"Who exactly are Shin and Soo?" Rosalind asked, her eyes fixed on the distant figures
standing upon the Red and Blue stages. The tension in the audience stand was thick
enough to cut with a sword, leaving a bitter, metallic taste in the air, as people filed in gloomy
with no hint of excitement but anticipation.
Vesper didn't take her eyes off the arena. She simply leaned against the stone railing, the
ghostly teal vapor of her Vim clinging to her dark coat. "Ittetsu Shin is the inheritor of the
'Maiden of Yue'," Vesper explained, her voice barely audible. "It's an ancient tale of a
peerless swordswoman who taught an emperor's army how to fight. And Bom Soo Ahn
holds an Ikos related to earthly shamanism and deep roots. A tale about the forest's
unending resilience."
Rosalind nodded slowly, though her brow furrowed. "I am satisfied with the answer, but… I
must admit, I don't even know what those stories are."
"Not all fiction is a global fairy tale, Rosalind," Vesper replied softly. "Some stories are local.
Some are forgotten. But that doesn't matter, In Hiraeth as long as there is fiction someone is
going to inherit them."
Down below, the black pavement below the floating stages like a vast emptiness began to
shift. Jocelyn and Mord appeared on their respective stages—Mord standing motionless on
the Blue Pawn stage, his wand resting loosely in his grip, while Jocelyn bounced on the
heels of her boots on the Red Knight stage, stretching her arms.
"It looks like we shall finally battle!" the boy on the other end of the Red Knight stage yelled.
Shin gripped the hilt of his sword, his half-white, half-blue hair catching the ambient light.
"Yes!" Jocelyn yelled back, cupping her hands around her mouth. "I hope you will be a good
sport about it once you lose!"
As soon as the words left her mouth, the heavy obsidian roof of the stadium seemed to hum.
The stages suddenly enclosed, an invisible pocket dimension expanding and snapping shut
around the four participants. Their surroundings instantly turned pitch black, the stone and
audience fading away. Then, the environment and biome within the sphere morphed. The
two stages merged into a single ground.Lush, vibrant green grass sprouted violently from the
floor, rolling outward into a massive plain. Above them, a digital sky ignited, painting the void
with clouds and a blazing artificial sun.
"Here we have a Knights and Pawns Duel between two Kings: Raina Hua Xiamira and
Emmerich Orion Wilhelm!" the referee's voice boomed, projecting from a special stand below
the audience section.
Rosalind felt a slight jolt at hearing Mord's full name as it didn't even have Mord in it but her
attention remained glued to the grassy plain.
"On Xiamira's Camp, we have Ittetsu Shin as the Knight and Bom Soo Ahn as the Pawn,"
the referee continued, his voice echoing across the pocket dimension. "On Wilhelm's Camp, we have Jocelyn Valjubi as the Knight and Emmerich Orion Wilhelm, the King himself, acting
as the Pawn."
The referee paused, letting the weight of the matchups settle, and the screams of the
audience bellow out,before rattling off the absolute laws of the arena. "As the rules state,
only the Knights will do the fighting, while the Pawns provide support. Only the Knight of
either camp is allowed to cause or receive damage. Surrender, death, or unresponsiveness
for five seconds counts as defeat. There are no draws. The battle will continue until one side
is victorious, as only absolute victories are allowed in a Knights and Pawns Match! Let the
battle begin!"
The moment the referee finished, the pocket dimension finalized its formation. The artificial
wind blew across the grass. Mord raised his wand. Shin tightened his grip on his sword,
bending his knees in anticipation of Jocelyn's approach. Bom Soo Ahn fades away as Bora
the plant that carries her turns into a tree, Bom Soo Ahn hidden in the tree immediately
begin chanting a spell, her hands raised high above her head as a pooling green light begins
to form, shining through the tree.
But Jocelyn didn't approach.
In a blink, Shin was suddenly teleported. The world blurred, and he found himself standing
right in front of Jocelyn, his back fully exposed, while her hands were casually clasped
behind her back.
Shin's instincts flared. He immediately drew his sword, sweeping the blade upward in a swift,
deadly arc aimed straight for her neck. But his blade sliced through empty air. Jocelyn
teleported away before the steel could even graze her skin.
Still in the motion of his upward sweep, Shin quickly twisted his arm, bringing his scabbard
up to protect his exposed torso.
It was all for naught. In less than a second, Jocelyn appeared directly above him. She was
already mid-motion, her leg sweeping down like a guillotine.
Boom!
