Chapter 331: Shadows Trials[14]

?1. "THE TARGET BEARS AN ANCIENT LEGACY UNTOUCHED BY MODERN FORGES."

2. "THE LEGACY WAS INHERITED, NOT CREATED."

?"It’s not a weapon," Cassius realized, a slow, dangerous grin spreading across his broad face. "A weapon is created. Even if it’s old, somebody forged it. But a bloodline? A Talent? That’s inherited."

?He slammed his fist into his open palm, the impact making a loud, dull crack in the quiet street. "Samantha’s spear was a fake. The target isn’t a relic. It’s one of the legacy kids."

?He immediately brought up his contestant index, filtering the roster by background parameters.

Legacy houses... Vance? No, Julian Vance’s line relies heavily on modern technology to stabilize their spatial compression techniques. Brewer..."

?Cassius stopped. His eyes locked onto the name.

?"House Brewer. Edmund Brewer."

?Cassius took a step forward, his A-2 Biological Talent stirring beneath his skin, his muscles visibly surging as raw physical force surged through his frame. "Ice boy. Pure bloodline. Inherited Talent."

?He turned sharply toward the border of Sector 7-C. "One hundred and fifty points. If I take Brewer down before anyone else figures this out, I leap straight into the Top 3."

In Sector 7-A, near the perimeter of the open-air amphitheater, the assassin who had previously backed away from Samantha was standing under the awning of a deserted retail shop, staring at his terminal in absolute confusion.

?"Inherited... not created..." he muttered, scratching his chin with the hilt of his short sword.

?He looked across the plaza toward Samantha, who was sitting calmly on a stone bench, resting her chin on her hand while the spear leaned against her shoulder.

?"The spear could still fit!" the assassin argued frantically to himself, his voice laced with paranoid desperation.

"What if the spear was inherited? What if it’s a family heirloom passed down through generations? That’s an inherited legacy! It doesn’t have to mean a bloodline! It could still be her!"?

The hundred-point penalty kept him from rushing forward, but the lingering ambiguity was maddening.

?The system had constructed the clues with agonizing precision.

Every phrase was just broad enough to keep Samantha squarely in the crosshairs of the desperate and short-sighted.

?Samantha stood unmoving. She felt the gaze of the assassin on her back, but her attention was focused entirely on her own internal perception.

?Since the second clue had broadcast, the spear resting against her arm had grown faintly cold, a deep, hollow chill that seemed to draw the ambient light out of the immediate air.

"It’s stirring," Samantha thought quietly, her dark eyes reflecting the dim glow of her terminal screen.

?She glanced up as Lucian and Xander walked back toward her from the edge of the stage.

?"You read the new line?" Xander asked, tossing a stylus up in the air and catching it effortlessly.

?"Inherited, not created," Samantha quoted cleanly. "It eliminates manufactured relics, synthetic items, and modern mechanical devices."

"And it locks the noose tighter around the neck for anyone who thinks ’inherited’ applies to weapons," Lucian added, his tone flat.

"Sorel and his group won’t give up on you yet. They’ll justify the wording to fit their initial bias because admitting they were wrong means admitting they wasted time standing around doing nothing."

?"Let them justify it," Samantha said smoothly, standing up and sweeping the Tenebris spear into a low, comfortable carry position.

"If they attack, they take the hundred-point deduction. The system will eliminate my competition for me."

?Xander grinned. "God, I love ruthless efficiency. But seriously, Lucian... we have a problem."

?Lucian looked at him. "Define the problem."

?Xander leaned in slightly, lowering his voice so it wouldn’t carry across the open concrete.

"If the clue points to an inherited bloodline from an ancient lineage untouched by modern socketing... there are only two people in this entire sector who fit that criteria to a tee."

?Lucian’s eyes remained cold and sharp.

"Edmund Brewer. And yourself."

?Xander paused, his smile fading for a fraction of a second before returning double-fold. "Hey now, let’s leave my mysterious, highly classified background out of this. I’m a simple guy who likes synthetic nuts and corporate hacks. But Brewer? Brewer is practically walking around with a giant blue neon sign over his head that says ’PURE ANCESTRAL ICE TALENT.’"

?"Edmund doesn’t know," Samantha observed quietly.

?Lucian nodded once. "He’s too analytical. He’s already convinced himself that the clue is a conceptual trap designed to target you. Because his logic was correct regarding the decoy, he won’t look for the secondary clue until the system explicitly forces him to."

?"Which means," Xander said, tapping his stylus against his belt, "he’s currently wandering around Sector 7-C completely exposed, while half the hunters in the trial are slowly realizing that the black spear in Samantha’s hands was a giant piece of cheese in a rat trap."

?In the central library precinct of Sector 7-C, Edmund Brewer stood before an automated archive terminal, searching the local database for historical records on Sector Seven.

?He was still hunting for an environmental objective—an ancient landmark, an unmapped cellar that might serve as the true Phantom Target location.

?[DATABASE QUERY: SECTOR 7 ANCIENT STRUCTURES / RELICS]

[RESULT: 0 MATCHES FOUND WITHIN ACTIVE TRIAL BOUNDARIES]

?Edmund frowned, his fingers tapping against the metal frame of the archive console.

?"Nothing?" he muttered. "That doesn’t make sense. If the Phantom Target is an object or a location, it has to be indexed within the sector’s historical registry."

?He closed the search window, pulling up his own status panel.

?[CONTESTANT: EDMUND BREWER]

[FAMILY: BREWER]

[CURRENT SCORE: 210 PTS]

[RANK: 4TH PLACE]

?He was sitting comfortably in fourth place. A single successful objective secure would push him past Samantha and Lucian, cementing his position at the absolute top of the leaderboard. But the silence of the sector was becoming oppressive.

?Every street he walked down was empty. The other contestants were no longer actively competing for standard ten-point data nodes or twenty-point targets.

The sheer weight of the one-hundred-and-fifty-point Phantom Target objective had paralyzed the entire trial.

Everyone was hiding.

Everyone was watching.

Everyone was waiting for the next clue to give them an undeniable edge—or waiting for some unfortunate fool to make a mistake and take the hundred-point penalty.