Chương 195

"Begin!" the instructor shouted, then moved back toward the safety of the marble wall, clearly doubtful that either of the two participants would care much about collateral damage. Valerius didn't wait for the echo to fade. Despite his arrogance, the noble heir possessed the skills to back up his bravado. At Level fifty-nine and with a martial class, his physical stats were much higher than Orion's, and he quickly closed the gap. And it was an impressive display.

From the outside, it wasn't obvious, but being on the receiving end of the vibrating sword made quite an impression. Still, Orion wasn't about to give up the initiative easily, so he tapped into the [Flight] spell he kept ready, reducing his friction coefficient to nearly zero, and simply let the air pressure from the blow push him away.

The blade swiped horizontally, missing Orion's chest by inches in what could have been a deadly strike, especially since it was followed by an after-image of air, probably the result of a skill. He's fast, Orion noted, drifting backward on his cushion of air. The oscillation generates a pressure wave that broadens the cutting range. A simple light shield would be torn apart by the dissonance before the metal even made contact.

"Stop running!" Valerius snarled, pivoting on his heel with surprising grace. He lunged again with a piercing thrust aimed at Orion's heart. This time, Orion didn't try to avoid it. He needed to test the limits of his new defense in a live situation, and he was quite sure that Pauline would step in before he could be killed. Calculating the Schwarzschild radius was the work of a moment, and with it came the warping he'd been getting more used to since his trips into the mountains.

"[Event Horizon]," he called as the air around him bent. Valerius was too determined to change course, so the blade entered the distortion field, but the space it occupied curved, causing it to slide smoothly to the left, following the curvature instead of the wielder's intent. Valerius lost his balance as his momentum carried him past Orion, and the blade plunged into the white sand, slicing through the silica grains so forcefully that they fused into glass.

"What?" he gasped, wrenching the weapon free.

"I had you!" Orion did his best to seem as insufferable as possible, pushing his glasses back and brushing dust off his clothes.

"I'm sure you did." Valerius's face turned a deep, ugly shade of red. The embarrassment of missing a stationary target in front of his peers was clearly more painful than any wound. Normally, Orion wouldn't have even bothered to entertain such an over-inflated ego, but he was starting to piece together a plan. The more he learned about his opponent, the more he needed Valerius to be as angry and irrational as possible.

"Would you like another try? I promise I won't move." The taunting worked, as Valerius started pushing mana into the blade, making its hum grow from barely audible to loud enough for the observing nobles to notice. Orion prepared for an even faster attack, but Valerius surprised him by channeling even more mana into the artifact, causing the blade to glow cherry-red as the heat warped the air around it.

"You really should take better care of your weapon," Orion mocked, but at the same time, he re-engaged his flight module. [Event Horizon] should be more than enough to handle any attack, but he didn't want to be caught off guard. Especially since he was sure the sword hadn't come from any forge in Cyril by now, and he'd already been caught by surprise more than once by what the enemy could come up with.

"Let's see you curve this!" Valerius roared, charging with a reckless, two-handed thrust. Though the strike was sloppy, even more so than his previous attempts, the sheer amount of power behind it still made it a real threat. In fact, the blade was now vibrating so rapidly that it was visibly blurring, cutting a path through the ground below. He's overstressed it. No matter how solid an artifact is, that thing can't hold such power for too long.

The moment it hits a solid surface, it will shatter and send shrapnel tearing through the arena. Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions. Shrapnel that could kill Valerius and likely the front row of spectators. He genuinely doubted that his opponent realized how reckless he was being, but that didn't mean he wasn't still doing it. Alright, enough mind games. I need to end this. Luckily, he had been experimenting with a spell that could save everyone from a massacre.

Focusing on the blade here might have seemed like the wrong move, given how badly he'd just assessed its structural integrity, but it was only by removing it completely from the situation that he could de-escalate the problem.

"[Gravity Cannon]," he intoned, even as he aimed at the very tip of the blade at the center of the spatial distortion. As Valerius stepped into range and thrust down, Orion clamped a localized gravity well onto the end of the steel, increasing the downward force by an order of magnitude. Valerius screamed as his wrists snapped audibly under the impossible weight. The sword ripped itself from his grasp, slamming into the sand with the force of a meteor.

The moment the vibrating blade hit the ground under intensified gravity and its internal fractures expanded, the gravitational force opposed them, slowing their release enough for Orion to expand [Event Horizon], curving the shrapnel around him and back into the ground, only allowing a single piece to pass through once he was sure it wouldn't be lethal. Valerius's shout was cut off as he was thrown backward by the shockwave, landing hard on his back.

A shard of his own blade embedded itself in the sand inches from his cheek, glowing with heat. Silence fell over the Golden Fields, only disturbed by the hissing of the cooling metal fragments in the sand. With its job done, Orion let the gravity spell fade away. He moved forward, crushing the glassy sand with his boots. Valerius lay there, clutching his broken wrists and staring up at the sky with wide, terrified eyes.

