Chương 104: You Cannot Punch a Tsunami to Death

[Time]: Summer Break, Day 22 — Grand Finals, 02: 00 PM [Location]: Open Sea · Grand Masters Regional Qualifier Venue · Six-Part Miniature Arena The spatial curtain rippled, tearing through the stadium's sky. Whatever the previous match had done to the field—and it had done catastrophic things—was cleanly severed from local reality. Through the grand, terrifying geometry of high-tier spatial manipulation, the ruined island was swallowed by the void and swapped out.

In its place, the system deposited a pristine Six-Part Miniature Arena. Terrain: [Ancient Ruins Zone]. Collapsed stone temples, half-buried monoliths, and a labyrinth of crumbling archways. A sprawling graveyard of architecture suspended over the void, offering a hundred tactical blind spots and absolutely no safe harbor. In the Mare Brume preparation zone, Lee Alice Varro was already standing at the field boundary. KOF relay didn't give her a rest period.

The cursed thorns on her left wrist had migrated to her forearm—black necrotic lines branching upward under her skin, patient and systematic, the way a debt collector works through a filing cabinet. The arena sky was dead clear. But the air around Alice was weeping. Her twin tails swept slow, hypnotic arcs over the cracked stone, bleeding hyper-compressed moisture and static directly into the dry ruins. She was holding a Category 5 hurricane, just waiting for the referee's fireball to drop.

Through the blast-proof glass of the preparation zone, Hathaway watched the Lord of Mistfall City. Alice's military robe hung in tatters. By any standard biological metric, she belonged on a medical stretcher. Instead, she stood perfectly straight. Witches were, at their core, creatures of absolute idealism. Their biology was merely a polite suggestion; their willpower was the law. As long as I decide I can move, I move. Mana is omnipotent.

Looking at the hyper-compressed moisture weeping from Alice's twin tails, Hathaway recalled a meme that had lived rent-free in the Inner Sea forums for years.

"Full-Power Alice." The math behind the meme was absurd. Alice's win rate in scrub-stomping matches against lower-tier qualifiers sat at 78. 22%—noticeably below the 80% baseline expected of an elite Arch-Witch. She treated low-stakes matches as a playground, testing bizarre spell interactions and gathering material for her smut novels. Yet her overall career win rate was a staggering 84. 5%. She balanced that ledger by being an absolute, unrelenting nightmare against fellow apex predators.

Alice's teal cat eyes were cold and terrifyingly clear. This was the Lord of Mistfall City, taking the field with unprecedented, absolute seriousness. And stepping into the ruins to meet her was Alucard Milan'thirskaya. The White City Archon had traded her administrative wardrobe for a dark grey dragon-scale tactical uniform—sleeveless, form-fitting, and entirely devoid of ornament. Blonde hair pulled back. Deer-dragon horns catching the harsh arena light.

Her grey eyes, usually clouded by the exhaustion of approving thousands of expenditure reports, had sharpened into vertical slits. Cold. Absolute. The Milan'thirskaya bloodline, stripped of its paperwork. Floating at her right shoulder: [Tyrant's Verdict]. A phenomenally heavy codex forged from an unknown silver metal. No ornament. No filigree.

Just compressed mass, radiating a gravitational wrongness that made the surrounding stonework tilt fractionally toward it, as if the arena floor itself was uncertain about the physics. To celebrate Alucard's coming of age, the Milan'thirskaya family had dismantled twelve high-magic dimensions, extracted their planetary cores, and forged them into a book. The giftgiving conventions of White City dragon witches were, Hathaway privately noted, deeply alarming. She would never say this out loud.

Across the field, Alice watched the silver codex float. Recognition sparked in her teal eyes. The terrifying, absolute stillness of her "Full-Power" state fractured, instantly hijacked by something infinitely worse. The chaotic, predatory author returned. Her lips curved into a sharp, cruel grin.

"A dozen dead worlds," Alice purred.

