With the match preparations complete, Sharon and I stood in the ring, facing off against each other.
“The fifth match in Block A is set to begin!” Luna said. “We’ve got the Incantor, Noel Stollen, versus the Black Shot, Sharon Valentine! Two very different classes using the same weapon! What kind of battle awaits us?! Competitors, fight!”
As soon as the bell rang, I whipped out my silver flame, took aim at Sharon, and fired a Garmr bullet. With a direct hit, the destructive power was sure to cause damage through the Megalith. But just before impact, the bullet veered wildly off course.
“Anti-missile?!” I shouted incredulously.
Anti-missile was a powerful defensive skill unique to Gunners and Archers. It rendered all flying projectiles useless. I hadn’t expected her to pick it, considering that the rules of the Seven Star Cup only allowed two skills per competitor. The skill only worked against projectiles, so it was literally useless against opponents who didn’t use them. Sharon had chosen the skill purely to shut down any enemy dependent on long-range combat.
“I hate you,” Sharon spat. “I will lock you down and finish you off.”
The enmity alight in her eyes was crystal clear, and no sooner had she spoken than I felt danger closing in on me from all directions. Thanks to the precognition I gained when making calculations at high speed, I saw countless Garmr bullets coming at me from every which way, after which I’d be swallowed up in the explosions.
It was the Gunner skill, Royal Road. The skill enabled direct hits from anywhere regardless of the distance between shooter and target. But thanks to my precognition, I could see each bullet approaching, so I dodged the whole barrage by the skin of my teeth.
After that, I sprang forward. The force of the magical explosion accelerated my leap as I flew toward Sharon. At the same time, I quickly swung my silver flame. Sharon laughed—she thought I was throwing the weapon at her because I was out of options. If I did that, the gun would have been subject to her Anti-missile skill, and she wouldn’t even need to move out of the way.
But I didn’t throw it. My silver flame was now in its holster, and I headed for her empty-handed. This allowed a better snap to my spinning backfist, which pushed against the air, turning into a bullet of wind before connecting directly with Sharon’s face.
“Augh! My eyes!” Sharon cried.
The technique was called Mayfly. Sharon had the Anti-missile skill in effect, but Mayfly was a pure gust of wind, so it passed through her defenses. Although it only had enough force to shunt the opponent’s jaw, the shock to a completely defenseless, unsuspecting opponent could blind them momentarily.
Sharon brought her hands to her eyes, giving me time to ready a follow-up attack. I was aiming straight for her heart. If I hit her with a hard punch to the chest, it would cause arrhythmia in her heart, followed by unconsciousness. The Megalith would be of no help to her, and victory would be mine.
I wound up and threw everything I had into a right hook. At that very moment, Sharon—who was supposed to be blinded—opened both her eyes.
“Too bad for you,” she said. “I’ve got artificial eyes.”
Well, shit.
Sharon launched a high kick at the side of my head. I managed to block her powerful counter with my left arm, but the Megalith’s damage simulation rendered it useless. In a real fight, the bones in it would have been completely shattered.
As I spun through the air from the force of Sharon’s kick, I saw bullets flying at me from every direction—Royal Road again. I reached out with my right hand and sprang into a backflip, landing on my feet and weaving through the gunfire. I launched into another flip to put more distance between the two of us. Unfortunately, putting distance between myself and a Black Shot only put me deeper in the kill zone.
“Splendid acrobatics. Based on that last technique, you’re clearly the better hand-to-hand combatant,” said Sharon, whose face then twisted into a cruel sneer. “But you can’t defeat me. Haven’t you realized? While you’ve been jumping around like a monkey, I haven’t even moved a single step.”
She was right. Even when she launched her counter, she never shifted from where she stood.
“And I know the skills you’ve selected for the competition too,” Sharon continued. “I can tell you’ve got limited access to precognition to grasp the situation you’re in—a benefit of your class ability to think at boosted speeds. But there’s no way you could read the direction of my Royal Road with your eyes alone. That means you’ve got eyes elsewhere. You’re using the Link skill to gain the sight of your companions.”
She’d hit the nail on the head. Things were different back when I had the Noble Blood’s powers; here and now, there was no way for me to completely read Sharon’s Royal Road attack. As soon as the fight started, I was already connected via Link to Alma and Leon, who were watching the match from above. Now that I was A-Rank, I could do more than just communicate through my Link skill—I could also gain access to the vision of those I was linked to. As a result, I had three viewpoints guiding me, meaning I could make even more accurate predictions. That was why I could evade Royal Road.
