construct. One turret briefly faltered, its output dipping as a fragment tore through the edge of its firing stream.
Nathaniel's eyes widened.
For the first time in the duel, the barrage had forced him to abandon the luxury of planning his next move.
Survival came first.
He compressed his defensive field, redirected the spatial assistance around his limbs, and forced his battered body into a series of abrupt movements. The shield followed as best it could, while the turrets continued firing at targets his own senses barely had time to classify.
The clouds around him were shredded by the pressure wakes.
From the observation tower, the camera drones struggled to keep him centred. Their displays filled with overlapping blue trajectories and orange defensive discharges, the individual movements too fast for an ordinary viewer to distinguish.
And through it all, Ethan remained poised in the distance, controlling the storm with minute movements of his fingers.
Nathaniel could read the attack.
That did not mean he had solved it.
One mistake, one missed trajectory, one moment of hesitation, and Mach 100 would turn his body into the next impact site.
In the Empress's private viewing room, Rayln stared at the enormous display with mounting disbelief.
Nathaniel was using her cores.
Not merely carrying them around or experimenting with their properties. He had fused them with components from Ethan's weapons and his own equipment, turning the three stolen cores into an improvised defensive system that was actively keeping him alive against a Mach 100 barrage.
Rayln's expression twisted.
"You're kidding me."
The Empress remained silent, her attention fixed on the display.
"Mother, how did you let him leave with those?!" Rayln snapped, gesturing at the screen. "You knew he had them! We didn't even collect my equipment after yesterday's match!"
The Empress's eyes narrowed slightly.
It was a fair accusation.
In the aftermath of the duel, the priority had been Rayln's medical assessment, the tournament's damage reports, and the extraordinary readings gathered from the battlefield. Somewhere among those concerns, the retrieval of her daughter's remaining equipment had been overlooked.
And now Nathaniel was making use of it in front of the entire empire.
"Apparently," the Empress replied evenly, "he has found a more immediate use for them than we anticipated."
Rayln stared at her.
"That's your answer?"
"It's the one I have."
Neither woman looked away from the screen.
The next collision made the entire display flash.
The lodging area was considerably louder.
Squad Four had gathered around the main screen, but the usual excitement surrounding Nathaniel's performances had given way to something more uncomfortable. Even George, who had spent the previous match cheering loud enough to embarrass his entire squad, was watching with his mouth slightly open.
"Is he seriously doing that?"
On screen, Nathaniel caught three of Ethan's projectiles.
Not deflecting them. Not allowing his shield to absorb the impact.
He caught them.
His hands closed around the fragments, and the force behind them visibly strained his arms as he fought to bring their momentum to a halt. Orange energy cracked across his forearms, while the spatial field distorted around his body under the pressure.
The instant the fragments stopped, he released them and twisted away from another incoming cluster.
His arms and legs moved through a bewildering succession of defensive positions. One moment he was folding sideways to avoid a projectile aimed at his ribs; the next, he was rotating his shoulders to let another pass close enough to tear at his clothing. His movements looked almost improvised, yet each adjustment seemed to place him just outside the most dangerous trajectories.
George leaned closer to the screen.
"That idiot is going to pull his own arms off."
"He knows how much force he's dealing with," Ria replied, although her fingers had tightened around the edge of her seat.
"Knowing it and surviving it are two different things."
Nobody argued.
Across the room, other squads had gathered to watch the broadcast. Whatever their opinions of Nathaniel had been before the tournament, the sight of him trying to survive a sustained barrage at Mach 100 had forced their attention.
He wasn't dominating the fight.
He was fighting for every second he remained in the air.
Nicole Santera watched from the Squad Six lodging area, her pale hair falling over one shoulder as she leaned back in her seat.
A smile gradually spread across her face.
"Serves him right."
One of her teammates glanced at her.
"You're enjoying this?"
"Immensely."
Nicole's eyes followed Nathaniel as he narrowly avoided another cluster of projectiles.
"After the shit he pulled during the Core Capture exercise? I'd say this is a perfectly reasonable amount of suffering."
She folded her arms, looking entirely too pleased with herself.
"Come on, Alderman. Let's see how clever you are when someone else decides to make your life miserable."
In another viewing room, Erementaru stood among the other squad overseers.
The atmosphere had changed since the beginning of the duel. Several overseers who had initially treated the match as a straightforward contest between the empire's strongest young knight and an unusually talented challenger were now watching the tactical displays instead of the main feed.
The projectile trajectories filled the auxiliary screens.
Thirty-seven guided fragments had already been a formidable attack. The problem was that Ethan wasn't content to maintain that pace. He continued adjusting their paths, increasing their speed and forcing Nathaniel to expend more energy on every defensive response.
