Shin's blade whipped through the heavy, humid air of the swamp, moving with the terrifying
precision of a master. With every fluid rotation of his wrists, the massive, muddy trunks of the
newly formed forest were carved into jagged blocks. Wood splintered and collapsed, clearing
a wide, empty space in the middle of the dense thicket.
He stood in the center of the ruin, his chest heaving slightly, his silver sword angled
downward.
Jocelyn had just teleported, but the clearing was dead silent. Shin narrowed his eyes,
funneling his grey Vim into his senses, trying to detect the subtle, spatial pressure of her
re-entry. Nothing. He immediately darted his eyes upward, expecting her to drop from the
artificial sk,.
Empty air.
Suddenly, fingers clamped around his right ankle like a steel vise.
Shin reacted instantly. Without even looking down, he pivoted his weight and brought his
sword down in a brutal, vertical slice aimed directly at the forearm attached to the hand.
CLANG.
The impact vibrated violently up Shin's arms, jarring his teeth. The blade hadn't bitten into
flesh. It had stopped dead against the skin. The arm—undeniably Jocelyn's—shimmered
with a faint, metallic blue sheen.
Before he could pull back, the hand squeezed his ankle tight enough to bruise bone. Shin
tried to yank his leg free, but the grip was immovable. Stuck in place, he raised his blade
again, raining down a rapid succession of heavy hacks. But the force he put into it wasn't
enough. The titanium-reinforced arm absorbed every blow.
Shin closed his eyes. The Golden Vim subsided as the grey Vim returned the pain in his
ankle reducing.He let out a slow, controlled breath, forcing his rising panic to settle.
"Wind Cutter," he whispered.It was the first offensive Ikos he had used since the match
began. The stagnant air of the swamp suddenly howled, whipping around his blade into a
violent, localized vortex.
He raised his sword high above his head, the steel screaming as the wind compressed along
its edge.
He swung down, initiating a continuous barrage of impossibly fast slices. His arms blurred,
moving like a tempest, intending to saw through the magical durability by sheer attrition.
But as the wind roared, a voice shrieked directly into his ear through the small vine Soo had "Stop!" Bom Soo Ahn screamed, sheer terror lacing her voice. "Are you trying to cut me?! If
you do that, dumbass you couldn't cut it so you just kept on swinging. She insulted Shin
annoyance and terror in her voice, if you cut me we will get eliminated!"
Shin froze. He canceled the Wind Cutter immediately, the violent gales dying out in a
heartbeat, his grey Vim disappearing alongside it leaving room for the golden vim to return
the pain in his ankle increasing.
He looked closely at the space around the arm gripping his ankle. The air was rippling
slightly, distorted by a faint pink hue.
Jocelyn wasn't just hiding underground—she was using her teleportation skill to spatially
overlap the area directly above the arm with the space of where Bim Soo Ahn was hiding. If
Shin's wind-enhanced blade had followed through, the spatial tear would have carried the
lethal force straight into his own teammate.
A foul. An automatic disqualification.
The hand abruptly let go of his ankle and vanished. A split second later, Jocelyn appeared
standing casually in the center of the clearing, brushing dirt off her uniform.
"Ugh, I thought that was going to work," Jocelyn sulked, crossing her arms. "If even one of
those attacks had slipped through and landed on your Pawn, the referee would have called a
foul and given us the win."
"The titanium spell I layered onto your arm was more durable than I anticipated," Mord's
calm voice echoed across the clearing, though his smoky blue silhouette was nowhere to be
seen. "I will move up my list of useful spells. The structural integrity holds well against raw
slashes."
Shin slowly lowered his sword, angling the tip toward the ground. His expression was
dangerously calm. "Are you mocking us, Jocelyn?" he asked gently.
"You don't have a lot of Vim to spare, Jocelyn. Maybe you should take this a bit more
seriously," Shin added, stepping sideways. He began walking in slow, deliberate circles
around her, his boots crunching over the cut wood.
Jocelyn stretched her arms over her head and let out a loud, exaggerated yawn. "Hmm.
Maybe if you start taking this seriously, I will too. You know, you've always given me some
strange vibe. Like you are hiding something. That's why I've always declined any duel
against you at Vraj. I didn't want to confirm my suspicions." She dropped her arms, her
emerald eyes locking onto his. "Can you stop stalling? I'm getting quite bored."
