The situation is becoming unbearable for me. I knew that the battle was inevitable for me, but still.
Everyone left the arena. It's just me, Shamil, and the judge. It seemed to me that he was deliberately delaying the moment.
"Let's get started," the referee's voice rang out across the arena.
Neither Shamil nor I moved. It seemed funny to the viewers who watched it.
I didn't want to attack first because Shamil's ability is mind control.
Shamil raised his right hand and aimed at me. A faint green smoke began to pour out of his hands.
I started to panic. From his hand, the smoke began to stick to the floor, heading towards me. Like a snake, the green doom directs to my feet.
I understand that as for the smoke snake, it is impossible, otherwise I will be paralyzed. However, the first smoke snake was followed by the second smoke snake. Both snakes began to surround me.
I jumped over one and looked at Shamil. He stood motionless with his arms outstretched.
"What if his own snakes surround him?" I thought.
I started circling Shamil, and he immediately saw through my plan. You can tell by the grin on his face.
Shamil released one of the snakes. He lowered his index finger to the floor and the floor began to be covered with smoke of a green hue. His snake merged with the smoke.
I'm starting to feel like something is crawling on my feet. My pronoia does not leave me.
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, focusing on how to get rid of the smoke. I hugged myself, and abruptly directed my arms in different directions using the gust of the Nexus shield.
I clenched my hands together and hit the floor, channeling the Nexus energy into Shamil. This formed a neat smoke path to it.
I was going to walk straight at him. But his smile doesn't allow it.
"I'm following HIS plan," I realized.
I needed to come up with a new plan as soon as possible.
The fact that his smoke snake still hadn't gotten to me worried me just a little less.
I took another deep breath. After that, I accelerate my step towards the wall, which Hat did in the previous battle.
My brain started getting a small amount of effects from Shamil's smoke. I have a growing panic, everything is blurred in my eyes, I'm trying to formulate my thoughts in order. I look at the audience, the elders, and the teachers.
I look at the empty place where Father Hat was standing. I remembered his face at the time of his son's loss. I remembered Hat himself after the fight. My gaze went back to the elders. There were three of them. Three?
Where did the fourth one go? At the time of the Azartsum battle, there were four elders. Why did he leave? I rush the nexus to jump on the wall and catch my breath from the acrid smoke.
I squatted down and started thinking. A second later, I was peering at the The core from behind Shamil.
"I have an idea," I said to myself.
I turned away from the core. He hugged himself, creating a shield from the Nexus. Then he clenched his fists together and hit the wall so that I would be catapulted directly onto the core.
"It worked," I shouted.
Shamil looked at me strangely. "Are you scared, come down and fight. Or are you giving up?" He said uncertainly.
"I'm more than confident in myself. I'm just wondering how high your snakes can climb. Answer - a few. If they could, they wouldn't crawl on the ground but would attack directly. The only question is, how long can you hold them?" I said, recognizing his abilities.
"this is a one-time technique. am I right? Otherwise, you would have used the second snake again," I said, waving my arms.
The audience is watching this picture as if under hypnosis.
I have already activated the Nexus shield for the umpteenth time and jump right next to Shamil, which caused his smoke to completely dissipate in an instant.
He stood hunched over, breathing hard. Sweat streamed down his face, his fingers trembling — everything about him screamed exhaustion.
My heart pounded with the confidence of a hunter cornering his prey.
"You're done," I said, locking my fists together. "I'll finish this now."
I stepped forward. My shadow fell over him, and I could already see him bracing for the hit. But then… he took a deep breath. Not just deep — it was as if he inhaled the very air along with every last shred of strength, pain, and fatigue.
His fingers twitched — and I noticed thin wisps of smoke. At first, they were faint, barely visible, but with each exhale they grew denser, darker.
"What the…" I muttered under my breath.
The smoke began to coil, twisting, almost alive. It wrapped around his arms and shoulders — and then I realized: the snakes were back. But now, they moved differently. Slower. Heavier. There was something in their rhythm… something dangerous.