Erementaru's expression grew serious.
"He's forcing Nathaniel to process an increasingly complex battlefield while maintaining his own defence."
One of the overseers beside him nodded.
"And Nathaniel is still trying to find a way through it."
"Yes." Erementaru watched an orange flash flare across the display. "That's what concerns me."
Nathaniel had a habit of turning dangerous situations into opportunities.
Against Rayln, that tendency had won him the match.
Against Ethan, it might be the very thing that got him killed.
Grandmaster Zenith watched in silence.
His neon-green eyes tracked Nathaniel's movements, following the minute shifts in posture and the strange expressions that crossed his face between evasions.
Something about it felt familiar.
Not the technique itself. The individual movements were too varied, too reactive, and too dependent on the peculiar properties of the artificial field.
It was the way Nathaniel approached the problem.
The brief narrowing of his eyes before a sudden adjustment. The almost insolent smile in the middle of an exchange that should have demanded his complete attention. The way he seemed to recognise the structure of an attack before he had fully understood its mechanics.
Zenith's expression shifted.
Deja vu.
He couldn't immediately place the memory, but the sensation was strong enough to linger.
"Who exactly are you, Nathaniel Alderman?" he murmured.
The screen offered no answer.
At home, Ginah, Valarie, and Mira watched the same battle through a feed slowed enough to make the exchanges comprehensible.
Even then, certain moments were reduced to highlighted sequences, with the system reconstructing projectile paths and defensive responses to show what had happened between frames.
Nathaniel's injuries were becoming difficult to ignore.
Blood marked his torn suit. His movements remained sharp, but the strain in his shoulders and the increasingly frequent flashes of orange energy suggested that maintaining his defence was taking a toll.
Ethan, meanwhile, was getting faster.
Ginah sat forward, her usual composure giving way to concentrated scrutiny.
Valarie's gaze followed the energy readings, her expression unreadable.
Mira watched Nathaniel's face.
He was still smiling.
Not because the situation was amusing. Not entirely.
There was something else in that expression, a growing intensity that none of them could comfortably explain away as simple confidence.
The three women could do little more than watch as Nathaniel continued fighting the strongest young knight in the empire, each of them aware that the gap between a remarkable performance and a fatal mistake could be measured in fractions of a second.
Ethan's breathing grew heavier.
His blood was pumping faster now, his heartbeat driving adrenaline through his body as the battle pushed beyond the comfortable limits of his usual restraint. The royal-blue aura surrounding him thickened, expanding around his limbs and spreading into the space occupied by his projectiles.
He had expected Nathaniel to be strong.
The assessment scores, the fight against Rayln, and the reports from the earlier stages had all pointed in the same direction. Nathaniel Alderman was a dangerous opponent with an unusual ability to adapt.
But there was a difference between reading about strength and feeling it resist you.
Ethan's bruised arm throbbed.
He flexed his fingers, and the fragments surrounding him responded immediately. Their speed increased again, the field of influence around each one growing denser. Several projectiles began to expand, their frames swelling beneath a translucent sheen of telekinetic force.
Royal blue shifted toward turquoise.
The colour bled deeper, the first hints of green appearing along the expanding surfaces.
Ethan's white hair lifted as the energy around him intensified. Individual strands rose and sharpened, spiking upward while the turquoise radiance around his body grew increasingly vivid.
His expression changed with it.
The composure remained, but the restraint was slipping. His gaze became more direct, his movements more forceful, and the words that had been gathering behind his teeth finally broke free.
"You know what it means to stand where I stand, Alderman?"
His voice carried across the battlefield.
The projectiles accelerated.
"You've got people cheering for you. Squads watching you. An entire empire wondering whether you're worth all the attention you've attracted."
He swept one arm outward.
The spatial field shuddered as his influence spread through the barrage. The projectiles altered their trajectories, their expanding force fields overlapping until the air around them seemed to bend.
"I'm the heir to this empire. I represent its strength, its future, and the expectations of every person who depends on the throne to protect them!"
His damaged royal-blue suit fluttered around him as his aura intensified. The turquoise began giving way to a deeper green, the colour spreading through the energy surrounding his body.
"I'm still below the Empress and the Grandmaster. I know that. There are tiers of power between us, and I have no intention of pretending otherwise."
Ethan's jaw tightened.
"But I don't get to use that as an excuse. I don't get to stand behind their strength and call myself worthy of the position I've been given."
His hair stood fully on end now, white spikes framed by the growing green radiance. The energy around his projectiles thickened until each one seemed less like a piece of metal and more like a compacted distortion of space, its movement carrying implications that ordinary speed alone could not explain.
