Chương 105: The DLC Installed Without Consent

[Time]: Summer Break, Day 22 — Grand Finals, 02: 45 PM [Location]: Open Sea · Grand Masters Regional Qualifier Venue · Six-Part Miniature Arena The spatial curtain rippled once. Twice. Then the grassland arrived. Flat, impossibly green, stretching to the boundary walls of the arena in every direction. No cover. No terrain features except what you made yourself. The oldest configuration in the tournament ruleset, still the most brutal, because it gave you nothing and demanded everything from what you brought.

Tasia walked out first. [Tyrant's Grace] levitated silently beside her left shoulder. The heavy grimoire, bound in ancient dragon-hide, was forged from the compressed cores of twelve dead, high-magic worlds. The scorched claw imprint on its cover wasn't decoration; it was a physical manifestation of gravitational mass catching the arena lights like dull bronze. Golden hair caught the wind.

Her grey vertical pupils tracked the field geometry, parsing the coordinate grid in three flawless passes before she had even taken four steps. Tasia shifted her center of mass. She pre-spooled her mana circuits to a razor's edge, locking the structural matrix of an anti-gravity sigil directly into the leather of her boots. She held the kinetic energy back by sheer force of will, ready to detonate it into existence the exact microsecond the system timer hit zero.

Her stance lightened by a fraction of a millimeter in pure anticipation—a coiled, predatory stillness that had never appeared in any of the earlier qualifier matches. Elysia emerged from the opposite axis. Golden hair, emerald eyes, and a composure that bordered on absolute zero. Her gaze anchored strictly to the coordinate grid of the arena floor, reducing the roaring stadium and the Royal Rosas bench into irrelevant, non-existent variables.

Her boots parted the grass with the rhythmic, unvarying cadence of a metronome. It was the stride of someone who had already run this exact simulation a thousand times in a sterile room, stepping onto the field merely to print the final receipt. On the bench, Hathaway watched the distance between them. Roughly four hundred meters. Looking at that gap, Hathaway's game-designer brain parsed the paradox. At lower power levels, a stray [Magic Missile] ended careers.

But at Grand Masters apex, every defensive system was too robust to pierce at range, and reaction times fast enough to sidestep almost any incoming trajectory. Long-range artillery simply stopped being lethal. Supreme magical duels inevitably collapsed into Close Range brawls. Close enough that a sonic-speed kinetic push could land before the target moved. High above the arena, the head referee raised her staff.

A single, blinding fireball arced down from the official's box and slammed into the exact center of the grassland. The moment the crater detonated, Tasia released the pre-spooled anti-gravity sigil on her boots. With a terrifying, instantaneous burst, she teleported two hundred meters forward. The sheer kinetic force of her start-up kicked up a shockwave of torn grass. She had instantly claimed the center of the arena, projecting her Admin Zone directly over Elysia.

[Tyrant's Grace] slammed open on her right shoulder. During the previous match, Alucard had burned her opening frames stacking defensive auras and stat buffs just to survive inside a weather domain. Tasia had no such burdens. Relying entirely on her overwhelming stat advantage over the human Witch, Tasia abandoned defensive layering completely. She opted for pure, saturated bombardment. 0. 138 seconds. Tasia's casting matrix violently expanded.

She chained six high-tier spells in a single, continuous exhalation, a relentless, administrative overwrite of reality surrounding Elysia. First came the conceptual rendering of a [Prismatic Fusillade], a gorgeous, blinding fan of multicolored artillery detonating into existence directly on top of Elysia's coordinates. Layered instantly over that matrix were the invisible, crushing gravity wells of a [Force Volley], designed to instantly collapse the spatial pocket.

To physically lock the trap, a roaring [Thunderwave] erupted from the ground to destabilize Elysia's footing, immediately followed by the blinding, branching arcs of [Chain Lightning] sealing the vertical airspace. The fifth layer was a lethal, emerald beam of [Disintegrate] threaded perfectly through the elemental chaos. And to complete the apocalyptic crossfire, Tasia flooded every remaining cubic inch of the Admin Zone with a merciless, hive-mind swarm of tracking [Magic Missiles].

