My blood did not just turn to ice; it flash-froze, shattered, and then sublimated into a cloud of pure, unadulterated dread.
[Enchantment: 'Field of Inertia.'][Description: Creates a localized field that nullifies all non-physical kinetic force and dampens all elemental magic within a 10-meter radius.]
The words scrolled in my vision, stark and damning. They were a death sentence delivered in the calm, clinical font of my own system.
My power was gone.
My 'Kinetic Redirect,' the trump card that had shattered a troll's club, was useless. My 'Terraforming,' the very foundation of my strategy, the ace up my sleeve, was nullified. Every plan we had made, every grueling hour of training, had been rendered completely and utterly irrelevant by a single, brilliant, and utterly cruel enchantment.
The roar of the crowd faded into a distant, meaningless hum. The bright sun overhead seemed to dim. In that moment, there was only me, the sandy floor of the arena, and the mountain of steel and confidence that was Sir Kaelan. And between us, an invisible, shimmering wall of anti-magic, a perfect cage designed just for me.
I was no longer the Glitch Sovereign. I was just a Level 1 boy with a rusty sword, a weak body, and a few days of clumsy swordsmanship lessons.
I glanced toward the royal box. I saw Elizabeth's face, her skin ashen, her eyes wide with the horror of dawning realization. I saw Luna, her hands clasped to her mouth, her face a mask of pure terror. Her good luck charm felt cold and useless in my pocket.
And I saw Duke Crimson.
He was smiling. It was not his usual smug, political smile. It was a genuine, heartfelt expression of pure, sadistic joy. He was savoring this moment, the moment his true trap had sprung, the moment he had stripped the monster of its fangs and claws, leaving it naked and helpless before the champion. He hadn't just planned to have me killed; he had planned to have me humiliated first, to show the entire world that without my "tricks," I was nothing.
"Did you really think the Duke would allow a fair fight, boy?" Sir Kaelan's voice was not unkind. It was the voice of a professional, a soldier stating a simple, unavoidable fact. "He may be many things, but a fool is not one of them. He had this enchantment commissioned the very night of the banquet. A rush job, but the Royal Enchanters are masters of their craft."
He took a slow, deliberate step forward, the golden light of the 'Field of Inertia' shimmering around his shield. He was a walking dead-magic zone.
"There is no shame in yielding, Lord Silverstein," Kaelan said, his voice resonating with a warrior's honor. "You are not a swordsman. I will grant you a clean defeat. No one will think less of you."
It was a generous offer. An honorable way out. I could yield, accept the humiliation, and live. For a little while, at least. The Duke would have won. He would have proven his point. My mystique, my power, would be shattered. I would be a laughingstock, a one-trick pony whose trick had been figured out.
And for a split second, I considered it. The programmer in me, the part that valued survival above all else, screamed at me to take the deal. To live, to fight another day.
But then I looked past Kaelan, at the faces in the crowd. I saw the sneering contempt of the Duke's faction, the pitying looks of the Traditionalists, the disappointment on the King's face. And I looked at Elizabeth, at the flicker of despair in her eyes. I looked at Luna, at her crumbling faith.
If I yielded now, I wouldn't just be losing a duel. I would be losing everything. The alliances, the respect, the fear. I would be losing the momentum that was my only true weapon.
No. I would not yield.
[Host's adrenaline and cortisol levels are spiking,] ARIA's voice was a cold, sharp anchor in the storm of my panic. [Probability of survival via conventional combat: 0.003%. The 'Field of Inertia' is a masterpiece of enchantment engineering. It draws power directly from the user's stamina, meaning as long as Sir Kaelan can stand, the field will be active. It is, for all intents and purposes, a perfect counter to your abilities.]
A perfect counter... I thought, my mind latching onto the words. In programming, there is no such thing as a perfect system. Every system has rules. Every rule has an exception. Every wall has a crack. I just have to find it.
"Yield?" I said, my voice coming out stronger than I expected. I forced a slow, confident smile onto my face, a mask of bravado to hide the terror beneath. "Sir Kaelan, you misunderstand. I was merely giving you a moment to appreciate the fine weather before your defeat."
A ripple of surprise went through the crowd. Kaelan himself looked taken aback by my sheer, unadulterated arrogance.
"Brave words, boy," he said, his expression hardening. "I will try to remember them when I am knocking your teeth out."
He raised his shield and began to advance, his steps slow and measured. He was a walking fortress, and he was shrinking my world with every step.
