Chapter 80: Guardian Duel Stage

The massive, iridescent gold interface hovered above the center of the glowing silver ring, projecting a massive digital countdown timer.

Leon stood at the southern edge of the two-hundred-yard circular arena. He had dismissed the Blade of the Dragon God back into his spatial inventory. A massive, heavy greatsword was designed for execution, for severing cores and shattering armor. In a hit-count match against a Level 245 entity where raw damage was nullified, wielding a heavy blade was a mathematical liability.

Instead, he held two lightweight, perfectly balanced void-daggers—weapons he had kept purely for utility. They were practically weightless, feeling like extensions of his own wrists.

"Auris," Leon spoke aloud, his dual-colored eyes never leaving the pale stone knight standing perfectly still in the center of the ring. "Step back. The rules dictate a solo engagement. Do not intervene, regardless of what happens in there."

The Glacial Sovereign snorted, a plume of freezing vapor escaping his jaws, and heavily backed away until he was entirely clear of the glowing silver runes.

Leon rolled his shoulders, feeling the absurd, catastrophic power of his newly allocated 230 Strength and 235 Agility humming beneath his skin.

His SSS+ Aura of the Undying pulsed with a slow, rhythmic heartbeat, conceptually tethering him to the ambient mana of the Battlefield Realm. He knew he couldn’t die here. The system had explicitly guaranteed his safety. But the sheer psychological pressure radiating from a Level 245 opponent was enough to make the air feel thick as molasses.

He looked at the Silent Aegis. The Guardian hadn’t drawn a secondary weapon. It stood completely motionless, both stone hands resting on the pommel of its massive, unadorned stone greatsword, the tip resting on the polished black floor.

"Round one," Leon murmured. "Let’s test the baseline. Let’s see just how fast you really are."

The golden numbers above them shifted.

[BEGIN]

Leon didn’t just run. He erased the physical distance.

With 235 Agility, his initial burst of movement broke the sound barrier, generating a localized sonic boom that kicked up the residual ash around the ring. He simultaneously triggered Storm-Strider, compressing the air beneath his boots to eliminate all kinetic friction.

He crossed the hundred yards to the center of the ring in a fraction of a second. He aimed a rapid, crossing slash with both void-daggers directly at the Guardian’s stone breastplate, intending to secure the first two hits of the match.

His daggers struck nothing but air.

There was no sound of impact. There was no resistance. The image of the pale stone knight simply rippled and dissolved. It was an afterimage, left behind by movement so fast the system’s visual rendering struggled to update it in real-time.

Leon’s SSS-Rank Origin Eyes flared with blinding golden light, the talent aggressively pulling ambient mana to artificially accelerate his optic nerves.

Behind you.

His Supreme Comprehension calculated the spatial displacement of the air perfectly, mapping the exact coordinates of the Guardian. The knight hadn’t teleported; it had simply stepped behind him using pure, unadulterated physical speed.

Leon didn’t turn around. He triggered Abyssal Stride, attempting to teleport fifty feet vertically into the air to reset his positioning.

As the void-energy enveloped him, he felt a series of rapid, impossibly precise taps against his Obsidian Carapace.

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.

Leon materialized fifty feet in the air, his eyes wide with genuine shock. He looked down. The Silent Aegis was standing exactly where Leon had been a microsecond prior. The Guardian had swung its massive stone greatsword with the speed and fluidity of a rapier, tapping Leon’s back exactly five times in the fraction of a second it took for the Abyssal Stride animation to cast.

Because of the arena’s rules, the massive greatsword didn’t crush his spine or trigger his Soul Anchor. The kinetic force was magically nullified at the exact moment of impact, registering only as a firm touch.

Ding!

[Current Score]

[Leon Wes: 0]

[The Silent Aegis: 5]

"It attacks during my cast frames," Leon realized, hovering mid-air, his tactical mind racing to process the data. "My Agility is 235. Its base Agility must be pushing a thousand. It can physically outpace a Diamond-Rank spatial teleport."

The Guardian didn’t wait for Leon to descend. The stone knight bent its knees and leaped. The sheer physical force of the jump didn’t shatter the unbreakable floor of the arena, but it launched the entity into the sky like a railgun projectile.

Leon reacted purely on instinct. He crossed his void-daggers, channeling Aegis of the Tempest.

A highly pressurized storm-front erupted around his draconic armor, creating a swirling gale of razor-sharp wind meant to violently redirect incoming physical strikes.

The Guardian hit the storm-front. It didn’t try to power through the wind. The Level 245 entity instantly adjusted its trajectory mid-air, using the centrifugal force of Leon’s own defensive tempest to surf the wind currents perfectly. The knight spun around Leon’s blind spot in a breathtaking display of acrobatic perfection.

The flat of the stone greatsword tapped Leon’s shoulder, elbow, and knee in a three-hit combination that was entirely unavoidable.

Leon retaliated, twisting his body and slashing outward with his right dagger, aiming for the knight’s helm.

The Guardian tilted its head back exactly one millimeter. The void-dagger grazed the air in front of the stone facepiece, registering zero hits.

As gravity began to reclaim them both, Leon rapidly analyzed his options. Trading blows in close quarters was mathematical suicide. The Guardian’s kinematic efficiency was flawless. It didn’t waste a single micro-movement.

"Abyssal Stride! Abyssal Stride! Abyssal Stride!"

Leon chain-cast his Divine-Rank teleportation, blinking across the sky and leaving a trail of localized void-implosions in his wake. He wasn’t trying to run; he was turning the arena into a minefield. The void-implosions dealt area-of-effect damage. If the Guardian pursued him through the blasts, the system would have to register the magical explosions as hits.

He landed heavily near the eastern edge of the ring, his Eternal Mana talent flooding his exhausted magical circuits, instantly replenishing the massive cost of the chain-casting.

He looked up.

The Silent Aegis was falling through the sky, dropping directly through the minefield of void-implosions.

Leon watched in absolute awe. The Guardian wasn’t phasing through them. It was perfectly calculating the exact expansion rate of each magical blast, adjusting its free-fall trajectory to weave through the millimeter-thin safe zones between the overlapping explosions. It was threading a needle in a hurricane.

Not a single void-implosion registered a hit.

The knight landed softly on the black stone, fifty yards away, its heavy armor making absolutely no sound upon impact.

Over two minutes had passed.

[Current Score]

[Leon Wes: 0]

[The Silent Aegis: 12]

******

A/N: Hope everyone is enjoying the book

As you can tell, I’m trying out new things by bringing up all this interesting challenges to keep everyone of you entertained.

I’m just requesting for an ernomous amount of golden tickets so I can be highly motivated