162 Honor Duel

By the time the crowd formed a wide circle around us, Amelia was already gone, slipping into the woods to scout the dragon’s supposed lair. We both found the whole situation too convenient. Injured scouts “resting” at the rear, their minds hollowed, and their thoughts repeating like broken glass. The expedition claimed they had gone mad after witnessing the dragon. But I pried deeper with my telepathy, pushing past their apathy, and the truth was simple… They hadn’t even reached the dragon. Something else had tampered with their minds.

A lesser telepath would’ve dismissed the numbness as trauma. Amelia and I tried to talk to them in every way we could, from friendly to hostile, and curious, yet they never responded. Despair trapped them like puppets with cut strings.

Amelia volunteered to scout ahead alone. I hated it, but she was the only one who could go unnoticed. And with everyone watching me and Abner, it was the best cover we were ever going to get.

I had to trust she wouldn’t end up like those husks.

Abner stepped forward, sword already drawn. He lifted his blade into a disciplined stance, his posture coiled and sharp.

I unsheathed my sword and raised it lazily. “Just a heads-up,” I said loud enough for the soldiers to hear, “this is the first time I’m wielding a sword.”

Instantly, the crowd roared in disapproval.

“Dishonorable!”

“Mocking the duel!”

“Coward!”

“Shameful!”

“Fight properly!”

Perfect. The bait wriggled in the water, and they all swallowed it whole.

Abner’s jaw tightened. “Your cheap provocations won’t work on me.”

“I guess we’ll see,” I muttered. I copied his stance perfectly, down to the angle of his blade, the placement of his feet, and the tension in his shoulders. I pushed my empathy and telepathy to full sensitivity, mapping every flicker in his mind, every pulse of intent, and every twitch of muscle.

I would stick to enhancer-level movement first. No intangibility unless death came knocking. Electrokinesis only if he pushed me into a corner.

“Come at me,” I said, eyes locked on him. “Give me your best shot.”

We stood still.

One second.

Five seconds.

Half a minute.

The camp grew restless. Whispers rose. Then boos.

“What are they doing?”

“Swing already!”

“This is pathetic!”

Under the noise, sweat formed beneath Abner’s eyes. I felt his heartbeat picking up, anxiety edging toward panic. Little beads of sweat formed on his eyebrow.

His thoughts bled through like cracks in glass.

“How? His stance earlier was atrocious. Now he moves like a master in a single breath.”

“When I try to use my superspeed… he already knows where I’ll land.”

“Every predicted future puts me at a disadvantage.”

“If I unleash the magic in my sword and miss, he’ll electrocute me to death.”

“What is this man? What kind of gift is this? The electricity I understand… but the precision? This is like fighting a puppet controlled by a grandmaster.”

“Unless his highness grants me his blessing… I can’t win.”

Precognition, then. That explained his hesitance. He saw every outcome, and none favored him. Superspeed mixed with future sight would normally be terrifying, but he couldn’t see far enough to counter what he didn’t understand.

And this “blessing from his highness” was definitely tied to Prince Grant’s gift. Another layer to unravel.

I smirked and tilted my head at him. “Hey, Abner.”

He braced, expecting a strike.

Instead, I grinned wider.

“I just saw your mom last week. She asked me to check on you and said if you start sweating like that again, I should remind you to hydrate.”

The crowd froze and then erupted into laughter and outrage at once.

“Oh, I feel bad, but I guess I don’t mind having a son like you,” I added, cruelly. “Your mom’s so generous, there’s a real chance I’m your dad and neither of us knows it.”

“I’m fucking older than you!”

The moment the yo-mama joke left my mouth, the crowd erupted like a kicked beehive.

“Abner, you coward!”

“Even your mother fights better!”

“Where’s your pride, Royal Guard?!”

“Your mama’s so fat, the kingdom’s taxes increased!”

I didn’t even have to try. With a simple nudge of empathy, I redirected their irritation toward him. I couldn’t plant detailed thoughts, since it was too risky with my weakened telepathy, but emotions? Emotions flowed like water. Irritation, mockery, and impatience. I fed all of it straight into the crowd, then laced Abner’s mind with a sharp spike of impatience.

His composure cracked.

In the next instant, he vanished.

A sharp whistle cut through the air as Abner reappeared behind me, his sword carving for my neck.

Gasps exploded, followed by cheers.

“That’s it!”

“End him!”

“Show that cocky brat his place!”

The reaction of the crowd was as expected, since it was quite rare for the royal guards to show their strength.

I ducked cleanly, guided by the sudden burst of killing intent I sensed through my empathy. My body moved before thought intervened, and my sword struck forward with enhancer precision.

The thrust landed squarely in the center of Abner’s chest.

The crowd’s reaction was immediate.

“Boo!”

“What kind of thrust is that?!”

“He’s poking him like a child!”

“Swing properly, idiot!”

I ignored them. Abner parried my blade with his armguard, redirecting my momentum to the side. His superspeed carried him forward, sword tip flashing straight toward my forehead with the intent to drive through bone.

I shoved my sheathe upward, jamming it into his exposed throat. The strike disrupted his balance and ruined his killing swing.

Abner stumbled, thoughts rattling under the shock.

“Calm down. Calm down. Too sloppy. I must focus. It’s unfortunate. You could’ve been useful—”

His elbow knocked the sheathe aside.

A clean path opened for his blade.

For a heartbeat, he saw the future where his sword pierced my skull. Then something changed.