For once, he looked young, foolish, and completely out of his depth, but even as Orion looked, outrage and pride flooded back in. The only thing stopping him from shouting again was the heat coming from the shard resting next to his cheek. Orion gave him a warning look and knelt, grabbing the weapon's hilt. It was still intact, although the blade was missing, and warm to the touch. He stood up, pulling a containment bag from his coat, and dropped the hilt and the largest shards of the blade inside.

"Hey!" Valerius struggled to sit up, cradling his injured arms.

"That's mine! You can't take that! It's worth more than your life!" Apparently, his survival instincts were also completely shattered, considering he only lasted a dozen seconds in silence.

"Tut tut," Orion mockingly said, "this is now evidence. Your sword was clearly an unregulated artifact, probably from the black market. I need to take this back to the Sanctum for examination."

"You have no right!" Valerius shouted, growing frantic beyond what he was expecting, turning toward the stands for support.

"Guards! Seize him! He's stealing my property!" There was a moment of stillness as the men looked at each other, clearly hesitant to disobey a noble's orders and risk losing their jobs, but well aware of who really called the shots in Silverpeak. Orion might have been a male, but he had proven to be skilled enough to defeat Valerius despite their age difference, and if there was one thing everyone knew about the Sanctum, it was that it craved talent.

Fortunately for them, the decision was taken out of their hands as Pauline entered the arena. For once, she didn't need to prepare her shadows for a dramatic entrance, since everyone in the Golden Fields could recognize the sparkle of a Magistra's amulet. Her presence silenced any thoughts the guards might have had about following Valerius' orders, and even the noble himself gaped, struggling to process what he was seeing.

"Seizure is the proper course of action when faced with such an unstable artifact," Pauline said, her voice carrying effortlessly to the stands.

"Unless anyone here wishes to file a formal complaint with the Sanctum, I believe we are done here?" The silence from the stands was enough of an answer. The nobles of Silverpeak might be proud, but they weren't suicidal, and no one wanted to go on record defending someone who had put their own lives in danger. Valerius slumped, realizing he was all alone.

"Let's go," Orion said, turning his back on the defeated scion. They exited the arena and walked back through the gates, ignoring the guards' bows. Orion didn't look back until they were far away from the establishment and down the street, turning into a quiet alley.

"That was suitably dramatic, I assume," Pauline remarked, glancing back at the street behind them.

"I can't understand why you went so far to provoke him even after getting the sword, though. He's going to hold a grudge." Orion shrugged. He doubted he'd ever be in a position where the nobility of Silverpeak had any control over him, and he had to push Valerius enough to cause real panic, not just annoyance.

"The sword won't be very useful," he revealed, ignoring the surprised look. He pulled it back out of his coat, running a hand over the cooled hilt.

"Whatever enchantment method was used, it doesn't tie itself to the Field for sustenance, but to the wielder, and the moment it was overloaded, the whole thing burnt out. We still should study it, but we probably won't learn much from it." Pauline looked at him with curiosity, knowing that he wouldn't act without a solid reason.

"Valerius is arrogant, but he's also a coward. I just humiliated him, broke the one artifact that let him rise above the fame he'd built as a failure, and took the pieces. And I did it in front of everyone he tries to impress," Orion revealed, adjusting his glasses as a cold, calculating glint entered his eyes.

"He won't let this slide. He can't fight me himself, and he can't ask the guards, given your presence. So he's going to go crying to the person who gave him the sword. He's going to demand a replacement, or revenge, and it's going to happen soon, since he will want to stop us from getting back to the Sanctum, lest the nature of the sword be revealed."

"Ah," Pauline murmured, nodding.

"Yes, he probably doesn't really know much about how the enchantment works. The person he's gotten it from might know, but it'll be too late by then, because we'll have followed him all the way."

"Exactly," Orion said.

"I assume you have a way to cover us? I haven't practiced my stealth spells much beyond those needed to ward a fixed location." Pauline's answer was to raise her hand. The shadows in the alleyway surged upward, wrapping around them like a cloak, and within seconds, they disappeared from sight, blending seamlessly into the alley's gloom.

This is quite an odd feeling, Orion mused as he was moved, shifting from shadow to shadow until they returned to the Golden Fields and had a clear view of Valerius, who finally recovered enough to stomp out of the ring. He was evidently so humiliated that he couldn't handle it, as shown by the purple tint to his skin, and he even disregarded his anxious sister, who tried but failed to soothe him. As a determined, grim look finally appeared on Valerius' face, he stomped away from his peers, and Orion grinned.

I might need to send a letter to Esmeralda to share that I've finally understood the thrill of the chase. This is fun.