Miss Karrie stepped back to the edge of the arena and raised a glowing crystal staff. With a sharp incantation, a massive, shimmering mana dome expanded over the sandy floor, sealing Zero-G and me inside a localized barrier to protect the audience from stray spells.
Zero-G's purple gravitational aura flared with a low, vibrating hum as he tightened his posture, his eyes locking onto my chest.
TWEEEEET!
The sharp blast of the magical whistle echoed violently through the vaulted ceiling of the gym. The match had begun.
To keep my bounty hunter strength hidden from the Archivist's watchful eyes on the VIP balcony, I chose a basic, flashy blood spell that perfectly suited Zenni's supposed prodigy status. I bit my tongue slightly, gathering a small pool of blood, and thrust my hand forward.
"Take this, brat!"
A localized stream of dark, liquefied blood erupted from my palm, condensing rapidly into a churning, pressurized sphere. I hurled it straight at Zero-G's chest, the projectile tearing through the air with a wet hiss.
But the second-year wasn't a total push-over. He smirked, his hands dancing through the air as his purple mana spiked.
"Predictable, freshman! G-Deflection!" Zero-G roared.
Just feet away from his face, an invisible wall of hyper-dense gravitational force materialized. The liquefied blood sphere slammed into the distorted space, losing all forward momentum. With a violent twist of his wrists, Zero-G bent the gravity field, sending my own blood spell hurtling right back at my face like a crimson bullet.
He wasn't done yet. Before I could even reposition, he thrust both of his palms downward toward the sand beneath my boots.
"Gravity Well: Tenfold Weight!"
CRACK!
The air above me turned instantly suffocating. A massive, invisible weight crashed down upon my shoulders, multiplying the gravity acting on my body by tenfold. To a normal freshman, a 10x gravity spike would have instantly crushed their knees and shattered their collarbones. Because I was an bounty hunter, my dense musculature barely felt it, but I had to act like it was devastating to keep my cover intact.
I let out a forced, dramatic gasp, intentionally dropping to one knee into the sand, letting my shoulders slump as if I were completely immobilized by the crushing pressure.
And right toward my pinned, helpless body, my own pressurized blood sphere was curling straight back at me at terminal velocity.
The second-year bleachers erupted into absolute hysterics, the sophomores jumping to their feet and mocking the freshman class.
"Yeah! Welcome to the upper leagues, slum rat! Get crushed!"
But back in the first-year section, my classmates refused to back down. The freshman boys leaned over the railings, aggressively barking back at the second-years, while Aisha, Amelia, and Cindy held their ground, shouting through the noise.
"Shut up, you arrogant seniors! Just wait till the end! Zenni isn't even warmed up yet!"
From the VIP box, I could feel the cold, calculating gaze of the Archivist scanning my pinned body, waiting to see if I would unleash the world-ending power his guards had reported from the night before. Beneath my fake expression of struggle, a dark, roguish smirk played on my lips. If you think ten times gravity is enough to hold a phantom, you've got another thing coming, Zero-G.
The pressurized crimson sphere came barreling straight toward me, fueled by the momentum of Zero-G's gravity deflection.
If I unleashed my signature blood weapons right now, the high-density mana would trigger an innate lifesteal effect upon impact. The moment my spell drained even a fraction of Zero-G's vitality, the Archivist and my sister would instantly recognize the trademark magic of an bounty hunter. I had to keep the predator inside me locked away.
"Fine, basic manipulation and pure, suppressed physical output it is." I thought, grit blooming in my chest.
The tenfold gravity was actively trying to grind my bones into the dirt, distorting the air around me and making every single calculation twice as exhausting. But I braced my core, channeling just enough raw stamina to mimic a human breaking past their absolute physical limits.
With a guttural, dramatic yell to sell the struggle, I forced myself up from my knee. The sand shifted violently beneath my boots as I took a heavy, grinding step forward. Then another.
The reflected blood sphere grazed my shoulder as I tilted my torso, tearing the fabric of my ivory uniform and splashing harmlessly against the dirt behind me.
"Look at you, crawling like an insect! Garret was a brainless brute who didn't know how to adapt, but I am a tactician, freshman! You can't fight what you can't lift!"
Zero-G mocked, his purple mana flaring brighter as he maintained the crushing gravity field. He gestured arrogantly toward the bleachers
"Is that... all you got?" I forced out a strained, breathless voice, taking another agonizingly slow step toward him.
While he was busy soaking in the applause of the second-years and gloating about being superior to Garret, I kept my eyes locked on the sand. I was deliberately mapping my route, making sure my slow, heavy steps steered completely clear of the dangerous, blistering sunspots piercing through the roof.
I just needed to get close enough to disrupt his focus. If I could break his concentration for even a fraction of a second, the gravity field would shatter, and Zero-G would find out exactly what happens when a phantom closes the distance.
With Zero-G entirely focused on gloating, his guard was wide open for a tactical misdirection. I needed a clean disruptor that didn't carry a shred of high-tier signature energy.
