[OXI: 2,423 / 2,500]
I check the number once and close the HUD.
Against Kellan, I stepped in to teach a lesson.
Against Veric, that would be stupidity. He isn’t just strong. He’s intelligent, patient, and irritatingly good at turning a defense into a question. Undertow isn’t a shield that only stops blows. It’s a problem chained to his arm, and Veric uses problems better than almost anyone I know.
Freya stands between us long enough to confirm the arena’s edge and the Nomine Gladiatus glow around it. She still looks tired, but her eyes are clear. After losing to Zhang Xi, something in her shifted. Not smaller. Sharper.
"Begin."
I concentrate OXI in my legs before the word finishes dying.
The ground answers under my feet with a dry crack. I push in low, not announcing the angle with my shoulder, and let Eventide rise from below. I don’t aim for the chest. I don’t aim for the throat. I aim for Veric’s left knee, where a noble leg and a common one obey the same rules.
Undertow drops at the last instant.
The impact doesn’t come clean. Veric doesn’t block it on expectation; he saves the leg on a read that lands a beat too late. The shield’s edge scrapes the black blade and deflects Eventide off the line. The sound is low, heavy, almost swallowed by the OXI compressed in the metal.
I jump back before he can use the contact. My sword’s point still aims at his leg.
"Don’t sleep, Veric. Ten percent is too expensive to lose along with your knee."
His expression changes. Not much but enough.
The social smile vanishes, and the prince who likes to look bored stops taking up space. In his place stands someone watching me as if he’d finally decided to strip the silk off the blade.
Veric doesn’t answer. He hurls Undertow.
The shield leaves his arm with the chain trailing like a metal tendon, spinning heavy enough to make the air complain. I don’t try to defend. Blocking Undertow head-on, with no need, means accepting the conversation on his terms. I slip aside just enough for the shield to pass close to my face.
The wind pressure scatters my hair.
Before the chain reaches full extension, I pivot out of the return line and run at Veric. The window is small. He threw his own defense away, and for an instant the shield arm is only an arm.
I raise Eventide for a downward cut.
Then I hear Undertow coming back.
I don’t need to look. The chain’s sound changes when the shield returns, a thick whistle cutting the air behind my angle. If I keep going, my blade reaches near Veric’s shoulder, but Undertow reaches me first.
I abort the strike. I shove OXI into my support leg, twist my hip, and leap back the instant the shield crosses the space where my rib would have been. Undertow snaps back to Veric’s arm with a dry impact, like dynamite biting stone from the inside.
Veric absorbs the return without giving ground.
Only then does he smile. Small. Irritating. Honest.
I spin Eventide between my fingers. The black energy complains around the blade with a sound that isn’t quite metal. It’s like a den full of things waking in the dark, voices trapped inside a blade that never learned to be silent. The spin isn’t decoration. It changes grip, hides intent, breaks the read. Against Veric, I need to attack his eyes before I attack his body.
"Let’s go to level two."
This time I come in higher.
Veric reads the diagonal cut heading for the collarbone and moves Undertow to intercept. The shield rises along his side, firm, covering the line between Eventide and the bone. A correct defense. Strong. Fast.
It’s also a wall, and walls block vision.
I use his own shield to disappear for half a second. The blade vanishes behind Undertow, but my body doesn’t stay where it should. I plant a foot off the line, let the torso turn first, and throw myself into rotation. The B-twist flip carries me over the defense, horizontal for an instant, then the leg comes at the end of the fall.
The top of my foot drops clean on the vertical.
It catches the top of Veric’s head before he can turn the block into another defense.
His body hits the ground hard. The knee and forearm touch first, but the impact still scatters dust across the arena. I’m already landing with Eventide returning to the line, ready to finish before he finds the floor properly.
Veric shouts. Not from pain. From pure effort.
His arms slam against the ground like pistons, and his body rises all at once, too fast for someone who just fell that way. Undertow returns to cover his left side.
He smirks. He’s still in the game.
I cut for the waist, short and direct, trying to force him to repeat the shield defense. Veric takes the invitation. Undertow comes in laterally to cover the blade’s path.
The impact doesn’t happen.
I spin Eventide between my fingers at the last moment, let the cut die before contact, and redirect to the arm without the shield. The opening is narrow but real.
`I can do it...`
CLANG.
The gladius meets Eventide.
The sound comes out sharp, clean, almost beautiful. Veric didn’t bite the whole feint. He used the shield to protect his body and draw the gladius to deny his arm. His short blade rattles against mine, and the right arm holds the impact better than I expected.
I leap back.
This time, I’m the one who smiles first.
Veric seats the shield on his arm, dust still clinging to his clothes, his hair a little out of place. The blow to the head left its mark, but it didn’t break his read.
"Luck doesn’t smile twice on the same person that fast."
"You just need to change the joke."
He gets the line. His smile vanishes again, not from irritation. From focus.
His posture shifts. The gladius drops a few centimeters. Undertow opens a fraction, not as an invitation but as a measure of distance. The OXI around him condenses into a bluish line, thin, compressed between his back foot, his hip, and the tip of the short sword.
I feel the air before he moves.
"Azure Trust."
Veric explodes toward me.
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