I held Veyra’s hand and walked at the same pace as her assistant pushed her. We passed the curtains, and bright stage lights lit our entrance.

  The stage wasn’t a hockey arena with stands all around. It was closer to a concert platform, though over a thousand seats still extended well into the hall ahead. Above us, two huge displays would show the matches. The ambient light from the displays provided just as much brightness as the stage lights themselves.

  And this was only the third stage of the Worlds event.

  Only a fourth of the seats were filled, being only the group stage, though I spotted Anna and my family with Ricky right away. My sister’s face lit up, and she lifted a new banner with a similar but more detailed “Assassin A” design. Around her was a flurry of Nomnom Catones banners and plushies from the merch stands held up high. Despite that, Anna wasn’t deterred, grinning wide.

  Then my family saw Veyra, in her wheelchair, and everyone’s eyes turned to curiosity.

  We walked to our game pods, marked blue. I smiled at Veyra there, saying, “Let’s do this.”

  She nervously nodded. I slid into my game pod, while Veyra’s assistant lifted her into the pod. Was she nervous about the match? I’d been way more nervous about meeting her.

  Focus, I told myself. Anna is watching. We didn’t come here for hugs and kisses. We practiced for weeks.

  I logged in, and virtual reality took me in. I picked my gear pieces, choosing the same items I’d been using, and I loaded into the arena.

  ***

  I found myself above the clouds, in a landscape very similar to the Ray Dragon event. To my right was a tall wall-like mountainside pointing straight up, and the ground was flat, as if a perfect triangle had been cut out of a mountain. To the left, a steep fall led to the clouds.

  Veyra spawned next to me, in her red hair and her beautiful robe. I wanted nothing more than to grin and hug her, but the pressure in my chest made me too nervous. I just smiled at her like an idiot.

  “We’re finally here,” I said.

  Her attention was on the opposite side, where our opponents were spawning in. “Let’s focus on the match. Now is not the time to talk.”

  “Yep, let’s win first,” I said.

  “Remember, it’s a public gearset tournament,” Veyra said. “We have five minutes to look at their gear. We shouldn’t be caught off guard by any surprise skills.”

  “Right,” I said, and I opened the system menu, which let us study our opponents’ item sets.

  Our first opponent was Nomnom Catones. A light-hearted but respected top ten guild of livestreamers. They were known for being bad at just about everything, while still somehow always showing up on the leaderboards with surprising results. They were definitely the most popular guild fighting today.

  The three members that loaded in were, Firtan, their barbarian tank, rank 73, MissKitty, their fire mage, rank 89, and ErrinLol an aura master girl with cat ears and a pink monk’s robe, rank 91.

  “Look at all the active abilities and passives,” Veyra said with her eyes already on the system menu, studying their items. “Firtan has insane defence buffs. That’ll be good for your build, but he’s resistant to crits. Their fire mage seems to just stack spell power and cooldown reduction. You’ll die in one hit. And you should know what Errin is like.”

  “She’ll charge in and get one-shotted in her usual style,” I said.

  “Yes, but she’s still a dangerous aura master,” Veyra said. “Her knuckle dusters give her a twenty percent increase to aura manipulation.”

  I skimmed through their items, noting all of their items and whatever Veyra warned me about. They wore epic uniques or above in all gear slots, but I didn’t see anything particularly dangerous. They all had nice combinations to buff certain class skills by insane amounts, but In comparison, I was fairly certain our mythic spellbook was much more threatening.

  I had already tried to assassinate Nomnom Catones members in the past, since they were easy to track with everyone livestreaming. I’d once dueled one of their members and won over a year ago, when my set was awful.

  Now we fought against their top members, though, who were all fully prepared.

  “Let’s charge in with plan A,” I said, spinning my daggers.

  Veyra seemed nervous, but she also agreed. We had some time to double-check everything our opponents had in their items, until the five minute preparation phase ended.

  “Ready?” I asked.

  “Ready.”

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  The clock hit zero, and all restrictions on our characters were lifted, as the announcer called “Fight!”

  The instant that [Shadow Dash] became active, I locked eyes with ErrinLol—the girl who was known for starting every fight by recklessly charging forward—and dashed straight to her, my vision returning from the shadows right in front of her face. I slashed at her.

  Errin flinched, caught off guard as she weaved a thread of red aura to block my dagger slicing at her throat. She counterattacked, swiping at me, which I didn’t block at all, but instead traded a hit, landing a dagger in her shoulder. My health dropped to 45%, while my dagger glowed subtly with time magic.

  Astral Defiance was active. For ten seconds, I dealt 50% extra time damage with all attacks. If I died during that time, I’d be healed instead and that would evolve to 100%. I could freely attack her without fearing death.

  “Errin, don’t hit, just dodge!” MissKitty yelled. “Ten seconds!”

  Errin’s cat-like face grimaced as she desperately defended. They’d read what Veyra’s spellbook did, and it seemed their strategy was to wait out its effects. If Errin could defend for ten seconds, she could kill me after without having to worry about my double time damage.

  Wrong decision, I thought, internally grinning. If they weren’t attacking me for ten seconds, that meant I could be as reckless as I wanted. Ten seconds was more than enough to cause havoc.

