Chapter 65: Unto the Next

Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit." — Napoleon Hill.

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The commentators stopped talking. The medical team at the arena edge went on high alert.

The referee stumbled backward, pulling a breathing mask from his belt and pressing it over his face with hands that were visibly shaking.

The arena floor was invisible. The green mist had swallowed everything completely.

The concrete, the boundary walls, and the glare of the floodlights were all gone.

A dense cloud of toxic gas had swallowed the area, melting standard armor on contact and paralyzing the respiratory system when inhaled.

Surviving this without specialized breathing equipment was considered biologically impossible.

The neurotoxin was military-grade, designed for area denial and crowd suppression. It didn’t just disable the body. It dissolved armor plating, degraded weapon components, and turned the enclosed arena into a gas chamber where the only outcome was a slow, agonizing death by asphyxiation.

Grath stood in the center of the cloud, completely unaffected. His black combat suit was self-sealing, with an integrated filtration system that made him immune to his own weapon.

His eyes peered through the mist with the satisfied expression of a man who had done this multiple times before and knew exactly what was coming next.

He listened.

The sound he was waiting for was the choking. It always started the same way.

A cough, then a wheeze, then the desperate, gasping sound of lungs trying to pull air from an atmosphere that was actively dissolving them.

It usually started within fifteen seconds of exposure. By thirty seconds, the opponent was on their knees. By sixty, they were unconscious.

He waited.

Fifteen seconds passed. Then thirty. Then forty-five.

No choking. No wheezing. No gasping.

Grath’s smile faded quickly. His eyes narrowed, and he peered into the mist, trying to locate his opponent through the thick, green haze.

The cloud was too dense for normal vision. He activated his suit’s thermal scanner, sweeping the arena floor for Micah’s heat signature.

The scanner found him.

Micah was standing in the center of the arena. Not kneeling, choking or gasping for air.

He was standing perfectly still, with his arms at his sides and his chest rising and falling in slow, even breaths.

He was breathing the gas and not holding his breath or using a mask.

The Poison Immunity talent had activated the instant the first molecule of neurotoxin entered his bloodstream.

The talent’s passive effect was total and absolute. It identified the biochemical agents, broke them down into harmless compounds, and flushed them from his system before they could reach his nervous system.

The process was automatic, invisible, and completely effective.

Grath stared at the thermal readout in disbelief. His eyes widened, and for the first time in his tournament career, the confident, patient expression on his face cracked.

He didn’t understand what he was seeing. Nobody could survive his toxin. Nobody.

Micah drew the Widow’s Wail.

The sound of the blade leaving its scabbard cut through the silence of the arena like a knife through paper.

The low, steady hum of the micro-vibration edge was audible even through the thick mist, a deep, vibrating tone that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

He walked forward with the calm confidence of a man taking a morning stroll.

The mist parted around him as he moved, curling away from his body as if the gas itself was afraid to touch him.

Grath panicked. He grabbed the remaining canisters on his chest and forearms and crushed them all, dumping the entire remaining supply of neurotoxin into the arena in a desperate attempt to overwhelm Micah’s resistance.

The cloud thickened. The concentration doubled.

Micah kept walking.

Grath fumbled for his secondary weapon. It was a short, curved blade that he kept sheathed at his hip for close-quarters combat.

He drew it with shaking hands and raised it in a guard position, his eyes darting between the approaching silhouette and the thermal scanner on his wrist.

Micah emerged from the mist.

BOOM!

Grath lunged. It was a desperate, clumsy strike driven by fear rather than technique. His curved blade came in low and fast, aimed at Micah’s chest.

Micah swung the Widow’s Wail once.

The micro-vibrating blade met Grath’s curved weapon mid-air. The contact lasted a fraction of a second.

The Widow’s Wail’s edge, amplified by its forty-thousand-cycle vibration frequency, passed through Grath’s blade like it was made of glass.

The weapon shattered into three pieces that flew across the arena floor and clattered against the boundary wall.

The Widow’s Wail stopped.

The tip of the pitch-black blade rested against Grath’s throat. Not to cut or anything. It was just resting there, touching the skin with the lightest possible contact.

The micro-vibration edge hummed against his flesh, close enough that Grath could feel the vibration in his teeth.

Grath froze. His hands were empty. His weapon lay in three pieces on the floor. The blade at his throat gave off a low hum, close enough to kill him in an instant.

"Surrender," Micah said. His voice was calm, carrying across the silent arena without effort.

Grath’s jaw clenched. His eyes were filled with humiliation and disbelief, with a hint of fear beneath them.

He had spent his entire career building his reputation around a technique that was supposed to be unbeatable, yet this man had just walked through it as if it were nothing.

His shoulders dropped.

"I surrender," he said.

The referee, still standing at the arena edge with his breathing mask pressed to his face, raised his flag with a hand that was visibly trembling.

"Winner! Ring 3! Micah Selman! Advancing to the grand finale!"

The crowd erupted. The sound was deafening, a hundred thousand voices screaming at the same time, because the rookie in the street clothes had just walked through a cloud of military-grade neurotoxin, shattered a Genetic Soldier’s weapon with a single strike, and forced a surrender without taking a single scratch.

The commentators were losing their minds.

"HE WALKED THROUGH THE GAS! HE ACTUALLY WALKED THROUGH THE GAS!"

"HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE?! THAT TOXIN MOLTS ARMOR!"

"THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE! THIS IS ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE!"

"MICAH SELMAN HAS ADVANCED TO THE GRAND FINALE!"

Micah sheathed the Widow’s Wail and walked toward the exit tunnel. The green mist was already beginning to thin as the arena’s ventilation system kicked in, clearing the toxic cloud from the floor.

Tasha was waiting for him at the tunnel entrance.

Her eyes were bright, and the smile on her face was wide and genuine and completely unhidden.