Albert stayed half-knelt amid broken stone, one hand pressed to the floor, the other hanging loose. Dust clung to his hair and coat.
Olfasten watched him like a mountain watches weather.
"I trained alone for thirty years." the monk said, voice carrying without effort. "Valleys where nothing lies. Waterfalls that erase thought. Forests where even fear forgets its name."
Albert lifted his head slowly.
"I acknowledged every grain of sand. I acknowledged every whistle of the wind. And then I acknowledged myself." Olfasten continued."Again and again. Until the body learned before the mind could interfere. Nothing could stop my body even if it is controlled by some sort of witch."
Albert pushed himself up to one knee.
" I can now predict almost every physical movement." Olfasten said. "By imagining possible continuations. But not all."
Albert stood. His legs trembled once, then locked up. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve, eyes kept sharp despite the damage. "Sounds lonely." he said.
Olfasten nodded. "It is why I am cautious. I do not know all."
He brought his palms together. It was obviously not prayer, his next move.
Olfasten separated his hands and slowly extended one palm toward the floor in an angle precisely measured. The gesture was almost dismissive, as if indicating a spot that did not matter.
Then pain sliced across Albert's face.
A sharp, invisible thing cut through his cheek, clean and bold. Blood sprayed sideways. Albert staggered back a step in confusion.
"What—" He touched his face. His fingers came away red.
Olfasten's palm had not moved.
He was pointing somewhere else.
Albert's mind raced. Delayed impact Reflection? A feint? None fit. There was no trajectory.
A false call?
Albert snarled and lunged forward, forcing speed through pain, shoulder lowered, intent compressed into violence. Olfasten shifted his palm again.
But not at Albert, somewhere else nearby him.
Another cut ripped across Albert's arm mid-stride. His sleeve shredded. Blood followed. His attack faltered, momentum collapsing into confusion.
The palm moved turned aggressively lately.
A shallow slash opened across his ribs.
Albert skidded back, boots grinding stone, breathing hard now. His Reverse Breathing refused to stabilize. The world no longer slowed.
"You see?" Olfasten said gently. "I do not strike where you are. I strike where you must pass and will."
Albert clenched his teeth. "You're not predicting me." he growled. "You're fencing the future."
Olfasten's eyes gleamed. "Close."
Albert charged again, weaving, breaking rhythm and forcing chaos.
The palm shifted. Pain bloomed across Albert's shoulder.
Again.
Again.
Each time he tried to close distance, the unseen edge met him first. Consequence arrives ahead of cause.
Blood dripped steadily from cheek, arm, side. He stood just outside reach, chest rising and falling, staring at Olfasten's calm, open hand.
"So I can't get closer." Albert said quietly.
Olfasten lowered his palm slightly still aligned.
He circled in low stance at first, eyes no longer fixed on Olfasten's body but on the space around him.
The cuts hadn't come from nowhere. They had come from decisions already made. Paths his body was about to take. Psychic forging.
The realization hit clean. Olfasten wasn't predicting strikes. He was pre-building outcomes.
Invisible spikes of condensed psychic intent hovered in the arena like unmarked landmines, forged in advance, anchored to probabilities rather than coordinates. Albert felt them now. The pressure points in the air, wrongness where movement would be punished.
Olfasten advanced one step.
Albert flinched instinctively and a spike detonated where his foot would have landed.
A stone slab split apart.
"You understand now?" Olfasten said, excitement quietly sharpening. "Good."
Albert exhaled, blood-spotted breath steadying. "You are not reacting to me," he muttered. "You are manipulating my future moves by arranging it."
Olfasten's palm shifted. A subtle twist of wrist, a re-angle of intent. Several unseen constructs rearranged themselves, tightening the net.
Albert lunged anyway. A spike unfolded mid-step. He twisted, barely slipping past as it grazed his cloth. Another erupted behind him, cutting off retreat. A third formed overhead, forcing him low.
Even proximity was a lie.
Albert closed within arm's reach and Olfasten smiled.
A delayed construct bloomed inside that distance, space folding inward. Albert was forced to throw himself sideways as the psychic spike detonated where his chest would have been, violet light ripped the air apart.
Olfasten hadn't just planned for approach.
He had planned for confidence.
"You assume closeness equals danger to me." Olfasten said calmly. "It is only another parameter."
Albert rolled, came up on one knee, mind racing. He doesn't even know what he will use until he needs it.
That was the real terror. Olfasten wasn't following a set technique. He was improvising from a library of prepared catastrophes.
Albert pushed forward again, deliberately triggering two spikes, using their detonations to push himself forward unpredictably.