Outside the spatial curtain, the crowd's roar shook the stadium's foundation. This was what forty thousand people had paid for. Sure, Alice summoning greater storm cats was hype—for exactly two minutes. But watching Alucard punch them to death in a fog bank? The crowd didn't buy tickets to watch zookeepers play hide-and-seek in the dark. Tasia was giving them exactly what they craved: an absolute masterclass in visual, destructive spectacle. It was a mathematically flawless kill-box.

But inside that apocalyptic crossfire, Elysia operated with absolute, surgical clarity. A silent [Counterspell] severed the conceptual thread of the [Disintegrate] beam the exact microsecond before it rendered. Instantly chaining into a [Deflect Shell], she repelled the crushing gravity of the [Force Volley].

She achieved perfect [Spell Clashing], rapidly firing her own kinetic barrage to annihilate the incoming [Magic Missiles] mid-air, while grounding out the [Chain Lightning] and [Thunderwave] by summoning a perfectly angled [Wall of Force] fragment beneath her boots. She deliberately allowed the grazing edge of the [Prismatic Fusillade] to strike her. The innate protective enchantments woven into her combat robes flared violently, instantly burning out their auto-defense capacity to absorb the impact.

Elysia had decisively sacrificed her gear's emergency safeguard to claw back the spell differential to a recoverable deficit. She had bought herself the single microsecond of safe passage she needed. Elysia instantly chained her final solve into a [Misty Step]. Using the remaining kinetic backlash of the magical collisions as fuel, she threw herself backward and to the side, completely escaping the 50-meter Admin Zone before Tasia's conceptual matrix could re-render.

When her boots touched the grass again, she had put a full four hundred meters between herself and Tasia. On the bench, Hathaway's breath caught in her throat. To the spectators and the bench outside the barrier, the visual feed of that 0. 138-second exchange was being broadcast in a natural, three-times slow motion. But even at a third of the speed, Elysia's spell-weaving raised the hair on Hathaway's arms. It was like watching a flawless, no-hit clear of a maximum-difficulty bullet hell game.

The way Elysia threaded the needle between disintegrating beams and force wells, grazing the exact edge of the prismatic fire—it was a breathtaking display of mechanical art. Hathaway had never, in her two lives, seen anyone physically and mathematically dissect a saturated death-trap with such beautiful precision. Elysia had executed a mechanical miracle. She had burned her robe's auto-enchantments and willingly swallowed a tactical deficit right out of the gate just to survive the opening frame.

But when her boots touched the grass, she was four hundred meters away. What the hell? You didn't just casually burn your auto-defenses and execute a flawless escape just to immediately max out your distance from the enemy. Elysia's mana pool and stamina were mathematically inferior to Tasia's. She couldn't win a battle of attrition. And at four hundred meters, Elysia's spells would have travel time; Tasia could just calmly dodge or tank them.

Elysia had just handed the center of the arena and all tactical initiative to Tasia for absolutely nothing in return. To Hathaway, it looked like Elysia had just spent an incredible amount of skill to choose a slower, more agonizing suicide. On the field, Tasia recognized the anomaly instantly. The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. Her grey eyes tracked Elysia's exit from the conceptual sphere. She didn't hesitate.

She triggered her peerless short-burst acceleration again, aiming to instantly close the gap and swallow Elysia back into the death zone. Tasia teleported, reappearing precisely on Elysia's predicted vector. But Elysia was already moving. A microsecond before Tasia's arrival, Elysia had cast [Drift Anchor], leaving a glowing coordinate mark on the grass, and immediately triggered [Null Tremor].