I had to think. The field was centered on his shield. It had a 10-meter radius. Inside that bubble, my magic was gone. But outside of it?
My eyes darted around the arena. The floor was sand. Loose, shifting, natural earth. My 'Terraforming' skill was elemental. The field "dampened" elemental magic. It didn't necessarily nullify it completely, especially if the source of the magic was outside the field's influence. It was a long shot. A desperate, insane theory. But it was all I had.
The problem was, to attack the ground beneath him, I needed to be close to him. Well within the 10-meter bubble. It was a paradox.
Unless...
A new plan, a mad, suicidal, and utterly brilliant strategy, began to form in the depths of my programmer's mind. It was a plan built on a foundation of feints, misdirection, and exploiting the single greatest weakness of my opponent: his own confidence.
He expected me to be powerless. He expected me to be a clumsy swordsman. I would not disappoint him.
Sir Kaelan was five meters away now. I was well inside the field. I could feel it, a strange, heavy pressure in the air, a dampening blanket on my powers. My connection to the earth felt distant and muted.
He didn't charge. He just stood there, shield raised, waiting for me to make a move.
So I did. I charged him, my rusty sword held high, my form a perfect imitation of a terrified amateur. I screamed a battle cry that cracked with fear.
Kaelan sighed, a sound of professional disappointment, and simply angled his shield.
I brought my sword down in a clumsy, overhead chop. It met the tower shield with a dull, pathetic clank. The force of the impact rattled up my arm, and the sword was nearly knocked from my grasp.
Kaelan didn't even flinch. He simply used the edge of his shield to shove me backward. I stumbled, tripping over my own feet, and fell to the sand in an undignified heap.
Laughter erupted from the stands, mostly from the Duke's section. I was a joke. A clown. The monster had been revealed as nothing more than a frightened child.
I scrambled back to my feet, my face a mask of humiliation and fear. I charged again. And again. And again.
Each time, the result was the same. My clumsy attacks glanced harmlessly off his impenetrable shield. He would shove me, trip me, or simply let me exhaust myself against his defense. He didn't even bother to draw his sword. He was toying with me, dissecting me, humiliating me piece by piece.
"Is this the power that shook the court?" he grunted, easily deflecting another of my desperate swings. "This is nothing."
From the royal box, I could see the Duke laughing, truly laughing, slapping his knee in delight. Prince Alaric was watching with a bored, dismissive expression. Elizabeth had her face in her hands.
But I wasn't just flailing. With every clumsy attack, with every pathetic stumble, I was learning. I was gathering data.
[Opponent's reaction time to a right-sided feint is 0.4 seconds,] ARIA reported calmly. [His footwork is economical. He moves in a pattern, a defensive semi-circle. He has not moved from his initial zone of control. He is conserving energy. He is arrogant.]
I was mapping his patterns, his habits. I was debugging my opponent. He thought he was fighting a swordsman. He was wrong. He was running a diagnostic test, and I was the one reading the results.
After a few more minutes of this humiliating dance, I was panting, my body screaming with exhaustion. I had taken several solid hits from his shield, and my HP was down to 35/45. I looked like I was at my limit.
It was time for the next phase of the plan.
I let out a cry of frustration and backed away, putting some distance between us. I stood there, panting, leaning on my sword like a crutch.
"Tired already, boy?" Kaelan taunted, though his voice still held a note of pity. "Yield. There is no honor in this."
"No," I gasped, my voice filled with a desperate, theatrical defiance. "I... I have one more trick."
I dropped my sword. The crowd gasped.
I held up my hands, palms facing Kaelan. I began to concentrate, my face contorted in a mask of extreme effort. I was putting on a show. I was pretending to gather the very last dregs of my power for one final, desperate magical attack.
Kaelan's eyes narrowed. He didn't believe I could break through his shield, but he was a professional. He wouldn't take any chances. As I had hoped, as I had predicted, he planted his feet firmly in the sand, rooting himself to the spot, and raised his shield. A brilliant, white light flared around it.
"Aegis Shield Wall!" someone shouted from the crowd.
He had taken the bait. He had activated his ultimate defense to block an attack that was never coming. He was now completely immobile for the next 3.5 seconds.
And I charged.
I ran at him, my hands still held out in front of me as if I were about to unleash a mighty spell. The crowd roared, thinking I was about to perform some kind of suicidal magic charge. The Duke leaned forward, a hungry look on his face, eager to see my final spell fizzle against the shield.
I ran, my legs pumping, my lungs burning. I crossed the 10-meter threshold, entering the dead-magic zone.