Shin stopped his pacing. The wind around him seemed to die completely.
"If you wish."Shin raised his sword back up, holding it horizontally in front of his face. A
violent, blindingly bright golden Vim shot upward, illuminating the dark swamp like a flare.
He closed his eyes. When he opened them, his face had changed. The grey eye went
completely dim, lifeless and hollow. But his gold eye—now glowing with piercing golden
light—bore the intricate, swirling symbol of a blooming flower etched directly into the pupil. From his hidden vantage point, Mord's smoky form drifted slightly in the air. "I've been
wondering since the beginning of this match, Jocelyn... but is this Shin a Forked?" Jocelyn
didn't reply to the slur. Instead, she vanished in a burst of pink light.
She reappeared instantly at Shin's right side, aiming a devastating, sparking punch squarely
at his ribs. But this time, Shin didn't flinch. He didn't stumble. He swung his sword in a
flawless, preemptive arc, the blade whistling toward her neck exactly as she materialized. It
was as if he had expected her to be there before she even moved.
Jocelyn's eyes widened slightly. She aborted the punch and teleported out of the blade's
path, reappearing directly behind him.
Shin was already pivoting. He responded not with his sword, but by lashing backward with a
brutal, perfectly timed kick that forced Jocelyn to block with both forearms. The impact sent a
shockwave through the air.
For the next minute, the clearing became a blur of motion. Jocelyn teleported
relentlessly—above him, behind him, striking at his blind spots. And every single time, Shin
responded with the most appropriate, punishing counterattack. He was no longer guessing.
He was tracking her.
Realizing her spatial dominance had been neutralized, Jocelyn teleported high into the
canopy, hiding herself atop the thick branch of a massive swamp tree.
"Realm of Silver," Shin yelled out. His rigid posture softened, his muscles relaxing as he
shifted his weight into a fluid, almost liquid stance, the gold vim subsiding his grey eye
brightening, the flower in his good eye disappearing, his grey Vim flaring out of him, as the
grey Vim disappeared."
That was a technique," Mord warned from the shadows. "It seemed to have allowed him to
track your teleports perfectly. Be careful, Jocelyn. He may have more techniques like that up
his sleeves."
"Don't worry about me," Jocelyn whispered back, a wild smirk spreading across her face. "I'll
be okay."
Down in the clearing, Shin's golden Vim flared around his legs. He dashed toward the tree
with single-foot jumps, each bound carrying him dozens of meters into the air. With every
step, a burst of grey light exploded from the bark, propelling him upward with terrifying
speed.
"Jocelyn! Get off that tree!" Mord immediately yelled.
Jocelyn bent her knees to teleport away—but her vision suddenly blurred. A heavy,
suffocating wave of exhaustion crashed over her mind. She swayed dangerously on the
branch, entirely unaware that she had been rapidly losing consciousness for the last ten
seconds. The vines and leaves wrapped around the tree she had chosen were hissing softly, releasing
thick, invisible plumes of sedative gas.
"I heard that the great Jocelyn Valjubi never falls asleep," Bom Soo Ahn's voice echoed
mockingly. It didn't come from an earpiece—it came from the swamp itself, the trees
chorusing her voice in a haunting, surround-sound whisper. "I beg to differ."
Jocelyn gripped the sides of her head, her fingers digging into her hair. She smacked her
own cheek, desperately trying to force her brain awake, but the sleep fumes were too potent.
It was too late.
Shin was already directly below her, his golden Vim filling the air like a localized sun.
Mord panicked. "Fool's Metal! Wind Platforms! Wind Shield!" he cast in rapid succession. A
thick barrier of enchanted steel, layered with compressed air platforms and a swirling gale of
defensive wind, materialized rapidly between Shin and the drowsy Jocelyn.
"Sun Steps, Violet Cross," Shin called out.
His blade moved so fast it left a violet afterimage in the air. Two intersecting slashes of pure
kinetic force erupted from the sword. The Violet Cross slammed into Mord's defenses,
cutting through the Wind Shield, shattering the Wind Platforms, and slicing cleanly through
the Fool's Metal as if it were wet parchment.
The cross continued upward, tearing right through Jocelyn.Blood splattered violently through
the canopy, painting the green leaves a dark, visceral red. Her body jerked backward under
the horrific impact.
Shin twisted his body in mid-air, raising his blade to deliver another strike to finish it.