"Finally. A prop heavy enough to keep your chair still." Alucard's golden hair flared. The vertical slits of her grey eyes dilated—nothing left in her expression but murder. The last microscopic thread of her executive composure came apart.

"KOF Singles, Match Two—Royal Rosas: Alucard Milan'thirskaya. Mare Brume: Lee Alice Varro!" The referee raised a burning arm. Alucard lowered her center of gravity. The cracked stone beneath her boots buckled under sudden, localized gravitational stress. The fireball dropped. Alucard's answer to weather control, fog terrain, an undisclosed ceiling of legendary summons, an astronomical mana reserve, and the absolute, sickening audacity of that insult was, in its totality: Rush down.

Pure, unreasonable, stat-check rush down. [Spell Chain] activated—a combat feat mandatory for the professional KOF circuit, granting a massive cast speed multiplier to six pre-anchored spells. A multiplier was just a mathematical variable. To reach the true ceiling, Alucard violently stacked it with [Quicken Spell]. [Tyrant's Verdict] erupted. The heavy silver pages blurred into a solid white hum. The codex bypassed cognitive lag entirely—direct circuit feed, parallel processing, zero downtime between matrices.

Feat multiplier. Feat compression. Artifact parallel processing. 0. 138 seconds. The theoretical minimum frame rate for sequential mana expulsion. Six high-tier state modifiers discharged in a single, terrifying blink. [Bull's Strength]. [Griffon's Grace]. [Bear's Endurance]. [Falcon's Velocity]. Four mythical beasts compressed directly into muscle and bone. Her tactical uniform creaked. Her physical density spiked past the threshold where physics starts leaving strongly worded notes. [Lantern Cat Anti-Gravity].

[Greater Cat's Might]. Two astronomically expensive state modifiers. The weight of a Dragon Witch: negated. Raw kinetic output: elevated to city-wall-demolition territory. Alucard's active circuits instantly spun up the matrices for the seventh and eighth defensive auras. Her mindset was one word: more. If Alice left the casting window open, Alucard would happily stand there and stack buffs until her physical density collapsed the local physics engine. Alice slammed the window shut.

The exact microsecond the fireball dropped, Alice unleashed the Category 5 hurricane stored in her tails. [Omniscient Rain] crushed the ruins, instantly erasing visibility. A Tier-4 [Spatial Displacement] tore her coordinates backward, vanishing her into the labyrinth of crumbling archways to brutally stretch the engagement distance. Simultaneously, she weaponized the deluge. Hundreds of hyper-compressed [Rain Spikes] materialized from the downpour, converging on Alucard's stationary coordinates.

She followed the artillery with heavy infantry. The [Pawprint Talisman of Calling Greater Cats] equipped on her wrist flared to life. Channeling its embedded [Cat-Ear Telemetry] effect through the casting material crushed between her fingers, she airdropped the Alpha—the twin-tailed localized disaster—directly into Alucard's lap. The twenty-five-second KOF embargo was active.

Magically silenced, the Alpha simply raised its crackling greataxe and brought it down—space-tearing kinetic energy, full commitment, the weight of a falling tower aimed straight at the greedy spellcaster's head. The shadow of the descending greataxe eclipsed the arena light. Alucard clicked her tongue in profound irritation. The codex snapped shut. [Artifact Overload: Physical Form] engaged. It was no longer a grimoire.

It was a silver brick carrying the mass of twelve dead worlds, and Alucard was about to use it on someone. This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version. The cracked stone beneath her boots detonated into a vacuum hemisphere. She ignored the rain spikes entirely. They shattered harmlessly against the overlapping auras of four mythical beasts. She became a sonic boom.

Rhode's answer to this exact summon had been a Tier-7 [Banishment] —a clean eviction that resulted in a four-minute economic bleeding. Alucard's ledger operated on a completely different currency. She traded stamina, not spell slots. She swung the silver codex directly into the descending greataxe. CRACK. The greataxe shattered. Alucard channeled her supersonic momentum straight through the broken weapon, driving the silver brick directly into the Alpha's chest. Twelve dead worlds delivered at Mach 1.