"And you?"
He thrust his hand toward Nathaniel.
The entire barrage surged.
"You've climbed faster than almost anyone in the empire's recent history. The fastest-growing knight we've seen in years. You keep finding ways to turn situations that should overwhelm you into something you can exploit."
His voice rose, carrying both frustration and genuine excitement.
"So tell me, Nathaniel Alderman!"
Green light flashed through the clouds.
"Is all that hype worth anything when you're standing against me?"
Ethan's energy flared again, turquoise bleeding into forest green as the spatial influence around his limbs began to distort the apparent distance between himself and his opponent.
He drew a breath, then roared across the battlefield.
"SHOW ME YOUR CONVICTION! WHAT MAKES THE PEOPLE TRUST YOU SO MUCH THAT THEY WOULD PUT YOU AGAINST ME?!"
Nathaniel was covered in cuts and bruises.
The orange cores mounted across his improvised equipment blinked intermittently, their light fading as Rayln's stolen reserves finally approached depletion. The turrets were the first to shut down. Their barrels dimmed, the last few discharges sputtering into harmless sparks before the mechanisms folded inward.
The secondary shield followed.
Its orange and royal-blue surface flickered several times before collapsing into the medallion at his chest.
Nathaniel barely had time to register the loss before another projectile came screaming toward him.
He caught it.
His fingers closed around the fragment, and the force behind it drove his arm backwards. Orange sparks crackled across his skin as he fought to arrest its momentum. The projectile slowed, its motion diminishing from Mach 120 to a crawl before finally stopping in his grasp.
His arm trembled.
He released the fragment, allowing it to drift away, and immediately reached for the next one.
His lungs hurt. His arms hurt. Every movement sent fresh complaints through his battered body, while fatigue crept deeper into his bones.
His reserves had fallen to thirty percent.
And yet Kinetic Muscle remained active.
That was the problem.
Eighty percent of the impact energy he absorbed was being converted and retained by the augment, but the remaining force still had to go somewhere. His body had endured the punishment, his muscles had stored the energy, and his augment continued doing exactly what it was designed to do.
His body, however, was approaching its limits.
The orange lightning crawling over his skin seized for an instant.
Nathaniel's muscles tightened.
Then they grew.
Not dramatically, but enough to change the contours of his shoulders and arms as stored energy compressed into his musculature. The crackling lines stabbed inward, tracing the fibres beneath his skin before emerging again in thinner, more violent arcs.
His aura dimmed.
The bright orange glow became a deeper, burnt shade, with faint traces of pale red threading through it.
Blood streamed from a slit across his brow, running over his eyes and down his cheeks. He blinked against the obstruction, his irises still burning orange.
Then the colour began to change.
Crimson seeped into their centres.
For a moment, Nathaniel stopped thinking about Ethan's projectiles.
His mind had gone elsewhere.
A park.
Boulders scattered across a training ground.
Ginah standing nearby, watching as a younger Nathaniel drove his fists into the rock.
The first impact fractured the surface.
The second punched a crater into it.
The third shattered a section outright.
He remembered the moment something had clicked inside him, the instant his understanding of Kinetic Muscle had shifted beyond simply striking harder. Cyan had darkened into deep royal blue, black threading through the energy until the force of his blows changed character entirely.
Critical Impact.
The memory moved.
Horus.
The shrimp boss.
Each opponent had forced him to understand something new about the power he carried, each battle leaving behind another fragment of experience. Then came Arete, the sensation of its power flowing through him, and Energen, the augment that had allowed him to maintain a state that his body otherwise struggled to sustain.
Finally, he remembered UraForge.
Not the substance itself, but the principle behind what he had done with it. Taking an energy that resisted ordinary handling and forcing it through a different route, changing how it was used by the system carrying it.
What if I do the same thing here?
His gaze sharpened.
He didn't need to create more energy.
He already had it.
Kinetic Muscle had been accumulating the impacts he had endured. Some of the force had come from Ethan's attacks. Some had been carried forward from Rayln's desperate, mountain-breaking grip the previous day, the energy his body had retained through the ensuing battle.
It was all sitting there, waiting to be used.
And Energen could provide the route.
Instead of allowing Kinetic Muscle to keep accumulating that energy while his body deteriorated, he could redirect the stored power into Energen itself, using it to reinforce his remaining reserves and drive the augment beyond its ordinary operating state.
It was reckless.
His body was already buckling under the strain, and the amount of energy he intended to redirect could overwhelm the very system he was trying to reinforce.
Nathaniel's expression soured.
I've had enough of this.
