Shade struck first, this ti without holding back. His knife movents blurred into a pattern that was sharper and faster than anything he'd shown earlier. He aid for Xavier's throat, ribs, and legs in a near-continuous sequence, cutting angles with so much precision that it felt like he had fought in this forest a hundred tis before.
Xavier countered the first barrage, rolled through the second, and deflected the third with the flat of his blade, but Shade kept coming, breathing harder but smiling like this was what he wanted from the start.
Then Shade changed forms. His stance lowered, his shoulders relaxed, and his movents shifted into a style ant for killing, not sparring. He vanished from Xavier's line of sight for a split second and reappeared behind him with a slash aid directly at his spine.
Xavier twisted and blocked, but the force still shoved him forward. Shade followed imdiately with another strike to the shoulder, a kick to the knee, and then a slash across Xavier's arm.
Xavier caught the last strike, grabbed Shade's wrist, and slamd him into a tree with enough force to jolt loose leaves from the branches. Shade pulled free, rolled across the dirt, and leapt at Xavier again.
This ti Xavier didn't hold back either. He locked Shade's blade, pushed into him, and turned the montum into a ruthless series of cuts. Shade blocked the first few but started losing ground. Xavier's strikes grew heavier and faster. Shade parried a downward slash, but Xavier turned and drove his knee into Shade's ribs, knocking the wind out of him.
Shade stumbled. Xavier pressed the advantage, carving a line across Shade's shoulder, then another across his side. Shade tried to counter but Xavier caught his wrist, slamd him onto the forest floor, and kicked the dagger out of his hand before it could reach his throat.
Shade lay on his back, breathing hard and grinning even wider. "Now I get it… your fa wasn't luck. You actually earned this."
Xavier didn't respond; he just wiped his blade clean and checked the ti out of habit. Shade sat up slowly, still wincing. "You know, you asked how I'm even here. The answer isn't dramatic. There weren't one million players registered in Phase Two. There were nine hundred ninety-nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine. One slot empty. My slot. A glitch."
Xavier stared at him flatly. "That's it?"
Shade shrugged. "What did you expect? A prophecy? A conspiracy? Sotis things break, and the system spits you out in strange places."
Xavier sighed. "That's the dumbest explanation I've heard today."
Shade opened his mouth to say sothing else — probably another smug comnt — but Xavier didn't give him the chance. He lifted his rifle and emptied the entire magazine into Shade's skull at point-blank range, each shot punching a cleaner hole until Shade's avatar burst into pixels and vanished from the forest floor.
Xavier flicked the safety back on, stood up, and adjusted his armor where Shade's blade had cut through. The forest was quiet for a brief mont, but the distant artillery and the roar of the battlefield kept rolling in like thunder.
He checked the tir.
[03:00 REMAINING]
Xavier muttered under his breath, annoyed that the duel ended sooner than he wanted.
Three minutes to survive and to end the mode.
Xavier could have stayed in the forest, waited out the tir, and taken the win without lifting another finger. But he could already imagine the headlines and s: clips of the "greatest boss of Starfall" crouching behind a tree like a scared squirrel. The thought alone annoyed him more than Shade's ridiculous explanation.
"I don't care if I win or lose. I do what I want, and what I want is…" He reached for the grenade strapped to his waist, pulled the pin through his teeth, and lobbed it at the cluster of players hiding behind the trees on the far side of the clearing. "…war."
The explosion tore through the silence of the forest and announced his return to the battlefield. Dozens of players went flying, their shouts echoing across the burning treeline. Those who survived scrambled out from behind cover, screaming into their mics that Xavier was alive and on the move.
Word traveled fast. So fast that by the ti Xavier stepped out of the forest, several top guilds were already repositioning to collapse on his location.
This was the last push. Everyone knew it. It didn't matter how many died in the attempt. They had only one target left.
Xavier fired the first shot, dropping a sniper perched on a broken tower. He sprinted along the cracked ground, weaving through gunfire and explosions. The number of players alive had dropped to only a few thousand now. But every single one of them was heading straight for him.
Tanks rolled across the rubble. chs stomped through smoke. Squads tried to flank from both sides. Dozens of drones circled above him, their targeting systems locking onto his heat signature.
Xavier snatched a fallen missile launcher off the ground, aid it into the sky, and fired. The rocket clipped the underbelly of a jet roaring overhead, detonating in a burst that sent the ship spiraling into the dirt. Flas erupted across the field as debris rained down, knocking out several squads who were running toward him.
He tossed the empty launcher aside and imdiately shot down two drones with quick, precise bursts. More drones sward in, and Xavier broke into a sprint toward a ruined anti-air turret. He vaulted over the railing, kicked off the panel, and grabbed the controls.
The turret whirred to life under his hands. A storm of shells ripped into the sky, shredding drones by the dozens. So crashed and exploded mid-air, others spun out of control before slamming into the dirt. The players below scread and scattered as the wreckage slamd down all around them.
A massive ch stomped toward Xavier, its pilot yelling into the global chat that he would take Xavier down himself. Xavier didn't bother replying. He kept firing the turret until the ch got too close, then jumped off the platform and rolled down the collapsed side of a tank hull while the ch's cannon carved open the ground behind him.
Xavier whipped out a knife, sprinted under the ch's legs, climbed up the back using exposed wiring, and jamd the blade into the core panel. The ch exploded and threw him backward, but he landed hard and kept moving.
He checked the tir.
[01:12 REMAINING]
Guild banners were closing in from all directions again. OgaWraith ca in from the east with heavy shields. NightmareFront flanked from the west with fast mobility units. Blood Reaver Legion rushed straight down the middle, screaming war cries loud enough to shake the ruined buildings.
Xavier grabbed a fallen SMG, leapt onto a broken wall, and opened fire into all three groups. They answered with everything they had—rifles, grenades, cannons, blades—but Xavier never stayed in the sa place long enough to get pinned down.
He crossed the broken ground like he already knew where every shot would land. His armor was cracked, his left sleeve torn, and blood ran down his forearm from Shade's earlier cuts, but none of that slowed him.
The last surviving tanks approached from opposite sides, hoping to box him in. Xavier slid under the first cannon blast, sprinted up the smoking hull, and shot the driver through the viewing slit. The tank swerved and smashed into the second one. He jumped off as they exploded behind him.
A soft chi appeared in his vision.
[00:30 REMAINING]
The battlefield was dying down. Only a few pockets of survivors were left, most of them wounded, exhausted, or too shocked by the destruction to know what to do next. Xavier stepped over a pile of debris, breathing steadily as he made his way toward the half-burnt and destroyed seat of an exploded tank in the center of the ruined valley.
Distantly, the cinematic sequence had already begun loading.
Xavier sat on the seat like a king without any ceremony. The light climbed around him, forming a pillar that swallowed the battlefield's smoke. The sirens faded. The gunfire softened. The world blurred out.
And then the mode ended.
The instant he returned to the lobby, the world outside Starfall Arena erupted. Social dia flooded with clips of him fighting Shade, blowing up jets, and walking through a million-man army like a storm with legs.
The devs launched an ergency livestream, insisting that nothing was scripted and no one had altered the event to favor him. They denied every allegation in the chat while clearly holding back laughter because the chaos was too perfect to pretend otherwise.
Even players who hated him had to admit it — they had never seen anything like that.
Xavier logged out of the VR rig, stretched his neck, and checked his ssages. They were overflowing. Fans. Guilds. Even the devs had sent him a private request asking if he'd join a future tournant as a "special NPC boss."
But he ignored all of it for the mont.
He just leaned back, smirked faintly, and muttered, "Not bad."
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