Aldric moved first.
He didn't explode forward or charge recklessly, he moved with the kind of fluid grace that came from understanding movement at a fundamental level.
His sword came up in a rising arc that looked almost lazy in its execution, but Jade caught the subtle shifts in his grip and the way his body's momentum was being channeled into the blade, and he understood immediately that this simple-looking strike carried enough force to shear through mithril.
He shifted his weight and angled his body just enough that the blade passed through the space where his torso had been a fraction of a second earlier, the edge so close he could feel the displacement of air against his skin through his clothing. Before Aldric could recover and reposition, Jade closed the distance in a burst of blinding speed and threw a quick jab toward his solar plexus.
Aldric twisted mid-recovery, his senses screaming at him as he brought his sword back around in a horizontal slash that forced Jade to abandon his attack and retreat backward. The blade whistled through empty air where his extended arm had been, and they separated with perhaps three meters of distance between them.
The exchange had lasted maybe two seconds.
And the crowd went absolutely insane.
"Participant 847,392 just stepped INSIDE Aldric's guard!" a commentator cut in, voice rising with excitement. "Who does that against a swordmaster?! That's suicide! But he read his recovery time perfectly and almost landed a hit!"
"And Aldric recovered mid-twist! That counter-slash would have taken his arm off if he'd been even a fraction of a second slower!"
The spectators were roaring with approval, the kind of primal excitement that came from witnessing genuine skill clashing at the highest levels. This wasn't overwhelming dominance or pure power displays, this was technique meeting technique, timing against timing, two fighters who actually understood combat at a level that made every movement meaningful.
Back on stage,
Jade and Aldric circled each other slowly, and he could see the reassessment happening behind the swordsman's eyes.
He'd expected Jade to be fast—everyone who'd watched his previous matches knew he was fast—but reading his blade mechanics and positioning required more than just speed. It required understanding sword angles and body mechanics and timing windows that most fighters didn't even know existed.
Aldric came at him again, and this time there was no lazy test strike. His sword blurred through a combination that incorporated three different angles of attack in rapid succession—high, low, middle—each one flowing naturally into the next and creating a pattern that left almost no openings for counterattack. Jade slipped through the assault like water through a sieve, his body moving with minimal wasted motion as he read each strike's trajectory before it fully developed and positioned himself in the narrow gaps between blade paths.
But before Aldric's third strike could complete it's trajectory, Jade swept low with his leg to hook behind Aldric's ankle while his hand came up toward the swordsman's extended elbow. The combination would have disrupted balance and created a real opening, but Aldric was already adjusting, using his sword's momentum to spin away from the leg sweep while his blade came around in a circular slash that forced Jade to abort and retreat.
They separated again, and the crowd's roar had reached a fever pitch.
"THEY'RE BOTH LANDING NEAR-MISSES!" the first commentator was screaming. "Neither one can find a clean opening! This is—this is the best technical display we've seen all tournament!"
"Look at how he's reading those strikes!" the second commentator added. "He's not just dodging randomly—he's seeing where the blade will be before it gets there! That's high-level combat awareness!"
"And Aldric's adapting every exchange! Each combination is different! He's not repeating patterns because he knows they'll be exploited!"
The fight continued for another minute and a half—an eternity by Jade's standards where most of his matches lasted seconds—and every exchange was like watching a conversation conducted through violence. Aldric would probe with a testing strike, Jade would respond with movement that answered the question, the swordsman would adjust his approach based on the response, Jade would counter-adjust, and the cycle would continue with both fighters learning and adapting in real-time.
Jade felt himself actually enjoying this in a way he hadn't expected. This was proper combat—not overwhelming power differences or lucky accidents, but genuine technical skill being pushed to its limits. Aldric was good, genuinely good, and fighting someone who understood swordplay at this level was forcing him to actually think and adapt rather than just ending things immediately.
But there was a difference between enjoying a good fight and letting it continue unnecessarily, and he'd seen what he needed to see. More importantly, he'd identified the pattern in Aldric's breathing and the subtle rhythm to his combinations, and that gave him the opening he needed.
The next time Aldric came forward with a horizontal slash aimed at his midsection, Jade didn't evade or deflect. He dropped low, his body folding almost in half as he ducked beneath the blade's arc entirely, and before Aldric could recover his positioning, Jade's hand shot up and caught the swordsman's wrist. His other hand came around and tapped two fingers against Aldric's exposed throat with a strike so light it wouldn't even leave a bruise but carried the unmistakable message of 'I could have crushed your windpipe just now'.