A shockwave of pure repulsion erupted from Elysia's boots, blasting her along the perimeter of the arena in a smooth, continuous arc. Tasia turned to pursue. She triggered another gorgeous, instantaneous short-burst, attempting her signature stop-and-cast rhythm to swallow Elysia back into the Admin Zone. But as Tasia materialized from the blink, something was wrong. There was a microscopic drag. A mechanical stutter in her posture. It's the physics engine. Tasia's straight-line start-up was flawless.

Her sudden stops were immaculate. But tracking Elysia required a continuous, curved pursuit. Elysia wasn't just running away; she was maintaining a massive, high-speed orbit along the extreme outer edge of the grassland. To keep up and keep Elysia in her sights, Tasia had to constantly adjust her acceleration vector. The anti-gravity sigil on Tasia's boots negated her gravitational weight, but it couldn't delete her mass. The sheer, crushing inertia of the Kingdom Silver-Helm Dragon bloodline was still there.

And when moving in a continuous, high-speed circle, that super-heavyweight mass generated catastrophic centrifugal force. Tasia over-corrected on the arc. Her sigil whined audibly under the sheer stress of trying to continuously redirect a dragon's inertia. She had to forcefully shed her own momentum just to turn her body and face Elysia, completely ruining her fluid casting rhythm. Hathaway stared at the field in sheer awe.

Abandoning the "Forward Press" meta to survive on the very edge of Tasia's Admin Zone, constantly sidestepping conceptual detonations while maintaining a perfect, continuous circular trajectory, required an absolutely horrifying level of execution. A single misstep, a single delayed cast, and Tasia's straight-line burst would catch you. But Elysia was a monster in her own right.

She maintained the orbit with surgical precision, casually weaving a [Lightning Bolt] from a safe, three-hundred-and-fifty-meter distance while riding the razor's edge of the death zone. For the first time in her competitive career, the fluid, beautiful rhythm of Tasia's assault had been broken. She was being spun in circles until her own physical mass betrayed her.

"Does she really think she can use Tasia for moving target practice?" Rhode muttered it, her eyes never leaving the field. Beside them, Nino simply tapped her tactical monitor, her expression entirely unmoved.

"A foolish countermeasure," Nino said. On the field, Tasia came to the exact same conclusion. If she couldn't catch the prey in a curved pursuit, she would simply remove the curves. One moment Tasia was mid-pursuit, her anti-gravity sigil whining against the centrifugal strain. The next, she released the lock on her bloodline. An ancient, biological truth overrode her silhouette.

Mirror-bright, impenetrable dragon scales physically breached her skin, seamlessly plating her from collarbone to ankle as the Kingdom Silver-Helm Dragon Witch revealed its true form. She planted her boots into the center of the arena. Elysia's tracking lightning slammed into Tasia's chest, grounding out in a violent shower of sparks. The scorch marks on the armor were real, but shallow. Entirely irrelevant to its biological integrity.

At that distance, Elysia's spells simply lacked the close-range kinetic penetration to pierce the heavy dragon scales. Standing dead-center in the grassland like an immovable silver monolith, Tasia unleashed her true terror. She started targeting the map. [Tyrant's Grace] opened on her right shoulder. Tasia began to permanently overwrite the arena's geometric coordinates with a [Spatial Siege].

The translucent purple grids slammed down on the outer edges of the grassland in a terrifying blur—even at one-third speed. Hathaway could count the frames as the geometric rooms collapsed, deleting the safe zones meter by meter with the mechanical ruthlessness of a guillotine. Elysia read the collapsing grid lines. The Spatial Siege had consumed the outer thirds of the grassland. The orbit was finished. From the bench, Hathaway watched the Vice-Ace pivot mid-stride and run directly at Tasia. Contact range.

She's going to dump everything at point-blank. Elysia didn't stop. She burned her remaining mobility budget not to survive but to close. The Spatial Siege boundary collapsed behind her as she moved. [Weave Overload]. The volatile aura erupted around her while she was still running — a blinding corona of unstable mana pressurizing her staff. She leveled it at Tasia's chest without breaking stride, burning her entire remaining mana pool to max out her elemental output for one instantaneous strike.

