I nodded at his quick analysis. My adversaries surely assumed that a Talker like myself had only one path to victory: Stun Howl. No matter who my opponent was, I could whip out my silver flame and shoot them in seconds once they were stunned. However, the countermeasure to Stun Howl was simple—when someone was hit by a stun debuff, a short window of stun resistance would follow.
The effect could be stacked, too, so take enough hits and you could carry that resistance all the way into the tournament. How? Well, you gained about ten minutes resistance the first time you were hit, thirty minutes the second, and so on up to twenty hours of resistance. Since there were so many classes out there with debuffs like Stun Howl, this countermeasure was easy to implement. And because resistance came down to individual constitution, it would not show in a mana density check.
With Stun Howl completely nullified, a Talker would be the weakest opponent in the entire tournament. Nobody had any doubts about that…but this made the tournament perfect for proving my worth.
“Noel and Charles are both clear. Please enter the ring.”
The tournament staff escorted me to the entrance.
“Show them your true power,” Leon said, grinning. He raised his fist in solidarity.
I nodded and walked into the ring. Leon had been my training partner for this, and he knew how I would fight.
I don’t intend to win the Seven Star Cup, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to lose here.
“And we’re ready!” Luna shouted, her voice reverberating through the air. “It’s time for the Seven Star Cup finals! Match number one of Block A! This one’s gonna be good! First we have Kahn’s vice-master, Charles Kahn! And his opponent, the organizer of this very tournament, clan master of Wild Tempest, Noel Stollen!”
Luna sounded delirious with excitement, but she pushed on.
“It’s a battle between a Lancer, the pinnacle of front-line offense, versus a Talker, the weakest of all buffing classes! Though it may seem like this battle has finished before it’s even begun, Noel is no ordinary Talker! He’s a one-of-a-kind talent who took his newly founded clan to the regalia in just six months! I literally might die from the excitement and anticipation of what this match has in store! Big sis Finocchio, your thoughts on this opening match?”
Finocchio thought for a moment before answering. “The reason many believe Talkers are the weakest class stems from the fact that they lack a means to defend themselves. This is true even in group combat, but it becomes especially clear in one versus one fights like this. If Noel is somehow able to overcome this obstacle…”
“Yes? Yeees?!”
“Then he will truly stand at the peak of all Seekers.”
The crowd whooped and hollered at Finocchio’s words. Fifty thousand voices bombarded me as I stood in the ring. Even I couldn’t help but feel a rush of excitement, but I took a deep breath so as not to let it show and centered myself. Instantly, my focus was razor-sharp, and I was impervious to the swells of emotion around me.
“My apologies, Noel,” said Charles with a grin, “but I’m not going to go easy on you. Victory is mine, but rest easy—your name will hereby be etched into the legend of my heroic conquests. After all, it is the hero’s duty to carry on his shoulders the names of the fallen!” He ran a hand through his hair as he declared his victory.
“Impressive confidence,” I said with a chuckle. “Maybe there’s a lesson in there for me.”
We took our spots in the ring across from each other, and Luna’s voice grew louder.
“Both competitors are ready! All that’s left now is the bell to start the match! Who among these two beautiful warriors will come out on top?! Let the match…begin!”
The moment the bell rang, Charles launched himself at me with his halberd. There was no windup to his attack, no moment of hesitation—just his weapon coming my way at several times the speed of sound. Right then, I knew he had used two skills: a speed buff and an attack buff.
For a Talker like myself, both defending and dodging this attack was difficult. However, I had already expected Charles’s attack well in advance.
Instantaneous Precognition. This was the Talker’s ability to boost their own calculation speeds to the point that they could predict the near future. Charles’s movements flashed through my mind just before they happened. Thanks to my rank-up to Incantor, my thoughts were even faster now, and time seemed to stop completely as I predicted the future and planned around it.
I immediately noted the timing and arc of Charles’s halberd. Naturally, this was not enough. Even if I could see what was going to happen, it was pointless if I couldn’t move in time to react. If the attack hit me, I would be launched from the ring. With this in mind, I elected to use an intercepting attack to catch Charles in the midst of his own.
I would stun Charles with an attack he couldn’t see or avoid. Not Stun Howl, but a secret technique that disrupted the semicircular canals in a person’s inner ear—in other words, a whistle. Pitched at just the right frequency, the whistle caused a slight wobble in Charles’s legs. It would last for less than a second, but that small opening was all I needed to take down my prey.
Charles was like an arrow flying through the air, carried by inertia. His powerful thrust was just slightly off target, but it was still terrifyingly powerful. I dodged his halberd by mere millimeters and stepped forward, letting my body spin as the halberd rushed by me. The force of the missed blow caused me to spin like a top, and I whirled around behind Charles. Then I leaped, letting the centrifugal force carry my elbow directly into the back of Charles’s head.
The attack—disrupting balance with a whistle, then spinning toward my opponent’s back before breaking their skull with my elbow—was like a vortex in two ways. Firstly, the whistle caused a whirlpool effect in the opponent’s ear. Secondly, the footwork had me spinning like a twister. Thus, I had named the attack Whirling Tide.
My elbow slammed into the back of Charles’s skull. If he hadn’t been linked to the Megalith, my elbow would have gone straight through him. But there was no direct damage to the Kahn vice-master, only the simulated damage sent through his brain.
Most of the nerves in one’s head were concentrated at the back. A strong, focused attack to the area was nigh impossible to withstand. Charles groaned, then collapsed where he stood. He would not stand up again.
The crowd went so quiet you could have heard a pin drop. In their minds, I never could have won. Nobody had seen this coming, not even in their wildest dreams.
To remind them all that I had won, I threw my right fist up into the air. However, because of the searing pain running through my entire body, the gesture was somewhat awkward. It was the whiplash from unleashing Whirling Tide. It hurt the worst at the point of impact, in my left elbow, and if I wasn’t careful, the pain could knock me unconscious. In a real battle, the whiplash would have decimated my elbow entirely.
I opted to grin and bear it, throwing my fist into the air again. It was a wordless victory cry, and the crowd finally understood it for what it was. They exploded into cheers.
“We have a winner!” Luna cried incredulously. “Noel Stollen! The unbelievable has just occurred before our very eyes! The Talker Noel Stollen crushed Charles with a single strike! Is this Noel’s true power?! Am I the only one who’s lost here?! Big sis, we are going to need a breakdown and we are going to need it—uh, big sis?!”
I turned to the commentary box, where Luna had her head tilted quizzically toward Finocchio. The clown was clapping emphatically, crying as he did so.
“It’s only his first match and he went and did that!” Finocchio said.
I grinned, turned on my heel, and left the ring.