One spike bloomed behind him anyway.
He felt the pressure kiss his spine and barely rounded free, skin tearing as violet energy carved past.
Olfasten stepped into view, palms open, posture seren. Eyes alive with possibility to win.
"You are fighting what I might do." he said softly.
Albert wiped blood from his mouth and grinned, feral and tired.
"Yeah." he said. "Despite, I still don't know how many knives you are hiding in your butt."
The Audience tried their best to held the laughter.
However, neither of them knew what Olfasten would do next.
Albert slipped again between invisible spikes, skin burning where probability had already tried to kill him. He planted his foot and punched the arena.
Stone collapsed inward with a thunderous wave. A crater bloomed beneath Olfasten as if the ground itself had flinched.
Fractures spider-webbed outward, debris spiraling down. The move wasn't meant to hit. It was meant to limit futures to trap Olfasten inside a narrowing well of outcomes.
Olfasten saw it before it finished. He stepped through the intent and brought both palms down. The arena answered him.
A massive area-of-effect wave erupted, violet psychic force expanding in a perfect sphere. Air liquefied and stones flattened.
The crowd was thrown backward as if struck by a god's breath.
Olfasten's voice cut through the devastation, calm and carrying.
"You know what, to believe survival is the highest truth," he said, eyes burning with clarity. "that strength exists only to endure and devour. That the world is a ladder made of corpses."
The wave continued expanding.
"That belief breeds endless vigilance," Olfasten continued. "Endless calculation. Eventually, I will never rest because I will never trust anyone."
The Area explosion should have erased Albert. It didn't.
He had already moved using the collapsing crater's rim.
The rebound of psychic pressure, a half-step that existed only because Olfasten assumed no one would choose it.
Albert slipped through the edge of annihilation, skin tearing, coat shredded, but alive.
Smoke swallowed the stage.
"Strength," Olfasten said, now unseen, "is not hoarding all paths. It is accepting that some paths end and walking anyway."
The smoke churned.
Olfasten waved his hand once.
The smoke obeyed, tearing apart, rushing outward like frightened animals.
Albert was already acting.
He planted his feet and threw a punch from a distance.
"Six Beautiful Flowers of Fragile Land."
From his shadow, six consecutive after-images burst forth. Each one a perfect rhythm of the same punching motion, layered not in time but in intent.
They slammed into Olfasten in relentless succession—one, two, three—each hit landing exactly where the previous one had, compressing force instead of dispersing it.
Olfasten staggered. For the first time, his stance broke.
The fourth and fifth impacts blurred his vision. The sixth one sealed it.
Something fragile and unseen snapped shut around his senses. Light turned unreliable to look up clearly. Olfasten looked up however.
Five blurry shapes descended, substances, not objects, wrong in texture and intent.
He dodged instinctively with the footwork immaculate even without clear sight, trusting discipline carved over decades.
Then he cleaned his eyes and looked onwards. Albert was gone.
" So you chose connection." Olfasten said softly. "How proudful I am to lose from a child like you! Hope you live long.... "
Albert was already behind him, turning on the opposite direction of Olfasten. The knives Olfasten had dodged clattered uselessly to the ground.
Olfasten had understood.
They had never been the point. The moment they drew attention, Albert had flash-stepped, slipping behind using the last distortion of the Six Flowers technique he learnt back then.
Albert—no, Tom Greyrat, murmured to himself,
" Thank You, Rosario. "
Kuga left its slot. One clean arc. The blow wasn't something called flourish or hatred.
The blade passed through Olfasten's neck with almost gentle finality. The monk's body remained standing for a heartbeat.
Then fell.
Silence obliterated the arena.
Blood traced a thin, respectful line across stone. Olfasten's face, calm even in death held no regret.
The crowd didn't cheer.
Then chaos erupted.
"WEAPON—!" someone shouted.
"THAT WAS ILLEGAL!"
The announcer froze. He raised both hands, voice cutting through the uproar. A thought ran over his head.
"WAIT—wait—listen!"
He swallowed, pointing shakily at Albert.
"The rules say no external tools." he said. "No weapons were brought in during the match."
He took a breath.
"Albert Newton entered the arena with that katana already slotted. From the beginning. It was declared."
The arena trembled.
"….Meaning...." the announcer finished slowly, ".…it was legal."
All eyes turned to Albert.
He stood there, bloodied, exhausted, blade lowered.
The announcer exhaled hard, then shouted,
"THE WINNER OF THE SEMI-FINAL—
AND MARCHING TO THE FINALE—
ALBERT NEWTON!"
Albert looked once at Olfasten's body.
Then turned away and the underground remembered his name.