Chapter 82

First Blood

The countdown had been ticking for over four minutes now. Neither had spoken. The knight stood in perfect stillness, longsword planted tip-down before him, helmeted head bowed over the crossguard as if in prayer. Talia had used the time to study the cathedral’s layout, memorizing every obstacle and piece of debris between them.

“Lady Talia,” Sir Garrett said suddenly, raising his head. “The time approaches. Your bearing speaks of a warrior’s discipline. I regret that honor demands only one of us leaves this holy ground.”

The countdown showed forty-seven seconds left.

Talia spoke quickly, sensing an opportunity to gain information. “Does your faith grant resurrection?”

He laughed, though not unkindly. “It would take a full Pentarchy of Priests channeling divine grace to bring about return from death. You seek our Faith paradigm, then?”

“Something like that.”

“A worthy choice. Faith sustains where mere strength fails.”

“What do you seek from my world?”

“Power to perfect my blade. To see my enemies’ weaknesses laid bare, and ensure I never know defeat.” He lifted his sword, testing its weight. “Would your power grant such insight?”

“Some of it. And with a Will as strong as yours, I’m sure you’d stretch it further.”

His helmet tilted. “You understand Will?”

Her surprise matched his. “You do too?”

“Will and Faith together are the pillars of true power.”

“Do you hear the System? The one that gave you this quest?” Talia asked.

“System?”

“The entity that brought us here. That assigned this combat trial.”

Recognition crossed his features. “Ah. You mean God.”

Talia’s breath caught. “Why do you call it God?”

“Because it is our God, as it always has been. Since the beginning of time.”

“That’s impossible. The System has existed for nine years at most. How old is your world?”

He shrugged, confused. “The Cardinals claim the world is eternal. Some madmen counting tree rings claim it can be no more than fifteen years old, but how can that be? I myself have seen twenty-three winters.”

Talia’s mind stuttered to a halt.

They were counting tree rings. The oldest trees having only fifteen rings despite claims of an eternal world. But the timeline made no sense. The System had only existed for nine years, assuming it arrived when superpowers first manifested. Unless time moved differently between realities.

And then there was Alexander’s world, where no powers existed at all. Based on what they’d learned, that had to be the true origin. The System even numbered it zero, with theirs as one. The beginning point from which everything else spawned.

But if their oldest trees showed only fifteen rings while the knight remembered twenty-three…

The implications crashed against her mind. Her stomach twisted. What if the System hadn’t conquered them and made itself their god? What if it had created them? Built an entire world, complete with people who possessed memories of lives that had never actually happened?

Were they even real?

The knight stood before her, solid and breathing, with hopes and faith and a desire to perfect his swordsmanship. But if his world was only fifteen years old and he believed he was twenty-three, what did that make him? A construct? A puppet? Something the System had dreamed into being?

She thought of the invasion, of the knights who had died fighting Grimnir and the Throne of Scales. Had they been real in any sense that mattered? Or just sophisticated props in the System’s game, given form and consciousness but no true history?

No, she decided. The confusion in Sir Garrett’s voice when she’d mentioned the System’s age had been genuine. Whatever he was, wherever he’d come from, his faith and his desire to perfect his blade were real to him. That had to count for something.

But it also meant the System might be far more than anyone had imagined. Perhaps not just a force that transformed worlds and handed out power, but one that might create them wholesale. Could it fabricate entire realities complete with false histories and populations who’d never question their origins?

There was no time to process the implications. No time to discuss what she’d learned. The knight was raising his sword, and regardless of the philosophical debate, that blade would kill her just as dead as any real one.

Both shifted into ready stances. Respect remained despite the revelation’s weight.

“May you find honor in death, Lady Talia.”

“May you find peace in it, Sir Garrett.”

The timer hit zero.

The barriers dissolved.

Stolen novel; please report.

Talia surged forward immediately. Her drone zipped high, dodging between the stone pillars that lined the nave.

Sir Garrett didn’t move from his altar. His blade swept twice, sending crescents of golden energy slicing toward the drone. It dodged both, clunky but effective at that height. The knight recognized the futility instantly.

He took a single step forward.

Slash. Step. Slash. Step.

Each movement birthed another blade wave. Talia rolled under one, sidestepped another, brought her katana up in a perfect arc to shatter a third. She’d crossed half the cathedral while he’d taken four steps.

Every prediction so far had been accurate. He was slightly faster than the knights from the invasion and more confident, but he used the same forms and attacked with the same patterns.

He shifted tactics, abandoning range for close combat.

They met with a clash that rang through the cathedral. Three exchanges, steel on steel. Before each strike, Talia read his stance, anticipating his next move. Their world had a specific style of swordplay, and if she had to guess, the man was executing it with textbook perfection.

Twenty-three winters. Still young and predictable.

As the fourth exchange began, Sir Garrett stepped back, raising his longsword high for a devastating overhead strike that would split stone and send a vertical wave of energy carving toward her. Exactly as she knew he would.

The drone dropped from above and magnetized to his blade.

Yanking it sideways.

Through his visor’s gap, she saw his eyes widen in shock. That split second of surprise when the rules changed.

