Chapter 81: Maria Shows Her Might

Two consecutive nights without a wink of sleep, yet sitting in the spectator stands at eight o’clock in the morning, I felt entirely wired. Watching the arena bathed in the harsh morning light, a quiet realization settled over me. I might not belong to any of Terra’s native races, but I was definitely no longer an ordinary human. A normal Earthling would have collapsed from sheer cardiac exhaustion hours ago.

“Now, who will the fledgling Pegasus of the Nearl family challenge next?” Big-Mouth Mob’s amplified voice tore through the stadium speakers, whipping the crowd into a frenzy.

The audience roared back in a unified, bloodthirsty chant: “Corruption! Wither!”

The heavy iron gates ground open. Two Sarkaz warriors stepped onto the bloodstained sand. Their bodies were ravaged by severe Oripathy, their very consciousness visibly clouded by the agonizing torment of the active crystals tearing through their flesh.

“Eh?” Big-Mouth Mob peered at the participant roster with exaggerated, theatrical shock. “This young Nearl hasn’t registered a teammate! Is she simply that overconfident, or could she find absolutely no one brave enough to face the Corrupted and Withered Knights?”

A wave of mocking laughter rippled through the stands.

Down in the preparation area, Maria stood at the edge of the tunnel. Her knuckles were white around the hilt of her sword. With her free hand, she reluctantly surrendered a half-eaten pepper and black garlic cookie back to me.

“I’m heading up,” she murmured, her golden ears twitching nervously. “Any last words of advice?”

I considered the situation, opting for the lowest-pressure motivation I could muster. “Good luck. If you can solo this, it proves you possess the combat talent of a Silverash Knight. You’ll be fully qualified to join me on the frontlines against the Reunion Movement.”

“And if I lose?” Maria’s tail flicked, a chaotic mix of anxiety and desperate anticipation in her eyes. “Will you be terribly disappointed?”

It was a universally accepted truth in Kazimierz that Maria wasn’t Margaret. But I had been the first to tell her that Rhodes Island needed a brilliant craftsman far more than another knight. For a Nearl, being genuinely needed was a far greater thrill than empty praise.

“If you lose, you’ll just have to stay in the engineering department as my personal craftsman,” I deadpanned, letting out a heavy, theatrical sigh. “You’ll be stuck forging weapons for me to fight Behemoths, Seaborn, and the demonic hordes of Sami. Sigh… I really just wanted to fight Reunion.”

“Pfft!” The tension shattered. Maria let out a bright laugh, released her grip on my sleeve, and marched out into the blinding arena light, her steps firm as she faced the two towering Sarkaz.

The starting bell hadn’t even rung.

Driven entirely mad by the Originium ravaging their nervous systems, the two brothers charged.

The pressure was suffocating. Caught completely off guard by the sheer velocity of their assault, Maria threw herself into a clumsy, desperate roll across the dirt, barely evading the Corrupted Knight’s descending warhammer.

Boom!

The earth shattered where she had just stood. The brothers’ murderous intent wasn’t hidden; it was a physical weight in the arena. Even as the hammer fell, the Withered Knight had already drawn his greatbow to full draw. An arrow dripping with a sickening, decaying aura snapped forward, cutting off Maria’s only avenue of retreat.

Madness hadn’t dulled their combat instincts. It had stripped away their restraints, leaving only aggressive, cold-blooded execution.

With nowhere to run, Maria jerked her blade up in a frantic parry. Metal shrieked against metal. She barely deflected the decaying shaft. It hissed past her cheek, grazing her bangs. A lock of brilliant golden hair instantly curled, blackened, and crumbled into dead ash.

Angry shouts erupted from the spectator stands. Even the bloodthirsty Kazimierz crowd recognized that something was deeply wrong with Corruption and Wither. Forcing Infected to boost their combat power at the cost of accelerating their Oripathy—just to assassinate a competitor—the General Chamber of Commerce had blatantly crossed a line.

Down on the sand, Maria couldn’t hear the outrage. In that split second of life and death, her mind wiped itself completely blank. She moved purely on instinct.

Honestly, the lethal coordination of these two Sarkaz didn’t even carry the same psychological terror as Uncle Młynar chasing her around the courtyard with a beast-tamer’s whip.

But this time, the threat to her life was real.

If her sister were standing here, Margaret would calmly dissect their coordination, find the fatal flaw, and dismantle them with overwhelming grace. But Maria knew she lacked that innate, terrifying talent for violence.

Accepting that gap, she leaned into what she did know. The careful, calculated precision of a craftsman.

‘The family motto,’she reminded herself.’Fear not the bitter dark!’

Maria squeezed her eyes shut. A blinding, incandescent white light erupted from her blade. The ancestral Originium Arts of the Nearl family flared to life, illuminating the stadium.

Up in the VIP stands, I casually shoved the remaining weird-tasting cookie into Patriot’s massive, armored hand, finally affording myself the luxury of opening a bag of original-flavored ones.

Down below, the radiant light exploded from the tip of Maria’s sword. A split second later, the Withered Knight abruptly stopped his snarling draw. The flat of a golden blade slammed directly into his forehead with mathematical precision. His eyes rolled back, and he collapsed into the dirt for a sudden nap.

