The Undying Warrior's Rewind

8

Ten minutes later, I was standing on the reinforced stone platform. Toby, the commoner kid, looked like he wanted to apologize a thousand times before the match even started. 

He held his wooden staff with trembling hands, clearly terrified that my supposed ‘Berserker Rage’ might accidentally trigger and liquefy his organs.

"Don't worry, buddy," I whispered to him, flashing a goofy, reassuring grin. "Just swing at me. I'm just going to dodge a bit and make it look good for the mana cameras."

The referee raised his hand. "Begin!"

Toby closed his eyes, let out a nervous yelp, and lunged forward, swinging his wooden staff in a clumsy, telegraphed arc. 

I easily stepped backward, letting the wood whistle past my nose by a fraction of an inch, making it look like a clumsy, accidental slip on my part.

"Whoa! Close one! Jeez, you're strong!" I yelled, flailing my arms wildly.

To the crowd, I looked like a bumbling idiot who was barely surviving a remedial student's basic strikes. The cheers faded into bored murmurs, and the teachers began marking down notes with sighs of disappointment.

But as I prepared to fake another stumble, a sudden, violent prickle of danger flared at the base of my neck.

My combat instincts didn't care about my acting performance. They screamed at me that a lethal threat was approaching from my blind spot. 

I didn't turn my head, but I immediately activated the restricted energy in my brain.

‘Eye of the Sovereign: Five Percent.’

The world around me instantly bled into a grid of slow-motion tactical blue light. Toby’s swinging staff slowed down to a snail's pace. 

But Toby wasn't the threat. My eyes tracked a thin, almost invisible strand of purple cosmic energy snaking its way through the air from the spectator stands, hidden perfectly within the shadows of the marble pillars.

What the hell? Kids nowadays are evil!

It was a Tier-3 Heart-Wither Curse. A horrific piece of abyssal dark magic designed to look like a sudden, tragic cardiac arrest from ‘overexerting an unstable bloodline.’

I followed the invisible thread back to its source. Standing near the pillar, his fingers subtly twitching under his long robes, was Julian. 

The ice-mage traitor wasn't taking any chances. He wanted to eliminate the "Hero Berserker" immediately, just in case my awakening was real.

You think you're clever, kid? I smirked inwardly. You're playing with fire, and I invented the match.

With my Eye of the Sovereign active, I could see the exact magical geometry of the curse. Julian had structured the spell loop with a minor flaw, a standard shortcut used by novice abyssal cultists.

Instead of dodging Toby’s next clumsy strike, I intentionally leaned into it. I let Toby’s wooden staff clip my shoulder. The impact wasn't enough to hurt my reinforced Tier-1 body, but I screamed in mock agony, throwing myself backward.

As I fell, my left hand snapped out in a blink-and-you-miss-it motion, catching the invisible strand of Julian’s curse magic between my thumb and forefinger.

I didn't break it. I grabbed it, twisted my wrist, and poured a precise surge of my own Tier-1 mana into the thread, reversing the spell's flow. 

It was a high-level tactical technique called Mana Redirection. And I studied that ancient spell thousands of times by myself.

To Julian, it would feel like his spell had hit an impenetrable mirror and bounced straight back into his face with double the velocity.

Such childish magic. So I flipped it toward him.

Flip.

The purple strand flashed violently in the spiritual plane, rocketing back down the line directly into Julian’s chest.

The slow-motion grid vanished as I deactivated my Eye, a fresh drop of blood leaking from my nose as I crashed heavily onto the mat, pretending to groan from Toby’s epic shoulder strike.

"Oh, what a devastating hit!" I cried out dramatically, rolling around on the stone. "The commoner magic is too strong!"

But my performance was instantly cut short by a sharp, choked gasp from the elite spectator stands.

“Argh! What the hell was that!”

Everyone turned away from my pathetic display on the stage. Standing by the pillar, Julian had suddenly clutched his chest, his face turning an unnatural, sickening shade of blue. 

His silver ice staff clattered to the floor, shattering into frost as he fell to his knees, coughing up a mouthful of thick, black blood.

"Julian?! Hey! Julian! Help!" Brandon yelled, rushing to his side as the elite students panicked. "What happened? He was just standing there! He's suffocating!"

The Academy healers immediately scrambled out of their seats, shouting orders as they rushed toward the collapsed prodigy. The entire arena devolved into chaos for the second time in two days.

Down on the dueling mat, I slowly sat up, rubbing my shoulder and looking at the commotion with a perfectly painted expression of dim-witted, innocent confusion.

"Geez," I said loudly, looking at Toby, who was staring at his own wooden staff in utter horror, thinking he had somehow caused a magical shockwave. 

"The elite students really need to work on their cardio. A guy can't even get beaten up in peace without someone having a medical emergency."

But as the healers carried Julian away on a stretcher, our eyes met for a brief second. 

Through his hazy, pain-filled vision, Julian wasn't looking at a lucky dropout anymore. He was staring at me with pure, unadulterated terror. 

I even gave him a small wink and a flying kiss. By now, I knew that he knew his curse had been redirected, and he knew exactly who did it.

My smile returned, hidden from the crowd but glaringly obvious to him.

The game was officially on. I had just put the first traitor into the intensive care unit without swinging a single sword, but I knew the remaining ten wouldn't stay quiet for long. 

They were going to realize that the "Hero Berserker" was a cover story, and that meant the next attack wouldn't be a hidden curse. It would be an all-out assassination attempt.