A Bug In Fate

Back to the present...

Marcus and Amon—or should we say Alden in disguise—were waiting for Alice to announce the start of the duel. However, Alice seemed to be deliberately waiting, letting the tension build as the crowd continued chanting their names, their voices echoing throughout the arena.

"Let’s go!"

"Amon!"

"Marcus!"

"Ravenhold!"

"Redmont!"

Some people’s voices had already become hoarse from continuously shouting, but that wasn’t going to stop them. Instead, many of them stood up from their seats, raising their fists and cheering even louder to show their support.

Are you guys ready?"

Alice asked, not the participants, but the audience.

The response was immediate.

The entire arena erupted into madness as countless voices overlapped with one another, their cheers echoing through the arena.

"Let’s go!"

"Start already! I want to see that blue-haired guy fight!"

"Marcus hasn’t even shown his full strength yet!"

"Amon! Show us what you’ve got!"

Alice smiled as she watched the crowd’s excitement grow. She let them shout for a few more moments before finally glancing toward her fellow overseers.

One of the women gave her a small nod.

Only then did Alice turn her attention toward the two participants standing below.

Her smile widened.

"Start!"

The moment her voice rang across the arena, the atmosphere changed.

Unlike the other fights, the two participants didn’t move immediately after receiving Alice’s signal.

Marcus stood in place with a frown on his face, while Amon—or rather, Alden—stood there with a relaxed smile. He wasn’t here to fight seriously. He was here to observe.

"Hey... why aren’t you moving?" Marcus asked, narrowing his eyes.

The crowd also fell silent, wondering the same thing. In the previous duels, the participants had started attacking the moment they received permission.

A soft smile appeared on Alden’s lips as he looked at Marcus with amusement.

"I could ask you the same question... why aren’t you attacking?"

He tilted his head slightly.

A brief silence settled over the battlefield before a grin appeared on Marcus’s face.

Without wasting any more time, he began preparing his spell as mana gathered around his palm.

"So you’re letting me attack first? Haha... I like that confidence," he said.

The crowd wasn’t going to accept it as a simple act of kindness either, and whispers quickly spread among them.

"He’s overconfident."

"But I think he has the right to be."

"What if he ends up in a mess? Hahaha!"

"Shut up, you losers! Haven’t you seen what he did earlier?"

Meanwhile, inside a VIP room above the arena, the five city rulers watched the battlefield with intrigue, curiosity, and tension.

"What is he thinking? Even though he has a special ability, it won’t matter if he can’t activate it in time," the only woman in the room, the head of the Windmare family, said as she narrowed her eyes.

"It doesn’t matter. I’m sure he’ll win anyway," the ruler of Ravenhold said.

He couldn’t exactly remain silent while the others discussed someone representing his city, could he?

"I think so too. That boy didn’t take much time to activate his ability earlier, but the real question is whether he can react to an attack from someone who is clearly two sub-ranks above him," another man said thoughtfully.

He was the ruler of Redmont City, where Marcus was from.

Elsewhere in the arena, the four students from Nebulon Academy were also watching the battlefield, each with their own thoughts.

"What do you think?" a young man finally asked, no longer holding back his curiosity.

The woman who had earlier nodded at Alice smiled before answering in a calm tone.

"Hmm... it depends on his physical strength and speed. If he can avoid Marcus’s spell without getting eliminated, he’ll probably use his ability again. But we still don’t know the full extent of his ability, so..."

She paused for a moment, her gaze remaining fixed on the battlefield.

"Let’s see what happens."

The others nodded at her explanation. They seemed to have considerable faith in her judgment, as they often turned to her whenever they encountered something they couldn’t understand.

Meanwhile, Alden simply smiled as he waited for Marcus to complete his spell.

There was a simple reason behind his decision.

He wanted to give Marcus an opportunity to show his strength.

Within seconds, Marcus completed his magic circle. He looked directly at Alden before finally muttering,

"Star Ball."

It was a technique he had received from the ruler of Redmont City—in other words, a technique passed down by a noble family.

The moment Marcus finished speaking, the magic circle before his palm suddenly brightened as an enormous amount of mana surged into it.

The air around him trembled.

A sphere of blazing fire began forming in front of his hand, growing larger with every passing second until it was nearly as tall as a person. Its surface churned violently, flames twisting around its core while waves of heat spread across the battlefield.

The crowd instinctively fell silent.

Even from a distance, they could feel the terrifying heat radiating from the spell.

Marcus gritted his teeth as he poured more mana into the magic circle, causing the fireball to grow even denser. The flames around its surface compressed before suddenly exploding outward.

With a powerful motion of his hand, Marcus launched the enormous fireball.

BOOM!

The ground beneath his feet cracked from the force of the release as the fireball shot forward.

It moved far faster than its massive size suggested.

A blazing trail stretched behind it as it crossed the battlefield in an instant, the intense heat distorting the air around it. Dust and loose debris were swept aside by the pressure, while the surrounding temperature rose sharply.

The spectators watched with widened eyes as the enormous sphere of fire rapidly approached Alden

There were several reasons behind Marcus choosing to use this spell.

First, he had already seen how Amon had stopped a spell earlier without even moving before it simply disappeared into thin air.

So when his opponent willingly gave him the chance to attack first, a thought immediately crossed his mind.

Why not take advantage of his opponent’s overconfidence?

That was why he had said that he liked that confidence.

And remembering how Amon had effortlessly stopped a normal spell, Marcus knew that the only choice left was to use his strongest attack.

The biggest problem with Star Ball was the time it took to cast.

But his opponent had just solved that problem for him by standing there and waiting.

So Marcus poured almost all of his mana into this single attack.

It was simply an all-or-nothing gamble.

But even after understanding his reasoning, several questions still remained.

Was his opponent really overconfident?

Or was he simply being kind enough to give Marcus a chance to show his strength?

Or perhaps there was another possibility.

Maybe that blue-haired guy was simply a narcissist who wanted to test his newly created technique on someone.

Once again, we had several questions but no answers.

Unfortunately, fate wasn’t on our side today, as the Chapter had already reached its word limit.

So perhaps the answers will come in the next Chapter?

Who knows...

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