Chương 131: Chapter 130: Ghost

Phantom's attacks didn't come from where they should have. Sometimes they even felt like multiple attacks at once. His body clearly showed left center, but despite dodging, I still got hit. His footwork committed forward while his blade arrived from the side. Every instinct I had, every read I'd trained across years of competitive gaming, was being fed wrong information.

I dodged a Horizontal Slash by dropping flat, fired a basic from the ground, and rolled sideways as a Piercing Stab shattered the stone where my head had been. He followed with Blade Rush.

"Quick Step!" I dodged the initial strike, but he didn't stop there. It was Vertical Strike, telegraphed clearly, the sword starting above his right shoulder. I dodged based on what I saw, but I paid close attention this time. The skill still grazed my forearm, and I lost another sliver of health. And it came from about ten centimeters further from where it should have been. I fired an arrow in retaliation, clean aim, dead center. He didn't even dodge this time.

The arrow passed through his body and embedded in the cobblestones behind him. But his health didn't drop.

"Burning Blade!"

"Fan of Arrows!" Once again, he didn't dodge. What he didn't expect, however, was that my aim was off this time. A couple of inches to the left of where he was. Or where it looked like he was, rather. The hit was solid enough to not just carve a chunk out of his HP bar, but also stagger him enough to miss the sword strike. Phantom wasn't dodging my attacks with pure technique. His visual model was displaced from his actual position.

What I was seeing — what everyone fighting him would see — was slightly off from where he truly stood. A constant offset, small enough that you'd not notice in casual observation, but enough to throw you off your game. That's why I missed so much this duel: I was shooting at a ghost. I also realized that it wasn't a constant thing. Some of my attacks had connected before, and they connected where they should have.

Being the leader of King's Glade, it wasn't unreasonable to think that Phantom had access to more Echoes than I did. With his information network, he could have even found another way for a class change. Either way, something tied to his class progression made it so his body was slightly out of position compared to reality, and the displacement shifted based on his movement direction. It wasn't permanent, and it was likely draining his mana or other resources, but it was incredibly strong.

I watched him advance and tracked the offset. The pattern wasn't random, and once I saw it, my play style adapted almost immediately. His next attacks came, and I ignored where his body appeared to be and dodged accordingly, firing back in the process. The arrow connected with his ribs, clean and hard. Phantom stepped back, and for the first time in the fight, something changed in his eyes.

"You figured it out?"

"Took me too long."

"Most people never would," he smiled.

"But that doesn't change the outcome." He stretched.

"See, now you will constantly think about whether I'm using it or not. You have to dodge twice as much, and guess where to attack."

"Don't worry about me, Phantom," I said.

"I thrive when fighting multiple opponents." Because that's what it was. I had to fight Phantom and his… phantom at the same time. Did the game let him get this ability based on his username? The thought gave me chills. We continued after our brief break. The displacement became harder to track, switching on and off between exchanges, mixing real positions with fake ones so I could never be certain which version I was looking at, but at least I knew what I was dealing with now. The fight evened out.

I fired three basics, two at his visible body and one offset to the left. The last one connected. He came in with a stab, and I dodged based on where his real body was rather than the ghost, the blade passing through empty air. I countered with Withering Light, and the beam forced him away, into a Piercing Shot I'd already lined up. Two clean hits in three seconds. He retaliated with Blade Rush into Shieldbreaker, the level 25 Swordsman ability.

It's main purpose was to break through guard; not the best against a Ranger, but close up it still dealt massive damage. I Leap Attacked over the combination, firing downward. He deflected with his sword, but the deflection cost him time, and I put twelve meters between us on the landing. For a minute we traded properly. I was landing shots now, and his health was depleting, but so was mine. His Sunder procced again, and a Fog Blade I couldn't fully avoid took a chunk I couldn't afford.