The population had chosen him to stand against Ethan. The empire had watched him fight his way through the tournament, and now the crowned heir was questioning his conviction while throwing enough force at him to tear apart his body.
He was tired of being tested by people who assumed that surviving their expectations was the same thing as having something to prove.
He looked directly at Ethan.
You want conviction? Fine.
The blood running down his face began to boil.
Then it evaporated.
The orange sparks vanished.
For a fraction of a second, Nathaniel's body was almost still.
Then red and black lightning erupted across his frame.
His muscles tensed and pulsed beneath the damaged combat suit, the energy tracing their contours in jagged lines. Trails of red light streamed from his eyes as his aura compressed around him, its former orange radiance darkening until crimson dominated the space immediately surrounding his body.
The air seemed to recoil.
Nathaniel raised his head.
His expression had changed.
The easy smirk was gone. So was the familiar irritation he had worn throughout the fight. His face had settled into an unsettling stillness, his mouth pressed into a thin line.
The centre of each crimson iris turned white.
Within the metaphysical space he occupied, Arc Kodonaki seemed to slip into a trance.
He wasn't quite absent, but neither was he fully present. His attention had fixed on the unfolding transformation, on the movements and instincts emerging through Nathaniel's body as old memories and combat patterns converged.
Nathaniel remained conscious.
He was still the one making the choice.
But the distinction between his own instincts and Arc's was becoming harder to recognise.
Across the battlefield, Ethan was already moving to reinforce his defence.
He never saw the approach.
Nathaniel appeared behind him.
The punch landed squarely in Ethan's back.
For an instant, the crowned heir's eyes caught Nathaniel's face over his shoulder.
There was no smile.
No taunt.
Only a cold, focused stare that came dangerously close to killing intent.
The enhanced royal-blue shield around Ethan shattered.
The impact detonated through the artificial field, producing a shockwave that raced outward across the clouds. Ethan's body folded around the strike before he was launched downward, his green aura scattering into turbulent fragments as he plunged from the altitude at which they had been fighting.
The rings suspended across the sky shifted.
Their carefully maintained alignment destabilised under the area-wide disturbance. The artificial field rippled, its spatial effects fluctuating as the mechanisms responsible for sustaining the battlefield struggled to compensate.
Far below, Ethan fell toward the enormous crater left by Nathaniel and Rayln's fight the previous day.
He struck the ground at its centre.
The crater's already fractured floor collapsed beneath him, sending a fresh eruption of dust and shattered rock into the air.
Zenith felt the change immediately.
His neon-green eyes widened a fraction as his attention snapped toward Nathaniel.
The energy was different.
More importantly, so was the stance.
The movement that had carried Nathaniel behind Ethan hadn't resembled the techniques he had used throughout the match. The shift had been too clean, too decisive. His entire body had moved as though it already knew the exact sequence required to deliver that strike.
Zenith studied him in silence.
There was something familiar about that technique.
Something he had seen before.
But there was no time to dwell on it.
Nathaniel remained suspended above the clouds, one fist lowered at his side while energy began collecting in the other.
More Uratsu gathered around his hand.
This time, he agitated it far more violently than before. The mass churned and compressed, orange plasma forming around a dense centre as red and black sparks snapped across its surface. The surrounding space distorted under the pressure, and the energy's unstable glow cast shifting crimson reflections across Nathaniel's battered face.
He forced the mass into a narrower shape.
The plasma stretched.
Compressed.
Lengthened into a javelin of incandescent energy, its tip sharpening as Nathaniel continued to force the unstable mass into shape. Red light pulsed through the orange exterior, while black arcs crawled along its length.
Below him, dust continued to rise from the crater.
Nathaniel's eyes fixed on the point where Ethan had landed.
Inside his mind, two voices reached the same conclusion.
ENERGEN-ENHANCED KINETIC MUSCLE: [CRITICAL OVERDRIVE]!!!
Nathaniel drew his arm back.
The javelin's radiance intensified until the clouds around him glowed red.
He had found a way to keep fighting.
Now he intended to make the most of it.
"KERAUNOS!!"
The Empress rose from her seat.
For the first time since the duel began, her composure cracked.
Her eyes widened as Ethan was struck out of the sky, his enhanced defence breaking apart under a single blow. The crowned heir disappeared beneath the clouds, plummeting toward the crater that had been carved into the landscape the previous day.
"ETHAN!"
Rayln had already stood, both hands gripping the edge of the console. Her expression was caught somewhere between disbelief and horror.
She had seen Nathaniel fight. She had experienced firsthand what happened when he stopped playing defensively and began dismantling an opponent's advantages.
But that?
That had been one punch.
