CHAPTER 206: THINKING V/S CHARGING

Chapter 203:Thinking V/s Charging

The silence in the grand, crystalline Rest Stop was a living thing. It was thick, heavy, and poisoned with the collective, stinging humiliation of the Academy’s elite.

The soft, ethereal music and the gentle splash of the mana fountain, which should have been soothing, now felt like a mocking soundtrack to their failure.

My team—Team Anomaly—had become the accidental villains of the story. We sat in a loose, quiet circle on the grass, our mana full, our armor clean. Alex, Kaelen, and Gideon were nervously munching on the complimentary (and magically replenishing) fruit from the trees, trying to avoid making eye contact with anyone.

The Twins were, as usual, completely invisible, having already faded back into the shadows of the surrounding grove, sensing the shift in the social atmosphere.

Only Seraphina and I were exposed. She sat on the edge of the marble fountain, stiff as a statue, pointedly sharpening her arrows, refusing to acknowledge the stares.

She was still processing her own team’s success, and the fact that this success had made her a pariah to her noble peers.

I, on the other hand, was doing what I did best: leaning back against a tree, eyes half-closed, stroking Kuro/Nox, who had materialized in my lap and was purring loud enough to be heard three meters away. I was deliberately, calculatedly, radiating an aura of bored indifference.

Across the lawn, the other teams were a mess of simmering resentment.

Eric William’s team had stormed off to the far side of the chamber, his voice a low, furious hiss as he berated his teammates for their "pathetic performance."

Lyra Braveheart and Aurelia Miller were already in a full-blown, albeit whispered, argument. Lyra was blaming Aurelia’s "overly complex" trap-disarming attempts, while Aurelia was clinically dissecting Lyra’s "wasteful" mana expenditure.

Selena and Elara sat quietly, their elven grace intact, but their faces were pale, their expressions deeply thoughtful as they kept glancing at me, then at the ranking pylon, then back at me, as if trying to solve an equation that didn’t make sense.

Leon Lionheart’s team was the most visibly demoralized. They sat on the grass, chugging health potions, their hero-squad energy completely extinguished. Leon himself just stared into the mana fountain, his reflection staring back, his face a mask of profound, internalized failure. He hadn’t just been beaten; his entire philosophy of "heroic, head-on" combat had been proven inefficient and wrong.

This fragile, toxic silence, this cold war of glares and whispers, could only last so long. Someone had to be the first to break.

And, of course, it was Magnus Daven.

He was the "Commoner Champion," a title he wore like a crown. His entire identity was built on being the one who fought smarter, harder, and more righteously than the lazy nobles. My victory wasn’t just a loss for his rank; it was a direct threat to his political identity. I was a commoner who had just out-maneuvered him, and he couldn’t let it stand.

I felt his approach before I saw it. The air shifted as he moved, his tall, imposing figure casting a shadow over me. Kuro/Nox let out a low, warning hiss from my lap, his violet eyes slitting open.

I slowly opened my own. "Daven," I said, my voice mild. "Enjoying the fruit?"

He stood over me, his hands clenched at his sides, his "Ironclad" team of top-ranked commoners arrayed behind him like a phalanx. They all looked furious. My victory made them look bad.

"Wilson," Magnus said. His voice wasn’t a shout. It was a low, dangerous, controlled baritone that cut through the chamber, causing all other conversations to die.

Every eye in the Rest Stop snapped to us. Leon turned. Eric paused his tirade. Seraphina froze, her hand halfway to her quiver.

This was it. The confrontation.

"A truly... remarkable performance," Magnus said, the words civil, but his tone laced with ice. "You’ve baffled us all.

A flawless clear on Floor 1 with almost no mana. A secret passage on Floor 3 that let you bypass the entire labyrinth. A ’flawed path’ on Floor 4 that no one else could see."

He leaned down slightly, his charismatic face hardening into a mask of pure suspicion. His voice dropped, but it was pitched to carry.

"So I’ll ask you, commoner to commoner. How did you do it, Wilson? What trick did you use?"

His question was a perfectly crafted trap. He wasn’t just asking for himself; he was asking for everyone. He was voicing the suspicion that was burning in every other team’s mind. He cheated.

