Chapter 541: Ace Morgan
A bow materialized in Ace’s hands.
Kael’s heart skipped a beat; his mana flared instinctively. His staff’s crystal began to glow brighter, readying whatever defensive options he had available. His face was tight with focus, his eyes locked on Ace’s hands, waiting to see what shape the incoming attack would take.
Moon’s eyes lingered on Ace for another moment.
He watched Ace slowly raise the bow, fingers reaching back smoothly to nock an arrow. The arrow itself was simple in appearance, unremarkable, just a thin shaft with a sharpened tip with no visible enchantment or flashy display of elements.
Moon’s pupils dilated.
He had seen this movement before.
The memory was vivid, dredged up from a depth Moon hadn’t expected to revisit today.
’Shit! Is it him...? But how... how is he here?’ Moon cursed internally.
Moon could feel the pressure building around Ace’s attack.
If this arrow reached Kael, the consequences wouldn’t be a simple elimination.
He would die.
Moon moved without hesitation.
Lightning began to spread through his entire arm, the purple current building rapidly along his skin. The charge grew brighter and denser with each passing second as the spell reached full power.
The bolt surged through the air with a blinding flash.
At the same instant, Ace released his arrow.
~Whoosh~
~Crackle~
The two attacks met at an intersection point halfway between Ace’s pillar and Kael’s.
For a long moment, the clash was almost beautiful. The arrow drove forward, its tip splitting the lightning’s surface along a perfect line. Purple sparks danced along the shaft as it pushed through Moon’s bolt, each fork of the lightning crackling against the arrow, struggling to anchor itself to the projectile and tear it apart.
The lightning resisted, coiling around the arrow, wrapping it in writhing tendrils of energy, biting into the shaft and the fletching alike. For a heartbeat, the arrow slowed visibly, its forward momentum dragged backward by the current’s grip.
Then the arrow broke through the flashing shackles.
It emerged on the other side of Moon’s lightning, weakened and scorched.
Kael didn’t waste the opportunity Moon had given him.
His hand shot up, a sharp fireball forming at his fingertips in less than a second. He launched it directly at the incoming arrow, and the two collided with a sharp crack. The weakened arrow snapped mid-air, its shaft splintering into fragments that fell harmlessly to the arena floor below.
Kael stared at the broken pieces, instinctively gulping the mouthful of saliva building up in the back of his throat.
His chest was rising and falling rapidly, his eyes wide. He had been a single heartbeat away from being eliminated. The shot was powerful enough to kill him. Klein would most certainly have intervened to save him, in turn disqualifying him.
Kael’s gaze lifted from the broken arrow to the figure on the opposite pillar.
Ace.
The white-haired young man was no longer looking at Kael at all. His attention had shifted entirely to Moon, his lips curving into that same small smile he seemed to reserve only for him.
Kael felt his stomach drop.
’Just who is this monster?’
Moon and Ace stared at each other across the arena.
They were hundreds of meters apart, but the focus between them made the distance feel meaningless. The cameras zoomed in on both faces simultaneously.
While Ace stared at Moon, Moon was staring at something else.
Something that made his heart skip several beats.
[Class: ???]
[Order: ???]
[Skills: ???]
Moon’s Eye of Truth couldn’t peer through Ace Morgan.
His Legendary Rank skill was returning nothing but question marks where data should have been. Moon had used Eye of Truth hundreds of times, on every kind of being he had encountered, and the skill had pulled hidden readings in almost every case.
The only category of being that ever returned this kind of result was Ascenders. People so far above Moon’s order that the skill couldn’t bridge the gap.
Even Alaric, a Surpasser at the peak of Second Order, hadn’t blocked Moon’s reading. Eye of Truth had pulled Alaric’s class and skills perfectly. The River of Paths connection hadn’t been enough to obscure him.
Ace was different.
Moon reached into his pocket and pulled out another rune. He pressed it into the surface of his pillar without looking down, activating the layered defenses to their maximum, and then he leapt off the pillar entirely.
His feet touched the arena floor for the first time since the round began.
The entire venue went silent.
Spectators leaned forward in their seats. Competitors paused their own engagements, distracted by the bizarre sight of the bracket’s frontrunner casually abandoning his defensive position.
Moon began walking toward Ace Morgan.
One of the nearby competitors, a Four-Star pyromancer who had been carefully watching for any opportunity, found his opening.
A slow, opportunistic grin spread across his face.
’This fool thinks nobody will challenge him any longer. He thinks a rune will deter attacks.’
The pyromancer raised his hands, mana surging through his channels, and condensed a massive fireball between his palms. He released it with everything he had, the sphere of red flame screaming across the arena toward Moon’s abandoned pillar.
Moon didn’t even glance at the attack.
He kept walking, his eyes locked on Ace.
Lightning crackled to life in his hands.
~Zap~
~Zap~
~Zap~
Three bolts of purple lightning lanced toward the pyromancer.
The first caught him in the chest before he could react. The second locked his muscles in place. The third drove into his head and shut down his consciousness in a single instant.
The pyromancer collapsed, falling off his pillar and landing on the arena floor with a thud.
At the same moment, his fireball struck Moon’s pillar.
The runes activated with a soft pulse. The fireball detonated harmlessly against the array, its force scattered into the open air without leaving so much as a scorch mark on the earth beneath.
Moon’s pillar registered no damage on the overhead display.
Moon’s voice carried across the arena, cold and clear.
"If you want to stay in the tournament, mind your business." Moon’s words spread through the silent venue like a judge’s verdict.
A few competitors who had been considering similar opportunistic attacks visibly recoiled. They lowered their weapons, their plans dying in their minds before they could be executed.
Moon was constantly showcasing why he was not to be messed with.
The announcement followed.
"Competitor eliminated."
The healer’s light descended to attend to the unconscious pyromancer. Then the pyromancer was carried off the field for treatment, his body limp.
Across the arena, Selene watched Moon walk across the open ground with no expression on his face.
Selene’s expression contorted with concern. This wasn’t how Moon usually fought. He was disciplined and conservative in his approach.
Walking off his own pillar in the middle of a round where pillar safety determined ranking was the kind of move he would never make under ordinary circumstances.
Something was wrong.
She didn’t know what. But she knew the man she had been falling for, and that man didn’t behave like this without a reason.
Her hand tightened on her staff.
Moon continued walking.
When he reached the threshold he needed, the range his class skill required for activation, he stopped.
’Could it be him...?’
His Classless cooldown had ended just minutes earlier. The system was ready for a copy attempt. He had been planning to use it on someone later.
But this was more important. Much more important.
He activated the skill.
[Class Slot activation failed.]
[Target’s classification exceeds skill’s threshold.]
Moon stared at the notification.
He had walked across the arena for this exact reason. To confirm what his instincts had been screaming since earlier. To prove or disprove the theory forming in the back of his head.
The notification was the proof.
The man standing across from him, Ace Morgan, was one of only two people in Moon’s life that his Classless skill had failed to copy from at the same order. The first had been a crazed man named Jonathan, encountered during his early days as a young Awakener trying to subdue an Elk.
Either Ace and Jonathan were two separate people who happened to share a rare trait.
Or they were the same person.
Moon studied Ace’s face carefully.
The physical features hinted that they weren’t the same person.
But appearance could be altered.
And Moon’s instincts were telling him that the man across from him was not what he appeared to be.
Ace’s smile widened just slightly.
The two of them stood facing each other across the open arena, the entire venue holding its collective breath.
**
Author’s Note: For those that would like to read about Jonathan and Moon’s first meeting. Look at Chapters 57-59.
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