The air in Arena One was thick; I could feel it weigh on me like a blanket, the kind people use for comforting sleep.

  There was nothing comforting about it now.

  Around us, the ropes of the arena's boundaries struggled to hold the playing field together. Around ninety per cent of the observing players were watching the finals, while the remaining had left to see the semifinals between Cyrus and Seraphina and check out the new commentator, Zenith Blade.

  To these players, this was the peak of entertainment, the climax of the Oakenlight Tournament. To me, however, it was a suffocating dance on the edge of a razor.

  Athos didn’t move like a normal player. Most swordsmen I have seen in Godsrealm had relied on the system’s guidance, resulting in predictable, telegraphed arcs and attacks. Athos was the polar opposite of that.

  He moved with a fluid motion, twisting and turning, changing strikes mid-swing, executing them with surgical precision. It was as if he were manipulating space itself around him.

  I jumped back, boots kicking up the white sand of the arena floor. HP-wise, the battle was mostly even, and our mana should have been relatively equal as well. I had to be careful. In a duel of this calibre, the first person to run out of resources was the person to lose.

  “You’re fast, Orion,” Athos said, his voice calm despite the ferocity of our previous exchanges. “But the tide always rises.”

  “I’m not keen on metaphors,” I let out a sigh. “Why don’t you educate me about this passive of yours?”

  He vanished into a Blade Rush, trying to get to me. I answered with a straight Piercing Shot that was met with his Vertical Strike. I didn’t hit, but at least I stopped his momentum for a while.

  “I have quite a few exciting skills, as you saw,” he said, talking about Comet and Saltstone Edge, I presumed. “Flashy stuff. Well, Rising Tide is much better than them.”

  He was on me in a heartbeat, aiming for my blind spot. I used Leap Attack to increase the distance, dodging his blade by mere millimetres. The follow-up shot was dodged effortlessly.

  “It triggers once I go below 50% HP,” he continued. “That’s the reason I usually take smaller hits instead of dodging everything.”

  I felt the displacement of air as his blade was once again onto me, coming in a Horizontal Slash, aiming for my head. I ducked and released Fan of Arrows within the same motion, but to my surprise, he weaved through the bolts with incomprehensible grace before retaliating with a basic combo.

  I blocked his first hit with my bow, twisted myself away from the second one, but had to eat the last hit. My HP was getting dangerously low.

  “The more damage I take, the more movement speed and attack speed I gain from Rising Tide,” he finally explained. “A skill very similar to a Berserker’s, used by a Swordsman already focused on speed. It’s unbeatable.”

  The more we fought, the more I was forced to agree with him. I was barely keeping up. He was nearing speeds similar to Kaelith, but with none of the Rogue’s fragility. Every exchange cost me more HP than it cost him.

  I needed to think smart.

  I fired a Burning Arrow to force him back, then immediately followed with a basic shot aimed low. He committed to dodging the first, taking the second on his pauldron. The poison applied, ticking down his health in small increments.

  Good. Make every hit count.

  “Thorax, what’s your read on this?” Shieldbreaker’s voice echoed from the scaffold.

  “Orion’s playing the long game!” Thorax responded. “With that nasty passive, a time will come when he won’t be able to match Athos’ speed, so he’s focusing on stacking damage over time.”

  Athos didn’t seem bothered by the poison. If anything, the damage was feeding his passive even more. His next Blade Rush came even faster than the last, and I barely managed to Quick Step aside.

  I planted a Web Trap as I moved, hiding it in the disturbed sand. Athos saw it; his eyes flicked down for just a fraction of a second. This time, however, he didn’t phase through it with Quick Step. Instead, he simply walked around it, forcing me to reposition.

  He was conserving his mana and cooldowns, too.

  This wasn’t just a battle of mechanics anymore. It was akin to playing chess. To the sceptical eyes, this match wasn’t as intense as the previous one against Cyrus, but for me, it was just as challenging.

  The difference was that we were both more drained mentally than a round before.

  I fired another Piercing Shot, this one aimed at his knees to limit his mobility. He used Horizontal Slash to deflect it, the arrow shattering against the blade’s edge, then immediately transitioned his attack into a Piercing Stab.

  The thrust came like lightning. I twisted, felt the tip graze my ribs, and countered with a point-blank shot that connected with his shoulder, but there was no poison this time.

  We broke apart, both breathing hard.

  The crowd was roaring, but the sound felt distant and muffled. All I could hear was the rhythm of my own heartbeat and the whistle of the coastal wind.

  Athos rolled his shoulders once. The poison had already ticked down. His HP wasn’t going down fast enough, and his Rising Tide passive was helping him more with each DoT anyway.

  I started moving laterally, forcing him to chase rather than engage. Let’s do some hit and run.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  He pursued, but methodically. There was nothing reckless in his movement. I saw him calculating every step, every angle in real time.

  I loosed a Burning Arrow from maximum range. He dodged left, closing the distance. I fired again, forcing him to commit to a direction, then used Leap Attack to vault over him as he once again closed the distance with Blade Rush, trying to land behind him while firing mid-air.

  The arrow missed by an inch, and he spun faster than should have been possible. His Horizontal Slash met my landing. The impact rattled my bones.

  I rolled with it, converting the momentum into more distance, but my HP dropped hard.

  “Incredible reflexes from Athos!” Virtue called out. “He punished the landing perfectly there, after reading the vault like one would read a book.”

  I gritted my teeth. I knew I could outmanoeuvre him if I did everything flawlessly, but his ever-increasing speed put my math off just a tiny bit there.