[Maximized Tier-8 Evocation: Starfire Cascade]. A roaring, overwhelming torrent of superheated plasma and liquid fire erupted at point-blank range. A continuous waterfall of absolute destruction aimed dead-center at Tasia's chest, designed to violently grind away physical matter. The superheated torrent slammed directly into her mirrored dragon scales.

Tasia took the Tier-8 evocation directly to her prime-dragon physical body, violently forcing raw, unshaped mana directly into her own bloodstream to pressurize her scales against the apocalyptic heat. The mirror-bright dragon scales shrieked, glowing cherry-red. At that range, Elysia's overloaded torrent fought a brutal, visible war against Tasia's biological mitigation stats.

Hathaway watched in absolute shock as a microscopic hairline crack appeared in the scales covering Tasia's chest, oozing a single drop of boiling blood. But Elysia's time was up. The spatial cage slammed shut behind her. The outer map was deleted. Tasia's grey eyes locked onto Elysia. Standing inside the fading embers of the firestorm, Tasia simply raised her hand and pointed. The [Bigby's Clenched Fist] originated directly against Elysia's sternum. CRACK.

The horrifying sound of a localized kinetic detonation pulverized Elysia's ribcage, completely caving in her upper torso before her body was thrown backward across the scorched grassland. The Resurrection Stone engaged instantly. A column of emergency white light swallowed her shattered, lifeless form. BEEP. KOF Match Three — Royal Rosas Wins. Current Score: Royal Rosas 2 — Mare Brume 2.

The stadium erupted into an earth-shattering shockwave of pure adrenaline—forty thousand people screaming for the absolute, unyielding violence of the Dragon Empress. But on the bench, there was no celebration. Hathaway stared at the tactical monitors, her brow furrowed. Same trick.

"Fifty times the base cost." Hathaway turned. The unflappable tactician of Royal Rosas wore an expression uglier than Hathaway had ever seen." [Quadruple Casting] layered with [Localized Time Acceleration]," Nino stated grimly, her eyes locked on Tasia's heavily taxing breathing on the field. Hathaway's breath physically stopped. Fifty times? She looked up at the giant holographic scoreboard. 2 to 2. The bleak reality of Mare Brume's parting gift washed over her.

Elysia was just a Vice-Ace; she shouldn't have been able to push Tasia into a corner where burning fifty times the mana cost was the only viable execution method. But the counter had worked. The orbital kite protocol was brilliantly executed. The worst part was that every team with a video analysis department in the national bracket had just watched it happen. The heavy-inertia flaw, the safe-zone geometry, the armor's threshold timing—it was all public data now.

Two weeks before the Main Tournament opened, Alice had successfully broadcasted the exact mathematical lever required to crack Tasia. The most expensive game balance demonstration Hathaway had ever watched had just concluded. The DLC had installed itself without her consent. On the field, Tasia dismissed the anti-gravity sigil. Hathaway watched as Tasia landed with a heavy, distinct thud. Tasia didn't raise her hand to the screaming crowd.

Instead, she ran a gauntleted hand over her chest plate before the silver dragon scales dissolved, her fingertips tracing the microscopic, hairline crack Elysia's overloaded torrent had left behind. A single drop of boiling dragon blood had dried against the silver armor. It wasn't a lethal wound. But Hathaway saw the way Tasia looked at it. She knows, Hathaway thought. Exactly what Alice just did. That single drop of blood was a public beacon, paid for with a brutal arena elimination.

Hathaway's gaze shifted from the invincible dragon Witch to the scorched ground where Elysia had just been violently erased. An eccentric, chaotic captain with a grand, impossible dream. An impeccably loyal, flawlessly skilled childhood friend who acts as the Vice-Ace. A Vice-Ace who shatters her own mana circuits and walks into a brutal arena execution, just to leave a single crack in a Raid Boss's armor to pave the way for her captain.