The Alpha Storm Greater Cat—Legendary-tier, possessing the [Unbreakable] trait—was instantly deleted, violently converting into blue motes before its paws could touch the ground. Alice gained the leyline refund, but the spell deficit compression was minimal. Alucard had bypassed the magical economy entirely by using instantaneous blunt force trauma. Alucard's physical sprint continued unabated, tearing through the torrential rain.

And because her tactical greed was boundless, her active circuits were already weaving a Tier-7 Transmutation on the run: [Dragon-Tiger Might]. She wanted the unlimited strength and dexterity scaling. She wanted the mana-fueled resistances. She was going to stack buffs until the arena broke. Alice refused to yield a single microsecond of casting space. The Alpha's blue motes hadn't even faded before the fog split again. Greater Cat number two hit the field.

Flanking it were dozens of standard Lantern Cats, immediately laying down a chaotic net of suppressing fire. Hyper-compressed [Rain Spikes] rained down in a coordinated barrage. A bizarre, bubbling glug-glug sound echoed through the downpour. A Tier-5 [Ghost Ship] tore out of the mist. A massive spectral galleon displacing the rain, screaming directly toward Alucard's trajectory. Deep in the ruins, the spell simultaneously coated Alice in a thirty-point armor shield and a double-layered regeneration matrix.

Alucard clicked her tongue. The ship's collision radius was too massive, forcing her to ruthlessly sever her half-formed matrix of [Dragon-Tiger Might]. Aborting a Tier-7 Transmutation generated a terrifying wave of highly volatile mana backlash. Alucard didn't waste it. Capitalizing on her apocalyptic physical buffs, she simply planted her boot, shattered the bedrock beneath her, and physically launched her body forty meters laterally—bypassing the spectral galleon at Mach speed through raw kinetic force alone.

Simultaneously, she weaponized the aborted Tier-7 mana. She hijacked the bleeding energy, forcibly compressing it in her throat and unleashing it as a point-blank [Tier-6 Evocation: Silver Dragon's Roar]. An omnidirectional shockwave of pure force detonated across the ruins. The sonic blast pulverized the incoming rain spikes into harmless mist and swept the perimeter of standard Lantern Cats off the grid. From the bench, Hathaway was counting. The attrition war lasted exactly four minutes. And Alucard was winning.

Through the blast-proof glass in the preparation zone, Bella leaned forward. Her unsealed eye fixed upon the arena with an eerie, absolute stillness.

"The Mist Lord retreats into the abyss for the sixth time," Bella murmured. Her voice was stripped of its usual dramatic flair, replaced by a calm, solemn certainty—the quiet weight of a finalized prophecy.

"She cowers within the War Fog. She believes this ultimate veil will conceal her final struggle." Bella slowly shook her head, her gaze almost pitying.

"But what use is hiding the threads of destiny when the Silver Tyrant has already decided to burn the entire tapestry to ash?" Rhode exhaled, leaning back slightly, the tension finally draining from her shoulders.

"Checkmate," Rhode said, crossing her arms with a relaxed, feral smirk.

"Alucard isn't giving her the space." Beside them, Nino tapped her tactical monitor, bringing up the raw telemetry.

"It's the action economy," Nino said.

"Over four minutes of brutal exchanges, Alucard has ground out a positive 0. 5 spell differential. Half a spell's worth of casting time." Nino pointed at the data.

"At this tier, that buffer is a guaranteed execution parameter." On the bench, Hathaway felt a sudden, horrifying chill that had nothing to do with the freezing rain in the arena. Shut up, she screamed internally, her eyes going wide. Stop talking! All of you! Hathaway knew the karmic law of every competitive circuit: you do not pop the champagne at halftime. You do not say 'checkmate' before the enemy king is actually dead.

And you never call anything a "guaranteed execution parameter" when fighting the main character of a weather domain. This was a textbook jinx. A catastrophic death flag. Her entire team was casually constructing the biggest karmic backlash in the history of the professional league right in front of her face. On the field, completely unaware of her team's lethal jinxing, Alucard proved Nino's tactical read with terrifying accuracy. Her vertical pupils contracted with sheer tactical greed.

