Chapter 613: My Way

From the very moment Percy had challenged him to a duel weeks ago, Liam had known this was never going to be just a simple test of skill or rank. Percy hadn’t been subtle about his intent. He wanted to see it. Not just Liam’s strength, but the true scope of a dark mage’s arsenal—what lay beneath the surface that so many feared yet understood so little. Percy’s curiosity had been sharp, deliberate, and unmistakable, and because of that, Liam had begun planning long before this day ever arrived.

Even knowing that defeating Percy would require dipping into the heavier end of his abilities, Liam also understood something equally important: unleashing his strongest spells against someone restricted to fifty percent of their power would be excessive. Wasteful. Revealing too much for too little gain. Because of that, he had already trimmed his options down, selecting only a narrow slice of his dark magic—just enough to secure victory without laying his entire hand bare.

But now, standing on the platform with hundreds of eyes locked onto him, that plan had shifted.

With the full student body watching, along with the Headmaster, the assistant headmistress, and a lineup of authoritative figures who governed the academy itself, Liam recognized the danger of overexposure. This wasn’t just Percy anymore. This was scrutiny. Evaluation. Judgment that would echo long after the bell rang.

’So far, the academy heads already know I can summon shadow creatures,’ Liam thought calmly, his stance steady and grounded. ’Yesterday’s trial made sure of that.’ His gaze remained fixed on Percy even as his thoughts flowed. ’But they don’t know how many I can summon, or how freely I can do it. And they’ve seen me manifest weapons from shadow.’ A brief pause followed. ’That’s where their knowledge ends.’

He exhaled slowly through his nose.

’I can’t afford to rely on just those two aspects,’ he continued inwardly. ’Not if I want to control this fight properly.’ His flames flickered faintly around his arms, responsive to his shifting focus. ’With fire alone, I have plenty of techniques to keep pace with Percy for a while. But fire by itself won’t be enough. I need a dark attack—something precise. Something with leverage.’

His thoughts dove deeper, sifting through the vast catalogue of techniques etched into his memory.

Void Passage was immediately dismissed. Shadow Step followed just as quickly. Both were far too revealing. His hybrid javelins and Umbra Star were equally out of the question—tools meant for battles where secrecy no longer mattered. One by one, the options fell away until only a single technique remained.

Shadow Rend.

’It’s the only one,’ Liam admitted to himself. ’It’s similar to Inferno Edge, but sharper. More dangerous and more demanding.’ His eyes narrowed slightly. ’Well, it used to be more demanding with the amount of myst required… but not anymore.’

Across from him, Percy had subtly lowered his stance, his posture tightening as the ice around his weapons thickened and refined itself. Frost mist rolled steadily from the reinforced blades, the structure of the ice growing denser, more lethal, each adjustment made with careful intent.

’Yeah,’ Liam thought, measuring him carefully. ’That’ll be enough.’

His grip loosened slightly on his daggers as a different kind of readiness settled in. ’I can also make full use of Void Storage. And… it wouldn’t hurt to test Unified Flow here.’

With that decision made, Liam allowed his mind to empty.

Not into relaxation, but rather, focus. Pure, sharpened concentration.

His thoughts faded into a controlled void as his awareness turned inward, his pupils dilating as his breathing slowed and deepened. Steam rolled from his parted lips with each exhale, visible and heavy. The flames coiled around his forearms dimmed, no longer wild or aggressive, but steady and disciplined, burning with restrained intensity rather than raw heat.

From his side of the platform, Percy noticed immediately.

He tilted his head slightly, eyes narrowing as a faint chill crawled up his spine. ’That level of focus…’ Percy thought, instinctively tightening his grip. ’My body’s screaming at me.’ His breath frosted with each exhale. ’Any hesitation now would be fatal.’

Reacting on instinct and experience, Percy shifted his weapons. The right ice dagger elongated smoothly, reforming into a slender, razor-edged ice sword, while the left expanded outward, encasing his hand in a brutal spike-laden gauntlet. The transformation was seamless and precise.

The temperature around him plummeted further.

A cold wind swept outward from the platform, crawling through the hall and brushing against the watching students below, drawing sharp breaths and uneasy shivers as the air itself seemed to brace for what was about to come.

Then Liam moved first again.

This time, there was no narrow channeling of flame into his legs, no focused burst meant solely for acceleration. Fire myst surged through his entire body in a controlled flood, threading itself through muscle, bone, and nerve alike. His veins glowed faintly beneath his skin as heat rolled outward in a tight, disciplined aura.The stone beneath his feet cracked as he pushed off, not from sheer force alone, but from the sudden, all-encompassing ignition of motion.

He vanished.

Not in the sense of teleportation, but in the way a predator disappears when it moves faster than the eye expects. One instant he stood coiled and still, the next the space he had occupied was empty, scorched lines spiderwebbing across the platform where his boots had last touched.

Percy reacted immediately.

Cold surged outward as his sword and gauntlet shifted position, his stance adjusting with the same calm precision he had displayed from the beginning. He didn’t panic or rush. His body moved on instinct honed through countless battles, shoulders angling, weight redistributing, eyes tracking the disturbance in the air rather than Liam himself.

And yet—

Something was wrong.

Liam’s line of motion wasn’t straight.

He wasn’t charging in a clean arc or a predictable vector. His movement bent, twisted, and refracted, as if the space between him and Percy had lost its rules. He advanced in sudden lateral slips and shallow spirals, his body tilting and correcting in micro-adjustments that made no logical sense when paired with his speed. He should have overcommitted. He should have lost balance.

