Chapter 86: Guardian Duel Stage (7)

"Got you," Leon sneered.

He had intentionally left the upper vector open. He had forced the Guardian into a predictable, sub-optimal path by cutting off its primary choice.

Leon triggered Abyssal Stride before the Guardian even reached the apex of its vault. He teleported perfectly into the knight’s secondary trajectory, summoning the Blade of the Dragon God directly into his grip mid-teleport.

He didn’t swing for an execution. He used the flat of the blazing golden blade, channeling Reaper’s Resonance.

Clack! Clack! Clack!

He scored three solid, undeniable hits against the Guardian’s helm and shoulder. The psychic shockwave of the resonance washed over the stone construct, harmlessly dissipating, but the hits registered on the golden scoreboard hovering in the starry void.

[Current Score]

[Leon Wes: 15]

[The Silent Aegis: 0]

For the first ninety seconds, Leon executed a flawless symphony of predictive warfare.

He turned the Primordial Eclipse into a funhouse of shifting gravity and localized spatial traps. He would use Origin Eyes to read the Guardian’s intended path, cast Dimensional Severance or Arcane Requiem to block that exact optimal route, and then pre-position himself along the secondary route to intercept the knight with rapid, low-commitment strikes.

His SSS-Rank Infinite Growth continuously expanded his neural capacity, allowing his brain to process the hyper-speed calculations required to out-think a Level 245 logic engine. His Perfect Body endured the constant, agonizing shifts in localized gravity without suffering severe vertigo or motion sickness.

He pushed the score to an unprecedented thirty-to-zero.

But a Level 245 Dimensional Guardian was not a simple mob. It was the apex of the system’s design.

At the two-minute mark, the Silent Aegis stopped optimizing for evasion.

The Guardian’s internal logic engine recognized that its perfect evasion routines were being actively mapped and exploited by the Vanguard. It realized that every time it attempted to avoid a hazard to secure a clean strike, it was being funneled into a spatial trap.

So, the algorithm shifted. It abandoned the pursuit of a flawless victory. It began optimizing for trade-offs.

Leon shifted the gravity, pulling the Guardian to the right. He cast a wall of Arcane Requiem to block its forward momentum, predicting the knight would vault over it. Leon pre-positioned himself above the wall, ready to score.

The Guardian didn’t vault.

It charged directly through the pillar of black decay and erratic blue lightning.

The Level 245 entity willingly absorbed the hit. The system registered the magical impact, adding a single point to Leon’s score.

But by ignoring the hazard and sacrificing its perfect defense, the Guardian completely shattered Leon’s predictive model. It burst through the Arcane Requiem a full quarter of a second faster than Leon’s Supreme Comprehension had calculated, completely bypassing Leon’s pre-positioned ambush.

The Guardian materialized directly in front of Leon, its stone armor scorched by the magic, but its momentum entirely unchecked.

Before Leon could trigger Phantom Shift, the knight unleashed a devastating, high-speed combination. It didn’t use the heavy greatsword; it used the heavy stone pommel and its armored elbows, striking with the precision of a master martial artist.

Clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack!

Seven hits registered against Leon’s ribs, sternum, and jaw in the span of a single breath. The sheer kinetic shockwave, while non-lethal due to the arena rules, rattled Leon’s teeth and sent him tumbling violently through the zero-gravity void.

Ding! Ding!

[Current Score]

[Leon Wes: 31]

[The Silent Aegis: 28]

Leon stabilized himself mid-tumble using Storm-Strider, wiping a bead of sweat from his brow.

"You discarded your perfect defense," Leon analyzed, a genuine smile of respect touching his lips. "You realized my traps rely on your desire to avoid damage. So, you simply started tanking the area-of-effect spells to secure the close-quarters exchanges. You are trading one point to secure seven."

The dynamic of the fight instantly flipped.

Leon’s predictive traps became entirely useless. If he placed a spatial rift in the Guardian’s path, the knight would simply drag its armored shoulder through the rift, taking the single hit penalty, just to close the distance and deliver a flurry of rapid strikes against Leon’s Obsidian Carapace.

The score gap violently inverted.

The Level 245 Guardian’s raw speed was simply too much when it no longer cared about avoiding hazards. It moved like a phantom, surfing the shifting gravity of the Primordial Eclipse with terrifying adaptability.

Leon tried to rely on Phantom Shift, phasing through the initial strikes of a combination, but the Guardian would instantly pause its animation the millisecond Leon turned intangible, waiting exactly for the cooldown frame to end before resuming the flurry.

Leon’s hit count slowly climbed through grazing blows and desperate trades, but the Guardian’s score was skyrocketing by twenties and thirties.

[Current Score]

[Leon Wes: 92]

[The Silent Aegis: 165]

"I need to break the tempo," Leon gritted his teeth. His SSS+ Aura of the Undying was working flawlessly, but the sheer volume of strikes he was absorbing was creating a phantom ache in his bones.

He waited for the Guardian to initiate a massive, lunging thrust with its stone greatsword.

Leon didn’t dodge. He triggered Chronos Shift.

The Band of the Chronos Lord flared with intense, iridescent starlight. The starry void of the Primordial Eclipse froze in absolute monochrome gray. The Guardian, suspended in mid-lunge, was halted perfectly in time.

Zero point five seconds of absolute, uncontested uptime.

Leon moved with the catastrophic speed of his 235 Agility. He didn’t use the greatsword; he summoned the void-daggers back into his hands to maximize his strike rate. He unleashed a blinding flurry of slashes against the frozen stone armor of the knight.

One-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight-nine-ten!

He pushed his physical limits to the absolute edge, scoring ten rapid hits in half a second.

The iridescent light fractured. Color returned to the void. Time resumed.

Ding! Ding! Ding!

[Current Score]

[Leon Wes: 102]

But just like round two, the Level 245 algorithm deduced the temporal anomaly instantly. The Guardian registered the ten sudden impacts and immediately recalculated the physics of the engagement.

However, this time, the Guardian didn’t just adapt to the repositioning. It analyzed the exact duration of the time-stop.