Chapter 137: The Combat Event 6 [Bonus]
The problem with fighting a man who never gives you a second is simple.
You stop asking for one.
Nicholas changed first. The crowd couldn’t have named what shifted, but Hunter felt it instantly, the way a swimmer feels the current turn. The black streak stopped retreating. It stopped weaving. It stepped in.
For the first time since the countdown, the assassin attacked without a single thought spared for defense.
A knife-hand at the eyes. An elbow at the throat. A heel driven at the knee joint, all three arriving in the same breath, all three aimed at places no referee could protect. Hunter’s perfection answered, hands blurring to intercept, but perfection built for smothering had to become perfection built for surviving, and the conversion cost him half a step of forward pressure.
Nicholas took that half-step and lived in it.
’There.’
His fingers curled. The cast-tell. The little gathering of focus Hunter had punished three times without fail.
Hunter reacted on rails, exactly as trained, exactly as mapped. He abandoned his angle and lunged for the interruption, fist screaming toward the gesture...
...and the gesture was empty.
There was no cast. There had never been a cast. There was only a lie shaped like one, and a hitman waiting on the exact rail he had watched Hunter ride three times in a row.
’Fourth time,’ Nicholas thought coldly. ’You paid for the first three. This one, I collect.’
He was already inside the lunge. His palm slammed Hunter’s committed wrist off-line, his boot crushed down on the man’s lead foot, pinning it to the stone, and his forehead met the bridge of Hunter’s nose with a crack that echoed off the barrier walls.
Hunter’s world went white.
Half a second. That was all the whiteness bought. To an ordinary fighter, nothing. To the man who had spent the entire match starving his opponent of exactly that...
Everything.
Nicholas slid backward through the dust, planted his feet, and reached. Borrowed knowledge rose from the copy slot, humming with a force that predated every martial art ever invented.
Hunter shook the lights from his eyes, saw the distance between them, saw the raised hand, and understood with perfect clarity that he had just lost the match.
’...Ah,’ he thought, almost peacefully. ’There it is. The second.’
"GRAVITY."
The world fell on Hunter’s shoulders.
BOOM!
The stage beneath him exploded downward, a perfect circle of stone crushed into powder as the S-Rank hero of Brazil was slammed flat against the arena floor. His arms shot out to catch himself. They never arrived. He hit face-first, spread-eagled, pressed into the rock like a leaf under a boot.
"HUNTER IS DOWN!" Julie screamed. "PHANTOM HAS FINALLY CAST, AND HUNTER IS FLAT ON THE FLOOR! IS IT... IT’S GRAVITY! THE STOLEN GRAVITY OF NECTRON HIMSELF!"
The colosseum lost its mind.
[Boddlly: HE FAKED THE CAST. HE FAKED THE CAST!!]
[Kamzy_1234: bro spent five minutes teaching Hunter a reflex just to sell him a counterfeit]
[GodOfDegenerates: imagine studying every martial art in history and losing to a HEADBUTT]
[Marypaz13: the second he couldn’t give... Phantom just built it out of lies I’m UNWELL]
Down on the stage, Hunter fought.
Of course he fought. Thirty-one masters lived inside his hands, and every one of them refused to quit lying down. His palms flattened against the stone. His arms trembled, coiled, pushed. Muscle and technique older than nations strained against the borrowed weight of a planet.
He rose an inch.
The gravity thickened.
The stone cracked beneath his palms and he sank two inches instead, the floor itself surrendering before his body did. Around him the crushed circle widened, rubble grinding into gravel, gravel into dust, the pressure climbing with every heartbeat like a tide with no ceiling.
’Get up,’ Hunter told his body.
His body wrote back its regrets.
Three inches down now. The stone was swallowing him in slow motion, a man being buried by an idea. His ribs flexed under the mounting load. Breath came in shallow sips. Somewhere far above, he could hear sixty thousand people not breathing at all.
And across the ruined stage, the Phantom simply stood, hand extended, expression unreadable, adding weight the way an accountant adds numbers.
’No anger in it,’ Hunter noted, oddly clear-headed as his cheek pressed deeper into powdered rock. ’No cruelty either. He’ll increase it forever, and he’ll be exactly this calm when my bones give.’
The pressure climbed again.
’Every art on Earth,’ he thought, and felt something that was almost laughter shake his pinned chest, ’and not one of them teaches you how to punch the concept of down.’
