After A Billion-Year Torture, I Returned As A Transcendent Player

Chapter 64: Player vs Player

The mist thickened around him instead of clearing, and a new block of text settled into place.

[Tier-3 Zone: The Severance Ring.]

[Two Transcendent Players have been matched by proximity of clear time. This arena binds both combatants to a shared ceiling. Here, you are only as strong as what you can do with what’s left. Defeat your opponent, or force their forfeit, to advance. The loser is ejected. Their attempt is marked failed.]

[Companions cannot enter this zone.]

Aidan felt Arthur, Jovan, and Tom peel away from his awareness all at once, and for the first time since he’d stepped through the mist, he stood entirely alone.

’No Divine-10 cushion. No four Power Bonds carrying the weight for me.’ He rolled his shoulders, and something old and quiet settled into him, the same stillness he used to wear at the bottom of the Darkness. ’Fine, bring it on.’

The mist pulled back, and the arena revealed itself.

A wide ring of black stone hung suspended over nothing, no walls, no floor beyond its edge, just endless grey void pressing in from every direction. A single figure waited on the far side of it.

He was tall, skin dark and faintly reflective like void-glass, twin blades hanging loose at his sides. His eyes found Aidan and did not blink.

"Another one," he said, flat. "The system tells me only one of us leaves this ring as who they’re meant to become."

’No small talk about villages or families, huh.’ Aidan’s stillness sharpened into something colder. ’Good. Neither do I.’

"I know what this program wants," Aidan said. "One ultimate power, forged out of everyone else’s failure." He rolled his neck. "I intend to be the one still standing when it’s done choosing."

"So do I." The man’s blades came up, and nothing in his face suggested he was bluffing. "I broke something in myself to earn this power. I won’t hand it to a stranger."

[Begin.]

He was already moving.

Both blades came in low and fast, a scissoring cut aimed to open Aidan from hip to throat, and Aidan barely got a wall of hardened wind up in time. The first blade shrieked off it. The second didn’t.

It opened a line across his forearm, deep and immediate, blood welling hot and fast down to his wrist.

No armor. No tally. Just the wound, and the pain of it, sharp and real.

’There it is.’ Aidan’s jaw tightened. ’No shield to hide behind here. Every mistake costs skin.’

He tried to answer with lightning, and nothing came.

His metal sat dead in his grip. His electromagnetism refused to catch.

[Notice: A Void field is suppressing all Mana-drawn techniques within this arena.]

’A canceler. That’s how he’s still standing after however many of these he’s already won.’ Aidan gave ground, boots skidding on black stone, reading the rhythm of the blades instead of panicking into them. ’Fine. Then I stop being cheap.’

He reached past Mana entirely, down into the deeper well beneath it, and paid the real price for what came next.

Blood answered first, dark and eager, threading up his arms in welling lines. Nether followed, patient, curling black around his knuckles like it had been waiting its whole existence for permission.

The man’s eyes narrowed at the shift. "That’s not Mana."

"No," Aidan said, voice flat now too. "It’s the part of me that actually hurts to use."

He closed the distance himself.

Blade met fist, and this time it was a real trade, void-glass biting into Nether-wrapped knuckles, both of them bleeding, both of them giving nothing away for free. A cut opened along Aidan’s ribs. A knuckle-shaped bruise bloomed dark under the stranger’s jaw.

Neither of them slowed down to notice.

’He’s not holding back at all.’ Aidan tasted blood in his mouth, his own, and spat it onto the black stone. ’Good. I don’t want him to.’

The stranger drove a blade toward his throat, full commitment, no hesitation left in him at all, and Aidan barely turned it aside with a forearm that screamed at the impact. The edge still opened a line above his collarbone.

Blood ran freely down his chest now, and his vision blurred at the edges from how much of it he was losing.

’Getting sloppy.’ He forced a breath through his teeth. ’One more mistake like that ends it. End it first, then.’

He reached for the last thing he had, and paid whatever it cost.

Neonoir Lethal Flow tore up out of him in a wash of dark, silent light, wind gathering into a form that hummed cold through every nerve he had left.

[Spirit Form active. Speed +150%. Attack +100%.]

[Warning: Spirit Energy reserve critical.]

’One opening,’ Aidan told himself, blood-slick hands closing into fists. ’That’s all I get to spend on this.’

The stranger came in for what he clearly meant to be the finish, both blades converging on Aidan’s exposed chest.

Aidan wasn’t there when they arrived.

He tore through the space between them in a blur of dark wind, appeared inside the man’s guard before the blades finished their arc, and Neonoir Fatality stacked into every strike that followed, wind-edged hits landing three, four, five times faster than void-glass could answer.

The stranger’s stolen speed bled away with every stack, his desperate counter arriving a full beat too late.

Aidan wove Blood and Nether into the final strike, driving it clean through the gap in his guard, decay eating outward from the wound while the enchant held his legs locked in place, too slow now to even stagger back.

The blow went straight through his chest.

No tally. No number falling to zero. Just a body coming apart around a wound that shouldn’t have been survivable, and wasn’t, until the raid’s single mercy caught him before the end and yanked him screaming out of the arena instead.

[Opponent ejected. Attempt marked failed.]

The black stone went silent, spattered dark, and Aidan stood alone in the middle of it, chest heaving, blood running from three different wounds down his own ruined coat.

He didn’t feel like celebrating.

’Didn’t ask his name,’ he thought, staring at the space where the man had been. ’Didn’t want to. Guess that’s what this program actually is. Strangers, bleeding each other out over who gets to matter.’

[Arthur, rushing back into his awareness: MASTER YOU’RE HURT]

’I’m fine, buddy. Give me a second.’

[Jovan: Fortune says that one will remember your face for a long time. So will you.]

Aidan pressed a hand to the gash on his ribs, sealed it shut with a thin thread of flame, and let out a slow, unsteady breath.

’Note to self.’ He forced himself upright. ’Spirit Arts aren’t a casual snack. Next time, spend them earlier.’

The black stone beneath his boots began to dissolve, grey mist rising to swallow the arena whole.

[Tier-3 Zone: The Severance Ring. Cleared.]

[Advancing to Tier-4 Zone.]

Aidan closed his eyes, blood still drying on his knuckles, and let the mist take him.