Chapter 56: Tsundere: Culmination Arc [17]

"This woman!" Calver threw himself sideways as ice shards screamed past his ear.

"Ha! Eat it!" Kreasial drove forward, both arms swinging wide, launching another spread before the first wave landed.

Arthur fired twice from behind her. Two water shots, flat and fast, one aimed at Calver’s left foot and one at Auros’s shoulder, not to hit, just to cut their repositioning options in half.

Calver pulled his foot back. Auros rolled his shoulder and the shot grazed it.

"Kreasial don’t push that far!" Arthur called. "You’ll get cornered!"

"In their dreams—"

Auros moved.

Not sideways. Not back. He dropped low and launched forward and covered the distance to Kreasial in under a second, both feet leaving the ground, his whole body folding into the movement like something that had been waiting for exactly this angle.

"Watch out!" Arthur thrust his hand forward.

Too late.

The ground between Auros and Kreasial erupted. Stone cracked upward in a flat burst, a shockwave pushing outward from the impact point in every direction at once. The force hit Kreasial across the ribs and sent her sideways. She hit the floor rolling and came up fifteen meters left of where she’d been standing.

The smoke from the cracked stone drifted across the floor.

"THERE IT IS." The announcer’s voice punched through the crowd noise. "THE SIGNATURE MOVE OF AUROS BELKAN. EARTH COMPRESSION RELEASE. AND FOLKS I HAVE TO SAY — THE MISFITS CAME OUT HOT BUT THEIR COORDINATION IS LOOKING SHAKY RIGHT NOW."

"Damnit." Arthur gritted his teeth. "She never listens."

The smoke cleared.

Kreasial was already pushing herself up on one knee. Left arm pressed to her ribs. Still moving. She shook her head once and looked up and her expression had gone past annoyed into something that was going to be someone’s problem very shortly.

Auros landed and straightened. He stepped in front of Calver and raised both hands. Blue light crawled across his knuckles, climbing up his wrists, covering his palms in a layer that pulsed slow and steady.

Arthur tilted his head.

Battlemagus.

He’d missed that. He’d read Auros as a physical type from the novel Chapters but battlemagus was a different category entirely — physical enhancement stacked on top of an already heavy frame. Every hit Auros landed wouldn’t feel like a person hitting you.

"Whatever you do," Roz said against his ear. "Do not let that one get close to you."

"I know, Master."

Arthur’s eyes moved. Auros in front. Calver behind Auros and to the right, already recovering his angle. Xavier standing ten meters further back.

Xavier was watching him.

Not Kreasial. Not Auros. Him.

That assessing look. Running something over. Not finished yet.

Xavier opened his mouth.

"Go push."

Auros flew forward.

"Fall back!" Arthur spun. "Theodore — fall back now!"

Theodore was already moving, pulling left away from Auros’s line, his bellus scrambling with him. Kreasial pushed off the ground and broke right. Arthur went straight back, creating distance, putting ten meters between himself and the incoming Auros—

A bolt of fire cracked across the floor from the right side.

It hit Auros mid-air. Dead center in the chest.

Auros flew sideways. Smoke trailing off his jacket. He hit the floor hard and skidded another three meters before stopping.

The crowd erupted.

"WHAT WAS THAT." The announcer’s voice went up an entire register. "FOLKS — CLASS B HAS JUST STRUCK CLASS A. ELIAS IGNION HAS ENTERED THIS SIDE OF THE FLOOR."

The crowed erupted.

Arthur looked right.

Elias stood twenty meters away with his palm still raised. Smoke curling from between his fingers. His triad was fanned out behind him, the green-haired woman on his left, the broad-shouldered man on his right.

Auros stood up.

His jacket was on fire.

He grabbed it by the collar and ripped it off in one motion, tossing it aside. The blue light on his hands hadn’t dimmed at all.

"You Ignion bastard." His voice came out flat and mean. "You really can’t sit down can you!"

"You’re dead today." Elias took one step forward. "Every single one of you freaks."

Oh. Arthur lowered his hand slightly. Okay. You two go ahead.

He started calculating the new floor layout. Elias had pulled Auros’s attention fully. Kreasial was back on her feet to the right, ribs held but standing. Theodore had gotten clear to the left. Xavier and Calver were still at the far position, Xavier unmoving, Calver watching Elias with a flat expression.

