Chapter 74: Threads of Wind and Steel: Silence and Logic
The desert breeze blew across the arena of Skull Rock, carrying away the last specks of volcanic ash from the previous bout. The healers had cleaned the jade floor with an efficiency that bordered on the inhuman, leaving the platform ready for the next carnage.
The clamor in the stands had not diminished; on the contrary, Elowen's tactical massacre had injected a reverential terror into the crowd. They had understood that this tournament was no exhibition of pretty martial arts. It was a demonstration of who possessed the most refined killer instinct in the legion.
In the VIP box, Lord Varian maintained his rigid posture. The Special Envoy of the Star Ice Empire interlaced his fingers on his lap, his cold eyes hiding a restlessness he had not felt in decades.
"The strength of a brute and the putrefaction of a healer," Lord Varian whispered. "It is a heterogeneous arsenal. But in my empire, the warriors who define wars are not those who strike the earth, but those who make no sound as they approach."
Saira Varian, her icy pride trying to compose itself, nodded slightly.
"I have not seen anyone use pure speed yet, father. Or stealth. The previous two matches were slow, dependent on direct clashes."
On the main balcony, Samael Morningstar seemed to hear his guests' doubts from hundreds of meters away. His violet gaze descended toward the herald. There was no affirmative gesture, only the pressure of his authority commanding the continuation of the protocol.
Seraphina, rocking little Celeste with an ethereal grace, smiled. Her silver-blue hair shone under the midday sun.
"The outsiders doubt our shadows, my king. They believe we only know how to scream and burn."
"The wind will take care of educating them," Samael replied, his deep voice heavy with absolute certainty.
Lilith, standing behind them with her timeless majesty, gently tapped the ground with her staff. Her dark red eyes shone with maternal anticipation.
"The siege has cleared the path. Now, it is the executioners' turn."
The herald raised the bone horn.
BOOOOOMMM!
"Third match!" bellowed the herald. "A clash of speed and Wind! Sequence 12, Rowan Morningstar, against Sequence 17, Joren Morningstar!"
The doors at the south end flew open, as if a hurricane had pushed them.
Rowan Morningstar shot out into the arena.
He didn't walk. He was a sky-blue blur. He crossed the distance from the tunnel to the center of the stadium in a fraction of a second, stopping dead with a burst of wind that kicked up a circular cloud of dust.
He was of average height and athletic build, but what caught the eye was his sky-blue hair, which defied gravity due to the static of the constant wind surrounding him, and his vibrant silver eyes. Rowan was hyperactivity incarnate; he couldn't stand still, hopping from one foot to the other as if the ground were boiling.
"It's about time!" shouted Rowan, his voice heavy with jovial arrogance. "I almost fell asleep watching those meat sacks move in slow motion! Come on, Joren! Speed it up a bit, the sun is burning the back of my neck!"
In absolute contrast, the doors at the north end opened with a sepulchral slowness.
Joren Morningstar entered the arena, and with him, sound seemed to die on his side of the coliseum.
He was tall, about one meter eighty, with light brown hair and a gray gaze so expressionless it seemed to belong to a corpse. His athletic build was hidden beneath tight, dark tunics. There was no bravado in him. There was no explosive aura. Joren walked, and his boots did not emit a single scrape against the jade slabs. He was the embodiment of lethal professionalism: an assassin who felt no need to announce his arrival.
"You always talk too much, Rowan," said Joren. His voice wasn't a shout, but thanks to a subtle manipulation of the air currents, he whispered directly into his opponent's ears. "The wind you use to shout is wind you aren't using to cut."
Rowan let out a mocking laugh and unsheathed a pair of steel-edged war fans, snapping them open with a flick.
"And you're as boring as a rock, Joren! I'll show you that stealth is useless if you die before you can blink!"
DOOONG!
The gong resonated, and the match began with an explosion of pure speed.
Rowan vanished.
He didn't run; he erased himself from physical existence. He had activated his Mid Earth Grade technique, the [Wandering Cyclone Step].
With a mini-explosion of compressed air on the soles of his feet, his body became a line of white and pale green distortion that shot across the arena. A sharp sonic Boom! marked his departure. He didn't travel in a straight line; he zigzagged three times in less than a second, leaving behind a "vacuum wake" that sucked up the dust from the ground.
He appeared directly behind Joren, his steel fan aiming for the soundless assassin's nape.
"Too slow!" exclaimed Rowan, executing a slash empowered by the [Translucent Vacuum Cut]. The edge of his fan was enveloped in a transparent ripple, sharpening the steel with extreme pressure to decapitate Joren.
But the fan cut empty air.
Joren hadn't turned to block, nor had he leapt away. He simply wasn't there anymore.
Rowan frowned, the wind from his own attack cracking the jade floor.
Where did he go? I didn't feel any Qi fluctuation.
