Chapter 330: Shadow Trials[13]

"Right, right, strictly business," Xander chuckled, though his eyes were already scanning the horizon, looking toward the central elevated walkways of Sector 7-C.

"Still... ’bears an ancient legacy.’ If it’s not the spear, we need to think about how the system constructs its phrasing. The System AI doesn’t write poetry."

?Lucian’s gaze drifted toward the sector border. "Bears. To bear isn’t necessarily to hold. An artifact is carried. A legacy..."

?"A legacy is carried in the marrow," Xander finished softly, his playful grin dimming into something far more dangerous. He tapped his chin with two fingers.

"An inherited structure. Something pre-modern. Something that existed before the Academy standardized class rankings, synthetic talent modifications, and modern socketed gear."

?Samantha looked at the dark shaft of her spear, then up at the sky.

"A bloodline."

?"Bingo," Xander murmured. "A pure, un-engineered, historical bloodline. The kind of Talented lineage that didn’t get built in a lab or bought through corporate gene-splicing."

?Lucian’s eyes narrowed.

"There are only four major houses in this trial cycle with lineage records that date back to the First Epoch."

?"And only one of them is currently wandering around Sector Seven trying very hard to pretend he’s just an ordinary contestant," Xander said. He didn’t name the family aloud. He didn’t need to.

?Four blocks away, in the manicured tranquility of the Sector 7-C garden courtyard, the air was growing noticeably colder.

?Edmund Brewer stood motionless near the frozen fountain. The fine layer of frost he had summoned over the stone was expanding, thin needles of ice branching out across the marble lip like delicate, pale cobwebs.

?He took a slow breath, letting the freezing air settle deep into his chest. His heart rate, elevated by Julian Vance’s sharp, deliberate lingering on his sister’s name, was finally beginning to level out.

?Clara.

?Edmund squeezed his eyes shut for a brief second before forcing them open again. Julian was playing an observer’s game—using political trauma to fracture Edmund’s composure. Julian wanted him distracted.

He wanted him emotional, volatile, and prone to error.

?"I won’t give you the satisfaction, Vance," Edmund whispered to the empty courtyard.

?He pulled his terminal from his belt, tapping the interface to re-examine the broadcast detail.

?[PHANTOM TARGET CLUE 1: "THE TARGET BEARS AN ANCIENT LEGACY UNTOUCHED BY MODERN FORGES."]

?Edmund stared at the sentence, his intellectual instincts automatically taking over. He began deconstructing the logic, just as he had been trained to do since his early childhood under the strict, uncompromising instructors of House Brewer.

?An ancient legacy untouched by modern forges.

?"Samantha’s spear," Edmund thought, his brow furrowing slightly. "It fits. It fits almost too well."

?The spear was a primitive, dark relic. It lacked the refined chassis of modern runic weaponry, contained zero mechanical or energetic sockets, and resisted standard classification.

To anyone looking at the trial grid, Samantha was the obvious answer.

?"But it’s wrong," Edmund murmured aloud, his voice barely a breath against the gentle murmur of the garden wind.

"Headmaster Whizen designed Trial Three specifically to test judgment under high-penalty uncertainty. If the system drops a clue that immediately single-targets the current leaderboard leader, it creates a massive cognitive bias. It tempts lower-ranked contestants into taking a wild, desperate gamble to strip three hundred points off the top seat."

?He shook his head, a cold smile touching his lips.

?"It’s a trap. Samantha is the decoy. The system wants half the sector to burn a hundred points on an incorrect engagement so the disciplined contestants separate themselves from the mob."

?Edmund tapped his terminal, bringing up the sector map.

?"So who is the real target?" he wondered. "If the spear is a decoy, then ’ancient legacy’ must refer to a secondary relic node or an unmapped historical asset within the sector perimeter. I need to find the objective terminal before the next broadcast."

?He turned away from the fountain, stepping off the stone patio and heading toward the commercial arcades of Sector 7-B.

?He was completely satisfied with his logic.

It was clean, structured, and entirely sound.

?It didn’t cross his mind, even for a single second, that the phrase "untouched by modern forges" wasn’t referring to a piece of metal, but to the un-engineered, ancient ice Talent surging silently beneath his own skin—a Talented lineage born long before modern technology,

High above the garden courtyard, on the glass-walled spectator walkway that bridged Sectors 7-C and 7-B, Julian Vance stood leaning against the polished alloy railing.

?His pale, luminous eyes followed Edmund’s retreating figure as the boy vanished into the shadow of the lower arcades.

?Beside him, Marco Dark remained standing like a silent monolith. The Head of House Dark wore his charcoal suit with a cold, aristocratic rigidity, his hands folded neatly behind his back.

?"He’s sharp," Julian remarked smoothly, his voice light and conversational.

Edmund immediately recognized that Samantha was a decoy.

Marco Dark didn’t turn his head.

"Recognizing a trap is the bare minimum required of an heir of the Brewer family. Falling for it would have been a disgrace to his bloodline."

?"Ah, but that is the beauty of a truly elegant system design, isn’t it?" Julian chuckled softly, tapping his fingers against the chrome rail.

"When you are intelligent enough to spot the decoy, your own intellect becomes your blind spot. You assume that because you have seen through the primary lie, your logic is secure. You stop looking at yourself."

?Marco’s dark eyes shifted slightly, casting a cool side-glance at Julian.

"You talk as if you know the system’s exact designationMarco remained silent for a long moment. "And your interaction with him down there? Mentioning his sister?"

?"A minor stress test," Julian replied effortlessly. "A contestant who cannot maintain emotional equilibrium when confronted with personal history will inevitably crack when the true pressure of the hunt settles in."

?Julian turned away from the railing, straightening his immaculate coat.

"Come, Maestro Dark. The second clue is about to broadcast. Let us see how many of our young prodigies begin to look past the dark stick in Samantha’s hands."

?Precisely ten minutes after the initial announcement, every terminal in Sector Seven vibrated simultaneously.

?Across the district, holographic billboards flickered, erasing their commercial advertisements to display bold, crimson lettering that hovered over the streets like blood dripping through the air.

?[PHANTOM TARGET CLUE 2: "THE LEGACY WAS INHERITED, NOT CREATED."]

?[REMAINING TIME UNTIL CLUE....]

?The broadcast sent an immediate shockwave through the scattered groups of contestants.

?In Sector 7-D, Cassius Wulfric stared up at a billboard mounted on the side of a residential tower.

His massive shoulders were still tense from his earlier frustration, but as he read the second clue, his eyes widened slightly.

?"Inherited... not created," Cassius growled under his breath.