  We traded blows in a tight exchange, basic shots meeting auto attacks. I dodged when I could, blocked when I had to, and fired whenever there was an opening.

  Athos was relentless. Every strike flowed into the next, a seamless chain of offence that gave me no room to breathe.

  I had found many high-level players in my life to know the tells. The micro-adjustments in stance, the shifts before making a move; these were all undeniably clear to me.

  But this was not Valhalla. This was me controlling an avatar with vastly different stats than me, working with physics that I had just started to get to know, using skills and equipment that I had less than a week to familiarise myself with.

  And a strong opponent in Godsrealm was vastly different from one in Valhalla. I couldn’t apply my years of experience to everything I saw in this world. Sure, it helped in the vast majority of cases, but players like Athos, Cyrus or Kaelith were just different enough to keep me on my toes.

  I started predicting regardless. I was still Bow God Zephyr after all.

  His Piercing Stab came from the left. I sidestepped and fired.

  Horizontal Slash followed immediately. I ducked under, fired again.

  A four-way combo was trying my guard relentlessly but I dodged every single cut, and answered with attacks of my own.

  He was good. Really good.

  Still, I was better.

  I stacked the poison whenever I could, and his HP was dropping steadily now. However, as was mine. We were both in red territory, both one mistake away from defeat.

  The crowd was on their feet, screaming our names in alternating waves. He had more fans, but mine were catching up. Clearly, I was doing something right.

  Athos paused for just a heartbeat, his chest rising and falling with controlled breaths. Then he smiled once again.

  “You’re making me work for it,” he said. “I respect that.”

  “Save the compliments for after,” I replied, nocking another arrow.

  He laughed–actually laughed–and came at me again.

  This time, I was ready.

  I fired a shot to bait the deflection, then immediately followed with the skill Piercing Shot aimed at the gap in his guard. He twisted, the arrow grazing his side instead of punching through, but at this point, every small hit was threatening defeat.

  Athos’ smile vanished. He lunged with Blade Rush, but I was already moving, using the very little mana I had left to create space with Leap Attack. He pursued, and I fired a straight arrow at his feet, forcing him to leap over the attack.

  Mid-air, he activated Comet once again. The skill transformed him into a meteor, fire wreathing the outlines of his body as he descended like a falling star aimed directly at my position.

  I’d seen this before, I knew the timing.

  “Silk Shot!”

  I jumped away from the impact zone, the explosion of sand and mana erupting where I’d stood a millisecond before. I landed five meters away, bow already drawn, and loosed a couple of shots in his general direction just to keep the space.

  One of them actually hit and had applied poison as well, his HP now critically low, the DoT ticking away at what little remained.

  For a moment, I thought I had him right then and there.

  Then he raised his sword toward the sky, and the air itself seemed to still.

  “This one’s a tricky skill, Orion,” he said. “And you’ve pushed me further than anyone else today, so I had to use it. But this ends now.”

  Mana erupted from his blade in a pillar of brilliant blue light. An animation that I frankly didn’t expect to exist at this stage of the game just yet.

  The Flame Hydra of Cyrus was already a sight to behold, but the effects on this one were a notch above that.

  “See, I had to be up there to place the mark,” Athos said. “I couldn’t even use this skill if I didn’t have Comet to get up there. Meet Three-Blade Execution!”

  The sky darkened.

  Three massive swords materialised above the arena, right where Athos had turned into a meteor just a couple of seconds ago. Each one was easily ten feet long, forged from condensed mana and crackling with power. They hung there, suspended like blades of a magical guillotine, dormant for now, but radiating with an unmistakable sense of finality.

  The crowd gasped collectively, and for the first time today, I stopped and stood still.

  “What the hell is that?” Thorax’s voice cracked through the speakers. If even they didn’t know about this, it’s possible this is the first time people see it.

  “That’s…” Virtue responded, his usual composure shaken. “I’ve never seen anything like it!”

  Athos lowered his sword, his expression calm despite his critically low HP. The poison was not ticking anymore, and by the looks of it, he wasn’t concerned about me making a move at this point.

  Truth be told, maybe I should have tried. Hitting him with Piercing Shot or Burning Arrow would have secured my victory right then and there. But I had mana for exactly one more skill, and judging by those massive swords hanging over me, those two were not the skills on my mind right then and there.

  “Those blades will lock onto you in about twenty seconds,” he explained, his voice steady. “Once they do, they’ll strike in three-second intervals. You can not outrun them. You can definitely not block them. Even if you use that ethereal skill of yours,” he added, as if he was reading my mind, “the second blade will finish you off right when it ends.

  He smiled with the knowledge of sure victory. Looks like someone told him about Woe's Last Grasp.

  All things considered, I felt like he didn't actively ask for it, but with this many fans, there was no way he didn't get informed.

  “And if, by some miracle, you dodge that one too…” He gestured to the third sword, hanging ominously in the sky. “The third will definitely seal the deal.”

  I looked up at the three blades, then back at Athos. This must have been at least an Epic skill, but even a Unique rating would not have surprised me. The animation, the effect, the sheer aura surrounding the user was enough to silence the whole coast, wind and waves included.

  My mana was nearly depleted. My HP was in the red. And in approximately fifteen seconds, three unavoidable attacks would rain down on me, each one capable of ending the match.

  The arena was silent.

  Even the commentators had nothing to say.

  I tightened my grip on my bow, my mind racing through every skill, every item, every possible angle.

  Ten seconds.

  And the timer began.

  Action Adventure Comedy Fantasy