One punch that had sent her brother, the strongest member of their generation, crashing out of the sky.
Neither mother nor daughter spoke as the feed returned to Nathaniel.
The figure hovering above the clouds no longer looked quite like the man who had entered the arena.
The red and black lightning crawling across his body, the blood evaporating from his skin, and those crimson eyes with their pale centres gave him an appearance that was difficult to reconcile with the familiar, infuriating smirk he had worn throughout the tournament.
The Empress slowly sat back down.
Her attention shifted to the energy readings.
"What in the world have you done, Alderman?"
Squad Four had gone silent.
George stood rigid before the screen, his mouth slightly open. Ria had risen from her seat without realising it, while Oliver watched the footage with an intensity that had replaced his usual detached expression.
They had seen Nathaniel battered.
They had seen him improvise under pressure, turn an opponent's advantages against them, and survive situations that should have overwhelmed him.
This was different.
The expression on his face was the most unsettling part.
Nathaniel had always carried himself with a certain irreverence, even when injured. There was usually a smirk, a dry remark, or some indication that he found the situation more amusing than it deserved.
Now there was nothing.
His face was still, his eyes fixed on the crater below with a coldness that made George's skin prickle.
"That's..." George started, then stopped.
For once, he couldn't find anything loud enough to say.
Ria swallowed.
"That doesn't look like the same person."
Oliver said nothing. His eyes followed the red sparks flickering around Nathaniel's limbs, then shifted to the display showing the energy readings.
Whatever had happened, it had changed more than the colour of Nathaniel's aura.
And Ethan was still down there.
In the Squad Six lodging area, Nicole's smile had vanished.
She stared at the screen, recalling her earlier comments about Nathaniel getting what he deserved.
"...All right."
Her arms slowly unfolded.
"Maybe I spoke too soon."
One of her teammates glanced at her.
"Just a little?"
"Shut up."
Nicole barely heard the laughter that followed. Her eyes remained fixed on Nathaniel, watching the crimson energy gather around his raised arm.
She had no desire to be on the receiving end of whatever that was.
Not even with her regeneration.
Kagami Ryuzen leaned forward.
The dragon-blooded fighter had spent the tournament studying Nathaniel with a mixture of suspicion and competitive interest. He had seen enough to know that the man possessed far more than his official profile suggested.
Yet even Kagami hadn't anticipated this.
Her eyes followed Nathaniel's posture, taking in the tension through his shoulders and the way he held the forming javelin.
A slow grin spread across his face.
"Now that's something."
There was no mockery in her voice.
Only awe.
She wanted to understand what Nathaniel had done. More than that, he wanted to see what would happen when Ethan stood back up.
Because Kagami knew the crowned heir.
And if Ethan had anything left to give, he wasn't going to accept being put down by a single blow.
Ryker Waithiera was practically climbing over his commentary desk.
"WHAT DID WE JUST WITNESS?!"
His six eyes blazed red as his augment struggled to divide his attention between the aerial feed, the crater below, and the rapidly fluctuating readings flooding his displays.
"NATHANIEL ALDERMAN HAS JUST SHATTERED THE CROWNED HEIR'S DEFENCES AND SENT HIM CRASHING OUT OF THE SKY! LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, I DON'T THINK ANYONE IN THIS ARENA WAS PREPARED FOR THAT!"
The co-hosts were talking over one another. The camera drones struggled to stabilise their footage as the artificial field continued to fluctuate, and the observation tower's warning displays filled with alerts.
Ryker didn't care.
He leaned toward the main microphone, his voice rising above the chaos.
"AND HE'S NOT DONE! LOOK AT THAT ENERGY! LOOK AT WHAT HE'S FORMING! GRANDMASTER ZENITH, I HOPE YOU'RE WATCHING THIS AS CLOSELY AS WE ARE!"
At home, Ginah shot to her feet.
Mira let out a startled cry, while Valarie's eyes widened at the sight of Nathaniel hovering above the battlefield.
For a heartbeat, none of them spoke.
Then Ginah threw both fists into the air.
"THAT'S MY BOY!"
Mira laughed, the tension breaking in a rush of exhilaration.
"HE ACTUALLY DID IT!"
Valarie's composure finally gave way to a broad, triumphant smile. She joined them, cheering as the feed showed Nathaniel raising the blazing javelin toward the sky.
They had watched him take hit after hit. They had watched his reserves dwindle and his body accumulate injuries, each exchange pushing him closer to a limit none of them wanted to see him reach.
And then he had changed the course of the fight with a single strike.
Ginah continued cheering, though her gaze never quite left his face.
She recognised that look.
Not fully. Not in a way she could explain to the others.
