Chapter 87: Guardian Duel Stage (8)

[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.

Leon retreated, utilizing Abyssal Stride to put fifty yards of distance between them, his lungs burning from the relentless pace of the exchange, sweat stinging at the corners of his eyes.

The fight raged on. Leon managed to score hits by layering Aegis of the Tempest with heavy gravity shifts, forcing the Guardian to occasionally lose its footing. He pushed his score up to one hundred and thirty, fighting tooth and nail for every single point.

With less than a minute remaining, Leon’s Chronos Shift came off its one-hour cooldown (accelerated by the internal temporal mechanics of the Battlefield Realm).

He needed a massive point injection. He waited for the Guardian to close the distance, baiting a heavy overhead strike.

The moment the stone greatsword began its descent, Leon triggered Chronos Shift.

The iridescent starlight flared. The monochrome gray washed over the world.

Leon stepped out of the path of the frozen blade, raising his void-daggers to unleash another ten-hit flurry.

But as Leon moved to strike... he realized the Guardian’s greatsword wasn’t where it was supposed to be.

Before the time-stop had initiated, the Guardian hadn’t committed to the overhead strike. In the microsecond before Leon triggered the ring, the entity had intentionally altered the kinematic trajectory of its swing, completely abandoning its offensive posture.

It had pre-positioned the massive flat of its stone greatsword exactly in the empty space where Leon’s optimal flanking maneuver would place him during the time-stop.

Leon stared in absolute shock in the frozen, gray world, the silence of the stopped time somehow making the realization hit even harder.

The Guardian hadn’t moved during the time-stop. It had simply predicted exactly when Leon would use the ring, and had placed a massive, unbreakable physical barrier directly in his intended path before time froze.

Leon couldn’t score the ten hits. The Guardian’s greatsword completely covered its vital hit-boxes, and striking the weapon wouldn’t register enough points to close the gap. He was forced to spend his 0.5 seconds of frozen time simply navigating around the massive stone barricade, cursing under his breath the entire way.

The iridescent light shattered. Time resumed.

Because Leon had spent his time-stop repositioning instead of striking, he materialized right in front of the Guardian without having scored a single point.

The Silent Aegis instantly capitalized on the failed temporal ambush. It dropped the greatsword and unleashed a devastating, rapid-fire sequence of unarmed strikes that battered Leon relentlessly, pushing its score past the two-hundred-and-fifty mark, each blow landing with a heavy, percussive thud that rattled through his bones.

Leon abandoned defense entirely, throwing wildly predicted dagger slashes, trading one hit for every five he received, refusing to stop moving until the absolute final millisecond.

[MATCH CONCLUDED]

The massive, iridescent gold interface flashed brilliantly. The Primordial Eclipse shattered, the starry void instantly dissolving to reveal the pale purple sky and the polished black stone of the Battlefield Realm.

The gentle, non-lethal shockwave of system magic erupted, forcefully separating Leon and the Guardian by fifty yards.

Leon landed on his feet, though he immediately dropped to one knee, breathing heavily. The sheer, overwhelming cognitive exhaustion of trying to out-predict a Level 245 logic engine was staggering. His SSS+ Aura of the Undying rapidly flushed his system, pulling ambient mana to restore his drained mental stamina, the fog behind his eyes slowly beginning to clear.

He looked across the arena.

The Silent Aegis stood perfectly still in the exact center of the silver ring. It rested its massive stone greatsword on the floor, assuming the exact same perfectly neutral, flawless guard stance. It was a monument of eternal, unyielding perfection, entirely untouched by the exertion that had just left Leon gasping for breath.

The golden holographic interface above the Guardian shifted, displaying the final hit comparison.

Ding!

[Guardian Duel Stage: Round 3 Completed]

[Hit Comparison]

[Leon Wes: 156 Hits]

[The Silent Aegis: 280 Hits]

[Result: Challenger Defeated. Guardian Claim Failed.]

Leon stared at the scoreboard, the numbers glowing steadily against the dark stone as if mocking him. One hundred and fifty-six to two hundred and eighty.

He had nearly doubled his previous score. He had successfully mapped and manipulated the Guardian’s logic for the first two minutes. But the moment the Level 245 algorithm realized it was being predicted, it simply changed the rules of the game. It started trading efficiency for raw contact, utilizing its overwhelmingly superior base stats to brute-force the exchanges.

It had even predicted his time-stop, pre-positioning a defense in the real world to perfectly counter an attack executed outside of time.

Leon slowly stood up, letting the void-daggers dissipate from his hands.

"I tried to out-speed you, and I failed," Leon said softly, his voice carrying across the empty arena. "I tried to build an impenetrable defense, and you turned it into a playground. I tried to predict your logic, and you simply abandoned logic to brute-force the math."

He began to pace along the southern edge of the silver ring, his dual-colored eyes burning with a terrifying, unyielding intensity. His SSS-Rank Infinite Growth was throbbing in the back of his mind, compiling the data from all three rounds, desperately searching for the fundamental flaw in a flawless machine.

"You are a perfect algorithm," Leon stated, stopping his pacing and locking eyes with the featureless stone helm of the Guardian. "You adapt to everything. You calculate every vector. You optimize every trade."

A slow, predatory grin spread across Leon’s face.

"But an algorithm can only adapt to patterns," Leon whispered, summoning the Blade of the Dragon God back into his hand, the ethereal golden flames roaring to life with chaotic intensity. "If I cannot beat your logic... then for round four, I am going to have to introduce you to absolute, unmitigated chaos."