Still, I was winning the exchanges, slowly, for the first time in the fight. Then Accelerate came back, and everything I'd figured out became three times harder to read. The displacement at normal speed was manageable, but with the buff, the offset changed faster than I could track, and his attacks arrived before I could decide what to dodge. I Quick Stepped away, but he followed me with ease, his sword like an angry wasp I couldn't shake off.

My Leap Attack met with the usual Sky Steps in the air, and I quickly burned Shadow Travel as well to get away from him. Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. I came out of the shadows and immediately activated Mistveil. Six seconds of invisibility, layered directly on top of the Shadow Travel. To Phantom, I'd dissolved into darkness and never reappeared. He had his displacement all this time, but now, so did I. He stopped mid-advance.

Accelerate was still active, his speed still absurd, but he had nothing to swing at. His eyes scanned the field, sword raised, turning in a tight circle. I went behind him with three seconds left in stealth, and broke the ability when it ticked down to one, with a charged Piercing Shot aimed at his back, offset slightly to the right based on the direction he was turning. The Mistveil bonus amplified the attack.

The arrow punched into his shoulder blade, and he stumbled forward, spun, and slashed the air behind him, but I was already away. Accelerate faded a second later, and we were back to normal speed, both in the yellow now. His health sat around forty percent, but mine was closer to thirty. I fired two rapid basics to force space, then dropped Arrowstorm between us.

The incoming rain created a wall he couldn't walk through without eating sustained damage, giving me four seconds of breathing room, and once again, we both used the break to replenish our mana. Phantom came through the fading storm with Blade Rush. I dodged, fired, and we locked into another exchange. He deflected a Burning Arrow, and I dodged a Piercing Stab. My next basic connected, but I ate a slash aimed at my neck I didn't judge correctly, followed by a Blade Spin, forcing me to retreat.

We were grinding each other down. His displacement flickered on and off, and every time it activated, I had to spend a fraction of a second recalibrating. Sometimes I guessed right, sometimes I didn't. The margin for error was shrinking on both sides. Fog Blade came again. I saw the swing, saw the sword pass wide to my left, and braced for the impact from the wrong direction. It hit me in the chest and launched me backward. That skill was nasty in combination with his phantom-form.

My health dropped to somewhere around fifteen percent. 1One more hit and the duel was over. I forced myself up. Phantom was already closing in.

"Mirror Edge!" I didn't know the skill, and I didn't want to find out what it did the hard way.

"Woe's Last Gasp!" The ethereal state took hold as the blade connected, ending the skill instantly. The shockwave at the end knocked Phantom back three meters, but he recovered fast. Still, it bought me a second that I used to run. I need to finish this now, I thought. He still had about 25% of his HP remaining, which meant that I needed to land a massive hit, a sure one, maybe even a critical one. I had the right skill for that. All I needed was the setup. On the ground, he was faster.

Sky Steps gave him aerial movement, but it was limited. Conclusion? I needed to go up. There was a massive oak at the south edge of the field. Its trunk was wide, its lowest branches six meters up, its crown reaching high above the rooftops.

"Shadow Travel!" I dissolved into the shade beneath the tree and emerged halfway up the trunk, standing on a thick branch ten meters above the ground. Phantom tracked the movement, then followed with Sky Steps, just as I had predicted. I was already switching gear; Chausses of Dusk replaced my leg armor in less than a second.

"Catapult Legs!" The skill launched me from the branch through the canopy, twenty meters up, past the leaves and into the open sky above Tidemark. The harbor spread below me: the rooftops, the palace, and Phantom, thirty meters down, looking up. Sky Steps reached its limit, and he was on the ground once again. Spriggan's Will was back in my hands before the apex, and then for good measure, I used Leap Attack from the very top of the tree, aimed straight up. The skill fired me another ten meters into the sky.

I was, for all intents and purposes, flying. Forty meters above the ground, with nothing but air and sunlight surrounding me.