"Did you buy information from the Academy?" Magnus pressed, his voice rising just enough to sound righteous. "Did your ’Cursed King’ status give you some kind of system exploit? The rest of us commoners, we have to fight for every single scrap of respect we get. We earn our victories with blood and sweat."

He gestured to his own soot-stained armor, then to my clean, pristine uniform.

"If you are using some underhanded trick, some exploit that bypasses the work," his voice was a low growl now, "then you’re not just a cheater. You’re a traitor to every commoner who is fighting to prove their worth. You’re spitting on our struggle."

It was a brilliant political move. In one speech, he had framed me as an enemy of my own class, an "other," while simultaneously elevating himself as the true, honorable leader of the commoner faction. He had painted me into a corner. If I didn’t answer, I was guilty. If I lied, he would tear the lie apart.

The entire room was watching me. Alex and Kaelen looked terrified, shrinking back. Seraphina watched with a new, sharp intensity, wondering how I would escape this. Leon looked on with grim fascination.

I, however, just... smiled. A small, faint, almost lazy smile.

I let the silence stretch, his accusation hanging heavy in the air. I gave Kuro/Nox another slow, deliberate stroke, the wyrmling’s purr an obscene, decadent sound in the face of such tension.

Then, slowly, I stood up.

I wasn’t as tall as Magnus, but as I rose, I let a fraction of my [Aura Dominion] leak out. Not the silver-blue field, but just the pressure. The raw, psychic weight of the ’Mindbreaker’ title, the cold authority of my will.

Magnus, a C-Rank warrior, visibly stiffened. His body reacted instinctively, his hand twitching towards his weapon, his eyes widening slightly as he felt that cold, dominant presence wash over him.

I wasn’t just a commoner. I wasn’t just Rank 1. I was dangerous.

I stepped past Alex and Kaelen, invading Magnus’s personal space, forcing him to either stand his ground or take an involuntary step back. He held his ground, but the effort was visible in the tense set of his shoulders.

I stopped barely a foot from him, my gaze cold and completely, utterly dismissive.

"Trick?" I repeated, my voice a quiet murmur that was somehow more intimidating than his roar. "Exploit? Traitor?"

I let out a small, short laugh. It was a cold, sharp, insulting sound.

"You really think I needed one?"

I gestured back to the ranking pylon. "Look at your team, Magnus. You’re bleeding, you’re exhausted, and you’re sick from chugging potions. You saw a maze, so you tried to charge it. You saw a trap, so you tried to break it. You saw a puzzle, so you tried to smash it. You charged. That’s all you do."

I leaned in, my voice dropping to a whisper that only he and those closest could hear. "You talk about ’blood and sweat’ like it’s a virtue. All I see is a waste of resources. All that ’hard work’ just got you to Floor 5, half-dead, to find my team fully rested and waiting for you for almost an hour."

I tapped my own temple.

"You call my strategy a ’trick.’ I call it thinking."

I stepped past him, brushing his shoulder deliberately. The contact made him flinch as if he’d been shocked. I walked towards the glowing fountain, my team—Alex, Kaelen, Gideon—scrambling to follow, their faces a mix of terror and awe.

I stopped at the fountain’s edge and turned back to face the entire, stunned room.

"You all want to know my ’trick’?" I called out, my voice ringing with the cold authority of the Chief Inspector. "It’s simple. I used my head. I looked where you didn’t. I saw flaws where you saw walls. I built a team that follows orders, not their own egos."

My gaze settled back on Magnus, who was still standing there, his fists clenched, his face a mask of cold, controlled fury.

"Maybe you should try thinking instead of just charging, Daven. You might find you save more mana. And you wouldn’t have to whine about ’traitors’ just because someone else was better at it than you."

I turned my back on him. On all of them.

I hadn’t just beaten him in the Tower. I had dismissed him.

Humiliated him. I had exposed his ’righteous struggle’ as nothing more than inefficient, brute-force thuggery.

In front of Leon. In front of Eric. In front of his entire adoring faction.

The rivalry was no longer about ranks. It was bone-deep. It was personal.

And as I sat down by the fountain, the sounds of the Rest Stop slowly, awkwardly resuming, I knew I had just made an enemy for life.

And I didn’t care at all.