I took a step back. The air felt colder. The crowd went silent, and I heard someone whisper:
"Second wind…"
Shamil raised his head and locked eyes with me. There was a glint in them that sent a chill down my spine. The snakes lunged forward. One went straight for my face — I jerked to the side instinctively — but the other was already coming in from the flank. I tried to pivot away, but they moved in perfect sync, cutting off my escape.
My heart was racing, but my body… slowed. It was like every muscle turned to lead. I tried to breathe deeper, to focus, but it was useless. The smoke was closing in, and the eyes of those snakes pierced straight into my mind.
"Move… move…" I told myself, but my legs felt nailed to the ground.
That's when I realized — I was paralyzed.
Panic hit me like a wave.
My muscles wouldn't respond, my breathing was ragged, and my mind refused to find a way out. All I could see were those smoky shapes, and with every passing second, they seemed to draw closer.
I didn't know what to do. My thoughts scattered like frightened birds.
The only thing that came to mind — scream. Not a shout of anger, not a cry of pain… but a scream from the depths of my soul.
I sucked in a breath, and a raw, torn, piercing scream ripped out of me.
In that instant, my entire body flared with the golden glow of Nexus. It felt as if everything I had left burst outward in a single, desperate surge of energy. But there was no real strength in that light — only fear. A frantic, hopeless attempt to break free from the invisible grip holding me in place.
Yet the panic didn't fade. It only tightened its claws around my throat. My heart pounded so hard it felt like it might tear through my chest, and my temples throbbed louder than the roaring crowd.
At some point, I realized — I was no longer in control. The glow around me began to fade, my arms turned to lead, my vision clouded. And then… darkness swallowed me whole.
The last thought that crossed my mind was: "your snakes… he knocked me out…"
I didn't even suspect that I had fallen not because of his hypnosis, but because of my own technique burning me out.
But by then, it didn't matter anymore.
I jolted out of the darkness as if surfacing from ice-cold water.
The first thing I felt was nausea. It crawled up from deep inside, pressing against my throat, and I had to squeeze my eyes shut to keep it in.
Where… am I?
A white ceiling. The sharp smell of antiseptic. The steady, quiet beeping of a medical monitor. I slowly turned my head—only to regret it instantly as the room swayed.
A hospital.
I blinked a few times, trying to gather my thoughts. The last thing I remembered—the scream. My own voice tearing from my chest, my body burning with golden Nexus light. In front of me—Shamil's smoke serpents, slithering closer and closer. Then… nothing but darkness.
I clenched my fists.
So… he knocked me out. Right there, in the exam.
On the bedside table lay a neatly folded piece of paper. The handwriting was sharp and precise:
Exam Result: Defeat. Remaining tournament matches — forfeited (7 matches missed).
The nausea grew worse. But now, it wasn't just from weakness.
It was from anger.
I went back to bed.
I sat in the hospital bed, the sheet crumpled in my hands, but my mind was elsewhere.
It wasn't just the loss that weighed on me—it was the thought of how my father would react when he found out I had failed the exam.
And maybe that fear wouldn't have been so strong… if not for Hat's father reaction. Yet it burned more than any insult. For some reason, it felt exactly like the way my father would look at me in this moment.
That expression haunted me more than Shamil's serpents.
I got out of bed and asked the nurse for paper and ink with a pen. They kindly agreed to give them to me for free. When I returned to my room, I decided to write.
So I wrote.
The pen scratched across the paper as I explained everything—exactly as I saw it. No excuses, no embellishments, just the truth from my point of view. How the smoke closed in on me, how panic overtook my mind, how my own Nexus burned me out. I told him I didn't give up, that I fought until I collapsed.
I folded the letter carefully, sealing my words inside.
What I didn't know—what I couldn't know—was that my father already knew what had happened. The elders had told him, every detail of the exam from start to finish. He wouldn't be reading my version as news… he would be weighing it against the truth he'd already been told.