[Thunderfall]
Without any chanting, the broadsword ca down with brutal force, purple lightning cracking across its length like veins made of fury. It cleaved toward Ruvian with enough montum to tear through the air in a loud, shuddering arc.
But sohow, the blade didn’t strike Ruvian.
"[Earth Wall]!"
From beneath the floor, a wall of earth surged upward in a sudden vertical bloom, not just intercepting the blade but cutting off Ardyn’s line of sight entirely.
Still, the impact didn’t stop him.
He howled through it, forcing the blade straight through the wall, chunks of stone flying as he swung, splitting the very floor beneath him with the sheer violence of his advance.
However, Ruvian was no longer there.
Ardyn’s swing hit only air and stone.
And even though it was only for a second... a flicker of confusion crossed his face.
"What?!"
The sound tore from him more in disbelief than rage.
And then the sensation of cold behind him, rising not from open space, but from the shadow on the floor itself.
[Shadow Phase]
Ruvian erged, rising from the lted shadow beneath Ardyn’s feet. His form distorted from smoke, to flesh.
Noelle had cast her spell on him.
By the ti Ardyn twisted with a retaliatory strike, Ruvian had already closed the gap.
His wand t Ardyn’s torso, and in that instant, he cast the spell.
"[Magic Missile]!"
Boom!
The spell detonated from point-blank.
The column of mana compressed into a concentrated energy, and at this range, there was nowhere for it to go except through its target.
Ardyn’s chest buckled.
His broadsword slipped from his fingers, clattering to the ground as his body shot backward like a cannonball.
He was still mid-air, twisting helplessly, when Griffer and Noelle caught him on the other end.
Noelle’s daggers sank low into his left knee, slipping between plates.
At the sa ti, Griffer’s spear snapped toward his shoulder, aiming for the joint where armor was no longer covered.
The coordination wasn’t perfect, but it didn’t have to be.
Both blades found their mark before Ardyn’s body even touched the ground. The strikes were fast, brutal, and placed with enough precision.
By the ti Ardyn crashed into the stone, skidding with the ugly friction of his body against the floor, the montum had already shifted.
Ruvian stood a few paces back, wand still raised, its tip faintly glowing with the residual charge of overused mana.
His fingers twitched from the raw nerve-throb that ca from his Spellcore due to forcing more than he could within a short ti span.
He let out a slow exhale and resisted the urge to drop the wand altogether.
’Nice. It worked...’
For the first ti, the hall went incredibly quiet. No one knew how to respond to what they had just witnessed. ( 20 PP)
Even Delila’s smile, so carefully composed and elegantly worn until now, began to slip.
*****
[Ardyn’s POV]
Ardyn’s breathing ca in short, too shallow to carry anything but disbelief. Each breath required more effort from him.
The humiliation settled across his shoulders.
His gaze remained fixed on the ground, where the cracked stone bore the aftermath of the last few seconds.
His blood was spattered near the fractures.
The sight of it didn’t make any sense to him.
Pain rippled through his limbs as all he could do was stand there, disoriented and bleeding, trying to claw back the scene of how this had gone so wrong so quickly.
’What the hell was that...? Did he move? No, I–I didn’t see him move. We were just– I had him, I thought I had him for sure!’
They had co at him in the sa formation. The sa rhythm, the sa steps. He rembered noting it as they moved, already preparing the counter in his head.
He had seen the previous pattern before, morized it, read it like a book, but sohow... they managed to tweak it?
Noelle’s twin daggers had struck low, just under the joint, sliding into the gap behind the knee plate where his footwork relied on flexibility, enough to slow him and stain the ground red.
Griffer’s spear had arrived next, less refined, but brutally tid. It slamd into the space beneath his shoulder guard, crushing the joint, and now he couldn’t lift that arm without pain crawling up his neck.
He was still upright, technically, though even that felt tenuous.
Had they aid an inch to the side, the vital parts, he would be face down, unconscious, and publicly broken.
He lifted his head with so effort, and the light caught the edge of his vision. Dust still lingered in the air, hovered by the earlier impact.
His eyes scanned the space ahead.
’They had regrouped again.’
And in the middle, between them, stood him.
’That black-haired boy...’
Ardyn didn’t care to recall his na and it no longer mattered.
Because what mattered was that he had been the one to pull the trigger on that coordinated attack.
He was the one who had orchestrated it, and watched himself walk straight into it like a fool.
Then, ca the soft whispers from the spectators. Ardyn didn’t need to hear the word to know what they were whispering about.
"He lost his ground against Class E?" ( 10PP)
"Wow. He really got hit. Did you see how his body went flying just now? He got thrown away like a shit!"
"Can’t believe he got outsmarted by Class E." ( 10PP)
Out of seven matches so far, not once had Class A ever been pushed back, let alone struck in a way that demanded recovery.
Ardyn could feel their gazes on him.
Slowly, he straightened his back. Each vertebra felt like a protest, but he ignored it. He let the pain settle into his body like armor, sothing to wear, sothing to remind himself of what had been taken.
He didn’t spare his sword a glance. It lay between him and them now, closer to the hands that had knocked it loose than to his own.
But it wasn’t the blade he wanted anymore.
’That little bastard...’
The thought surfaced like smoke, deepened, spread, and caught fire.
’I’ll kill him!!’
’I’LL KILL HIM FOR SURE!!!!’
He could taste the fury behind his teeth.
His fingers twitched, the phantom weight of the sword still imprinted in his palm.
He would break the boy with his bare hands if that was what it took.
’I swear that I’ll tear him apart!’
’Shatter every piece of him and feed it back to him one breath at a ti!!’
Ardyn’s mouth curled into sothing aner, unshaped by charm or pride.
His eyes never left the boy.
And then he moved again.
[Thunderfall]
Lightning gathered in his palm, crackling faintly at first before it coalesced into sothing more volatile.
There was not a single thought in his mind except for only the sharp clarity of rage.
His foot struck the ground, and then again, faster now, montum building as he dashed forward with the unmistakable intention of ending the fight... consequences be damned!
The spell in his hand surged brighter, casting sparks that lit his face in flickers of purple-white.
And yet he never reached them.
Mid-dash, just as his body leaned into the movent with total commitnt, sothing invisible caught him first.
’Hukkkk—!’
His eyes rolled back in an instant, white overtaking the iris, and all the tension in his muscles vanished as though his strings had been severed.
His montum carried him forward a few seconds longer before he crashed face-first into the stone floor with a brutal thud.
Thud!
The impact sent his body sliding across the arena in an awkward sprawl.
He ca to a stop several feet away later, utterly still.
A stunned silence followed the arena.
Noelle’s daggers remained in her hands, halfway lifted. While Griffer took an unconscious step forward, confusion etched across his face.
Even Ruvian frowned in perplexity.
Then, he quietly spoke:
"What...
──────── ✦ ────────
[Chapter 76: The Hell Just Happened?]
Plot Points= 11660
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