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

Chapter 68: Scuffle, Sword Time

The whisper hadn’t even finished traveling through the crowd before both cousins moved.

The taller one, Kess Redtide, didn’t bother with a warning. His talent surged awake in an instant, blood welling up from beneath his skin in dark, glistening threads that whipped out from his forearms like living tendrils, each one tipped with something that looked less like a blade and more like a hungry mouth.

Talent activated: Crimson Undertow.

Beside him, Doran Redtide’s eyes went distant and strange, pupils narrowing to thin vertical slits, tracking a motion that hadn’t happened yet.

Talent activated: Bloodcall Edge.

"Redtide bloodline doesn’t forgive insults," Kess snarled, tendrils lashing the air in warning. "Especially random Epic-rank trash."

Aidan didn’t back down an inch.

Wind gathered around him first, a low, restless hum that stirred every loose stone on the ground, and Nether curled black and patient at his fingertips right alongside it. Lightning crawled up both his forearms a heartbeat later, crackling loud enough that the nearest onlookers actually flinched back from the sound.

’Come on then.’ Something old and calm settled over him, the stillness that always came right before he stopped holding back. ’Let’s see whose bloodline forgives what.’

The crowd scattered wide in a ragged circle, half of them already regretting stopping to watch.

Then the sky itself seemed to exhale.

A man dropped out of the clouds and stopped dead ten meters above the three of them, floating there like gravity had simply excused itself from his presence. He wore no guild colors, no crest, just a plain grey coat marked with a single stylized cloud-and-blade insignia.

The pressure that rolled off him hit the ground a full second before he spoke, and both cousins’ talents guttered out like candles in a hurricane, snuffed to nothing without him lifting a finger.

Kess and Doran both staggered, eyes wide with genuine shock.

"If you want to die," the man said, voice calm and utterly unbothered, "die fighting the Terrors. But if you want to compete, do it in the ring." His eyes swept the crowd once, unhurried. "I’ll be keeping an eye on this place while doing my mission. I won’t allow infighting in my presence."

A Cloud Whirl Allied Enforcer Department badge glimmered faintly at his collar, and nobody in the basin needed telling twice what that meant.

Median Divine-rank, no private guild backing him, answering to nothing but the Alliance itself.

Kess’s tendrils dissolved back into his skin, jaw clenched tight enough to crack. Doran’s strange, tracking eyes cleared, blinking hard as he’d just woken up from something.

Neither of them said another word.

Aidan let his own crackling aspects fade with a slow, easy shrug, as if none of it had bothered him in the slightest, and walked past the two cousins toward the registration pillar without a second glance.

He could feel their glares burning holes into his back the entire way.

’Cute family.’ He pressed his Digicard against the pillar. ’Shame about the manners.’

[Registered: Garen. Epic-rank Contest, Ridgehollow Basin.]

...

Sixty-four names filled the board by the time registration closed, and the basin reorganized itself into two wide fields, each one stretching a full five hundred meters across, formation lines glowing faintly at their edges.

Aidan didn’t have to wait long for his name to light up.

His opponent was already crossing the line when he arrived, a lean, composed man with a sheathed blade at his hip and the unhurried confidence of someone who had won this particular dance more times than he could count. Median-stage Legendary, by the weight of him.

"Garen," the man said, inclining his head. "Corvath Ren. Blade’s my whole discipline, so don’t expect me to make this interesting for you."

Aidan looked at the sheathed sword, then flexed his empty hand.

’Huh.’ He rolled the thought over, genuinely curious. ’I’ve got Blade as an aspect. Never actually held a sword in my life, though.’

He reached into Metal, drew it dense and long, and let Blade sharpen the edge as it took shape in his grip, a plain, unadorned length of dark steel with none of the flourish Corvath’s own weapon carried.

"Huh," Corvath said, eyebrows lifting. "You’re not a blade user."

"Nope." Aidan turned the sword over once, testing the balance with mild interest. "Figured I’d give it a shot. Would you mind if I ask for a pointer or two, senior? Purely educational."

A ripple of quiet laughter went through the onlookers.

Corvath actually smiled, something genuine and a little indulgent creeping into it. "Keep your elbow soft. Let the blade lead, don’t force it." He drew his own weapon, settling into a clean, practiced stance. "Not that it’ll save you much today."

"Appreciate the pointers, senior."

"Begin!"

Corvath opened with textbook precision, a clean diagonal cut meant to test the very basics of a guard, and Aidan met it with a stance that had no business looking as steady as it did for someone holding a sword for the first time.

He read the strike, not through any swordsman’s training, but through the same instinct that had let him read a thousand other kinds of violence, and turned it aside at the exact angle Corvath had just handed him for free.

"Good ear," Corvath said, already flowing into the next exchange.

Aidan kept experimenting instead of finishing it fast. He let Lightning ride along the blade on one swing, just to feel how it changed the weight of the strike. He let Wind curl around a parry, just to see what it did to the follow-through. Every exchange taught him something new about a weapon he’d never bothered picking up before.

Corvath’s confident smile started slipping somewhere around the sixth clash.

Naturally, Aidan had already activated his Legendary-rank Spirit Art to boost his stats, and with further attribute boosts from his Power Bonds, his speed and attack were higher than Corvath’s.

"You said you’d never held a sword," he said, breathing harder now, backing off half a step.

"I hadn’t. Before today." Aidan tilted his head, genuinely pleased with himself. "This is fun, actually."

Corvath came in one more time, faster, sharper, putting real weight behind a strike meant to finally end the lesson, and Aidan simply let Metal thicken the blade at the last instant, catching the strike dead and turning Corvath’s own momentum straight back into him with a shove of pure electromagnetism.

’W-What was that? Something invisible broke my guard and reduced the speed of my sword!’ Corvath stumbled, guard wide open for the first time all match, and Aidan tapped the flat of his crude sword against the man’s Spirit Armor almost gently.

But only Corvath knew its power. It was meant to be hidden from onlookers, but the overbearing, lethal pressure at the point of the sword made him sweat buckets.

[Corvath Ren: 100 to 0.]

’If this wasn’t a competition, I would have died.’ Corvath’s eyes shook. ’What is that strange magnetic power?’

Silence rolled over Field One.

Corvath stared down at his own chest, then up at Aidan, then at the plain, unadorned blade still humming faintly with borrowed lightning in Aidan’s hand.

"Match over," the overseer announced. "Field One goes to Garen."

"That was your first fight with a sword," Corvath said slowly, like the words didn’t quite want to leave his mouth.

"Yeah." Aidan let the blade dissolve back into loose motes of metal, shrugging with what looked, from the outside, like genuine sheepishness. "Sorry, senior. Guess I got lucky."

Nobody in the crowd looked like they believed that for a second, but not a single one of them could figure out why not.

"What the hell just happened? How come Corvath failed to defend?"

"And why was he able to keep up with Corvath? Did that guy actually master a Spirit Art and was using it to boost his parameters?"

"That was indeed the case, but Corvath also had his Epic-rank Spirit Art activated..."

Corvath was asked by others what the hell actually happened, and he ruefully smiled in response. "You’ll know if you fight him."

The two cousins snorted, not intimidated in the slightest, and instead were eager to fight Aidan.

Being able to rank in the top 100 means those two were capable of beating the average peak Legendary-rank Hunters, so Almond being able to defeat a median-stage Legendary Hunter was indeed nothing in their eyes.