Chapter 90: Guardian Duel Stage (11)

The final two minutes of the match were an absolute, visually incomprehensible blur of violence.

The arena rules nullified all lethality and pain, but the sheer physical force of the exchange was staggering. Leon was battered relentlessly, his Obsidian Carapace ringing like a bell under the endless barrage of stone fists. He landed hits of his own, his greatsword occasionally finding the solid mass of the Guardian amidst the afterimages, but the trade ratio was brutal. For every three chaotic, unpredictable hits Leon scored, the Guardian’s kinetic dome registered fifteen.

Leon chained Abyssal Stride to teleport directly inside the Guardian’s guard, attempting to utilize point-blank Arcane Requiem detonations to rack up rapid damage-over-time ticks.

The Guardian didn’t even attempt to dodge the magic. It simply punched through the black decay, utilizing its Level 245 density to ignore the spell’s hit-stun, and continued its relentless, blindingly fast assault.

[Current Score]

[Leon Wes: 342]

[The Silent Aegis: 480]

"I need the time-stop!" Leon gasped, desperately checking the cooldown on his Band of the Chronos Lord.

The internal mechanics of the Battlefield Realm accelerated the cooldown, but it was still locked for another ten seconds.

Leon threw everything he had left into the chaos. He cast Dimensional Severance repeatedly, not to attack, but to create a chaotic web of spatial gravity wells around himself, hoping the localized distortions would slow the Guardian’s fists just enough to artificially reduce its hit rate.

He triggered Grave-Crusher and stomped the indestructible black stone floor repeatedly, attempting to generate seismic shockwaves to stagger the entity.

Nothing worked. The Guardian had become a localized force of nature, entirely detached from the need for tactical logic. It was a machine operating at maximum RPM, blindly executing its highest-speed attack loops to ensure mathematical victory through sheer volume.

"Chronos Shift!" Leon roared, the moment the cooldown refreshed.

The iridescent starlight flared, washing the chaotic blur of the arena in absolute, monochrome gray. The kinetic dome of stone fists froze instantly, suspending hundreds of afterimages in mid-air.

Leon had exactly zero point five seconds.

He didn’t use his sword. He didn’t use magic. He stepped directly into the frozen cluster of afterimages, located the true, physical body of the Guardian, and unleashed a rapid-fire sequence of bare-fisted strikes, channeling every ounce of his 230 Strength and 235 Agility.

He pushed his muscles to the absolute tearing point, moving so fast his own arms became a blur in the frozen time.

One-two-three-four... fifteen-sixteen-seventeen...

He scored twenty-two hits before the iridescent light shattered.

Time resumed.

The Guardian’s kinetic dome immediately collapsed upon him, unleashing the stored momentum of the frozen strikes. Leon was battered by a dozen immediate impacts.

[MATCH CONCLUDED]

The massive, iridescent gold interface flashed brilliantly. The gentle, non-lethal shockwave of system magic erupted from the center of the ring, violently separating the chaotic melee, pushing Leon and the Guardian fifty yards apart.

Leon hit the ground hard, sliding across the polished black stone before coming to a complete stop. He lay on his back for a long moment, staring up at the pale purple sky of the Abyssal Fracture. His chest was heaving, his entire body trembling from the sheer, catastrophic physical exertion of trying to match a Level 245 entity in a pure brawling spam-fest.

His SSS+ Aura of the Undying worked furiously, pumping his veins full of golden vitality, immediately repairing the exhausted muscle fibers and resetting his neural pathways.

He slowly sat up, resting his forearms on his knees.

He looked across the arena. The Silent Aegis was standing in the exact center of the silver ring. It had retrieved its fallen stone greatsword and assumed its flawless, neutral guard stance once more. It was completely untouched by the absolute madness that had just occurred.

The golden holographic interface above the Guardian shifted, finalizing the calculations and displaying the hit comparison.

Ding!

[Guardian Duel Stage: Round 4 Completed]

[Hit Comparison]

[Leon Wes: 387 Hits]

[The Silent Aegis: 521 Hits]

[Result: Challenger Defeated. Guardian Claim Failed.]

Leon stared at the scoreboard. Three hundred and eighty-seven to five hundred and twenty-one.

He let out a slow, breathy laugh that echoed across the empty arena.

"I broke your algorithm," Leon said, pushing himself to his feet. He dusted off the dark, gold-embroidered fabric of his draconic garb. "For three full minutes, I completely shattered your logic engine. You didn’t know how to process chaos."

He began to walk slowly along the edge of the silver runes, his dual-colored eyes analyzing the pale stone knight with profound respect.

"But breaking the algorithm wasn’t enough," Leon admitted, his voice devoid of frustration, filled instead with cold, calculating clarity. "Because when a perfect machine stops trying to be perfect, it simply falls back on its hardware. And your hardware is Level 245. Once you stopped trying to predict me and simply started swinging as fast as your base attributes allowed, my chaos couldn’t bridge the raw statistical gap."

Leon stopped pacing. He looked down at his own hands, flexing his leather-gloved fingers.

He had tried raw speed. He had tried an impenetrable fortress. He had tried predictive logic. He had tried absolute chaos. Every single tactical philosophy he possessed had been systematically countered, deconstructed, and defeated by the Dimensional Guardian.

He had lost four consecutive rounds.

"I cannot out-speed you. I cannot out-defend you. I cannot out-predict you. And I cannot out-spam you," Leon summarized, a terrifying, absolute calm settling over his aura.

He looked up at the golden digital timer, which had just reset for the final time.

"Auris," Leon called out, not looking back at his bonded dragon. "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result."

Leon summoned the Blade of the Dragon God back into his right hand. The ethereal golden flames did not roar chaotically; they burned with a focused, razor-thin intensity, mirroring the sudden, absolute stillness in Leon’s mind.

"I’ve spent four rounds trying to find a combat style that counters yours," Leon said, stepping purposefully across the silver boundary, re-entering the arena for the fifth round. "But the truth is, the system didn’t put you here to be countered. It put you here to teach."

Leon raised his greatsword, assuming a guard stance that was not his own. It was a flawless, mathematically perfect imitation of the Guardian’s neutral stance.