Abner recoiled, leaping back as if burned, hand gripping his throat.

“What… was that?” His voice trembled. “I… I don’t understand…”

I smirked disdainfully at his direction. “Are you seriously asking me that?”

“I just died,” his mind whispered, hollow and disbelieving. “My throat… cut… how?”

I stared at him calmly.

I had combined my empathy and telepathy to recreate John’s empathic killing-intent technique. Not simple hostility. Not fear. It was the feeling of death itself. The visceral certainty of a blade slicing through his throat. I flooded him with that image, that pressure, and that instinctual dread.

My version was cruder and weaker than when I was at my peak. It was wrapped in genuine fury and the desire to kill. But it worked.

The crowd erupted again, this time aiming their fury at Abner.

“What are you doing?!”

“Why’d you jump back?!”

“You had him!”

“Royal Guard, my ass… fight properly!”

“Did you chicken out?!”

This situation was good for me. Humiliating Abner wasn’t just satisfying. It pushed him exactly where I wanted him. With his pride torn open in front of the crowd, he no longer had the luxury of restraint. If he wanted to salvage even a scrap of his reputation, he had to take me seriously.

And as expected… he finally did.

Abner vanished in a crack of displaced air, dragging afterimages across the circle. His superspeed snapped from one point to another, each movement sharp, disciplined, and lethal. It was about as fast as Windbreaker before he left the Watch.

But I’d dealt with faster.

I parried the first strike cleanly, then the second, and then the fifth. Sparks burst between our blades, steel ringing against steel in a violent staccato. Abner’s swordsmanship was precise and calculating, each movement honed by years of training.

Mine wasn’t.

Mine was just a growing imitation, graceful only because I could read his intent through empathy and accuracy sharpened by telepathy threading through every twitch in his mind. Every time he feinted left, my body danced right. Every time he shifted his weight, I slipped under the arc of his blade. When he spun to cut at my ribs, I stepped into the attack and parried with a whisper-thin margin.

Our swords collided again and again, sparks flying in bright arcs around us, drawing flashes of excitement and confusion from the crowd.

He fought like a master.

I fought like someone who was learning mastery by dissecting it in real time.

As our blades clashed, I felt myself improving with each exchange, tuning my muscles, sharpening my precision, and narrowing gaps in my stance. What had started as mimicry was becoming fluent motion, the sword becoming an extension of my nerves, my instincts, and my pulse.

But it still wasn’t enough.

I wanted to see the so-called “magic” in his sword.

So I pushed deeper.

I flooded my muscles with enhancer strength, then threaded electricity through my nervous system. My thoughts sharpened. My perception deepened. Every neuron fired with crackling clarity. Tiny arcs of electricity danced along my blade.

Abner noticed instantly.

His next strike hesitated by a fraction. It was barely visible, but it was enough.

I slipped in a counter. Then another. Then another!

He grew more flustered with each one.

But Abner wasn’t helpless. He began adapting to the killing intent I had shown him earlier, anticipating it, rejecting it, and cutting through it with sheer discipline. His mind steadied into cold calculation as he fought through the fear I’d forced into him.

We exchanged blows at a blistering pace, and with each pass, I felt myself gaining ground, tightening the noose around him with pure momentum.

I forced an opening, lacking any intent to kill. There was no bloodlust for him to see and nothing for him to read. It was an assassin’s strike straight at his heart.

If he did nothing, he would die.

Fear exploded out of him into pure and sharp terror. His precognition must have shown him his death in brutal clarity.

His sword burst into blue light.

His speed spiked so violently the air screamed. The blade parried mine in a blink, the impact jarring up my arm, and he countered with a killing thrust aimed straight at my skull.

“Ah, shit,” I thought. “I might actually die.”

With the clarity of my Researcher instincts, I finally recognized the truth behind the “magic” in his weapon. It wasn’t magic at all. Just advanced bio-tinkering. A weapon engineered to supercharge speed, stripping away drag, and slicing through air resistance like it didn’t exist. No wonder the thing felt wrong.

I hated being forced to use intangibility at this moment.

But what I hated even more… was the idea of losing in front of this many people.

I wouldn’t admit it to most people, but yeah… I was vain. There was a reason my Eclipse persona wore a tailored suit and a porcelain mask. Pride wasn’t a sin. It was a motivator.

In the end, I doubled down.

I used empathy on myself, pumping my body full of adrenaline. It was the same trick Onyx used. My heart hammered. My nerves blazed. My muscles tightened with raw survival instinct.

But even that wasn’t enough.

So I added electricity.

Like Light did with his superspeed, I flooded my system with current. My movements sharpened to a razor point, every thought snapping through my mind with lightning intensity.

If I was going to die, I’d make damn sure I took him with me.

I swung my sword with the intent to behead him, electrocute him,  and end him in one stroke.

Of course, Abner did the same.

For the eternity of one heartbeat, we were both dead.

Then… Abner stopped.

I stopped a fraction later.

His blade was inches from my throat. Mine pressed against the side of his neck, electricity humming hungrily along the edge.

He glared at me like he wanted to strangle me bare-handed.

“You crazy bastard!”

Abner’s teeth ground so hard I heard it over the roaring crowd.

“You—” he spat, breath ragged, “—please, declare it a draw.”

Prince Grant’s voice cut through the tension like a sword.

“Enough! The duel ends in a draw!”

The crowd erupted into cheers.