She slammed her hand onto [Tyrant's Verdict]. The codex flipped open to Page 666.

"[Final Judgment — Execution Mode]!" A terrifying black aura ignited around the silver book. She was already channeling. A Greater Cat and a swarm of standard Lantern Cats threw themselves at her. Alucard didn't flinch. Her repulsion field shredded the summons in an instant — but the kinetic weight of their simultaneous destruction sent a violent tremor through her casting matrix. A microscopic stutter. Milliseconds. Behind the ruins, Alice withdrew an ancient, heavily engraved [Jeweled Gong]. Her tail struck.

CLANG. The [Jeweled Gong] shattered. A physical law bent its knee to an absurd amount of mana burned in the space of a microsecond. [Legendary Spell Sub-species: Boundless Spreading Tide]. From the bench, Hathaway stopped breathing. I fucking knew it, her brain supplied unhelpfully. The air pressure plummeted. A towering wall of white water materialized from the void, an annihilating tsunami of purity swallowing the sky.

It ripped through the collapsing ruins, obliterating the fog and the stones in a singular, unstoppable roar. Alucard's head snapped up. She hadn't finished her charge, but she had no choice. She roared, pushing the repulsion field to 120% overload, and swung the half-charged [Execution Mode] directly into the incoming tide with every physical buff stacked on her bones. [Dragon's Might]. [Bear's Endurance]. The weight of twelve dead worlds against a world-ending flood.

For one impossible, physics-defying second, the Dragon Witch stat-checked the ocean. But you cannot punch a tsunami to death. The repulsion field shattered. RUUUUMBLE— The tide swallowed the arena. The glowing water washed over Alice's shattered body. She was still standing. BEEP. A violent flash of teleportation light swallowed Alucard just as the tsunami crushed her coordinates. The water didn't just drain. It took the island with it.

The entire Six-Part Miniature Arena—a landmass spanning dozens of miles—groaned under the conceptual weight of the tide. The island's bedrock fractured into massive tectonic plates, crumbling into the turbulent spatial sea below. The lingering mana of the purifying flood didn't dissipate; it continued to silently cannibalize the very fabric of the spatial curtain enclosing the zone.

[Tyrant's Verdict] plummeted into the void along with the rubble, flashing briefly as its owner's auto-retrieval snatched it back to the infirmary. Far across the spatial turbulence, standing on a disintegrating fragment of the island's core suspended in the void, was Lee Alice Varro. Barely. She had won. The moment the system registered, she stopped.

Her teal cat eyes—which had been terrifyingly, unrelentingly bright through the whole magnificent, expensive disaster—went still, and she slipped off the crumbling stone without ceremony, falling freely into the spatial sea. The specific, quiet way a machine shuts down when there is nothing left in the reservoir. A rescue beam intercepted her instantly. The system confirmed it. KOF Match Two — Mare Brume Wins. Current Score: Royal Rosas 1 — Mare Brume 2.

In the Royal Rosas preparation zone, the silence was absolute. And suffocatingly awkward. Bella's prophetic composure had shattered. Her unsealed eye stared blankly into the void — a high priestess who had just delivered a spectacularly wrong prophecy, now frantically calculating how to spin the narrative before the angry natives lit the stake. Beside her, Rhode's relaxed smirk had vanished without a trace, replaced by a rigid, appalled stare.

Hathaway felt a surge of sympathy for Alucard, currently being revived in the medical bay. This wasn't a tactical failure, she thought, her eye twitching. This was a non-combat casualty. Beside the blast-proof glass, Nino cleared her throat.

"Zero point two five seconds," Nino said. Her voice lacked its usual sharp edge; it sounded hollow as she stared at the scrolling telemetry on her tactical monitor.

"She compressed the casting window by layering [Double Casting] over a Legendary matrix. The conceptual friction alone demands a ten-fold mana multiplier." Rhode turned slowly from the glass.