I bit my lip again, drawing a fresh pocket of blood into my mouth, and flicked my wrist across my chest.
"Damn you, here, blood sphere!"
Instead of hurling one massive, slow projectile, I launched five smaller, low-density blood spheres in rapid succession. Zero-G sneered, raising his hands to cast another gravitational shield, but he miscalculated the density. The moment the spheres crossed into his immediate perimeter, I clenched my fist, detonating them simultaneously in mid-air.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
They didn't strike with blunt force. Instead, they popped like over-pressurized paint balloons, bursting into a thick, blinding cloud of misty crimson fluid right in front of his face.
"Ah! What the…" Zero-G shrieked, his vision completely cut off by the dark red smear covering his eyes and nose.
Blinded and panicked, he instinctively dropped his hands to wipe the heavy fluid from his face, breaking his focus for a crucial split second.
The moment his concentration slipped, the crushing weight of the tenfold gravity field shattered like glass.
Now, with the suffocating pressure gone, I didn't just walk—I unleashed the absolute maximum peak of a humanly possible burst of agility. I became a blur across the sand, weaving effortlessly around the dangerous patches of blistering sunlight slicing through the roof. Before the crowd could even process the explosion of mist, I had already crossed the distance, appearing directly in Zero-G's blind spot.
He finally wiped the blood from his eyes, his pupils dilating in pure horror as he realized I was no longer pinned across the ring. I was standing mere inches away from him.
"Too slow, senior," I whispered.
Pulling my arm back, I channeled a highly suppressed, precisely calculated fraction of my strength, just enough to look like a desperate, high-velocity freshman strike, but carry the kinetic impact of a runaway carriage. My fist connected squarely with Zero-G's jaw.
BOOM!
The impact echoed through the entire gymnasium. The sheer force of the punch lifted the second-year clean off his feet, sending him spinning through the air before he crashed violently into the dirt, rolling several times across the sand until he lay completely motionless near the edge of the mana dome, his eyes rolled back into his head.
The stadium fell into a dead, suffocating silence. The cocky grins on the second-year bleachers instantly vanished, replaced by pale, open-mouthed shock.
I stood in the center of the ring, lowering my fist and chest-heaving dramatically to make it look like the punch had exhausted the very last of my stamina. From the VIP balcony, I could feel the Archivist leaning forward, his sharp eyes narrowing as he tried to analyze the move. But there was no lifesteal, no illegal weapons, and no forbidden magic. Just a clever freshman who used a tactical blindside to punch out an arrogant sophomore.
The first-year section stood frozen for a single second before the entire bleacher block erupted into an absolute, deafening roar of triumph.
The magical amplification runes across the ceiling crackled with static for a brief second before the announcer's voice boomed over the deafening silence of the arena, filled with absolute shock.
"T-The battle is over! In a stunning, tactical turnaround, the freshman prodigy has shattered the gravity field! The Crimson Phantom Wins This Round!"
The stadium erupted. The first-year bleachers completely exploded into a frenzy of flying papers and high-fives. Aisha, Amelia, and Cindy were jumping up and down, screaming my name at the top of their lungs, while the rest of the freshman boys pounded on the railings, chanting, "Zenni! Zenni! Zenni!" until the stone walls of the gymnasium vibrated.
Across the arena, the second-year section was a sea of absolute, grim disappointment. Some muttered curses, others threw their hands up in disbelief, completely humiliated that their star tactician had just been flattened by a single, well-placed punch from a slum kid.
I stood in the center of the sand, chest heaving in a perfectly choreographed display of exhaustion, wiping a fake bead of sweat from my brow. I subtly glanced up toward the VIP balcony to check the real audience that mattered.
My sister, Elicia, was clapping elegantly, a proud yet slightly stunned look on her face. Beside her, the Archivist was leaning so far over the velvet railing his knuckles were turning white. His sharp, predatory eyes were locked directly onto me, practically dissecting my stance, my mana flow, and the remnants of the blood mist settling onto the dirt.
I held my breath, keeping my heart rate perfectly steady.
After a long, agonizing moment, the Archivist slowly leaned back into his ornate chair, his tense posture relaxing into a cold, dismissive posture. My tactical gamble had paid off flawlessly. By relying strictly on low-density blood bursts and a localized physical strike, there was absolutely no trace of the bounty hunter they were hunting. No signature lifesteal runes had flared, no phantom swordsmanship had been exposed, and no forbidden artifacts had been drawn.
To the Archivist, I was exactly what the academy records claimed, a volatile, dirt-poor freshman with a terrifying amount of raw, natural talent. A nuisance, an anomaly, but completely disconnected from the legendary bounty hunter who had slaughtered his elite clan members the night before.
I walked over to the weapon rack, retrieving Zenni's black umbrella and propping it back over my shoulder to block a creeping patch of sunlight. I flashed a lazy, arrogant wave to the roaring crowd, cementing my status as the academy's rising star while the real phantom remained safely hidden right beneath their noses.