Aldric froze completely, his eyes widening as he processed what had just happened. His sword was still in hand, still technically in position, but Jade's control of his wrist meant he couldn't generate the leverage to use it effectively. And those fingers resting against his throat—so gently they barely made contact—demonstrated with absolute clarity that if this had been a real fight, he'd already be dead.
Three heartbeats of perfect silence passed as the implications sank in for everyone watching.
Then Aldric laughed—a short, sharp sound that held genuine amusement mixed with respect mixed with acknowledgment of defeat.
"I yield," he said clearly, and Jade released his wrist and stepped back immediately.
The referee's hand shot up. "Match concluded! Winner: Participant 847,392!"
The arena exploded into noise that defied description. Cheering and screaming and roaring approval that shook the very structure of the arena. The commentators were practically incoherent with excitement, their voices overlapping as they tried to describe the battle.
"TWO MINUTES AND FIFTEEN SECONDS!" one of them screamed. "That's the longest match Participant 847,392 has fought! And it was INCREDIBLE!"
On the stage, Aldric sheathed his sword with practiced ease and offered Jade a slight bow that he returned without hesitation. "You're better than good," Aldric said quietly, pitched to carry only to him over the crowd noise. "Wherever you learned to fight, they taught you well."
"You're skilled yourself," Jade replied honestly. "Your sword intent is solid, and your adaptability is excellent. You'll go far if you keep developing those fundamentals."
Something in Aldric's expression softened slightly at the genuine compliment, and he nodded once more before turning and walking toward the stage exit. Jade followed a few steps behind, and when he stepped through the barrier back into the contestant area, he found himself walking into a wall of attention that was considerably more intense than anything he'd experienced before.
The fighters who'd been sitting casually or chatting or meditating were now all focused on him with expressions that ranged from impressed to calculating to openly respectful.
Even Lysander had lost his condescending smirk, replaced by something harder to read.
Kara was grinning so wide it looked like her face might split. Theron was nodding slowly with a thoughtful expression.
Further back, Caelum had sat up straight in his seat with what looked like genuine interest for the first time since Jade had met him. And Rivan's eyes were practically sparkling with hero worship, and even fighters Jade hadn't interacted with before were regarding him with visible respect.
Darius seated several rows away was staring at Jade with an intensity that was almost tangible, his entire body trembling in what seemed to be a mixture of anticipation and battle hunger. The way he looked at Jade suggested he was already fighting their eventual match in his head, planning and strategizing and counting down the time until they could face each other properly. It was so intense that Jade almost wanted to walk over and poke the man's eyes just to make him blink and look away for five seconds.
'Kids and their battle intent,' Jade thought with internal amusement as he made his way back to his seat. 'At least he has the power to back up that stare. Should make for an interesting fight eventually.'
He settled back into his seat, and conversations gradually resumed around him though he could still feel eyes on him periodically.
.....
The matches continued processing—more eliminations, more advances, the steady march toward cutting the numbers in half again—but there was a subtle way in how people were positioned now. Several fighters had unconsciously oriented themselves to keep Jade in their peripheral vision, and conversations that had previously been casual now carried undertones of wariness and respect.
...
Time passed, more matches concluded, and eventually the second round finished with two hundred and fifty fighters remaining. The bracket updated, showing who'd advanced and who'd been eliminated, and then a thirty-minute break was announced to allow for equipment repairs and medical assessments.
Jade remained in his seat while people moved around—some heading toward refreshment stations, others discussing matches with renewed energy, a few approaching Aldric to offer congratulations on a well-fought battle even in defeat. The atmosphere had changed again, becoming simultaneously more relaxed due to the break but also more charged as everyone processed that they'd made it to the top 250.
Then Kara suddenly turned to Jade with an expression that suggested something had just occurred to her, and she said: "By the way Jade, I've got to ask—how the hell is your hood still on?"
The question landed in the middle of the scattered conversations around them, and suddenly everyone in their immediate area had gone quiet and was looking at Jade with varying expressions of confusion and realization.
"What?" Theron said slowly, his eyes widening as he processed what Kara had just pointed out. "She's right. You just fought a swordmaster for over two minutes. There was wind displacement from the blade strikes. You were moving at high speed. Your hood should have been blown back at least once."
"But it didn't," Kara continued, leaning forward with intense curiosity. "It didn't even shift. Not during the fight. Not during any of your fights, actually. I don't think I've seen it move at all since we got here."