But there was something in the stillness of his expression that made her excitement catch in her throat for a moment.
Nathaniel was still there.
She was certain of that.
Yet something else seemed to be looking through his eyes.
On the screen, red and black lightning crawled along his raised arm as the javelin reached its final shape.
The cheers continued around the empire
And far below the airborne fighter, in the depths of the crater, the crowned heir of the Azeran Empire had yet to rise.
Nathaniel's body erupted with power.
Red and black lightning burst across his shoulders as he drew his arm back, the javelin of compressed Uratsu trembling in his grasp. Its crimson surface churned around a dense core, shedding sparks that evaporated before they could reach the ground.
Then he threw it.
The javelin plunged toward the crater.
Ethan looked up.
His eyes widened as the descending weapon rapidly grew in his field of vision. Its speed increased as it fell, the artificial spatial field feeding into the distortion surrounding its trajectory. The javelin became a streak of crimson light, its expanding pressure forcing dust and loose fragments away from its path.
Ethan thrust both hands forward.
Forest-green energy erupted around his arms.
Space folded.
The region directly before him compressed into overlapping layers, each one distorting the distance the javelin needed to cross. The first layer buckled. The second twisted under the pressure. A third formed behind them, Ethan's influence desperately reinforcing the barrier as the incoming weapon continued to advance.
Then the javelin struck.
Red light swallowed him.
Heat washed across the crater, turning the air into a shimmering distortion. Ethan's spatial defence strained as the weapon's destructive energy pressed against it, layer after layer of folded space collapsing beneath the assault.
He gritted his teeth.
His reserves began to drain.
He pushed more power into the barrier, then more again, his green aura flaring violently as he fought to prevent the attack from reaching him. The javelin continued to discharge its energy, each successive burst threatening to overwhelm the remaining layers of his defence.
Seconds stretched.
Five.
Six.
Ethan's arms began to tremble.
Seven.
Eight.
The green light around him flickered as his reserves approached their limit.
Nine.
Ten.
The detonation finally came.
A tremendous burst of red and green light engulfed the crater. The shockwave swept across the surrounding terrain, scattering dust and fragments through the artificial field. High above, the clouds parted beneath the force of the blast, revealing the enormous battlefield in stark afternoon light.
For several moments, nothing could be seen through the glare.
Then the light began to fade.
Motes of red and green Uratsu drifted down from the sky like glowing embers.
At the centre of the crater, Ethan stood with his knees bent and his arms hanging at his sides. His hands trembled uncontrollably. Blood poured from his nose, and his eyes were bloodshot from the strain of maintaining his defence.
His reserves were empty.
Yet the crater around him remained largely untouched, its surrounding walls still standing despite the ferocity of the exchange. Ethan had concentrated his spatial influence on protecting the ground beneath him, diverting the worst of the attack away from the surrounding terrain.
He had survived.
Barely.
Ethan dragged in a ragged breath and slowly straightened.
"That..."
He coughed, wiping blood from beneath his nose.
"That was..."
He turned.
A shadow fell across his vision.
The punch struck his face before he could finish speaking.
Ethan's head snapped sideways as the impact launched him across the crater. His battered body tore through the remaining distance before crashing into the crater wall, sending loose rock cascading around him.
For an instant, his vision went completely white.
Through the fading glare, he saw a figure standing where he had been a moment earlier.
A shirtless man with dark skin and black hair.
Silver eyes stared back at him, their fading light carrying undertones of white, crimson, and orange.
Nathaniel Alderman.
The torn remnants of his combat suit hung from his waist, while blood and sweat streaked his battered body. Red lightning still flickered weakly across his arms, but the energy was beginning to fade.
He raised his right arm.
"How's that for conviction, proud heir?"
His voice was rough.
Nathaniel exhaled sharply, his chest heaving as he struggled to draw enough air into his lungs. His breathing grew increasingly ragged, each breath coming faster than the last.
The red and black energy around his body flickered.
Then it collapsed.
The remaining orange glow reverted to cyan, the familiar colour of Kinetic Muscle returning as the last traces of Critical Overdrive dissipated. Steam rose from his skin as the heat trapped within his body escaped into the cooling air.
His knees buckled.
Nathaniel dropped onto all fours, catching himself against the crater floor before he could collapse completely.
He had lost his grip on Energen.
For several seconds, he could do little more than breathe, his fingers digging into the broken ground as his body struggled to recover from the strain.
Above the crater, the last motes of crimson light faded into the clouds.
Ryker Waithiera exploded.
"IT'S OVER! IT'S OVER! NATHANIEL ALDERMAN HAS DONE IT!"