Talia’s katana found the gap between breastplate and helmet with a clean, final swing.

The knight crumpled, and the cathedral fell silent, only to be disrupted by the soft ping of a notification.

—

[ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: DECISIVE VICTORY]

First to eliminate their opponent in the Multiversal Solo Combat Challenge

Reward pending

—

Talia pulled her blade free, already turning toward the opposite altar and her prize. Behind her, Sir Garrett’s form began dissolving into golden light.

“May you find peace,” she said quietly, and meant it.

She walked across the cathedral with measured steps, her drone returning to hover at her shoulder. The nave felt longer now without combat to focus her mind. Each footfall echoed in the vast space, the only sound besides the faint hum of dissolving light behind her.

The opposite altar loomed ahead. The golden sphere atop it pulsed with a steady rhythm, like a heartbeat made of light. She glanced back at where she’d started. The pedestal that had held “her” power had vanished, leaving only smooth stone.

She climbed the altar steps and stood before the sphere. Faith power. The ability to believe something into reality, to make conviction tangible. From a knight who thought his fifteen-year-old world was eternal.

Her hand hesitated above the light. Not from fear, but from the weight of what she’d learned. If the System could fabricate entire civilizations, what else was false? What other lies had they accepted as truth?

The sphere pulsed, waiting.

She pressed her palm against it.

Light exploded outward. Faith power flooded through her, alien yet somehow comprehensible. She felt it seeking harmony within her, weaving through her existing superpowers like a golden thread. The sensation was neither pleasant nor painful, just strange.

The cathedral began to fade at the edges, dissolving like Sir Garrett had.

Through the light, she caught glimpses of other arenas. They shifted as she thought of her friends. Then she saw them. Annie screaming profanities at something massive moving through murky water. Augustus dodging through impossible geometry. Alexander racing upward through a crumbling tower.

Then the light swallowed everything, and Talia saw no more.

***

Annie watched the Spinosaurus test its barrier with growing dread. The creature wasn’t just scary big; it was relentless. Its massive head brushed against the shimmer, then its shoulders, then its tail lashed out in what looked like calculated strikes. Testing for weaknesses. Learning the dimensions of its cage.

Seven tons of muscle and teeth, and it moved with an intelligence that made her stomach clench.

Her drone hovered beside her, wobbling slightly in the humid air. For a moment, she imagined it was nervous too, then caught herself. Stupid. Alexander wouldn’t program fear into a drone. That was all her, projecting onto everything around her.

The countdown showed ten seconds.

The Spinosaurus stopped its pacing and turned to face her fully. Even through the barrier, she could feel the weight of its attention. It tilted its head, studying her the same way she’d been studying it.

Five seconds.

“Okay,” Annie muttered, forcing her whole upper body to shift to metal. “Just don’t die. That’s the whole plan. Don’t die.”

Three.

Two.

One.

The barriers dissolved.

The Spinosaurus looked at her, cocked its head slightly as if curious, then took a deliberate step backward. Its eyes never left hers as it slid into the murky water with barely a ripple. Within seconds, it had vanished completely beneath the surface.

“Oh fuck.” Annie’s voice came out higher than intended. “Oh fuck fuck fuck.”

She stood on a stone platform maybe ten meters across, ancient and slick with moisture and algae. Dark water surrounded her, but she could see other structures jutting from the swamp. Broken pillars, partially collapsed buildings, toppled statues creating stepping stones and bridges. A whole ruined city turned into an aquatic hunting ground. The mist drifted across everything, limiting visibility to thirty meters at best.

Ripples appeared to her left. Then behind. Then her right.

It was circling.

Her drone tried to track the movement, sensors struggling with the murky water. Annie turned constantly, trying to keep eyes on every direction at once. Her arms were fully metal now, shaped into rough blades. Not that they’d help much against something that size.

The attack came from her blind spot.

The Spinosaurus erupted from the water at the platform’s edge, jaws wide enough to swallow her whole. Annie threw herself right, twisting in the air as her right arm extended into a longer blade. She brought it down across its snout as she passed, felt the impact jar up through her shoulder.

The blade sliced across leather and barely left a mark.

“That’s not good,” she breathed as the creature slid back into the water. “That’s really not—”

It surfaced again, and she could swear it was smiling. Water cascaded off its sail as it rose just enough to speak.

“You break so easily, metal thing.”

The words froze her. Then the Spinosaurus opened its mouth wider, and she saw her left arm between its teeth. Metal fingers still twitching. It chewed noisily, metal grinding and crumpling between jaws designed to crush bone.

Annie looked down at her left side. The entire arm was gone, jacket sleeve shredded and hanging empty. No pain, no blood. Her real arm safely phased out of reality while the metal one had taken its place. But the speed of it, the fact she hadn’t even seen the attack coming…

She was still staring at where her arm should be when the Spinosaurus swallowed.

Then it lunged.

Seven tons of predator hauled itself onto the platform. Stone cracked and tilted under the weight. Annie stumbled backward, one arm gone, platform failing beneath her feet, and the Spinosaurus bearing down with teeth like knives.

The water below looked very dark and very deep.

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