Chapter 76: Chapter Seventy Six
"Yo, this is amazing."
Aaron cooed, turning slowly in the white space, his voice carrying the particular reverence of soone who had just walked into sothing they didn’t have the vocabulary for yet.
The boys had found themselves in the white building — the training ground of the Crucible, clean and vast and waiting, the ceiling sowhere above the point where looking stopped being useful.
"So." Anton’s voice cut across the wonder with the precision of a man who had decided he was done waiting. His face had gone the particular still that ant he had questions and had already decided he wasn’t accepting deflection. "Are you going to tell us how you’ve got an EX artifact in your possession."
It wasn’t a question.
"I really can’t say." Zeke shrugged, the movent easy, unbothered. "I have an ability that gives
things — abilities, traits, anything that’s possible is possible with . Whenever it decides."
"An ability."
Michael said it quietly, but his attention sharpened in a way that was visible if you knew how to look at him. The information had gone sowhere and was being processed.
"Didn’t you ntion having amnesia before?"
Kai had the look of soone whose separate thoughts had just introduced themselves to each other. He was nodding slowly, the way people nodded when they were confirming sothing to themselves rather than agreeing with soone else.
"Yes, I have amnesia." Zeke glanced at him. "But did I actually ntion that?"
"You did," Jude said.
Zeke placed his hands on his chin. "I’ve got to keep things to myself."
"It looks like you’ve reached a conclusion," Michael said, still watching Kai, who had graduated from slow nodding to enthusiastic nodding.
"Yes, I have." Kai turned to Zeke with the energy of a man presenting evidence. "Do you have a system daddy? Maybe a gacha type of system?"
Zeke took one deliberate step backward, his expression arranging itself into sothing between pity and disgust. "You’ve been reading too many books. Can you not separate fiction from reality?"
The look he gave Kai said: you need help, professionally, soon.
"I can’t be wrong — I an, I could be, but hear
out." Kai pressed forward regardless. "You wake up one day without mories. You weren’t exceptional beforehand. Then after you awoke, everything changed — from a shut-in to, well, this." He gestured at Zeke in a way that encompassed all of him. "And you just seem to produce things out of this world."
"First off," Zeke said, "you rich people need to stop doing background checks on . Second, I was not a ’jack.’" He gave the word its own air quotes and a weight that suggested the distinction mattered to him personally. "And yes, it might resemble the fictional trope of soone getting transmigrated and receiving a cheat from wherever — but consider this." He raised a hand, adopting the expression of soone about to present a reasonable alternative. "Maybe I awakened this ability, and it gave
nothing useful for years. Then after about four years, it finally produced sothing."
He looked around the room. The group was following. He continued.
"Maybe that sothing had side effects. Maybe I didn’t know, because it was genuinely unprecedented and I didn’t have Observation abilities yet. Maybe I took it anyway." A pause. "Maybe it wiped my mories, took my diocrity with them, and left
with Immortality as compensation."
He spread his hands. "Then you have . Immortal waste of space, Zeke Vaughn. And everything that ca after."
Jude considered this for exactly one second. "It’s a nice story. But it depends entirely on how your ability actually works. You have every card — you could fabricate anything."
"C’mon, Jude." Anton’s voice carried the easy timing of soone enjoying themselves. "He has all the cards and we never even knew this ability existed until now." The teasing glint in his eyes suggested he was less suspicious than he was entertained. "Convenient, isn’t it."
"Why would I tell you everything about my abilities?" Zeke asked, with genuine exasperation. "Do you disclose everything about yourself on a first date?"
"This has passed first date territory," Aaron said. "This is makeout territory."
"Start a family together territory," Jude added.
"You didn’t tell them about your trait, you bastard—"
"I told them later." Jude raised his hands. "It happened off screen."
Zeke’s face dropped. He stared. "Off screen. Off screen, he says." His voice had taken on the quality of soone discovering a structural injustice. "So when I’m not present, it’s just ’off screen’?"
"This is not a movie."
"My mistake — who’s the one going around calling himself a handso MC?"
They had drifted toward each other during the exchange without noticing, and now stood a breath apart, the argunt having reached the proximity where it beca sothing else.
"He’s changing the subject," Michael observed pleasantly from sowhere to the side. "Don’t fall for it."
Zeke turned. "How dare you accuse ."
Michael shrugged.