But before his muscles could tense, the world warped around him. He was violently
teleported directly into the trunk of a nearby tree. His head slammed into the thick wood with
a sickening thud, knocking the breath from his lungs and sending him plummeting toward the
swamp floor.
He hit the mud hard, but rolled with the momentum, scrambling back to his feet. In an
instant, he was teleported again, dropped right back into the center of the clearing he had
made earlier, surrounded by the broken pieces of wood.
Shin raised his sword, his golden eye darting around.Jocelyn was standing right in front of
him. She wasn't dead. She wasn't even bleeding anymore.Her arms were crossed, forming a
tight fist on top of each other. The gruesome, intersecting wounds that Shin had just carved
into her torso were completely disappearing. Shin stared, his tactical mind racing. She hadn't
regenerated new flesh—the cuts had been impossibly clean, partitioned by spatial distortion
the moment the blade hit. She was simply using her teleportation to stitch her separated
flesh back together, bypassing the massive Vim cost that true cellular regeneration would
have required.
But it wasn't a perfect fix. Behind her mask, the emerald projection of her eye was glitching.
A fiery, unstable orange light was trying to force its way through the projection, fighting
against her disguise. "Mord," Jocelyn said, her voice dropping its playful lilt, replaced by a cold, resonant echo. "I
need you to create tons of stuff. All sizes. Things are about to get crazy in here."
Shin tightened his grip on his sword, bending his knees, ready for whatever hell was about to
break loose.
"Wings of the 11th Card Circle," Jocelyn called out softly. "Vorpaljolt. Space Delirium."
A sudden, concussive gush of Vim exploded from her. It was different from what she had
used since the beginning of the match. The aura transitioned into a blindingly bright, hot pink
that burned the very air it touched. The sheer density of it caused the surrounding space to
visually warp and distort, the trees bending like reflections in a funhouse mirror.
Despite the terrifying display of power, a concerned, knowing smile crept onto Shin's face.
"I kind of guessed it," Shin said quietly. He reached up and unfastened the collar of his
kimono, letting the heavy fabric slide off his shoulders and drop to the dirt. Underneath, he
wore a skin-tight black cloth, interwoven with dull, enchanted metal plating—the hidden
armor that had allowed him to survive her earlier, brutal onslaught.
"You can throw anything at me, Jocelyn," Shin declared, his flower-crested eyes burning with
golden intensity. "My petal golden eyes will detect you anywhere you are. Or whatever you
do. In my eyes... the world is a black gold simulation that shows me no lies."
"Shin, be careful!" Bom Soo Ahn warned through the vine on his neck. "I'm losing control of
the area! All my Vim is being pushed out by her pressure, and none of my Ikos are
responding! You may very well be on your own here!"
Shin merely grinned.In the periphery of his vision, space tore open. A jagged piece of broken
wood materialized right beside his head, moving at the speed of a bullet.
"Oh, my goodness!" the Male Narrator shrieked, his voice vibrating with absolute hype. "Will
he be able to dodge it?! Will he not?! Look at the speed of that projectile! And did you see
Shin's Vim? It was a dull grey earlier, but now it's shifted entirely to gold! And what is with
that flower symbol in his eye? Maybe it's a representative crest of his family's Vim?"
"You are an absolute idiot," the Female Narrator cut in, her tone dripping with disdain. "Did
you pay attention to anything at all? Shin is obviously a Charred."
"Wait, what?" The Male Narrator coughed in confusion.
"Look at the markers, you fool," she sighed, as if explaining basic math to a child. "He has
two different colors of hair. Two different eyes—one of which bears a magical crest while the
other goes dim. And most importantly, he possesses two distinct, unique Vim signatures.
Grey and Gold. It's incredibly obvious."
"Ah!" the Male Narrator gasped in realization. "That explains it! That's why Emmerich—I
mean, Mord—called him a 'Forked' earlier! That's a common slur for the Charred, individuals
born with two conflicting Vim signatures that they can never safely release at the same time.
Though I'm sure Mord meant no harm by it. He's just analytical." "Indeed," the Female Narrator mused. "But what is truly fascinating is Shin's tracking
method. I theorize that his 'Black Gold Simulation' isn't just magic—it's extreme pattern
recognition. He is likely tracking the residual pink light, the petals, and the spatial glitches
that appear whenever Jocelyn teleports. By reading the environmental data, he predicts her
exit points."