More people were turning to look now, their attention caught by the observation, and Jade could practically see the gears turning in their heads as they reviewed memories of his matches and realized Kara was absolutely right.
Rivan gasped dramatically, his hands flying to his mouth in shock. "Oh my gods, she's right! Your hood never moves! Ever! Even when mine shifts around just from walking, yours stays perfectly in place no matter what!" His eyes went comically wide. "Is it... is it glued to your head?!"
The question was delivered with such genuine bewilderment and innocent curiosity that something inside Jade just... broke. The absurdity of it—of everything, really, from being reincarnated as an omega to fighting in tournaments to now being interrogated about whether his hood was glued on—hit him all at once, and before he could stop himself, a sound escaped his throat.
It started as a quiet huff of breath, then grew into something richer and warmer, until finally Jade was actually chuckling—a low, genuine sound that held real amusement and carried a quality that was almost musical in its naturalness. The sound had a warm timbre to it, like dark honey mixed with velvet, completely unbidden and entirely human in a way that contrasted sharply with his usual controlled silence.
Every single person in their immediate vicinity went completely silent.
The effect was immediate and somehow more dramatic than anything Jade had done on the stage. Fighters who'd been engaged in their own conversations trailed off mid-sentence. People who'd been moving around froze in place. Even those who'd been facing away turned around because the sound had been distinct enough and surprising enough to cut through every other noise in the area.
Jade's chuckle lasted maybe three seconds before he caught himself and stopped, suddenly acutely aware of the wall of attention now focused on him with laser intensity, and he felt his face heat slightly under the hood's shadow at being the center of such concentrated observation.
The silence stretched for another beat, then two, and Jade shifted slightly in his seat with uncomfortable self-consciousness because 'why was everyone staring at him like that?'.
Then Rivan exploded.
"THAT WAS BEAUTIFUL!" the young beta practically shrieked, his eyes gone so wide and starry they looked like someone had replaced them with entire galaxies. He half-rose from his seat in his excitement, hands gesturing wildly. "Your laugh is 'beautiful'! Like—like bells or music or something! There's no way—there is absolutely 'no way'—you're ugly under that hood! Beautiful people have beautiful laughs, that's just how it works! If you sound like that, you must be gorgeous!"
"Rivan!" Orion's hand shot out like a striking snake, clamping over the beta's mouth with enough force to muffle whatever else he'd been about to say next. "Indoor voice. Personal boundaries. We've discussed this 'multiple times'."
But the damage was already done. The observation had been made, heard by everyone in the vicinity, and Jade could see several people looking thoughtful, as if they'd never considered that angle before but now couldn't stop thinking about it.
Kara was grinning outright now, her scarred face transformed by genuine amusement. "Kid's got a point though. That was... yeah, that was a nice laugh. Pleasant. You should do it more often instead of being all mysterious and silent all the time."
Jade felt his face burning hotter under the hood, and he cleared his throat with deliberate intent to change the subject to literally anything else. "The hood stays," he said firmly, pitching his voice to be heard by the immediate group. "Glued or otherwise. Can we move on?"
"But—" Rivan started to protest, but Orion's hand tightened over his mouth again with a look that clearly communicated 'do not push your luck'.
Kara laughed and settled back in her seat, apparently satisfied with having gotten a reaction. "Fair enough. Your secrets are your own. But for the record, that was the most human thing I've seen you do since we got here, so thanks for that."
The conversations gradually resumed after that, though Jade noticed people kept glancing at him with slightly different expressions than before—less wary assessment and more genuine friendliness, like that single moment of unguarded amusement had somehow bridged a gap between him and everyone else that hadn't even been visible until now.
He settled deeper into his seat and focused on recovering his equilibrium, very carefully not thinking about how a simple chuckle had apparently caused more of a reaction than any of his actual combat displays.
The break continued, fighters rested and prepared, and eventually the third round would begin to cut their numbers down to one hundred and twenty-five.
But for now, in this moment, Jade sat surrounded by people who'd gone from viewing him as a mysterious threat to someone they could actually respect and maybe even like, and despite his embarrassment, he had to admit it wasn't entirely terrible.
Even if they were still wrong about the hood being glued on.
....
Author San here ☺️
Ok guys I'm sorry I haven't been updating, I have been busy with my thesis , ugh it's a lot of work !
And I swear I almost regret the day I decided to pursue a master's degree!
But today Is a rest day and I decided to write a chapter as a thank you to y'all that checked up on me and I'll at least try to update 2 chapters per week until I'm finally free of my predicament 😫😫
Thank you all , I appreciate the love 💕 😘