The commentary booth descended into absolute chaos.
"THE CROWNED HEIR HAS BEEN DEFEATED! AFTER TEN SECONDS OF UNRELENTING DESTRUCTIVE FORCE, ALDERMAN CLOSED THE DISTANCE AND LANDED THE DECISIVE BLOW! THE WINNER OF THE DUEL IS NATHANIEL ALDERMAN!"
The other hosts shouted over one another, their voices barely distinguishable beneath Ryker's roaring commentary.
The broadcast displays shifted to the damage assessments.
Nathaniel was bruised and bloodied, his body covered in cuts and several deep gashes. His combat suit had been almost entirely destroyed, leaving him shirtless and visibly exhausted.
Ethan was in no better condition.
His arms had sustained multiple fractures, while a section of his cheek was broken and several areas of his body bore burns from the prolonged exposure to Nathaniel's attack. The medical assessment classified the burns as treatable, but he would need immediate attention.
Neither fighter had emerged unscathed.
But only one remained on his feet long enough to claim victory.
Ryker slammed both hands onto his desk.
"NATHANIEL ALDERMAN HAS DEFEATED BOTH AZEROTH SIBLINGS! SQUAD FOUR'S REPRESENTATIVE HAS TAKEN DOWN THE CROWNED HEIR!"
Across the empire, the tournament's audience erupted.
And in the crater, Nathaniel remained on all fours, breathing hard, his silver eyes fixed on the ground.
He had won.
Now he needed his body to cooperate long enough for him to appreciate it.
Nathaniel managed to turn his head at the sound of approaching engines.
An air carrier descended through the thinning clouds, its stabilisers humming as it settled beside the crater. Professor Wolfsbane arrived with several medical staff, all of them moving with the urgency of people who had just watched two of the empire's most promising fighters push themselves far beyond reasonable limits.
"Get them onto the stretchers. Carefully," Wolfsbane ordered.
The staff moved in. One group attended to Ethan while another helped Nathaniel onto a stretcher, their healing augments already activating as they assessed the damage. Within minutes, both combatants were being transported toward the carrier, where some of the finest healing specialists in the empire would see to their injuries.
Nathaniel barely registered any of it.
He was too busy trying to breathe.
Then the broadcast cut back to the arena.
SLOW MOTION REPLAY.
Nathaniel's final punch appeared on the massive screens, replayed from one angle, then another. The first showed the precise moment his fist connected with Ethan's face. The second captured the force of the impact twisting the heir's head aside. A third followed Ethan's body as it hurtled backward, ending with his collision against the crater wall.
The replay ran again.
And again.
For a brief moment, the lodging area reserved for the participating squads fell silent.
Then Squad Four erupted.
George was on his feet, shouting so loudly that his voice nearly cracked. Oliver threw both arms into the air, while Ria practically launched herself out of her seat. Shirou joined the uproar, and even Alucard, usually content to let others make noise on his behalf, roared with the rest of them.
NATHANIEL ALDERMAN HAD DEFEATED ETHAN AZEROTH.
The heir to the empire had fallen.
Around them, the other squads could only stare at the screens. Some wore expressions of disbelief, others looked thoughtful, already reconsidering what they thought they knew about the quiet fighter from Squad Four. A few simply sat motionless, watching the replay as though the outcome might somehow change if they looked at it long enough.
It did not.
Nathaniel had won.
At home, Ginah, Valarie, and Mira celebrated with considerably less restraint than any of them would have admitted to beforehand.
Mira was the first to break, leaping out of her seat with a triumphant shout. Valarie laughed, her usual composure giving way to unmistakable relief, while Ginah watched the screen with a fierce smile that had been building since the final exchange.
"He actually did it!" Mira exclaimed.
Valarie shook her head, still staring at the broadcast. "Against Ethan, no less."
Ginah said nothing for a moment. Her eyes remained fixed on the frozen image of Nathaniel's fist buried in the heir's face.
Then she smiled.
"That idiot," she muttered, though there was no real irritation in her voice.
For all the worry he had put them through, he had pulled it off.
High above the streets, in the Illumine Guild Tower, another celebration was underway.
Arete stood in her office, her golden hair catching the light from the enormous display before her. Her golden eyes gleamed as the final replay unfolded, and the smile on her face was far too broad to be mistaken for professional satisfaction.
Beside her, her red-haired husband laughed outright.
Around them, members of the Illumine Guild erupted into cheers. Some clapped, others shouted Nathaniel's name, and more than a few immediately began arguing over the finer details of the fight. The discussion would undoubtedly last for hours, if not days.
Arete barely heard them.
She watched the replay one more time, her golden eyes following the instant of impact.