It checked every single box of a classic, blood-pumping, tear-jerking Shounen protagonist's backstory. For a horrifying, agonizing moment, Hathaway spiraled into a deep crisis of meta-narrative survival. I thought we were the protagonist team?! In the immutable laws of gaming and anime, when the eccentric Captain falls and the loyal Vice-Ace tragically shatters herself to leave a weakness, the remaining roster ALWAYS gets a massive, "Inherited Will" reverse-sweep buff! Are we just mid-season stepping stones?!

Is Mare Brume's anchor going to wipe us out with the power of bonds?! But then, her racing brain hit a violent, screeching halt. Look at the actual plot. Who actually remembered why this epic, blood-soaked tragedy was happening in the first place?! What was the "fallen captain's will" that Elysia was bleeding to inherit? It wasn't world peace. It wasn't the glory of the sport.

It was to march onto the Main Stage, look the Greed Umbrella dead in the eye, and deliver the most suicidal trash-talk in competitive history. I dug through your darkest secrets. Wrote three hundred pages on it. Your curse didn't kill me. Are you mad? Come try again on live television. It was the exact mentality of a toxic gamer surviving a Raid Boss's ultimate wipe with one HP, strictly to teabag the hitbox and spam emotes. And Elysia had just happily fed herself to a dragon to make it happen.

And Alice had cheerfully burned a world-shaking monopoly on greater cats just to buy five minutes on the hot mic. What kind of protagonist does that?! Hathaway let out a long, silent exhale. The Protagonist Halo was safe. Royal Rosas wasn't narratively doomed to be a stepping stone. They were just the unfortunate collateral damage standing in the way of a maniacal fanfic writer's twisted literary climax. An infinitely colder realization dropped into the pit of her stomach. Why did Alice write that book?

If Elysia had just died a tragic, heroic death to secure Alice's unhinged literary dreams... and Alice's unhinged literary dreams only existed because Hathaway had handed her the investigation prompt to begin with... Am I the hidden Mastermind orchestrating the tragedy?! Am I the root of all evil?! Hathaway buried her face in her hands, letting out a long, muffled groan of absolute, soul-crushing despair. You have got to be kidding me.

"Hathaway, are you crying or having a stroke?" Hathaway flinched and peeked through her fingers. Rhode was leaning over her, looking down at her younger cousin with genuine, slightly exasperated confusion. As Hathaway slowly lowered her hands, she realized the bench was more crowded than it had been three minutes ago. Alucard had quietly returned from the medical bay. Alucard was leaning forward, her elbows resting on her knees. Her eyes were locked entirely on the field—specifically on the center of Tasia's chest.

Alucard's jaw tightened. She slowly, methodically crushed the empty paper water cup in her hand into a dense, flat disk.

"That psycho cat," Alucard muttered.

"It's a biological absolute," Nino stated from the tactical monitor, her voice cutting through the heavy air.

"The Silver-Helm trades maneuverability for indestructible mass. Unmatched linear burst and absolute defense, paid for with catastrophic centrifugal drag. It is the flip side of her greatest advantage." Nino deleted the orbital kite trajectory from the display with a single, ruthless swipe.

"We cannot make Tasia a lighter dragon. That is biological fact." A pause.

"The rest is an engineering problem."

"Then let the foolish moths flutter toward the flame," a voice drifted from the end of the bench.

"They gaze upon a single, fractured scale and mistake it for a shattered throne," Bella murmured, her tone carrying the weight of a gothic aria.

"But they forget the abyss that guards her. To dance in the Empress's shadow, they must first survive the requiem of our stage." Hathaway swallowed hard. Hathaway looked at the unyielding expressions of her teammates, and then at Tasia, who was standing quietly in the center of the ruined arena. Fine. Royal Rosas was a Raid Boss. And the Raid Boss had just entered its second phase.