"Dead Calm." Movement speed: gone. Defense: gone. None of that mattered up here. Phantom stood below, sword raised, watching. He was already moving, reading my aim, preparing to dodge the moment I released. I'd spent the entire fight learning his trick. I knew his patterns. He'd dodge left. The ghost would shift right. And I had to guess. I aimed at where he would actually be, then I released. The arrow fell from the sky like a white comet, crossing forty meters in a fraction of a second. Phantom started his dodge.

Left, exactly as I'd predicted. He moved into the arrow's path, but then something happened. Even from forty meters up, in freefall, I saw it. His eyes lit up with a golden light, and the same glow started climbing his blade from the hilt. The white sword blazed, and the air around it distorted much more than when I first saw the weapon. He was activating something. Something he'd been holding back the entire fight. For a heartbeat, I was sure the arrow would be stopped.

Then the glow disappeared as his eyes dimmed, and the blade went dark. He lowered it, and then... The arrow hit. Light erupted across Phantom's body as Dead Calm connected, resistances ignored, four hundred percent attack power delivered from a height no one could reach. His health bar emptied, and Phantom dissolved into light. I changed to the Threadweaver and sent a Silk Shot toward the tree, aiding my landing. When I arrived, I was breathing hard. I spent every major cooldown I had.

The swordsman respawned, and the rest of his guild members joined him as he walked up to me and extended his hand.

"Well fought, Orion." I shook it.

"You too." He pulled out the skill book and held it out.

"Yours. As promised. Alice, Denxy, and Desirae will join your dungeon team," he said.

"No restrictions, no time limit. They stay until the job is done." Alice stepped forward.

"We'll be ready tomorrow morning."

"Thank you," I said, putting the book in my inventory. Phantom looked at me. I expected him to say something about the last second of the fight, about what I'd seen before the arrow hit. He didn't.

"Good luck with the dungeon, Orion. I look forward to working together in the future." He turned and walked toward the city with his two officers. Alice watched him go, then looked at me.

"Nobody," she said, "has figured that out about Phantom so far."

"He's the real deal."

"I know." She paused.

"I guess that means we're running a dungeon tomorrow."

"It does," I nodded. Cyrus appeared at my side.

"That means we have the three parties."

"We do. I'll tell Somnus and Redcap to meet us at 8 am in Carpa tomorrow."

"Good. We'll do a briefing there, then give the caves a go."

"Good for us," Alice said, and her two friends nodded.

"For now, I'll go with Phantom, look around, talk about guild things. See you tomorrow." They went after their guild leader.

"That last shot," Cyrus said while looking at our newfound colleagues.

"Did you know where to aim?"

"It was a guess. Though I spent the whole fight learning how he moves. I had a strong hunch."

"He did something at the end, but it looked like he decided against it at the last second." The Arcanist had watched the duel from a bit further away, next to a food stall.

"I saw it, too."

"What was it?"

"I don't know," I admitted.

"He was about to use something. Then he stopped." Cyrus was quiet for a moment.

"You think he let you win?" I replayed the final moments. I didn't know what went through Phantom's mind in those last seconds, but I was sure of one thing. Now that we'd both seen what the other is capable of, my chances of winning a second time were slim to none. He'd seen all the skills I had access to. He could calculate with Woe's Last Gasp and Dead Calm, and he knew that I had a pretty good grasp of his phantom-trick, too, while he still had skills I hadn't seen.

And he might not have moved into the killshot on purpose, but he'd consciously decided not to do anything about it in the end.

"I'm not sure," I said.

"But he must have had his reasons."

"Fair enough." He clapped me on the shoulder.

"Tomorrow. Fang Forest. Get some good sleep before it." He walked off, and I sat on the grass for a long while after that.

Alice found Phantom at the teleport gate, alone. His two officers were arranging accommodation in the city, and the guild leader stood looking out over the harbor.

"Why didn't you use it?" she asked. He didn't turn around.

"Because," he said, "one day that man is going to be too big to be forced into cooperation. And I'd rather have him as a friend than as an unwilling subordinate." Alice stood beside him, looking at the water.

"Would you have won if you did?" Phantom smiled.

"Guess we'll never know."