But he didn’t.

Percy’s eyes narrowed a fraction.

’…how absurd.’

Even so, Percy met him head-on.

Their first clash detonated across the platform.

Inferno Edge screamed to life along Liam’s dagger, a blade of compressed fire extending outward in a razor-thin arc. Percy’s ice sword intercepted it, frost and flame colliding with a sound like shattering glass wrapped in thunder. Steam erupted violently between them, obscuring the impact as heat and cold annihilated each other in bursts of white vapor.

Liam didn’t stop.

He twisted through the collision, letting the recoil spin him sideways rather than back. His second dagger slashed upward, flames snapping along its edge, while his knee came up in a tight, brutal strike aimed for Percy’s midsection. Percy blocked low with his gauntlet, ice thickening instantly to absorb the impact, while his sword carved a precise counter toward Liam’s neck.

Liam leaned into the strike instead of away from it.

The blade skimmed past his throat close enough to burn with cold as he dropped low, sliding under Percy’s guard. His hand snapped forward, palm open, a miniature sun forming in an instant—dense, brilliant, and violently unstable. He hurled it point-blank.

Percy shattered it mid-air with a flick of his wrist.

Ice spears erupted from the platform, punching upward into the orb and detonating it prematurely. The explosion blasted heat and shrapnel in all directions, forcing both fighters apart. Liam flipped backward through the firestorm, landing lightly on one hand before springing to his feet. Percy skidded several steps back, boots carving frozen lines as he reinforced the ground beneath him.

The platform was changing.

Frost spread outward from Percy’s position, creeping along the stone in branching patterns. Jagged ice ridges rose from the surface, uneven and treacherous, altering footing and angles alike. Spikes and barriers formed and collapsed in rapid succession, reshaping the battlefield with deliberate intent.

Liam charged again.

This time he didn’t go straight.

He ran along the edge of a rising ice ridge, flames flaring from his feet as he vaulted upward, then kicked off sideways, rebounding at a sharp angle that sent him spiraling toward Percy’s flank. Inferno Edge carved downward, slicing through an incoming wall of ice as if it were paper, the heat shearing clean lines through frozen constructs before they could fully solidify.

Percy responded in kind.

Ice burst upward around him, forming layered shields and angled plates that redirected blows rather than stopping them outright. His sword thrust forward in quick, surgical jabs, each one aimed not to kill but to force repositioning, to herd Liam into disadvantageous terrain. Shards exploded with every impact, the air filled with glittering debris and hissing steam.

Still, something was slipping.

Percy frowned.

He was reacting on time, blocking correctly, and countering efficiently.

And yet, he was always half a step late.

Liam’s attacks came in patterns that suggested logic—feints into real strikes, pressure into sudden withdrawal—but then broke that logic at the last possible moment. A slash that should have followed through instead turned into a kick. A retreat became a forward burst. Movements that should have obeyed momentum simply… didn’t.

Percy tried to read intent.

And found nothing to grasp.

’No…’ Percy realized as he narrowly avoided a spinning backhand slash that carved fire across his shoulder guard. ’It’s not that he’s unpredictable.’

It was worse.

Liam wasn’t thinking in sequences anymore.

He moved like an instinct given form.

Unbeknownst to Percy, this was Unified Flow at work—decision and reaction fused into a single continuous current, where conscious tactics fed into instinct and instinct reshaped tactics in real time.

The next exchange came fast.

Liam hurled one dagger.

It spun end over end, trailing dark mist as it cut through the air toward Percy’s head. Percy dodged smoothly, stepping aside while raising an ice wall to intercept the follow-up he knew was coming.

And it did.

Liam closed the distance instantly, the remaining dagger flashing toward Percy’s chest in a clean, lethal thrust. Percy countered on reflex, sword snapping down to parry—

Only for Liam’s empty hand to suddenly be full again.

The thrown dagger reappeared in his grip mid-motion, yanked from Void Storage in the blink of an eye, its sudden presence turning a predictable strike into a deadly cross-angle slash.

Percy reacted by pure instinct.

He twisted violently, ice surging to reinforce his guard as the blade grazed past his face. Pain flared hot and sharp as the edge cut across his left cheek, a thin line of blood immediately freezing at the edges.

But Percy was still standing.

Yet that wasn’t enough.

Liam dismissed the dagger in his left hand entirely.

Shadow swallowed it whole as it vanished, and in its place, heat condensed violently. A miniature sun bloomed in the center of his palm, brighter and denser than any before, its surface roiling with compressed fire myst. Liam drove it forward with his full body weight, slamming it directly into Percy’s ribcage.

The impact was catastrophic.

The explosion sent Percy skidding backward across the platform, ice and stone shattering beneath him as he was hurled several meters away. Smoke, steam, and debris engulfed the area, obscuring everything in a roiling cloud.

When it cleared, Percy was still standing, though barely.

A thick, hastily formed layer of ice coated his ribs, cracked and smoking where the miniature sun had struck. Frost peeled away in sheets as the heat dissipated, but the damage was undeniable. His breath came out in sharp, cold bursts as he forced his body to stabilize.

But he didn’t have time to recover as he realized Liam was gone.

He was above.

Percy’s eyes snapped upward just in time to see him descending from the air, both daggers in hand once more, dark myst coiling tightly around the blades like living smoke. Gravity seemed to hesitate around him as his body twisted mid-fall.

Before Percy could draw another breath—

Liam swung.

Both daggers came down in a brutal, crossing arc, carving an X through the air as shadow curled around them.

“Shadow Rend.”

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