‘Ah, such enviable sleep quality,’ I mused, chewing a cookie.

Maria was gasping, the immense drain of her Originium Arts taking its toll. The Corrupted Knight, roaring in berserk fury, lunged at her exposed back.

Without even turning her head, Maria executed a flawless backhanded strike. Her entire focus was clearly locked onto a single, internalized thought: ‘Align the skill rotation in three seconds.’

The heavy blade caught the massive Sarkaz perfectly, nearly flattening him into the arena floor.

The maneuver was ruthlessly efficient, lethal, and precise. It carried a distinct, terrifying level of technical mastery that felt entirely alien to the flashy, theatrical duels of Kazimierz. It was the touch of a grandmaster. Anyone with a trained eye could immediately spot whose handiwork it was.

Executing a sequence like that was practically the same as pinning a Rhodes Island operator’s badge directly to her chest.

A dry smirk tugged at my lips.

Sitting to my right, Margaret Nearl had been gripping her lance, every muscle coiled to vault into the arena at a moment’s notice. Now, she froze.

She turned to me, her golden eyes wide with shock. “Doctor… are you commanding her?”

I casually waved my hand and tapped my bare ears, showing her I had taken my headset off. Command pre-input mechanics—truly a magical thing.

“I merely offered a tiny bit of advice. Just the framework for this specific sequence,” I said, my tone carrying genuine praise. “But to execute it with such flawless stability under this kind of lethal pressure… in that specific regard, Maria might actually be stronger than you.”

Margaret looked back at the blood-stained sand in utter disbelief. The Withered Knight was groggily trying to push himself up, only for Maria to casually swat him back into the dirt with the flat of her sword, treating the heavy weapon like a flyswatter.

“That’s… still the same sequence?” Margaret murmured.

Slap!

This time it was the Corrupted Knight. He had just managed to prop himself onto his knees when he viciously headbutted the steel toe of Maria’s boot. He immediately sank back into dreamland.

“Is that also the sequence?”

The tactical stunlock specialty of Rhodes Island—truly a magical thing.

For three solid minutes, Maria suppressed the two towering Sarkaz like a Challenger smurf styling on a pair of bronze rookies, spinning them around the arena like helpless tops. But eventually, the sheer chaotic nature of their Originium-clouded brains created an unpredictable variable. They found a microscopic opening and looked up at the exact same time.

Maria’s current swordsmanship could only maintain absolute stunlock in one direction. Forced to choose, she unhesitatingly slashed at the Corrupted Knight, who posed the immediate melee threat.

That left the Withered Knight free. He finally snatched up his greatbow.

He drew the string taut, the decaying arrow locking onto the young Pegasus.

Up in the caster’s booth, Big-Mouth Mob screamed into the microphone, prematurely calling the match. “The Nearl family’s journey ends here! The only question left is whether Miss Maria will leave this arena in a body bag—”

I shoved Margaret hard between the shoulder blades. “Go, Radiant Knight. The hero’s moment has arrived.”

The shriek of the decaying arrow tearing through the air was deafening. But this time, something infinitely faster pierced the arena. A blazing lance of pure, golden light!

A massive warhammer smashed into the arrow, snapping the cursed shaft in half mid-flight. Maria spun around, gasping. Standing back-to-back with her was the fully armored Pegasus, their mirrored defensive stances casting a brilliant, unified glow across the stadium.

“Well done, Maria,” Margaret praised, a fierce, proud smile gracing her lips. She paused for a fraction of a second before adding, “Also, Uncle is extremely pleased. He said all those years of lashing you weren’t for nothing, since you dodged quite timely today. His exact words.”

Praise from Młynar. Maria blinked, suddenly realizing the immense weight of her seemingly casual three-minute beatdown. Back in the day, the highest praise Margaret had ever wrung from their stern uncle was a grim: ‘I have seen your path clearly. Now, can you bear the price of failure?’

But Margaret wasn’t finished. “The Doctor also seems very satisfied. He said you can get ready to say your line.”

At that, Maria’s eyes ignited like miniature suns. ‘Uncle’s praise is old news! The Doctor is the ultimate meta for us young fillies!’

The two sisters exchanged a single, knowing look. Surrounded by the deafening, fanatical roar of the Kazimierz crowd, they stepped forward in perfect, flawless synchronization. They swung their weapons in unison.

Blinding golden Arts erupted from both the sword and the hammer, merging into a towering pillar of light that pierced the heavens.

A massive grin stretched across Maria’s face. She felt a brief flash of embarrassment, but the sheer, intoxicating thrill of stealing her uncle’s thunder completely overpowered it. Throwing her head back, she screamed at the top of her lungs:

“E—X—CALIBUR!!!!”

[Rhodes’s Note: “Young fillies” is adapted from a Chinese internet slang pun in the raw text (“young horses”). It serves as a double entendre, referencing both their Pegasus race and the slang for young girls chasing after an older, capable man (the Doctor).]

[Rhodes’s Note:

Enjoying the operation so far, Doctor?

(This daily grind literally pays the landship’s rent! 🙇‍♂️):

Massive thanks for reading and supporting the operation!]