Ten meters to Rowan's left, the air seemed to tremble, and Joren's translucent figure materialized out of nowhere. He had used the [Invisible Breeze Steps] in combination with his own version of agility, the [Shadow of the Hundred Steps].
Instead of sonic booms, Joren had nullified his own weight, gliding on a nearly invisible cushion of air. His evasion left no wakes or sound, only small swirls of dust that hid his direction.
"You make too much noise when you brake," Joren murmured, sliding twin matte steel daggers from his sleeves.
Rowan grunted, his silver eyes flashing competitively.
"Dodge this!"
The hyperactive warrior raised his fans and unleashed the [Flurry of a Thousand Cuts]. The air in front of Rowan filled with silver lines and translucent distortions that crossed the distance toward Joren at erratic angles. It was as if a flock of invisible, razor-sharp birds dove at him, accompanied by the rhythmic hissing of scissors cutting silk.
Joren did not retreat. Facing the storm of wind cuts from his Stage 4 opponent, the soundless assassin spun on his own axis.
[Evasive Tornado].
A high-pressure centrifugal vortex formed around him. The violent wind cylinder raised an opaque wall of arena debris. Rowan's slicing gusts struck the vortex, but instead of piercing it, they were sucked in by the rotation and expelled harmlessly to the sides, cracking the arena's containment walls instead of Joren's flesh.
From inside the point of absolute calm within his tornado, Joren counterattacked.
He didn't launch an air projectile. He concentrated all his wind Qi on the edge of his right dagger and performed a horizontal slash that tore through the wall of his own tornado.
[Celestial Dawn Cut].
It wasn't a gust. It was an extremely fine sky-blue line of light that traveled across the arena, separating the air. Behind the line, reality seemed to have cracked. It was pure vacuum.
Rowan, confident in his speed, tried to use his [Breeze Stride] to leap over the horizontal cut.
But Joren had calculated his opponent's arrogance.
The Celestial Dawn Cut possessed a suction property. When Rowan jumped, the vacuum left by the slash sucked the surrounding tissues and wind downward, altering Rowan's mid-air trajectory and pulling him toward the invisible blade.
Rowan's eyes widened. He barely had time to cross his fans in front of his chest.
The cut impacted.
A sharp, chilling whistle echoed a second after the impact, followed by the pop of air filling the vacuum.
Rowan was thrown backward, bouncing against the jade. His two steel fans were split in half, cut cleanly. A superficial but painful line of blood crossed his chest.
"Damn it..." Rowan gasped, springing to his feet, although the effort made his lungs feel empty, the aftermath of abusing his Stage 4 air compression. He looked at his broken weapons and threw them to the ground in fury. "Fine! Old school it is!"
In the VIP box, Lord Varian rubbed his chin, his interest fully piqued.
"Explosive speed against vacuum suction. The boy in blue (Rowan) is faster over long distances, but the other (Joren) masters micro-evasion and absolute soundproofing."
Saira nodded, her eyes following the blurs in the arena. "The vacuum boy doesn't emit any murderous intent, father. It's disturbing. It's like watching a shadow fight. I can't predict where he's going to attack based on his aura."
Lord Varian nodded, his face somber. "He learned that lesson through torture. Whoever trained him knew that a noisy assassin is a dead assassin."
In the arena, the fight had degenerated into hand-to-hand combat at speeds the normal human eye could not register.
Rowan, unarmed, used the Pressure Palm of his Translucent Vacuum Cut.
Each of his strikes launched point-blank compressed air projectiles that hit like invisible mallets. His fists generated miniature tornadoes at his wrists.
But Joren was a ghost in close combat.
He had activated his Mid Earth Grade technique: the [Fangs of the Reverse Breeze].
His daggers no longer cut the air head-on; they created low-pressure vortices around them. The steel blurred. When Rowan threw a wind-empowered punch and missed by a millimeter thanks to Joren's pinpoint evasion, Joren's dagger showed no mercy. The blade's vortex acted like a wind magnet, sucking Rowan's arm or clothing toward the edge.
Rowan was bleeding from dozens of superficial cuts. Every time he tried to pull away with his Vacuum Wake, Joren stepped over the compressed air trails left by the daggers, using the [Dance of the Silent Wake] to receive instant speed boosts and zigzag glued to him like a lethal tick.
The collateral damage on their own bodies from the extreme friction was becoming overwhelming. Rowan's knees emitted a white steam smoke, and his eyes were bloodshot. For his part, Joren's fingers beneath his gloves began to bleed; the vacuum he created in his own daggers was trying to suck his blood through his skin due to the continuous negative pressure.
Both assassins knew the fight wouldn't last more than a few seconds. The first to lose rhythm would die.
He's too elusive in one-on-one with those magnetic daggers, Rowan reasoned, his hyperactive mind working in tandem with his body. I have to throw him off balance.
Rowan used his last boost of the Wandering Cyclone Step. He visually teleported right in front of Joren, but he didn't attack. He stopped his body dead, releasing all the accumulated air in his lungs and legs in a massive [Gale Brake].