"Fine." Zeke stepped back, the exasperation settling into sothing more considered. "I don’t have a system. This is not a novel. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t know I would ever receive sothing of this magnitude — the sa way Jude never ntioned his trait because it had no consequence, until Anton arrived."
"Why’d he call ?" Anton turned around with the energy of soone who had just been nad in a sentence they hadn’t agreed to participate in.
"Also," Aaron said, with the asured tone of soone who had been sitting on a thought — "Zero’s a gift from your ability, isn’t he. That’s why you didn’t want to talk about him the other day."
"Yes and no." Zeke’s voice landed with a particular finality. "Yes, he’s a gift from my ability. And I didn’t want to discuss him — not because of the ability, but for other reasons that will not be disclosed." He looked around the room. "Ever."
A beat.
The boys raised their hands. An agreent, or at least an acknowledgnt. So things weren’t followed up on.
"So that’s where the butler cos from," Michael said. He had moved during the conversation, crossing the space without announcent, and was now standing closer to Zeke than he had been — the proximity of soone rearranging their assessnt. "You keep getting more interesting every day."
"Let’s test this artifact." Zeke turned toward the room. "That’s why we’re here."
"Yes, let’s get it started," Kai said, with the recovered enthusiasm of soone whose shoulder had just reminded him it was fine, actually.
"I’ll have to introduce it properly." Zeke glanced upward, or sowhere near upward. "Zero. Take it from here."
{ Lazy fool. }
Zero’s voice filled the room. What followed was a wave of recognition from the trio that was sowhere between a greeting and a reunion — nas called, questions launched, Aaron saying sothing that made Jude laugh once, sharply.
...
"So." Michael had the small, carefully calibrated smile. "A fight fest."
"What forces growth faster than a battle royale?" Zeke said. "Equal premise. Clean test."
"As long as I participate, there’s no equality."
Michael shrugged.
"Pride is an emotion you shouldn’t technically be capable of feeling," Anton said.
"I learned from the best."
{ The artifact does not care for your hidden traits or stats you may or may not have, once it enforces equality, it’s equality. }
A pause that had texture to it.
{ Or are you scared of losing your image? }
"Is an AI trying to rage bait ?"
Michael looked at the ceiling with the expression of soone filing the mont for later.
"Fine. I’ll bite." Michael straightened slightly. "What restrictions are being placed."
{ First off, Innate abilities are off the table. For Zeke, his Immortality and Pride trait are off the table. }
"A handicap." Zeke’s smile had the particular quality of soone pretending to be aggrieved. "My hand was in need of a cap."
{ Ignore. Skills are allowed. Your stats are capped at 49, the peak of E Rank. Any trait that grants a near death boost is locked. Traits that are a form of passive abilities like Zeke’s free flier are locked. Traits that give extra stat boost are locked. }
"This is simply made to nerf . So you know, if you don’t put in effort, this will be a boring match."
He let it sit for a mont.
Then his aura moved.
It didn’t build — it arrived. No preamble, no escalation, just the sudden presence of sothing that pressed against the room from the inside out. The weight of it was physical. Aaron’s knees bent before he’d processed why. Kai’s hand found the nearest surface. Even Anton’s jaw set, his feet adjusting instinctively to distribute the load.
The aura died as quickly as it had appeared.
"Oh, you’ve initiated the restrictions."
Zeke was smiling with his full face. "Otherwise Aaron would have at minimum died."
The smile disappeared.
The room took a mont to rember how breathing worked.
Their clothing changed — training gear, clean and simple, appearing without ceremony. A bracelet materialized on each wrist, smooth and unremarkable.
{ The bracelets beco whatever weapon you wish. }
Zeke looked down at his. Turned his wrist once. The tal caught the white light.
"Alright boys." The grin ca back, slow and specific. "A boon."
...
Nobody moved for exactly one second.
Then Michael stepped left, Anton stepped right, and the room exploded.
---
The first collision was Anton and Zeke, because of course it was.
Anton closed the distance without telegraphing — no wind-up, no shift in weight, no announcent. Four thousand years of warfare had simply decided that the most dangerous thing in the room needed to be addressed imdiately, and his body executed that decision before the thought finished forming. His bracelet beca a straight sword before his grip had fully closed around it, the tal already an extension of him before it had finished being a bracelet.
