Jade himself seemed completely unbothered by the chaos his four-second victory had created. He simply turned away from his surrendering opponent and walked toward the stage edge with the same unhurried pace he'd maintained throughout. When he reached the barrier, he paused for just a moment—long enough that several nearby spectators leaned forward expectantly—and then he simply wasn't there anymore. The space he'd occupied rippled slightly as Void Step activated, and in the next instant he was back in his seat in the premium fighter section, settling into the same relaxed position he'd held before his match was called.
The reaction from surrounding fighters was immediate and varied in ways that painted a fascinating picture of tournament dynamics and secondary gender politics.
Two seats to Jade's left, a broad-shouldered alpha with the kind of overdeveloped musculature that screamed enhancement talent was sneering openly at Jade's return. His arms were crossed over his chest in a posture that radiated dismissive arrogance, and pheromone—which Jade could detect despite Spectra's Band diminishing the impact—practically reeked of aggressive territoriality. "Showoff," the alpha muttered to his companion, voice deliberately loud enough to carry. "Probably just got lucky with a weak matchup. Let's see how he does against someone who actually knows how to fight instead of some backwater precog who can't throw a proper punch."
His companion was another alpha, this one with energy crackling faintly around his fingertips in an unconscious display of barely controlled power. He nodded agreement, though his expression was more calculating than outright contemptuous as he studied Jade's hooded profile. "Rank gap was massive. Four thousand places. That surrender doesn't prove anything except the matchmaking system needs work." He paused, fingers tapping against his armrest in a rhythm that matched the electrical discharges. "Still, catching the punch instead of deflecting it was... interesting. Suggests confidence or stupidity. We'll find out which when he faces top thousand opposition."
On Jade's right, a slender beta woman was observing him with open fascination rather than hostility. Her eyes were sharp and analytical as they tracked from his concealed face down to his hands, which rested relaxed on the armrests without any sign of strain or injury from catching that enhanced punch. She noticed Jade's attention and smiled slightly, inclining her head in a gesture of genuine respect that caught him off guard. "Clean execution," she said simply, voice carrying professional appreciation.
Jade returned the nod, unsure how to respond to straightforward compliment from a stranger. The woman seemed satisfied with the acknowledgment and turned her attention back to the stage where preparations for the next match were underway, though he noticed she kept glancing back at him periodically with continued interest.
Further down the row, Jade could feel multiple sets of eyes tracking his position. Some were curious, trying to figure out what was hidden under that hood and what capabilities he might reveal in future matches. Others radiated envy barely concealed beneath forced neutrality—fighters who'd trained their entire lives to reach this level watching someone from an unknown planet demonstrate effortless superiority. And scattered among them were the proud alphas, the ones whose entire identity was built around being the strongest and fastest and best, now confronted with someone who made their achievements look ordinary.
One dominant alpha three seats back was particularly persistent, nostrils flaring as he tried repeatedly to catch Jade's scent and determine his secondary gender. His pride couldn't come to terms with the fact that a mere beta was that strong, but the attempt was doomed to fail—Spectra's Band concealed those markers completely.
Directly across the aisle, a young man with bright eyes and an eager smile caught Jade's attention and immediately gave him an enthusiastic thumbs up. "That was awesome!" he stage-whispered, completely ignoring the annoyed looks from nearby fighters who clearly thought he was embarrassing himself. "Just grabbed his punch like it was nothing! Can you teach me how to do that? I've been working on my hand-to-hand technique but I can't figure out the timing for—"
"Shut up, Rivan." The alpha sitting next to the enthusiastic youth smacked him upside the head with enough force to make a sharp cracking sound. "You're embarrassing yourself and every other alpha in this section. Show some dignity."
"I'm not embarrassed! That was genuinely impressive and I want to learn from it!" Rivan rubbed his head but kept grinning. "Besides, you're just mad because you know you couldn't catch a punch like that."
"I absolutely could catch—" The alpha's face flushed red with indignation. "That's not the point! The point is you're supposed to maintain competitive dignity, not fanboy over every fighter who shows basic competence!"
"Basic competence? Did you even watch the same match I did?"
Their bickering continued in heated whispers that gradually faded into the general arena noise, but Jade found himself oddly amused by the interaction. The variety of reactions was almost more interesting than the matches themselves—pride, respect, fear, excitement, calculation, dismissal, everything in between. Everyone processing the same four-second exchange through completely different lenses shaped by their experiences and talents.
