The world inside the vortex was a blender.

Alaric stood in the eye of the storm. Dust, rocks, and invisible blades of wind whipped around him at hurricane speeds.

Shallow cuts appeared on his cheeks and arms every second, stinging like paper cuts bathed in salt.

"DIE!" Jett's voice echoed from everywhere at once, distorted by the wind.

Jett was moving inside the tornado, using the centrifugal force to accelerate.

He was a blur of green mana, circling closer and closer, preparing to fillet the giant standing in the center.

Alaric didn't move his feet. He couldn't. The wind pressure was trying to lift him off the ground.

He looked down at The Anvil.

'I'm seriously starting to hate wind element users", Alaric muttered in complaint as his eyes darted left and right.

If he were to take down Jett, then something had to change.

Right now, right here, he had to surpass his limits.

He took a deep breath. The Titan's Capacitor in his chest thumped.

Thump-Thump.

Akin to an engine revving, its beat echoes through the stadium.

Thump-Thump.

With every thump, the atmosphere lowered. After a few seconds, the crowd even felt silent, unable to process what they were seeing.

Alaric gripped the handle of The Anvil with both hands. His knuckles turned white.

He ignored the wind slicing his uniform. He ignored the blood running down his forehead.

He watched the blur of Jett circling to his left.

'Timing,' Alaric told himself. 'Just like hitting the baseballs Lukas threw.'

Closed his eyes and used a move he had practised for a while now

Boom!

He swung at the air in front of Jett.

[Titan Art: Kinetic Displacement.]

Alaric torqued his hips. The muscles in his back bulged, tearing the remains of his shirt.

He swung the 400-pound slab of Mythril with every ounce of strength in his body.

The sword moved.

Instantly, under his immense strength, a large portion of air was displaced

The sheer surface area of the flat blade, combined with the terrifying velocity of the swing, created a localised wall of high pressure.

It was like swinging a door in a small room, but a thousand times harder.

WHAM.

The air pressure wave slammed into the rotating tornado.

It disrupted the flow. The vortex instantly choked.

The perfect aerodynamic circle was shattered by the sudden intrusion of a vacuum wave.

With this move, he had used pure strength to triumph over magic, taking one step closer to his goal of reaching the peak without mana or aura

And Jett, who was riding the wind, suddenly found himself running on nothing.

"What—?" Jett gasped as his momentum faltered. He stumbled in mid-air, his wind mana scattering.

For one split second, Jett stopped moving. He hung suspended in the air, eyes wide with horror, right in the path of the follow-through.

Alaric grinned.

"Found you."

Alaric didn't stop the swing. Instead, he pivoted on his heel, turning the displacement swing into a strike.

[Titan Art: Home Run.]

CRUNCH.

The flat side of The Anvil connected with Jett.

Jett managed to raise his [Wind Shield] at the last microsecond.

Unfortunately, it didn't matter.

Physics is a cruel mistress.

When an object with massive mass meets an object with little mass, the lighter object does not resist; instead, it accelerates.

BOOM.

The sound was like a cannon shot.

Jett, in return, was launched into the air at speeds that made it hard for anyone to react.

He became a green blur, rocketing across the arena faster than he had ever run.

He crossed the fifty meters to the perimeter wall in less than a second.

CRACK.

Jett hit the stone wall of the stadium.

With a loud bang, his whole body was embedded in the wall. The stone brickwork spiderwebbed, cratering inward around his body.

He stuck there for a moment, as a cartoon character plastered to a windshield, before gravity remembered he existed.

Jett peeled off the wall and fell face-first into the dirt.

Thud.

He didn't move. His scimitars clattered to the ground a moment later.

Alaric finished his swing, the momentum spinning him around once before he planted The Anvil back on the ground.

CLANG.

Dust settled. The tornado was gone.

Alaric wiped the blood out of his eye.

"Fore," Alaric whispered.

The arena was dead silent. The Announcer's jaw was unhinged. The crowd was frozen.

"W-WINNER... ALARIC OF CLASS F!"

….............

[Location: VIP Box – Distinguished Guests]

Professor Arthur stared at the arena, his mouth opening and closing like a fish.

There was no "artifact" to blame this time. There was no trickery. There was no complex spell formula.

That was just brute force. Horrifying, simple, undeniable brute force.

"He..." Arthur stammered. "He disrupted the airflow... with a sword? That weapon... It's not a sword. It's fucking a fan! A four-hundred-pound fan."

Duke Vane stopped swirling his wine. His expression had shifted from amusement to cold calculation.

"That boy is like a siege weapon," Duke Vane murmured. "He turned the opponent's speed into a perfect counter."

He turned his gaze to Damien.

"You are breeding quite the monster group, Professor Mozart. It seems this competition is going to be quite the surprise."

However, to this praise, Damien just sipped his tea, hiding his smile behind the porcelain cup.

"I simply help them find their talents, Duke Vane," Damien said smoothly. "Alaric has always been strong. He just needed a little push"

Isabelle leaned in close, her voice a barely audible whisper behind her fan.

"Young Master," she hissed, her voice trembling with excitement.

"The odds. The Noble Houses are trying to hedge their bets. But it's too late. The payout... if we win..."

"I know," Damien whispered back, watching Alaric drag his sword back into the tunnel.

He looked at the digital board displaying the tournament brackets. Class F had swept the first round.

"The money is good, Isabelle. But the look on Arthur's face?"

Damien glanced at the pale, sweating instructor who was frantically taking notes.

"That is priceless."

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