Tony listened to her elaborate proposal with a look of absolute, unadulterated amusement, a low, cold chuckle escaping his throat that echoed hauntingly off the stone walls.
He stood up straight, his tall frame instantly casting a massive, intimidating shadow over her trembling form as he took a slow step forward, his dark eyes locking onto hers with a sharp, predatory intensity that made her entire blood run cold.
"Ten thousand crystals and a recommendation?" Tony sneered coldly, his voice vibrating with an immense, terrifying wave of villainous pride that completely mocked her desperate offer.
"You family of clowns truly believe you can still dictate the terms of this match. You poisoned my duplicate body, you treated me like a dirty stain on your name, and now that you see the absolute graveyard I am building for your allies, you want to buy your way out of the trap with a handful of stones?
Let me make something perfectly clear to your arrogant mind, Julie. I do not care about your family’s concession, and I certainly do not care about your inner peaks. The marriage token stays with me until I decide to use it to trample over your family’s royal gates. The dice have already been cast, and tomorrow morning, I am going to take that Sun-Devouring Core Fragment and watch your entire lineage beg on their knees for mercy."
Before Julie could even attempt to find her voice or argue against his absolute defiance, Tony casually turned his back on her, his dark hunting cloak billowing in the wind as he strode back toward the open central plaza, leaving her standing alone in the dark corridor, her mind completely consumed by a helpless, terrifying sense of absolute doom.
The grand arena bells rang violently once again, signaling the official start of the second round of the Grand Obsidian Ascension Tournament. Tony walked up the stone steps of Ring Number Four, his lazy posture perfectly restored as he took his place on the volcanic platform.
On the opposite side of the stage, his new opponent was already waiting for him. It was a high-level wizard named Vance the Illusionist, an older senior disciple from a rival academy who had mastered the dangerous Mirage Domain spell.
He held a glowing, silver-attribute crystal staff that vibrated with a dense, confusing spiritual energy, his eyes gleaming with a calculating light as he looked at Tony’s wooden bow.
"Your physical shadow arrows might have been fast enough to catch a brainless brute like Ryker, Tony Clark," the illusionist stated calmly, his voice echoing smoothly across the stands. "But a weapon that relies entirely on physical trajectory is completely useless inside my domain. The moment you release your string, you will find that your targets are nothing more than empty air!"
The moment the referee signaled the start of the match, the illusionist violently slammed the base of his silver staff into the stone floor, activating a massive, wide-range defensive array. Instantly, the entire atmosphere of Ring Number Four violently distorted, turning the clear morning sky into a thick, swirling maze of shimmering light and mirrors.
Within a fraction of a second, the illusionist’s physical form multiplied into twelve identical, glowing copies that constantly shifted, dashed, and rotated across the stage, completely blanking out his real spiritual energy signature to the standard senses of the crowd.
Thousands of spectators in the stands held their breath, completely unable to find the real wizard through the visual distractions of the mirror maze. Even the nice-looking painting lady, sitting in the absolute front row, tightened her grip on her brush, her violet eyes scanning the stage with intense worry.
Tony, however, simply stood in the center of the shimmering maze, a slow, ruthlessly brilliant grin spread across his face as he casually unslung his wooden bow.
He didn’t waste a single microsecond trying to guess the correct target with his ordinary sight. With a brief thought, he fully unleashed his Truth Eye at its absolute maximum capacity, completely bypassing the tournament’s grand defensive arrays.
Through his supreme vision, the entire grand illusion of the Mirage Domain completely turned to dust. The twelve glowing copies of the wizard appeared like empty, hollow glass shells, while the real physical body of the illusionist was clearly visible, crouching behind the fifth mirror on the far left, his internal energy flow heavily bottlenecked as he concentrated on maintaining the spell.
Tony didn’t show even a fraction of his discovery; he intentionally notched a standard arrow and drew his bowstring back, pointing it toward an empty clone to make his opponent believe the trick was working.
Seeing Tony aim at the wrong target, the real illusionist behind the mirror let out a quiet, triumphant laugh, preparing to unleash a lethal lightning strike from his staff to blind him permanently.
But right at the exact moment the wizard’s spell reached its peak activation, Tony’s body suddenly blurred, his hands executing the Invisible Shadow Shot with absolute, fluid mastery. He subtly shifted his aim by a fraction of an inch, pointing his bow directly toward the hidden fifth mirror, and released the string without a single sound.
Thwack!
The invisible arrow, infused with a perfect combination of shadow and wind attributes, sliced through the shimmering air with zero wind resistance, completely bypassing the defensive mirror laws.
Before the illusionist could even realize his position had been exposed, the invisible arrow smashed directly through his silver crystal staff with an absolute, thunderous CRASH, the massive kinetic force violently exploding the weapon into a thousand tiny fragments.
The entire Mirage Domain instantly collapsed into thin air, and the real illusionist was thrown backward across the stone floor, his hands covered in blood as he crashed heavily against the guardrail, completely disqualified and unconscious.
"Winner: Tony Clark! Flawless progression to the quarter-finals!" the referee announced loudly, his voice shaking with absolute awe as the entire colosseum erupted into a massive wave of frantic cheers.
Tony casually slung his wooden bow back over his shoulder, his dark eyes locking onto the high stands with a lethal promise as the grand path toward the core fragment opened wide before his feet.
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tq
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