The kick connected flawlessly with Shin's head. The sheer kinetic force sent the swordsman
flying across the grassy plain. He tumbled through the air, heading face-first toward the dirt,
but managed to catch himself with his free arm, digging his boots into the soil to stop his
momentum.
But Jocelyn wasn't waiting for him to recover. Before Shin could even fully right himself, the
sickening lurch of pink petals gripped him again, falling in front of his eyes.
He was pulled through space, appearing right back in front of Jocelyn with his back facing
her. She was already executing another brutal kick, this one aimed squarely at his ribs while
he was still bent awkwardly over the ground. Shin gritted his teeth and barely managed to
shift his sword to block the impact. The kick struck the flat of his blade, ringing out like a cracked bell. Shin was sent flying
again, his boots tearing deep trenches into the grass. This time, he didn't tumble. He
maintained his blocking stance, sliding backward until the momentum died. Despite taking
two savage blows—one to the head, one to the body—Shin didn't look injured, as his grey
Vim coated the air around him.
A sudden, vibrant green light pulsed around him.
"Olive Cover," Bom Soo Ahn called out from her stage, finishing her spell. The green light
she had been conjuring snapped onto Shin, wrapping him in a translucent, protective aura.
Jocelyn landed softly on the grass, taking a loose stance as she observed the glowing
shield.
"It's just a healing and durability buff spell. You should keep pressing," a calm voice called
out from right beside her.
Jocelyn blinked in confusion. Standing next to her was a blue, smoky silhouette in the shape
of Mord.
"Don't worry," the silhouette said. "This is Light's Presence, a spell that allows me to hide
myself within the ambient light. Only you can see me in this smoky form. I will be assisting by
telling you what kind of spell is being cast, and by making invisible platforms and traps. Do
you need any buffs?"
"Not really," Jocelyn replied, grinning wildly as she shifted into a tight boxing stance. "He's
coming."
Shin dashed forward, closing the distance with terrifying speed. His sword swept through the
air, a silver flash aimed at Jocelyn's midsection. She leaned back, the tip of the blade nearly
grazing her hair as she ducked underneath the slash.
Shin immediately pivoted his wrist, redirecting the sword downward in a brutal chop, forcing
Jocelyn to teleport backward to avoid being cleaved in two.
Seeing her retreat, Shin stepped in for a deep, lunging stab. But just as he thrust his sword
forward, he felt her fists at the very last microsecond lunged onto his body, completely
eliminating the distance advantage she had just created for him.
Shin grunted, stepping back and using his sword to deflect the barrage of localized,
teleporting strikes. He began to run in jagged, unpredictable patterns, constantly changing
his position to test if Jocelyn could track her teleports against a moving target.
She could. And she did,as he kept on getting hit, ribs, stomach, neck and chin.
Realizing he couldn't outrun the spatial strikes, Shin gritted his teeth and stepped forward to
begin a fierce counterattack. But as he planted his lead foot, he stumbled. His boot caught
on something hard and entirely invisible—one of Mord's platforms. Jocelyn instantly capitalized. With a sonic boom, she zoomed directly at him.
Shin, still trying to regain his balance, looked up to see a grinning Jocelyn right in front of
him. She threw a devastating punch aimed straight for his gut. Shin managed to cross his
arms and sword just in time, bracing for the impact.
But Jocelyn wasn't playing fair. At the last possible millisecond, she teleported her fist,
bypassing his guard entirely and landing a solid, bone-rattling hit directly against the side of
his head.
Shin was launched sideways. He spun wildly through the air, but as he tried to twist and
regain his footing, his foot slammed into another invisible platform. The sudden stop jerked
his body, leaving him completely wide open in mid-air.
Refusing to yield, Shin slammed his hands together, channeling his grey Vim a purple
glowing, transparent shield hovering over his body.
He was instantly teleported again. He appeared directly underneath Jocelyn, who was falling
toward him from above. Her fist was drawn back, glowing with a violently bright pink spark.
She had activated a skill that exponentially increased the strength and speed of her attacks,
turning her into a living missile.
The punch with pink sparks soaring all over her fist slammed into Shin's hastily conjured
shield. For a fraction of a second, the barrier held. Then, it shattered like cheap glass.
The punch connected. The force was so immense it drove Shin straight down into the dirt,
cratering the ground before the kinetic rebound launched him back up into the air. Blood spat
from his mouth, staining the pristine grass. It was the first attack that had managed to
bypass Soo's durability buffs and Shin durability and cause actual damage.
