From the moment Leo had first seen him — that cold, measuring look across the lounge on day one — he had known this would be different.
Not the way Ethan had been different. Ethan’s danger had been obvious, loud, wrapped in pride and raw cultivation power. This was something quieter. The young man in black robes hadn’t done anything threatening. He had simply looked at Leo, and Leo’s instincts had immediately sat up straight.
That feeling hadn’t gone away.
Standing across from him now in the arena, Leo could feel it even more clearly. The spiritual energy coming off his opponent wasn’t aggressive — it wasn’t trying to intimidate. It simply existed, bottomless and still, like deep water with no visible floor. Where Leo’s own fighting spirit burned outward like a fire looking for fuel, this person’s presence absorbed everything around it without effort.
Volcano versus abyss.
The same Saint Knight referee from the Ethan match stepped forward calmly. "The match may begin."
The young man in black spoke first.
"My name is Zane Merrick." A faint smile crossed his face — the first real expression Leo had seen from him in three days. "I believe you’re going to become a worthy rival in the near future."
Leo met his gaze steadily. "My name is Leo Ashford. And right now, I’m your opponent." He paused. "Before we start — feel free to call your mount. That’s your own strength to use."
Zane Merrick shook his head slightly. "Let’s begin."
His hands moved.
A golden radiance erupted from both palms simultaneously, and two identical claymores materialized in his grip — broad, long, perfectly balanced, pulled from a magic storage item. The blades caught the arena light and held it.
Leo’s eyes sharpened instantly.
A Veil Knight.
His own hands were already moving, Light Sword and Flame Sword appearing in the same motion. He held them steady, eyes locked on Zane, and felt something shift in his chest — not nerves, not hesitation. Something that had been waiting for this exact moment since the first day of the trials.
This was what he had come here for.
Both of them moved at the same time.
Leo charged like an arrow released from a bow — the first time in the entire Shadow Hunt Trials that he had chosen to go on the offensive from the opening move. As he crossed the thirty meters between them, four skills activated in rapid sequence without breaking his momentum.
Radiant Halo. Guardian’s Favor. Sovereign Ring.
Three Shield Knight enhancement skills deployed simultaneously, their combined spiritual energy cost crossing 150 units in a single breath — something that would have drained most knights before they reached their opponent. For Leo, it barely registered. His innate spiritual energy sat at the 97th level, a figure without precedent in recorded history, and it meant that skills which bled others dry cost him a fraction of what they should.
He ran the Guardian and Veil Knight paths at the same time, something no knight was supposed to be able to sustain — and he did it without strain, every skill interacting cleanly with every other, no interference, no waste.
The senior members watching from the platform had stopped talking.
Three meters out, Zane moved.
His left foot stepped forward in a wide, deliberate stance, his whole body flowing behind it in a single smooth motion. The claymore in his left hand stayed at his side. The one in his right tilted upward at an angle — not raised for a downward strike, but angled diagonally, the blade edge glowing with 66 centimeters of golden spiritual energy that extended its reach far beyond its physical length.
No skill name. No formal technique. Just the raw output of a fifth-stage cultivator, so refined it looked like extension of his own body.
The claymore swept forward across the ground in a wide arc.
Leo stopped.
Not stumbled — stopped, in the middle of a full charge, his momentum vanishing as suddenly as if he’d hit a wall. His left foot planted sideways, his balance tilting dangerously — and then the Flame Sword in his left hand drove straight down into the stone floor, using the impact to launch his body upward and sideways in the same instant. The sweeping claymore passed beneath him with a hand’s width to spare.
Airborne, he swung the Light Sword in a sharp arc and drove Thorny Charge directly at Zane’s chest.
"Good!" Zane called out — genuine, surprised, his voice carrying actual appreciation rather than condescension. He hadn’t expected that. Mid-charge into mid-evasion into mid-counter, all executed without a pause between them — his left claymore came up to intercept while his left foot kicked against his own right leg, killing his forward momentum in a move just as sudden as Leo’s had been.
*Ding.*
Light Sword met claymore. The impact was lighter than Zane had expected — far lighter. Before he could process why, Leo had already used the deflection force to spin his entire body faster, both swords sweeping outward in a wide continuous arc as he drove forward again.
Zane didn’t dodge. He brought both claymores up and began deflecting — short, precise movements, each one redirecting a blow rather than stopping it, the blades carving small controlled ripples in the air between them.
What followed was difficult to follow even for experienced eyes.
Leo’s twin swords became something between a grinding wheel and a storm — constant, overlapping, each strike flowing into the next without hesitation. But the more remarkable thing was what he was doing with the rebounds. Every time Zane’s claymores deflected him, Leo used that force to spin faster, to shift his angle, to increase the frequency of the next strike. He was turning his opponent’s defense into fuel for his own offense.
The sound of metal on metal filled the arena in a continuous rapid rhythm — not the punctuated crash of two fighters trading blows, but something closer to a drumroll, too fast to count individual strikes.
A golden halo began spreading slowly around Leo’s body, his outline blurring at the edges as his rotation speed increased.
For the first time, Zane Merrick’s expression changed.
Not fear. Not alarm. Something sharper than either — the look of someone who has just encountered a problem that is more interesting than they anticipated, and is genuinely uncertain how to solve it. His claymores were keeping pace, but only just, and Leo’s attacks were not slowing down.
They were getting faster.
Up in the competitor lounge, nobody was speaking.
Ethan Holt stood at the railing with his arms at his sides, both hands open, watching without blinking.
Master Kessel had not moved in two minutes.
And on the platform above, the senior elders of the Ironveil Order leaned forward in their seats, watching a fourteen-year-old boy run a fifth-stage Veil Knight ragged in the fifth round of the Shadow Hunt Trials, and said nothing at all.