Zeke’s beca a sword too, Master of Arms downloading a decade of muscle mory in the half-second before the first impact.
The clash sent a shockwave through the white floor — a visible ring spreading outward in a perfect circle, the surface fracturing along its leading edge like ice discovering it had been standing on itself.
They separated. Returned. Separated again.
To watch them was to watch two different philosophies argue in steel. Anton was economy — every movent served two purposes minimum, each step either opening an angle or closing one, the sword an extension of a body that had spent four thousand years forgetting how to waste motion. Zeke was adaptation — Martial Instinct reading the geotry of each exchange before it resolved, Master of Arms providing the vocabulary, sothing older and deeper providing the grammar beneath it.
Neither was managing the other. Neither was conserving anything.
The fourth exchange opened a cut along Zeke’s forearm, blood welling clean and imdiate, bright against the white floor when it fell. The fifth put a crack in Anton’s guard that Zeke widened into a hit to the ribs — not clean, not precise, but landed, the sound of it dense and low.
Anton didn’t flinch. He used the montum of the hit to spin, elbow coming back toward Zeke’s jaw.
Zeke leaned back. The elbow moved his hair on the way past.
"You’re fast for an old man."
"You talk too much for soone bleeding."
"You should rember you’re no longer immortal."
"Heh."
---
Across the room, Kai had opened with Flowing Stone Breaker Art, because at E Rank stats with forty-nine points to work with, a defensive art that turned aggression into liability was the correct opening answer to almost everything. He had planted his feet and waited for Aaron to commit.
Aaron had not committed. He had arrived.
He was behind Kai before Kai’s stance had finished settling — not a teleport, just the application of speed through the shortest route while Kai was focused on the expected direction. Combat Flow ant the transition from movent to strike had no seam, no tell, no gap between arriving and hitting. His fist found Kai’s shoulder, rotating him off his center before the stance was complete.
Kai went with the rotation rather than against it — Flowing Stone Breaker Art was water, and water didn’t resist, it redirected. He ca around with his elbow leveraging Aaron’s own montum, catching him clean across the cheekbone.
Aaron’s head snapped sideways. He spat once. Ca back.
There was nothing elegant about what followed. They hit each other with the focused specificity of two people who had trained together long enough to know the exact location of every gap in the other’s defense and were now filling those gaps with concentrated intent.
Aaron’s eye was swelling by the third exchange. Kai’s shoulder was moving with the particular wrongness of sothing strained past its preference. Neither acknowledged it. Neither stopped.
---
Jude had gone for Michael.
Not because the math supported it. Because Jude, carrying thousands of years of the Tower’s trial in the body of a nineteen-year-old, understood sothing about battle royales that younger fighters didn’t: you don’t let the most dangerous mind in the room stand still and catalogue everyone else. You make it spend. You force reaction. You accept that you will not win this specific exchange and you make him pay for the win anyway.
He ca in with Ard Combat Mastery and a bracelet that had beco a broadsword, his technique operating at a level that had no business fitting in his fra. The first swing was committed — not a probe, not a test, a genuine strike designed to require a defensive response.
Michael’s first response was not defensive.
He stepped inside the arc.
The sword passed behind him, and his palm found Jude’s sternum at the range where technique beca secondary to the fact that a palm strike at close quarters with forty-nine stat points behind it hits like a door thrown open by soone who has made a decision about it.
Jude went backward four feet, boots dragging white floor, and caught himself.
He looked up.
Michael was already sowhere else.
Genius had processed Jude’s Ard Combat Mastery within the first half-second of contact — not the technique, but its logic. The priorities. The decision architecture that produced each movent. He wasn’t reading Jude anymore. He was reading what Jude would do before Jude’s nervous system had finished issuing the instruction.
Apex Misis ant his face gave nothing. No micro-expressions, no weight shifts before commitnt, no tells of any kind. He was a surface that had removed all the parts of combat that leaked intention, and what remained was a fighter who existed entirely in the present tense, with no past movents written on him and no future movents announced.
Jude attacked again. And again. Each ti Michael wasn’t there, and each ti he left sothing behind on the way out — elbow, knee, the heel of a hand, never the sa thing twice, always finding the angle Jude’s guard had just vacated.
By the sixth exchange Jude was bleeding from two places. Michael was unmarked.
Jude smiled. Tightened his grip.
Ca again.
---
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