But his nightmare wasn't over. Shin was teleported once more, appearing standing upright in
front of Jocelyn. She landed another heavy blow to his chest. Instead of flying away, Shin
crashed backward into an invisible platform that acted like a rubber wall, bouncing him right
back toward Jocelyn, who was already spinning into a vicious roundhouse kick.
The kick struck his stomach with the force of a cannonball. This time, the impact was so
fierce that Shin didn't bounce off the invisible platform—he crashed right through it,
shattering Mord's construct.
Miraculously, Shin managed to stop himself, digging his sword into the dirt to arrest his
momentum faster than before. Blood dripped steadily from his chin, his breathing ragged,
the grey Vim coating the air around him before sprouts out of him larger than before.
Jocelyn cracked her knuckles and stepped forward to finish it.
Suddenly, the ground rumbled. A massive blast of roots and thick, gnarly trees shot up from
the earth directly between them. The grass decayed into thick, bubbling mud in an instant. A
massive swamp forest erupted outward, forcing Jocelyn to rapidly teleport two hundred
meters back to avoid being skewered by the rapidly growing branches. Within seconds, a dense, dark swamp surrounded them, completely altering the terrain of
the pocket dimension.
"Hey, Shin. Are you alright?" a voice rang directly into Shin's ear. A small, green vine had
grown from the collar of his shirt, wrapping gently around his ear like an earpiece.
"Yes. I'm fine, Soo," Shin coughed, wiping the blood from his mouth with the back of his
hand. He regained his posture, his hands clamping tighter around the hilt of his sword.
"The spell I cast on you before transferred copies of my skills to you," Bom Soo Ahn's voice
echoed through the vine. "Well, just three. One is a healing buff, the other is durability. This
one activates during emergencies, creating a swamp-like forest. I'm going to cast another
spell to create trees that generate noise to mask your movements."
"Hmm. So Jocelyn won't hear us." Shin responded in appreciation. "Alright. Could you also,
like, cast some more healing spells?"
"I thought you said you could handle her!" Soo scolded through the vine. "Now look at you!
Weren't you boasting about how you were going to help me and Maeve get our get-back on
Jocelyn for teleporting our stuff away?"
"Don't worry. I will," Shin said, his voice lowering into a deadly calm. He closed his eyes,
focusing his Vim into his optical nerves. When he opened them, his grey Vim was gone and
now a new vim glowed a brilliant, piercing gold.
The world shifted into a spectrum of energy. He could see the dense, tangled strands of Vim
all around him. Most of it belonged to Bom Soo Ahn—thick rivers of green and peach
interwoven through the swamp trees. But far out in the distance, he was able to pick up on
distinct, sharp strands of blue and pink Vim.
"I'm heading toward them," Shin said. He leaped effortlessly onto the thick branch of a
nearby tree. "And don't worry. I will beat her."
Across the swamp, Mord floated above the thick mud in his smoky silhouette form. "Hmm.
This seems to be a passive safety skill of Bom Soo Ahn. I hope the ground is not too
muddy."
"No worries. I can just teleport out of this," Jocelyn said. With a sickening schluck, she pulled
her boots out of the deep mud and jumped lightly onto a sturdy tree branch.
"Then why didn't you teleport closer to him?" Mord sighed his disappointment at Jocelyn
antics louder than ever. "The trees here are massive and provide a lot of cover. I will try to
find him and communicate his location to you."
"Don't worry, I know where he is," Jocelyn smirked, brushing a stray lock of hair from her
face. "You should help me watch these trees. Terrain spells like this usually come with a
catch. There might be traps." "Hmm. True," Mord pondered. "Like poisonous trees that may induce sleep or pain. Though I
would imagine it's sleep, as a Pawn is not allowed to deal damage to a Knight. What about
remote control of the roots? Mord Inquires.
Yeah, that's also possible Jocelyn affirms.
I will watch out." Mord replies observing the trees around them more keenly.
"Heehee. He's here," Jocelyn suddenly whispered.
She jumped high into the air. A second later, the branch she had been standing on—along
with the trees immediately surrounding it—were cleanly sliced into dozens of perfect,
diagonal pieces.
Shin stood below her in the clearing he had just carved, his sword gleaming, his golden vim
soaring,ready for their second exchange.
In the audience stands, Rosalind puffed her cheeks in a pout. "Hmm. What is this? A sudden
change in terrain? Is it the pocket dimension that did this? An announcer really would have
come a long way in explaining what is going on."
"Well, this isn't an official Atheneum battle, and we didn't organize an announcer," Vesper
replied dryly, not taking her eyes off the glowing sphere.