  Errin blocked my next three attacks with precision, without using the system. To her credit, she was a top player with sharp instincts.

  But since she couldn’t attack, I didn’t need to even think about blocking. All of my efforts went into hitting her. My fourth hit landed, the fifth was blocked, and the sixth landed as well, my defence stat gradually rose.

  A battle of fire and time magic took place beside us while MissKitty and Veyra traded spells. Firtan protected his mage, letting MissKitty focus purely on the offense, while Veyra was mostly defending.

  Plan A relied on the first ten seconds of the fight. We could only use Astral Defiance once. It was up to me to kickstart this fight.

  I kept slashing wildly, while Errin used all shapes of her aura for defence. She was being overwhelmed, more and more stacks of evisceration landing on her body, now over ten and counting. She stepped back, panicking, until six seconds into my spells she blasted [Aura Scissors] at me, cutting my body in half.

  The sharp threads of aura cut me in half, yet the halves didn’t separate, my body fully intact.

  [Blood Desperation - Active Conditions Met]

  [Straight Attacks Are 100% More Effective When Under 40% Health]

  [Astral Rage - Active Conditions Met]

  [Attacks Deal 100% bonus Time Damage]

  Errin’s panic continued as she slashed more threads of aura at me, which I was now forced to block with The Immortal. My body glowed with a white mist of my own from [Astral Rage], If I hit any crit at all, Errin was dead.

  MissKitty gritted her teeth, seeing the struggle. She redirected the casting of her next [Volley Of Fire] at me, hoping to help Errin.

  Except, she used system casting. By the time her spell was half-way done, the frost of [Absolute Zero] caught not only her staff, canceling the spell, but her feet as well. Veyra shot an icicle at her head as well, which Firtan managed to block with chestplate by moving in the way.

  But MissKitty’s spell was canceled, and I had a free duel against Errin. I used [Afterimage] as a shadow, dashing it behind her, which made her snap around, slashing her aura behind her with speeds only the very best could manage.

  But she’d still hit my afterimage, leaving her back open. I activated [Eviscerate] and thrust my dagger into her nape.

  Slash.

  With [Astral Rage] still active for six seconds, I dashed straight to Firtan, hitting Sablethorn against his helmet from behind. The heavy impact knocked him a step forward, and I stole over a hundred defence with one hit.

  He turned around, [Swinging] at me, and I landed a perfect block. The parry didn’t proc, but I had more than enough time to land another hit on his breastplate. He gritted his teeth, casting [War Cry], enhancing the speed of his swings, followed by [Demon Crusher], a superbuffed version of [Swing], which hit three attacks in quick succession.

  I didn’t take any risks blocking, still lacking defence. I stepped back, dodging the first, and the next combo attacks came. For a tank, his sword was insanely fast.

  I struggled to stack evisceration, but his full attention was forced onto me. It didn’t take three seconds for a slash to come behind him as one too many [Chronorift] spikes killed MissKitty.

  That [Chronorift] spread to Firtan’s feet, and a flurry of spikes crushed him from below. He turned around, attention shifting to Veyra as well.

  Now that [Demon Crusher] was over, his swings were normal system assisted basic attacks again. I kept hitting him, stealing defence, while his health rapidly fell to Veyra’s attacks.

  I didn’t even need to land a critical strike for my stacks to take effect when a third slash came, and Firtan fell.

  The battlefield fell silent, all three opponents dead. Text appeared into the sky. It read,

  [Winner: Team Solo Mage!]

  I required a moment to catch my breath, grinning while I did so. I’d fought almost at my limit there. Even though the battle barely lasted for twenty seconds, Nomnom Catones were top players. These matches wouldn’t be easy.

  “Nice.” I grinned at Veyra.

  She nodded. “Good work.”

  She opened her system menu and studied our next opponents.

  Although, it didn’t look like she was studying anything at all, but was tapping her finger on the system menu nervously.

  “What?” she asked. “Let’s focus up. Three more fights to go. We need to beat Luxueux.”

  “And after those three,” I said, “the rest of the day will be free. We’ll have time for a date.”

  She lowered her head, tucking her chin in her robe, as if to hide. “Yes… And don’t remind me of that! I need to focus!”

  “Yes, yes,” I said with a laugh, and we waited in virtual reality for our next match to start.

  ***

  Our next two opponents before Luxueux both fell to plan A. Neither guild Forlorn nor MaximizeDeath could deal with the [Astral Defiance] opener.

  Forlorn had an interesting strategy of taking their tank’s armor off to stop me from stealing defence, but that let Veyra three-shot him, making the battle an easy two versus two. MaximizeDeath tried to burst me down right away, sending all of their ultimates to me.

  And sadly, I actually died that round. Not because their spells killed me, but because Veyra’s [Time Freeze] nuke destroyed the entire battlefield, including me, since I didn’t have [Shadow Dash] active and I was too far to hug her.

  Absolutely tragic.

  Our wait times between matches were longer than the matches themselves, since our opponents all took more than five minutes for each battle. That was how fights usually went, with players slowly lowering each other’s resources.

  Finally, we loaded into our final match of the day against Luxueux, where Fuhad was already eyeing me as if he had a chance to win.

  After you all are dead, I’ll finally hug Veyra for real.

  20 chapters ahead on !