“You’re using Link and Stun Howl,” said Sharon. “Those are the only two skills that will serve you well in this battle. Using your martial arts was a smart idea, but I know what you’re trying to do. It won’t work on me anymore. I have you locked down completely.”
Sharon’s sneer intensified as she used Royal Road again. The hail of bullets came straight for me, and I once again used my precognition to weave through them. There had to be a limit to how much ammunition she was carrying, but I would run out of endurance before she ran dry. She didn’t even need to hit me directly; the Garmr bullet explosions would cause chip damage even with near-misses.
After five minutes, I was exhausted. My right leg and left arm were now basically unusable. Sharon laughed at the sight of me hopping around on one leg like a scarecrow.
“You’ve put up a valiant fight,” she said. “But it ends here.”
Sharon was not the type to show off and get conceited. She wasn’t going to lower her defenses or go easy just because my mobility was wrecked, so she activated Royal Road again.
I wasn’t taking any chances either.
“Incantor skill: God Fragments,” I said. “Let those who live by the sword die by the sword.”
As soon as I uttered the words, Sharon’s silver flame flew from her hands.
“What the—?!”
Her bewilderment made me laugh. “Looks like your gun doesn’t like you anymore.”
She reached for her gun, but it zoomed away from her once more. It was as if the weapon had a mind of its own and no longer wished to obey its master.
“This is a skill, I presume?”
I nodded. “Correct. You’re as sharp and cunning as they come, but you made one error. I didn’t select Stun Howl as one of my skills. I selected Link and an Incantor skill: God Fragments.”
“Incantor skill?! But the Appraiser Association announced that the Incantor was just a support class! A skill with direct effects like this is impossible!”
“Oh, you mean that lie the Appraiser Association told? I paid them to keep the real skills quiet.”
“No. You. Didn’t.”
I grinned. “Getting a public organization like the Appraiser Association to follow my wishes certainly wasn’t cheap, but it was well worth it just to see you fall deep into this trap.”
Sharon ground her teeth as I went on.
“As long as God Fragments is active, nobody within its area of effect can use a weapon. It’s a thirty-meter radius with me at the center. These square rings are twenty meters on each side, meaning there’s nowhere to run unless you go out of bounds.”
“Nobody can use weapons?! Even if it’s a form of mind control, it can’t possibly be that strong! There must be some way to resist it!”
“Exactly. That’s why the skill has to be bound. For one, the skill affects the caster as well as the target. I have to stay within ten meters of the target for a full five minutes before I can activate it.”
“So the area of effect increases based on the binding…”
Some skills had prerequisite conditions for activation. The Punisher skill Judgment required the target to refuse the caster’s wishes three times, but the effects were unavoidable. If the caster and target were the same rank, the caster could dig out the target’s heart.
“I understand how the skill works, but…” Regaining her, Sharon put up her fists. “Even without my silver flame, I’m not going to lose to someone who’s on the brink of death.”
“Thought you’d say that. And you’re right, I don’t have a chance as things stand.”
Sharon was put off by the way I agreed with her, and it made her wary. She had a point, though—I couldn’t win with the way things were. That was why I needed to take God Fragments to the next stage.
She noticed the change immediately and rushed toward me, but it was far too late.
“Did you really think I’d be so kind as to reveal the entirety of my skill to you? Idiot. I just did that so I could reach the next activation conditions!”
Before Sharon’s fist could reach me, I made a declaration.
“Dispose of your powers. Know that I am the law.”
In the second phase of God Fragments, the target in the area of effect lost all their class buffs. They could still use skills, but it sapped a ton of their bodily strength. This skill also affected the caster, but because the Talker only received a boost to their speed of thought, the impact on me wasn’t especially great.
For a Black Shot like Sharon, however, the loss was immense. With her buffs gone, her usual agility disappeared and her attacks were easy to dodge even in my injured state.
“It’s been fun, Sharon Valentine.”
I leaped into the air in time with her punch, caught her arm and neck between my legs, and squeezed tight. It was a triangle choke, a submission hold in which you used your legs and the opponent’s arm to close off their carotid arteries. The hold knocked her out before she even knew it. It didn’t even matter how much strength she still had according to the Megalith—with her blood pressure dropping suddenly from the choke, she was out like a light.
I wriggled free from the unconscious Sharon and stood shakily to my feet. And just like in my first match, I faced the crowd and threw my fist into the air. The fifty thousand people in the stands erupted into cheers, all of it showering down upon me.