Chapter 91: Full Evidence, TitanSkell Are Cheaters

The room was packed with glowing monitors, high-speed replay servers, and camera feeds. A shift operator sitting at the main desk spun around in his chair, his eyes widening.

"Hey! You’re not supposed to be in here, man. Stage access only," he said, reaching for his radio.

I reached into my inner jacket pocket and pulled out a thick stack of hundred-dollar bills—the $10,000 cash roll I always keep on me for unexpected situations. I calmly peeled off ten bills and set the $1,000 cash stack right on his desk console.

"And you’re not supposed to see me," I said with a calm, unbothered smirk. "Relax. I’m not here to sabotage or cheat for my team. I just need five minutes on a high-speed replay monitor to check a technical discrepancy on TitanSkell’s player cams."

The operator looked at the cash, then at the door, and back at the money. Without a word, he grabbed the bills, pocketed them, and reached over to click the automatic lock on the control room door.

"You’ve got five minutes," he whispered, pulling up a swivel chair for me. "Which feed do you want?"

"Pull up LownGun’s raw 240fps booth camera and his direct screen capture from round two," I commanded, leaning over the console.

He keyed in the command, and both feeds hit the ultra-high-definition monitor in front of me. I grabbed the scrub wheel, zooming directly into LownGun’s hands, eyes, and screen crosshair, frame by frame, hunting for the single, undeniable visual proof that would ruin him.

I zoomed in on the dual-feed layout, locking LownGun’s mouse hand on the left monitor alongside his raw in-game footage on the right. Scrubbing through frame by frame at 240 frames per second, I pinpointed the exact moment he swung out to take down Amanda.

I slowed the footage down to a crawl and froze the frame.

On the game feed, the muzzle flash ignited and the headshot hit-marker registered on Amanda’s health bar. But on the booth camera feed, LownGun’s index finger was still hovering completely flat over his primary mouse button. His hand hadn’t even twitched downward yet. The bullet was fired and the kill was logged before his finger ever actually clicked the physical switch.

"Look at that," I said, pointing my finger directly at the frame gap on the glass. "Right there."

The control room operator leaned in, squinting at the two timestamps side by side.

"Hey..." I asked, keeping my voice low. "Is there usually a display delay between the player camera and the direct feed?"

"Yeah, sure, hardware latency exists," the guy muttered, his brow furrowing as he grabbed the controller to check the stream sync specs. "Maybe a couple of micro-seconds, max. But this... this is almost a full second out of sync! His client side is executing commands before his physical input is even triggering!"

The realization hit him like a freight train. He pulled his hands back from the console, staring at the screen in complete disbelief.

"Holy shit..." the operator whispered, his jaw practically dropping to the floor. "TitanSkell... they’re actually fucking cheating?! I’ve been a fan of theirs for three years!"

"Now you know," I said, grabbing my phone and holding it up to the 4K monitor. I recorded a clean, high-resolution video of the synced footage, capturing both timestamps, the physical mouse click delay, and the in-game kill feed in crystal clarity.

"Save this raw file to an external drive right now," I ordered, tapping the desk. "Round four is playing out right now on stage. The moment this series finishes, you and I are taking this clip straight to the head tournament commissioner."

The control room operator looked at me in complete disbelief, clutching the flash drive containing the raw evidence.

"Wait..." he said, his voice rising in confusion. "Aren’t you going to use this right now? You can take this straight to the refs, disqualify them on the spot, and grab the free championship win!"

I looked back at the live stage feed mounted on the wall. Round four was already loading in. On the split-screen player cams, I could see Amanda’s sharp, ruthless expression and Piercer cracking her knuckles with absolute venom in her eyes.

I let out a low chuckle and smiled. "Luna and Piercer just got dropped back-to-back by a bunch of frauds. Their egos are burning through the roof right now. They don’t want a default victory in a committee room... they want to tear them apart on stage."

The operator stared at me like I was insane. "Against auto-shoot?! Man, it’s literal software firing for them!"

I nodded, my eyes locked on the broadcast monitor as the countdown timer hit zero. "Against auto-shoot. If my team breaks their script and beats them with pure skill, TitanSkell doesn’t just lose a trophy—their entire legacy gets destroyed. They’ll prove they’re the best in the world, and then we hand over the tape to bury them forever."

The operator shook his head in awe, locking the saved file onto the external drive. "You’re crazy... but damn, I want to see this."

Over the control room speakers, the arena casters screamed into their headsets: "ROUND FOUR IS LIVE! ZENITH ON ELIMINATION POINT!"

Down on the main stage, Amanda bought her setup, tapped her radar, and clicked her comms open.

"Hyena protocol," Amanda’s voice echoed through the team feed, cold and precise. "No fear, no gaps. Let’s show these cheaters what real aim looks like."

I leaned forward, resting my elbows on the console desk as the tech guy and I stared at the main broadcast screen in the control room. Every nerve in my body was completely locked in.

"Watch this," I murmured, my eyes glued to Zenith’s minimap markers.

Amanda had recalibrated their entire approach. Instead of rushing into close-quarters duels where TitanSkell’s auto-shoot software had the absolute advantage, Zenith all equipped high-velocity, long-range rifles. They took up wide, sweeping perimeter angles across the map, completely denying TitanSkell the tight corridors they needed.

Down on the screen, Zenith locked onto LownGun’s secondary fragger who was holding a tight lane.

"Now," Amanda’s voice cracked through the broadcast audio stream.