The floor had split into three separate problems running at once.

Then something moved through his shadow network.

Fast. Coming from the right quadrant. He hadn’t anchored that side heavily — most of his network was concentrated forward toward Class A.

Who—

’ARTHUR MOVE!—’

He moved. 𝘧𝓇ℯ𝑒𝓌𝑒𝑏𝓃𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭.𝒸ℴ𝓂

But Not fast enough.

The water hit him like a wall had fallen on him. Dense and enormous, nothing like his coin-sized shots, this had mass behind it, real mass, and it picked him up and threw him sideways across the floor. He hit the stone and rolled and kept rolling until the momentum bled out and he stopped face-down with his ears ringing and his jacket in pieces across his back.

Ooff that hurt like ass...

’I TOLD YOU TO MOVE! LISTEN TO ME AND STOP DOZING OFF!’ Vexis hissed while doing hand gestures at Arthur.

Roz had bitten down on his collar mid-flight and was dangling from it, bow tie askew, red eyes absolutely furious.

Arthur peeled himself off the floor.

What.

He pushed upright. His jacket hung off him in strips. He looked at his arms. The fabric was gone from both shoulders entirely.

He turned around.

A wall of water was already reforming twenty meters away. Gathering itself in a slow rotating mass, pulling from the air, growing. The person standing behind it had both arms raised and her expression was the specific blank of someone who had already decided this was beneath commentary.

Dark brown hair cut straight at the collarbone.

Grey-green eyes.

Arthur blinked.

Alfia.

"Nice to meet you again." Her voice carried clean across the floor. No effort behind it. "Lestilaut."

He stared at her.

In the novel she went after Xavier. Specifically Xavier. Out of curiosity, out of competition — she always moved toward the strongest signal in the room.

Why is she looking at me.

"Brat." Roz dropped from his collar to his shoulder and fixed his bow tie in one motion. "She controls that volume like it weighs nothing. That is not a light output."

"I know." Arthur wiped the stone dust off his jaw. "She’s one of the most dangerous people on this floor."

He looked across at Theodore, still on the left side of the floor, moving to intercept Kreasial. Good. They were handling it.

He looked back at Alfia.

Her water mass had reached the size of a large carriage now and it was still pulling in.

I’m not just a reader anymore.

The thought arrived clean and certain, and next to it, something that felt like it came from both of them at once, him and Vexis, running the same track for the first time without one of them dragging.

Arthur opened his mouth.

This time it was voluntarily.

"You have a crush on me or something?"

Alfia’s expression moved from blank to surprised to furious in under a second. "Ha. You wish bastard."

"I’m serious. You walked all the way over here when Xavier’s right there." He gestured loosely at the far end of the floor. Water was already forming at his fingertip. "Kind of embarrassing honestly."

"I’m going to kill you and your stupid face!—"

"Sorry." He grinned. The genuine one, the ridiculous kind he couldn’t fully stop. "I like older women."

"FOLKS." The announcer’s voice cracked across the whole coliseum. "ALFIA EVERRETH OF CLASS C IS NOW FACING VEXIS LESTILAUT OF CLASS F AND I AM NOT SURE ANYONE EXPECTED THIS MATCHUP TODAY—"

Alfia fired.

The water mass launched in one clean release, enormous and fast, aimed straight at Arthur’s center with the control of someone who had been doing this since before Arthur knew this world existed.

Arthur pulled out his aetheric blood. Dense and filled the water circling on his finger tips and fired back.

His shot was coin-sized.

It punched through the center of her mass in a straight line, splitting the water column down the middle, and both halves crashed into the floor on either side of him in two separate waves.

"What!" Alfia hissed. Her eyes wide

The spray hit him across both arms.

He was already raising his finger for the next one.

Alfia stared at the split water on the floor.

Then back at him.

Her eyes had changed.

"DENSITY." The announcer’s voice went quiet before going loud again. "LADIES AND GENTLEMEN DID YOU SEE THAT. LESTILAUT’S OUTPUT IS SMALLER THAN EVERRETH’S BY A MASSIVE MARGIN AND HE JUST PUNCHED STRAIGHT THROUGH IT—"

[A massive group of people are looking at the reader]

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Alfia brought both arms forward.

Arthur brought his up.