CHAPTER 26: FIRE AND SHADOW

The duel began not with a salute. Not with a clang of steel. But with a roar of incinerating fire.

Chris didn’t bother with swordsmanship. Or tactics. He had a cannon. And he was determined to use it. He thrust his gauntlet forward. A torrent of brilliant, white-hot flame erupted from his palm. A liquid stream of pure, solar fury.

The crowd gasped. A collective sound of awe and terror. This was not the contained magic of a student duel. This was the unrestrained power of an S-Rank artifact.

The wave of fire was a twenty-foot-wide wall of annihilation. Nowhere to run. Nowhere to dodge. Edward was a stationary target.

But Edward didn’t try to run. He was a creature of the shadows. In the face of this overwhelming, blinding light, he did the one thing that was unexpected.

He embraced the darkness.

He drew the Shadowfang Dagger. The black blade drank the light from the air. It felt cool and steady. As the inferno surged towards him, he dropped low. His body was a coiled spring. At the last possible second, he moved.

He didn’t run away. He ran parallel to it.

His crippled Speed stat of 10 was a death sentence. But he was not the same boy from the training grounds. He had the +5 bonus from his MVP reward.

[SPD: 10 - 15]

Not the god-like speed of the cursed blade. But a significant, life-saving improvement. He was no longer wading through syrup. He was moving with a sharp, explosive quickness. It took Chris completely by surprise.

He skirted the edge of the firestorm. The intense, searing heat washed over him. Singing the hair on his arms. He moved like a phantom. A dark shape flitting at the very edge of destruction.

The wave of fire slammed into the far wall. The marble cracked and turned black. Chris, a look of shocked frustration on his face, turned. He tracked Edward’s new position.

"Stand still and be purified, you coward!" he bellowed. He unleashed another, wider arc of flame.

The arena floor became a blazing, fiery hellscape. Chris was relentless. A demigod of destruction. He turned the white sand to molten glass. The air grew thick with the smell of ozone and burning stone.

The heat was suffocating.

Edward was a ghost in the inferno. He was forced onto a purely defensive game. He couldn’t get close. The sheer, radiant heat from Chris was a defensive barrier. This was not a duel of skill. It was a battle of attrition. And Chris had all the firepower.

’He’s powerful, but he’s a fool,’ a cold, analytical voice whispered in his mind. The echo of the Lich. A fragment of its ancient, tactical genius. ’He believes the artifact is his strength. It is his cage. His movements are dictated by its power. He is predictable.’

The Lich was right.

Chris was fighting like an amateur with a cannon. He was just pointing and shooting. Relying on overwhelming force. He had no subtlety. No finesse.

Every attack was a massive, energy-consuming blast. He was a raging bonfire. Magnificent. Destructive. Ultimately, unsustainable.

Edward was a flickering candle flame in a storm. But one that refused to be extinguished.

He used the arena itself as his weapon. He weaved between scorched practice dummies. He kicked up clouds of sand to obscure his position. He used the very shadows cast by Chris’s own brilliant flames as his hiding places.

The whispers from the Shadowfang Dagger sharpened. A constant, tactical feed. Not just the Lich’s mind. But the predatory instincts of a hundred other creatures.

...He shifts his weight to his back foot... a wide-arc sweep is coming...

Edward dropped flat. A scything arc of fire passed harmlessly over his head.

...The gem on the gauntlet glows brighter... he is gathering power for a focused blast...

He rolled behind a chunk of molten stone. A concentrated beam of solar energy struck the spot where he had been. It left a deep, glowing crater.

He was frustrating Chris. Enraging him. The S-Rank prodigy, who expected a swift, glorious victory, was being made to look like a clumsy fool.

The crowd, which had been roaring his name, was growing quieter. A confused, murmuring tension replaced their bloodlust.

"Fight me!" Chris roared. His voice cracked with a new, desperate edge. He was starting to pant. The gauntlet was consuming his magical energy at a prodigious rate. "Stop scurrying around like a rat and face me like a man!"

Edward didn’t reply. He was a silent, patient predator. Waiting for his prey to exhaust itself. To make a mistake. He was learning Chris’s rhythm. The timing of his attacks. The slight tells before each new blast. He was not just surviving. He was analyzing. Adapting. Preparing.

Chris, his pride wounded and his patience shattered, finally made the mistake Edward had been waiting for.

He decided to end it.

He stopped his frantic, sweeping attacks. He stood still in the center of the arena. He raised his golden gauntlet high. He channeled all his remaining energy into the sunstone gem.

The gem began to glow brighter than the sun itself. A terrifying, beautiful sight. He was gathering power for his ultimate attack. A single, massive fireball. A miniature sun that would engulf the entire arena. Leaving no shadows to hide in. No room to dodge.

The crowd gasped. They shielded their eyes from the blinding light. Even the instructors looked nervous.

This was it. The final, all-or-nothing gambit.

Edward saw it. The raw, unrestrained power. The arrogant, triumphant look on Chris’s face. And in the second it took for Chris to gather that immense power, he saw his opening.

The Lich’s cold logic. The Dire Wolf’s predatory instinct. His own desperate, stubborn will. All came together in a single, perfect moment of chilling clarity.

He did not run. He did not seek cover.

As the miniature sun in Chris’s hand reached its critical, blinding peak, Edward burst from the shadows.

He ran directly towards it.

He charged into the heart of the inferno. His Shadowfang Dagger was held in a low, ready grip. Its black, light-devouring form was a stark, absolute contrast to the brilliant, world-ending light it was about to meet.

He was a moth flying into a star. A single, desperate shadow challenging the dawn.