His physical speed backed by three years of genuine development was not something to dismiss, and the pattern was well constructed.

Neil covered the first strike, slipped the angle of the second, and on the third he made a decision. Instead of pulling back to absorb it cleanly, he stepped forward into it and let the strike land across his shoulder while he moved inside Varn’s space entirely.

One hand closed on Varn’s collar.

The other drove a single controlled strike directly into his chest.

Varn left the ground.

He hit the far edge of the stage and caught himself just before going over the side, one foot hanging in the air for a moment before he pulled it back, and stood there with his chest rising and falling visibly and his eyes wide in a way he was not quite managing to control. 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

He looked across the stage at Neil, who had not moved from the spot where he had thrown the strike.

The hall was absolutely silent for a long moment.

Then it wasn’t.

"He took the hit deliberately to get inside his range—"

"3rd Origin Silver. He just sent a 3rd Origin Silver flying—"

"What rank is he actually? What is his actual strength?"

"Who is this person?"

Varn breathed steadily for a moment. Then he straightened, adjusted his collar with one hand, and looked at Neil across the stage with an expression that had changed entirely from the one he had worn when he stepped up.

The measuring quality was still there but it was sitting differently now, recalibrated around a much larger set of unknowns.

He gave a short, clean nod.

Neil nodded back.

Mantis raised his hand.

"Winner, Neil Yates!"

Randy located the warden he had most recently made a bet with and put his arm around his shoulders with the warmth of a person who had just won something.

"That is my student." He said with complete serenity.

The warden looked at him with the expression of someone calculating how long it would take to get their money back through future bets and arriving at a discouraging answer.

***

Meanwhile, in a different part of the settlement entirely, Cynthia moved through a narrow corridor that the maps didn’t show.

She had slipped away from the event hall without drawing attention, which for her was not a difficult thing to accomplish.

A crowd that large, with that many powerful people occupying each other’s interest, provided more than enough cover. She had simply stopped being visible and found a different path.

The settlement of Fifty was built in layers, the kind of place that had grown outward and upward and inward over a long time without anyone designing it deliberately, which meant the spaces between the parts that were designed had their own logic. Cynthia had spent time learning that logic before arriving.

The corridor she was in now connected a storage section of the outer ring to an older administrative structure that most of the current settlement’s residents didn’t know had ever been used for anything.

The walls were older stone, the seams between blocks wider than modern construction, and the air had the specific quality of spaces that didn’t get much circulation.

She moved without sound.

The information she had pointed to a vault room beneath the administrative structure, accessible through a maintenance route that had been sealed for years and unsealed recently by someone who did not want it on any official record.

That detail alone had told her the treasure was real and that someone else already knew it was here.

She reached the end of the corridor and stopped at the edge of a wider space below her, crouching at the top of a short drop and looking down.

Three guards, positioned at intervals, with the particular stillness of people who were being paid enough to stay awake. None of them were weak. Two were 2nd Origin and the third carried the pressure of someone at least at the Diamond class of the same tier.

She studied the rotation for a moment, mapping the gaps between their sight lines with the patience of someone who had done this kind of thing before and had no interest in doing it carelessly.

Varn stepped off the stage without a word, and the hall went back to its noise.

Neil stepped down too, rolling his shoulder once where Varn’s strike had grazed it. Nothing serious, barely worth noting, but it was the first hit he had taken all evening and his body had registered it out of habit.

Randy materialised beside him almost immediately, looking like a man who had just won something significant and was having difficulty containing it.

"That’s five." He said.

"I know how to count." Neil replied.

"Five clean wins, not a single loss, and the last one was a 3rd Origin Silver." Randy continued anyway, as though Neil hadn’t spoken. "Do you understand what that does for my reputation in this room right now? Several very important people saw that."

"Good for you." Neil said.

"It is good for me, yes, thank you for acknowledging that." Randy said, entirely sincerely, then he clapped Neil once on the back and went off to locate someone else to argue with about money.

Neil found a chair at the edge of the floor and sat down, reaching for whatever was on the table nearest to him. It turned out to be water, which was fine. He drank it and looked out across the hall, letting his attention rest without focusing on anything particular.

The crowd had that specific quality now of people who had watched something they hadn’t expected and were still processing it.

Conversations were louder, more animated, with the particular energy of people who wanted to talk about what they had just seen before the feeling faded. Several pairs of eyes drifted his way and drifted away again when he didn’t do anything interesting.

He was aware of Caleb across the hall. The wolf prince had not moved from his position since the fights began, and his expression had settled into something that was working very hard to remain neutral. He was scanning the crowd with a regularity that had nothing to do with casual interest.

Neil noted it and said nothing internally about it.

’Nemo, any message from teacher?’ he asked.

"Not yet, master." Nemo replied.

He settled back and waited.

***

Elsewhere in the hall, the evening was having a different effect on different people.

Tred’s voice was still ringing in Robert’s ears long after the call had ended, the particular quality of his father’s fury sitting in his chest like something he couldn’t swallow or spit out.

He stood near the edge of the gathering with Jane beside him, and neither of them had spoken since the call cut off.

The people nearby had heard everything. That part was unavoidable. Some had the decency to pretend otherwise, and some did not bother.

"We are going back." Robert said finally, his voice flat.

Jane looked at him. "What?"

"Your grandfather wants us home. Tonight." He said, still not looking at her, his jaw tight. "We leave within the hour."

Jane’s first reaction was immediate and involuntary. Her eyes moved across the hall without her meaning them to, searching without quite admitting that she was searching.

Neil was sitting near the far edge of the floor, alone, with a glass in his hand and no particular expression on his face.

She looked at him for a moment.

Then his chair was empty.

She blinked. She had not seen him move, had not seen him stand or walk away, had simply looked and then looked again and he was not there anymore.

"Jane." Robert said.

She turned away and said nothing, Neil still needed time anyway so she will wait for him.

Jane just hoped the love for her had not yet faded from his heart.

The signal came quietly, the way Cynthia did most things.

A faint pulse through the communication token she had given Neil before the event, barely perceptible, easy to miss if he hadn’t been waiting for it.

A token Neil didn’t even know he had until it buzzed over his arm.

Two short pulses and then nothing.

Neil set his glass down.

He sat for another minute without moving, letting the moment pass without drawing attention to the act of leaving.

Then he stood, stretched his arms above his head in a way that looked entirely natural, and walked toward the far side of the hall at a pace that had no urgency in it whatsoever.

He turned a corner behind a group of beastkin merchants who were deep in a loud argument about shipping fees, and once he was out of the direct sightlines from the main floor, he activated Escape.

The ability settled over him like stepping into cold water. His presence disappeared from the space around him, not invisible exactly, more like he stopped registering as something worth noticing. Walls ceased to be obstacles. The air around him went quiet in a specific way that he had grown used to.

He moved through the settlement’s interior, passing through two walls and a storage corridor, following the direction of the signal.

The settlement of Fifty was large and layered in the way that places grown organically over time always were, with older sections beneath newer ones and passages that connected things no current map bothered to show.

Cynthia had clearly spent time understanding its structure before arriving, because the route her signal pointed him toward was not anything he would have found on his own.

❖❖❖

Thanks for reading...