"Well done, Nathaniel," she murmured.
Across the empire, however, the celebrations were far from universal.
Betting halls and gambling dens descended into chaos as the result spread. Those who had placed their faith in the underdog screamed in delight, clutching betting slips and celebrating their sudden winnings. Some embraced strangers. Others nearly fell over their tables in disbelief.
On the opposite side of the room, people who had wagered on the heir stared at their screens in horror.
A man slumped over a counter, staring at the figures on his betting terminal as though they had personally betrayed him. Somewhere else, a woman shrieked at the broadcast, insisting that the outcome made no sense. Others simply buried their faces in their hands, mourning fortunes that had vanished with a single punch.
The empire had expected a contest.
It had received an upset.
And no matter how the spectators felt about the result, the footage left little room for argument.
The heir had been brought down.
Nathaniel Alderman, representative of Squad Four, had won.
In a bar several districts away, Ivo was having the worst and best night of his life.
"WHY?!" he wailed.
He stood beside his table with multiple stacks of cash clutched against his chest, tears streaming down his face. His purple hair stood out beneath the bar's dim red lighting, while the artificial spine running down his back and the synthetic nerves branching along his neck glowed a vivid purple.
On the wall-sized display above the counter, Nathaniel's face filled the screen.
The announcers were still celebrating his victory.
Ivo looked at the money in his arms, then at the screen, then back at the money.
A fresh sob escaped him.
"I BET ON THAT BASTARD!"
Several patrons turned to stare.
"I ACTUALLY BET ON THAT BASTARD!"
He shook the stacks of cash accusingly, as though they were responsible for his emotional collapse.
The bet had been a joke. A spiteful, thoroughly unserious wager placed on the off chance that the man he hated might somehow ruin everyone's expectations. Ivo had expected to lose a modest amount of money and gain the satisfaction of having made an absurd prediction.
Instead, Nathaniel had beaten the imperial heir, and Ivo was now considerably richer.
He hated it.
He hated the result. He hated the smug face on the screen. Most of all, he hated the fact that his decision had turned out to be financially sound.
A patron at the neighbouring table raised his glass.
"To Nathaniel Alderman!"
Ivo whipped around so violently that the purple glow along his artificial spine brightened.
"DON'T YOU DARE SAY HIS NAME WHILE I'M TRYING TO PROCESS THIS!"
The entire bar burst into laughter.
Ivo sank into his seat, still crying, and hugged his winnings closer.
On the screen, Nathaniel's final punch replayed for what had to be the twentieth time.
Ivo stared at it through his tears.
"...At least I made money."
Another sob shook his shoulders.
"WHY DID IT HAVE TO BE HIM?!"
Ivo remained hunched over his table for another thirty seconds, surrounded by cash and misery.
Then he sniffled, wiped his face with the back of his hand, and slowly raised his head.
The wall-sized screen still displayed Nathaniel's face.
Ivo narrowed his eyes.
"...Bartender."
The man behind the counter glanced over. "Yeah?"
"Drinks. For everyone."
The bar fell quiet.
Ivo lifted one of his stacks of cash and slapped it against the table.
"EVERYONE IN THIS BAR DRINKS ON MY DIME TONIGHT!"
For half a second, nobody moved.
Then the establishment erupted.
Cheers thundered through the room as patrons raised their glasses, tables were abandoned, and several people immediately began shouting their orders toward the bar. The bartender stared at Ivo, then at the money, before deciding that asking questions would be a waste of perfectly good business.
"YOU HEARD HIM!" he bellowed. "FIRST ROUND'S ON THE GENTLEMAN!"
The resulting roar nearly drowned out the tournament broadcast.
Ivo stood, his purple hair catching the dim red light as his artificial spine and synthetic nerves glowed beneath his clothes. He raised his glass with all the dignity of a man who had not been sobbing uncontrollably less than a minute earlier.
"To the most infuriating bastard alive!"
The patrons laughed and lifted their drinks.
"To Nathaniel!"
"DON'T MAKE ME REGRET THIS!"
That only made them cheer louder.
Ivo downed his drink, slammed the glass onto the table, and pointed accusingly at the screen.
"You hear that, Alderman? You're paying for this emotionally, you hear me? Every single drop!"
Nathaniel, currently unconscious or otherwise indisposed aboard a medical carrier, offered no response.
Ivo sniffled again.
Then he looked at the remaining stacks of cash.
A slow, terrible realisation crossed his face.
He had enough left for another 10 rounds.
His expression crumpled.
"...Get them another one."
The bar exploded all over again.
And Ivo, standing amid the celebration of a victory he had never wanted to witness, began crying once more.