The point-blank sonic boom was deafening.
The shockwave stunned Joren for a blink, throwing him off balance backward and breaking his suction dance.
"Got you!" roared Rowan. He concentrated all his Stage 4 Qi into his right hand, wrapping it in pure translucent distortion, prepared to pierce Joren's chest with the pressure of a hurricane.
But Joren was no rookie relying on a single trick. His mind, forged in the Pavilion of the Five Paths, didn't break from the surprise.
As he fell backward, unbalanced, with Rowan lunging at him for the final blow, Joren didn't try to raise his daggers to block. He knew Rowan's inertia would break his guard.
Instead, Joren aimed the palm of his left hand at the ground beneath Rowan's feet and detonated the [Ascending Gale Burst].
The jade floor erupted into a violent geyser of cyan-white wind. The air, almost as dense as a liquid, emerged with the force of a cannon directly beneath Rowan.
The hyperactive warrior's momentum was his downfall. Lunging forward with such force, the high-pressure column hit him dead in the stomach, violently launching him into the air, three meters off the ground. Rowan was left completely defenseless, trapped in the ascending inertia with nowhere to plant his feet to change direction.
Joren, using the momentum of the same gale to stabilize his fall, recovered in a fraction of a second.
With his lungs burning and the capillaries in his eyes threatening to burst, Joren jumped. The speed of his leap was imperceptible.
When Rowan began to fall, the matte gray blade of Joren's dagger was already firmly pressed against his throat, and the second dagger pressed directly against his femoral artery.
The soundless assassin held his prey in the air, both suspended for a second in gravity before landing softly on the jade.
The silence was absolute. The hum of compressed winds vanished.
Joren looked Rowan in the eyes. His gray gaze was still as expressionless and professional as when he entered, but a small trickle of blood ran down the corner of his lips due to internal pressure.
Rowan, with the freezing edge at his throat, blinked several times, his silver pupils contracting. A dry laugh escaped his lips, surrendering to the evidence of his own theoretical death.
"Damn it, Joren..." murmured Rowan, raising both hands in surrender, ignoring the pain in his squeezed lungs. "You cheat. Who attacks the ground when the enemy is coming right at you?"
"An assassin who wants to live," Joren replied, withdrawing the daggers in a fluid motion that didn't emit even a scrape of metal.
On the main balcony, Seraphina nodded slightly, satisfied.
"Silence has dominated static. Explosive speed is useless if the attack position is predictable. Joren learned the Pagoda's lesson well."
Lilith smiled, leaning her weight on her ceremonial staff.
"The boy has no ego, Seraphina. That's what makes him lethal. He didn't mind being unbalanced; he used the enemy's inertia to his advantage."
Samael Morningstar said nothing, but his violet eyes reflected the approval every military leader feels when they see a weapon execute perfectly.
The herald, after a few seconds of shock while processing the absurd speed of the conclusion, blew the horn.
BOOOOOMMM!
"The winner of the third match!" announced the herald, his voice returning the crowd to euphoria. "Sequence 17, Joren Morningstar, masters the wind and advances in the Final Rank Tournament!"
As Joren and Rowan retreated toward the tunnels—the latter complaining loudly about the pain in his joints, and the former walking as if he had simply gone for a morning stroll—the attention of the entire arena fixed on the iron doors.
In the VIP box, Lord Varian stroked his chin. His arrogant posture had completely vanished.
"Saira. That boy who just won is Rank 17."
Saira swallowed hard, her eyes still fixed on the tunnel where Joren disappeared.
"I know, father."
"If a Rank 17 of this clan has that mastery over wind compression and concealing murderous intent..." muttered the Emperor of Star Ice, feeling a genuine chill. "I don't even want to imagine the hell that those occupying the top five seats will unleash."
"We won't have to imagine it for long," Saira replied, her voice tense.
The herald raised the bone horn for a fourth time. The protocol of the massacre wasn't going to give the foreign observers any respite.
"Match number four!" bellowed the herald. "A duel of field control and unbreakable logic! Sequence 20, Elian Morningstar, against Sequence 4, Cedric Morningstar!"
The south and north doors opened slowly.
From the south, the air began to feel heavy, damp, and suffocating, as if the arena had suddenly been filled with the pressure of the ocean floor. The smell of liquid metal and stagnant water preceded Elian, the king of passive defense.
From the north, the sound of invisible gear mechanisms and the hum of mathematical energy cut through the heavy air. Cedric, the strategist of steel and bicolored arrays, walked toward the center of the stadium. His fingers were already tracing glowing lines in the nothingness, calculating the density of his opponent's water before the gong even sounded.
Physical brutality and supersonic stealth had had their moment of glory. Now, it was the mind's turn. Absolute strategy was about to clash against the crushing weight of fluid toxicity. And the Morningstar Empire was ready to prove that its strategists were just as lethal as its siege monsters.