The proud alphas were probably the most dangerous long-term, though not because they posed any real physical threat. Jade could handle them as easily as he'd handled everyone else so far. But their pride would drive them to keep fighting even when logic and self-preservation said to surrender, refusing to yield until the referee called it or unconsciousness made the choice for them. They'd see surrender as weakness, as something beneath their status as apex humans, and would rather take a beating than admit inferiority to someone from a backwater planet.
The calculating ones were smarter but equally predictable in their own way. They were already trying to analyze his fighting style, looking for patterns or weaknesses they could exploit when they eventually faced him. The problem was that Jade didn't really have a fighting style in the traditional sense—he just overwhelmed opponents with raw physical superiority applied in whichever way seemed most efficient for the current situation. No complex technique sequences to memorize and counter. No exploitable patterns to identify and avoid. Just devastating power that made conventional combat strategy essentially meaningless.
The respectful ones like the beta woman were probably the wisest. They recognized superior capability when they saw it and chose to learn from observation rather than challenging something they couldn't match. Those were the fighters who'd go far in their careers even if they didn't win tournaments, because they understood that sometimes the smartest move was acknowledging when you were outclassed and adapting accordingly.
And then there were the enthusiastic ones like Rivan, who apparently saw combat prowess as something to celebrate rather than compete against. Jade wasn't entirely sure what to make of that approach, but it was certainly more pleasant than the hostile alphas sneering about lucky matchups.
On stage, the next match was beginning—two fighters whose names and participant numbers Jade hadn't bothered noting. One of them wielded some kind of crystalline manipulation that turned the platform surface into a forest of sharp spikes, while the other countered with a kinetic absorption talent that let them walk through the hazard without taking damage. It was technically interesting and tactically sound combat between two competent awakeners, and under normal circumstances it would have been worth watching closely.
But Jade had already seen enough to know that nothing happening on that stage would challenge him until the bracket naturally filtered down to genuinely elite opposition. So instead of focusing on the match, he closed his eyes and let the arena noise fade into background static while he returned to the question that had been nagging at him since battle rounds concluded.
It was possible that the truly dangerous fighters were still ahead, safely seeded in the bracket's upper reaches where they wouldn't meet until later rounds. Rank 1 Darius Kane had looked genuinely powerful during his morning match, and there were probably dozens of others scattered through the top hundred who could actually make Jade work for his victories. The tournament was designed to build toward increasingly difficult challenges as weaker opposition was systematically eliminated, so perhaps this early dominance was expected and the real fights would come later.
Or perhaps—and this was the thought that had been bothering him—he'd simply trained so relentlessly over the past decade that he'd vastly overshot what was actually necessary to win. Years of bitter, desperate training driven by the need to never be helpless of being manipulated by fate. Thousands of hours pushing his body past reasonable limits. Countless dungeon runs at difficulty levels that should have required full teams. All of it building toward a goal that might not have needed nearly that much preparation.
The system didn't make mistakes with quest difficulty. If it had given him ten years to prepare, there had to be a reason. Which meant either the tournament's true challenge was still ahead, or there were factors he wasn't seeing yet that would make victory more complicated than just punching people until they stopped moving.
Time would tell. For now, Jade settled deeper into his meditation and listened to the sounds of combat continuing on stage—techniques activating, barriers rippling from impacts, the referee making calls as matches progressed through their natural cycles. All of it familiar. All of it predictable.
And somewhere in the midst of that predictability, Jade allowed himself the smallest smile beneath his concealing hood.
If the tournament stayed this easy all the way to the championship, he'd be disappointed but hardly complaining. And if it suddenly became genuinely challenging in later rounds like the system's decade-long quest timer suggested it would, then he'd finally get to test himself properly against opponents who could make him use his real capabilities.
Either way, he was advancing. Either way, he was winning.
And either way, that legendary quest reward would be his when this was all over.
The arena's noise continued around him as match after match processed through the single-elimination bracket, five thousand fighters being systematically reduced toward that final championship goal. Around him, other fighters prepared themselves mentally for their own upcoming battles, each one carrying their own dreams and motivations and desperate hopes that they'd be the one to defy the odds.
Jade let it all wash over him without concern. Dreams and hopes and desperation were admirable, but they didn't change the fundamental dynamics of power and capability. The tournament would continue its relentless progression, and he would advance through it with the same efficient brutality that had carried him this far.
Ten seconds maximum per match, if his opponents kept surrendering quickly.
...
To be continued...