The collective breath of every student in the staging area hitched. Time seemed to slow down, stretching into an eternity of disbelief. Kael's glowing battle axe, a weapon capable of shattering stone walls, descended with the force of a falling meteor. Amrit, serene and unmoving, tilted his head forward slightly, offering his brow to the apocalypse. It was a gesture of such supreme, suicidal insanity that it transcended arrogance and became something else entirely.
Clang!
The sound was not the sickening crunch of bone and flesh that everyone expected. It was the sound of a blacksmith's hammer striking a divine anvil. It was a pure, deafening, metallic chime that vibrated through the very bones of everyone watching.
Kael's axe, infused with the full might of a peak Body Tempering master, struck Amrit's forehead.
And bounced off.
The blood-red glow of the axe shattered into a shower of harmless sparks. The immense force of the impact, with nowhere to go, traveled back up the axe's haft and slammed directly into Kael's own arms and chest.
Kael's eyes bulged, his triumphant roar turning into a choked gasp of pain and shock. He felt as if he had swung his axe against the face of a mountain. The bones in his hands and wrists fractured with an audible crackle. The Prana in his meridians, thrown into violent reverse, ruptured in a dozen places. He vomited a mouthful of blood, his own power turning against him with catastrophic results.
The massive battle axe, its edge now dented and ruined, was torn from his nerveless grasp. It flew into the air, spinning wildly, before embedding itself deep into the stone ceiling of the chamber overhead, where it hung, quivering.
Kael himself was thrown backwards, his huge body tumbling through the air like a discarded ragdoll. He crashed into the far wall of the staging area, the impact cracking the solid stone, before slumping to the floor in a broken, unconscious heap.
Silence.
A silence so deep and so absolute it felt like the end of the world.
The duel, the Open Challenge that was meant to be a brutal battle of strength, had ended in a single, anticlimactic instant. It had ended before it had even truly begun.
Amrit stood in the center of the room, unmoved from his original spot. He slowly lowered his head, his expression as placid as ever. On his forehead, where the axe had struck, there was not a scratch. Not a bruise. Not even a single red mark. The skin was as flawless and untouched as polished jade.
He had met a full-power strike from one of the strongest Body Tempering masters in the Academy with his bare skin and had emerged completely unscathed, while his opponent lay broken and unconscious.
He had honored the terms of the challenge. No tricks. No running. Just pure, unadulterated, incomprehensible strength. His body, tempered by a perfect foundation and infused with the power of a vast Spirit Sea, had become an artifact in its own right, a fortress of flesh and bone that mortal steel could not mar.
He had proven Kael's point. He was a true warrior. He was just a warrior from a different, higher plane of existence.
The students stared, their minds refusing to function. The scene was so logically impossible, so fundamentally reality-breaking, that it simply did not compute.
Rohan's jaw was on the floor, his face pale. Zian, the master of patterns, saw no pattern here, only a terrifying, absolute truth. Princess Fenghua's fiery aura seemed to dim, her pride taking a severe blow. Yan Tao, watching from the crowd, felt a cold sweat on his brow, realizing the depth of the abyss he had provoked.
Prince Valerius's cool, aristocratic mask finally, completely, shattered. The casual disdain was gone, replaced by a raw, naked look of disbelief and a dawning, terrible understanding. He had assumed Amrit's power was in strange techniques, in spiritual tricks. He had never, in his wildest nightmares, considered that Amrit's physical vessel itself was a divine treasure. How could you fight a man a full-force blow from an enchanted axe couldn't even scratch?
And Vikramaditya, the Son of Destiny, watched with a profound, somber gravity. The pity was gone from his eyes. He now saw Amrit not as a lost soul to be guided, but as a true, calamitous threat. The world's harmony could not account for a being like this. This was not a discordant note; it was a silent void that devoured sound itself.
Amrit calmly brushed a non-existent speck of dust from his sleeve. He looked at the unconscious form of Kael, then at the stunned Academy official.
"The duel is over, I believe," he said, his voice cutting through the silence and jolting everyone back to reality. "I will accept the transfer of Merit Points at your convenience."
The official, his face ashen, could only nod dumbly. He had just witnessed the most one-sided and terrifying duel of his entire life.
Amrit turned and walked back to his friends, the crowd of geniuses parting for him like the Red Sea before Moses. They recoiled from him, not just in fear of his power, but in fear of the unknown. He was something that did not fit into their world.
"Well," Zian said, his voice a dry croak. "That was certainly one way to handle it. You didn't just defeat him. You defeated the entire concept of a brute-force contest."
"He wanted a demonstration of strength," Amrit said simply. "I gave him one."
Before anyone else could react, the grand doors to the official Dueling Arena swung open, and an Elder's voice, laced with a new, hurried urgency, boomed through the hall.
"The preliminary challenges are concluded! The first round of the tournament will now begin! Contestants, enter the arena and find your assigned platforms!"
The announcement was a clear attempt by the Academy leadership to regain control, to force this chaotic, unbelievable event to be swept aside by the official proceedings.
Amrit, now twenty thousand Merit Points richer, walked with Zian and Rohan towards the arena entrance. He was no longer just the top seed. He was a walking legend, a figure of myth before the tournament had even started.
He stepped out from the dim staging area into the brilliant sunlight of the Grand Dueling Arena. Fifty thousand spectators filled the stands—students, city residents, and emissaries from various powers who had come to scout talent. A roar went up from the crowd as the contestants emerged onto the obsidian floor.
A hundred smaller dueling platforms were scattered across the arena floor, each one shielded by a shimmering energy field. The runic screen, now repaired and twice as large, hovered in the air, displaying the matchups for the first round.
Amrit found his name easily.
Platform 37: Amrit (Kshirapura) vs. Jin (Iron Mountain Sect)
He glanced across the arena. His opponent, a stocky young man with a determined look, saw the matchup at the same time. The young man's face went completely white. He looked at Amrit, then at the unconscious form of Kael Volkov being dragged out of the staging area by healers, and his entire body began to tremble.
He held up his student token and, with a look of utter despair, shattered it, forfeiting the match and withdrawing from the tournament entirely.
The runic screen updated instantly.
Platform 37: Amrit (Kshirapura) wins by forfeit.
Amrit hadn't even taken a step onto his platform, and he had already won his first round. His demonstration against Kael had been so absolute, so psychologically devastating, that his opponent had chosen to surrender rather than face him.
A new wave of hushed whispers swept through the massive stadium. They had all come to see the great enigma fight. And his first victory had been won without lifting a finger. His reputation had become a weapon in itself, more potent than any sword or spell.
Amrit stood on the arena floor, a solitary figure in a sea of combatants, his first match already over. He had come to the Dueling Arena to fight, but it seemed the world itself was becoming too terrified to fight back.