But my command, my final, desperate line of code, was not aimed at Kaelan. It was not aimed at the shield.
It was aimed at the sand ten and a half meters behind me. Outside the field.
As my foot crossed the 5-meter mark, I poured every last drop of my remaining mana, all 150 points, into a single, complex, and brutal command.
TERRAFORM: SHOCKWAVE!
It was a gamble on the system's interpretation. I wasn't trying to create a spike inside the field. I was creating a kinetic event outside the field, and I was banking on the idea that the physical result—the shockwave traveling through the sand—was not magic. It was physics. And the field only dampened elemental forces, it didn't completely nullify them. I was betting that a massive enough force could push through.
For a heart-stopping millisecond, nothing happened.
And then, the entire arena floor behind me buckled.
A wave, a visible ripple in the sand a meter high, erupted from the ground ten meters away and shot forward, traveling across the arena floor like a miniature tsunami.
It was not magic. It was displaced earth. It was physics.
The shockwave hit the edge of the 10-meter 'Field of Inertia.' The golden light of the field flickered violently, trying to dampen it. But the force was too great. A significant portion of the wave pushed through, weakened but still powerful.
Sir Kaelan, his feet planted, his entire focus on the non-existent magical attack he expected from my hands, had no time to react.
The wave of sand slammed into his rooted ankles.
His perfect stance, the foundation of his entire fighting style, shattered. His feet were knocked out from under him. The unbreakable champion, the mountain of a man, was thrown off balance. His massive tower shield dipped for a fraction of a second.
And that was the opening I needed.
My 3.5-second window.
I didn't stop. I didn't hesitate. In the same motion as my charge, I bent low, scooping my fallen sword from the sand. My movements were no longer clumsy. They were precise, economical, and fueled by desperation.
I lunged forward, under the dipping shield.
I was not aiming for his heart. I was not aiming for his throat. This was a duel of first blood.
My rusty blade, a relic from a forgotten age, flashed in the sun. It slid past the edge of his shield and drew a single, clean, red line across the exposed skin of his forearm.
It was a shallow cut. Barely a scratch.
But it was blood.
I leaped back, out of his range, my chest heaving, my body screaming from the effort.
Sir Kaelan stared at his arm, at the thin line of red welling up on his skin. He looked at the unsettled sand at his feet. He looked at me, the exhausted, panting boy holding a bloody sword.
The entire arena was silent. No one understood what had just happened. It was too fast, too strange.
Kaelan looked at me, and for the first time, the professional calm in his eyes was replaced by something else. A profound, grudging respect.
He slowly, deliberately, lowered his shield. He took his own sword, which he had not even drawn, and planted it in the sand. He bowed.
"I have been bested," his voice boomed, clear and strong, filled with the honor of a true warrior. "The victory belongs to Lord Kazuki von Silverstein."
The silence held for one more beat.
And then the arena exploded.
The roar from the crowd was a physical thing, a tidal wave of sound that washed over me. It was not the sound of laughter or mockery. It was the sound of shock, of awe, of disbelief.
I had done it.
I had faced the kingdom's champion, been stripped of my power, and had won anyway. I had won not with brute force, but with my mind. I had won with a loophole.
I looked to the royal box. The Duke's face was a mask of pure, black fury. He was staring at me as if I were a serpent he had tried to crush under his boot, only to have it turn and bite him. Prince Alaric was on his feet, his eyes wide, a slow, dangerous smile spreading across his face. He was no longer looking at a rival; he was looking at an equal.
And Elizabeth... she was also on her feet. The mask of composure was gone. Her face was alight with a fierce, triumphant, and utterly beautiful smile. She was looking at me, her husband, her monster, her ally. And in her eyes, for the first time, I saw not just respect, but a spark of genuine pride.
A final notification, the sweetest one yet, appeared in my vision.
[Duel of Destinies Completed!][Victory achieved through superior strategy and exploitation of system mechanics.][Title Unlocked: 'Champion Slayer.'][Title Unlocked: 'The Unconventional.'][Relationship Level with 'Elizabeth von Crimson' has increased!][Loyalty: 25/100 -> 40/100][Notes: She is no longer certain she can control you. She is, however, more certain than ever that she wants to be on your side. The 'weapon' has proven to be a master strategist. This is... intriguing to her.]
I stood in the center of the arena, the roar of the crowd washing over me, the sun warm on my face. I had walked into the lion's den, faced its champion, and emerged victorious.
The game had changed. I was no longer just a rumor or a mystery.
I was a legend in the making.