[ REPLICATION SYNC: COMPLETED ]
* System Status: Active Damage Sustained (72% Tissue Trauma)
* Cellular Status: Adaptation priority shifted from Instant Regeneration to Structural Replication.
* Data Acquired: Full schematic architecture of Grade A [Trap Assassin] talent.
Thomas lay pinned inside the rotating stone teeth, the grey granite dust clinging to the weeping crimson cuts across his chest. Unlike his fight with Marcus, his body wasn’t instantly stitching itself back together this time. The Endless Adaptation talent had redirected all its raw processing power away from fast cellular healing, focusing every ounce of its evolutionary energy on one singular objective: digesting and completely copying Victor’s unique trap architecture. The agonizing, deep wounds across his legs and ribs still burned with a blinding, heavy heat, but his internal systems had rewired themselves to entirely isolate the pain.
Victor paced forward across the black sand, his long fingers twitching in tight, economic circles as he prepared to detonate the secondary explosive runes buried inside the gears. "Your dream ends here, vermin," he muttered, his voice cold as ice.
Thomas’s fingers stopped shaking. He didn’t claw at the dirt in a desperate attempt to escape. Instead, he gripped the raw stone axle of the main gear crushing his thigh, bracing his newly reinforced, dense bone structure against the grinding pressure.
He slowly raised his head, his face a completely tattered, blood-masked mess. He looked directly at the elite High-blood assassin, a slow, dangerously cold smile breaking through the dried crimson on his lips.
"My dream is ending?" Thomas rasped, his voice cutting through the whistling high-altitude wind and the roaring noise of the stadium crowd. He spit a mouthful of thick, coppery blood into the sand, his dark eyes locking onto Victor with a chilling intensity. "Who decided that? You? Who the hell are you to decide that... you f**king worm."
A collective, breathless gasp violently rippled through the front rows of the stands. The thousands of High-blood spectators froze mid-cheer, their expressions turning into a mix of shock and pure rage. For the first time in his life, Thomas had completely shattered the laws of their social order, openly disrespecting a high-born prodigy on a big stage.
Victor’s face twisted into an ugly scowl, his pride violently stung by the lesser’s insult. "Die!" he screamed, dropping his palms to trigger the final explosion.
But before his fingers could even twitch to pull the invisible cords, the hidden system interface inside Thomas’s skull hit absolute peak alignment.
[ TRANSMITTING REVERSE-ENGINEERED BLUEPRINTS ]
* Protocol: Active Deployment of Copied Trap Architecture.
* Fueling Variable: Successor Mana Core Influx.
[ DEPLOYMENT COMMENCING: REPLICATED OPPONENT’s GRID ]
Thomas didn’t use an unrefined flail. Guided by the precise, copied blueprints flooding directly into his mind, his long fingers twitched in a tight, fluid motion that perfectly mirrored Victor’s exact hand-spool movements. He violently slammed his bare, bleeding palm flat against the black sand floor.
Clack-clack-clack-clack-clack!
The entire arena floor beneath Victor’s boots violently imploded. Before the assassin could even attempt to deploy his secondary line of defense, a massive, terrifyingly complex matrix of replicated stone gears and razor-sharp obsidian blades violently erupted from the earth directly under his feet.
It was a flawless, absolute copy of Victor’s own Talent, reverse-engineered and spun into existence by Thomas.
"What... what is this?!" Victor panicked, his supernatural assassin reflexes completely failing him as the heavy, rotating rock teeth violently locked around his ankles and calves. The machinery groaned, the mechanical torque instantly crushing his leather uniform and chewing into his legs with thousands of pounds of hydraulic pressure.
CRUNCH!
Victor let out a high-pitched, agonized scream as the sharp obsidian blades swiped horizontally across his torso, carving deep, bloody lacerations through his reinforced mesh jacket. The visual was an exact, mirror image of the trauma he had just inflicted on Thomas. The kinetic shockwave of his own copied talent blasted through his chest cavity, cutting off his internal mana flow and forcing him down onto his knees in the center of his own grinding nightmare.
Thomas slowly pushed his battered, unhealed body out of the deconstructed pit, his boots crunching softly against the sand as he stood tall, his tattered uniform drenched in blood but his presence carrying a heavy, suffocating calm.
Up in the elevated premium booth, the bright-eyed young lady with the long violet hair stood up so fast her leather chair slid backward against the stone wall. Her aristocratic elegance was completely replaced by a look of sheer, unadulterated terror. "He didn’t just tank the attacks... he copied his entire skillset! Julian, who the f**k is that?!"
Julian didn’t answer her. He remained perfectly rigid in his seat, his silver-rimmed glasses catching the cold morning light as his striking ebony eyes bored down into the sand floor, a massive, incredibly sharp smile finally breaking across his face.
Down on the platform, Instructor Cross stood frozen with the dark starting flag half-lowered, his eyes wide in absolute disbelief as he looked at the boy who had just systematically reverse-engineered an elite combat gift.
Thomas stopped a few paces away from the kneeling, screaming assassin, his dark eyes looking down at Victor with total indifference.
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