"That's mathematically impossible," she said, her voice strained.

"She was heavily cursed. She'd been brawling with Alucard for four minutes. A ten-fold Legendary invoice? She didn't have that kind of mana left in her reserves. Not today." She didn't, Hathaway realized. The pieces clicked together in her mind. The moment Alice's jaw worked, swallowing something down mid-fight. The final, seemingly pointless suicide charge of the last Greater Cat and the standard Lantern swarm. Alice hadn't just emptied her mana pool. She had meticulously orchestrated her own bankruptcy.

She gathered her absolute last dregs of mana, absorbed the leyline refund from the final wave of cats the second Alucard shattered them, and bridged the remaining, impossible deficit by burning her own literal life force. But even with the mana paid and the cast time halved to 0. 25 seconds, it was a terrifyingly fragile gamble.

"But her weather domain collapsed the second she cast it," Hathaway said quietly, voicing the final discrepancy.

"Her mist regeneration was gone. If she burned her own life force just to trigger the spell, she should have died before the tide even hit Alucard. How did she stay standing long enough for the system to register the kill?"

"Rodeline," Nino said.

"Lee Rodeline Lancaster." Each word landed with absolute precision. A fraction too precise.

"Holder of [The Axiom of the Water Dragon]." Hathaway frowned. Lee Rodeline Lancaster. The name hovered right at the edge of her memory—absurdly familiar, but she couldn't place it in any tactical database. Holy shit. The Witch of the Firmament. The Grand Luminary. Sixteen-time consecutive recipient of the Weave Laureate. She was the literal author of Hathaway's mandatory Dragon Ecology textbook. Nino moved on.

"She took a standard Legendary matrix and rewrote the base code. Embedded deep within that cataclysmic destruction is a hyper-potent, secondary healing matrix. It bypasses anti-magic defenses entirely because the system registers it as a beneficial blessing. You cannot counterspell a gift.

"Casting a pure healing spell at a Legendary price tag might seem exorbitant. But as a supplementary mechanic attached to an unblockable, island-sinking AoE wipe? The ultimate tactical bargain. The spell acted as magical superglue, holding Alice's failing biology together for that final half-second. Just long enough to outlast Alucard." But Alice was down now. Royal Rosas still had Tasia. Hathaway looked down at the leather-bound manuscript resting on her lap. She had promised herself— only when the dust settles.

When the ticket is officially secured and this nightmare formally becomes enemy intelligence. She raised her hand, resting her fingertips against the cold leather cover. Then a shift in the lighting across the void caught her eye. In the Mare Brume preparation zone, Elysia had risen from her seat. The human Witch with flowing golden hair and emerald eyes stood by the blast-proof glass. She wasn't radiating vengeance.

There was no dramatic eruption of mana, no theatrical anger at seeing her childhood friend plummet into the abyss. She looked at the spatial coordinates where Alice had fallen. Her expression was entirely unreadable. Watching her, Hathaway felt a drop in her internal temperature. Elysia's demeanor wasn't dangerous in any conventional sense. It was just quiet. Like mist. Like water.

Like the [Boundless Spreading Tide] that had just erased a landmass—a spell composed entirely of pure, gentle, healing water, completely devoid of malice, yet carrying enough mass to drown the world. Elysia slowly lifted her gaze. Her emerald eyes crossed the massive, ruined expanse of the spatial fold, locking onto the Royal Rosas preparation zone. Onto Tasia. Tasia stood motionless by the glass, her own grey eyes meeting the gaze of the Mare Brume Vice-Ace. A silent, fathomless depth.

Hathaway looked at the two of them. Then, very slowly, she looked down at her own hand resting on the cover of the manuscript. A spike of cold went directly down her spine. Am I going to jinx Tasia?! Hathaway snatched her fingertips away from the cold leather cover like it was made of molten iron. The variable hadn't been locked. The tide hadn't receded. And she refused to be the one to karmically assassinate their Ace. She set her hands flat on her knees, staring straight ahead. Not yet. Absolutely not yet.