His hand moved. Not to push. Flat against the stone.
He tapped. Twice.
"I QUIT!" His voice tore out of his crushed chest, raw and loud enough for the microphones. "THE MATCH IS YOURS, PHANTOM!"
The weight vanished.
Hunter gasped as the world released him, air flooding back into his flattened lungs. The horn followed a heartbeat later.
BWOOOOOM.
"SURRENDER!! HUNTER HAS SURRENDERED!" Julie’s voice cracked from sheer volume. "THE SECOND MATCH OF THE COMBAT EVENT GOES TO... AMERICAAAA!!"
The eruption that followed made the Brazilian celebration look like a library. The Phantom chant returned with interest, rolling around the colosseum in a wave that refused to break.
{Ding!}
{The world stands in awe of you!}
{+450 Charm points}
The giant screens flashed.
{VICTORY: PHANTOM. AMERICA}
{POINT TRANSFER IN PROGRESS...}
{HUNTER: 10 PTS. PHANTOM}
The cheering stuttered.
Sixty thousand people read the number. Then read it again.
"...Ten," Julie said flatly, all showmanship briefly abandoning her body. "Ten points. Brazil put TEN points on their S-Rank ace. Ladies and gentlemen, Phantom just went through one of the most terrifying fighters alive... for the price of a sandwich."
[Demiurge666: LMAOOO they scammed him]
[Will_1631: this is called FINANCIAL martial arts 🇧🇷 the vault stays home, the fists go to work]
[Zorgus: so Raoi and Veloce are sitting on 990 combined. that’s terrifying actually]
[IamTruck_kun: Phantom defeated a raid boss and the loot was a potato]
In the American alcove, Selena finally let go of the railing, exhaling four minutes of held breath in one go. Beside her, Dana had both hands over her mouth, but her shoulders were shaking with barely contained laughter.
"Ten points," she wheezed. "They made him fight that for ten points. Oh, I respect it. I hate it, and I respect it."
Down on the stage, the medics were helping Hunter to his feet. He waved them off, stood under his own power, and looked across the rubble at the man in black.
Nicholas walked over and extended a hand.
The colosseum quieted, watching.
"Ten points," Nicholas said.
"Ten points," Hunter agreed, clasping the offered hand, a grin splitting his bloodied face. "The coach said you’d probably beat whoever we sent. So we made sure beating us would cost you everything and pay you nothing. Four minutes of your stamina, every trick in your footwork on the world’s screens, and the whole planet just watched you cast under pressure." He shrugged as best his flattened ribs allowed. "For a sandwich."
"It was a smart play," Nicholas said, and meant it. "The manifestation as the vault. The martial artist as the toll gate. Whoever built your strategy thinks like a professional."
"I’ll tell her you said so." Hunter released the handshake, then paused. "Phantom. That style of yours. I felt it the entire match, but my ability couldn’t grip it. Couldn’t perfect it. Like trying to memorize smoke." His eyes searched the flat, unreadable face before him. "What in the world are you?"
Nicholas turned toward the American alcove and raised one hand to the roaring crowd.
"Underpaid," he said. "Apparently."
He left the ruined stage to the sound of Hunter’s laughter and sixty thousand voices chanting his name, and for all the theatrical flatness of his exit, the truth sat warm and quiet in his chest.
’Ten points, a bill of four minutes, and every analyst on Earth now has my footwork on file.’
The corner of his mouth lifted.
’Worth it. That was the best fight I’ve had in two lifetimes... present company excluded, Tianzun.’
He hopped the rail into the alcove, where Selena was waiting with her arms crossed and her relief badly disguised as disapproval, and Dana was still giggling the word "sandwich" to herself.
"AND THE BOARD RESETS!" Julie’s voice dragged the world’s attention back to the spinning flags. "Two matches down! Germany crippled, Brazil enriched, America victorious, and the standings tighter than ever! Selection system, ROLL for match three!"
The flags spun.
The colosseum leaned in.
The wheel slowed... slower... and two flags slammed into the center of the screen.
For one full second, nobody made a sound.
Because some matches are fights. And some matches are history books being opened in real time.
Julie’s whisper fell into sixty thousand silent ears.
"China... versus... Australia."
In the Chinese alcove, Tianzun’s eyes slid open.
In the Australian alcove, Mercury set down her empty teacup, and smiled.