The silence in the Old Gymnasium didn't break. It shattered.

There was no referee. There was no countdown. There was only the sound of Ashe Razar's bare foot driving into the rotted floorboards.

BOOM.

Ashe didn't run. She vanished.

It was the [Flash Art: Ground Shrink]. To the untrained eye, it looked like teleportation. To Vane's [Usurper] eyes, which were currently burning with the stolen reflexes of a Spear Saint, it was just physics abuse. She was compressing her muscles like high-tension springs and releasing the energy in a single, explosive burst.

She crossed the twenty meters between them in a heartbeat.

Her wooden sword, a blunt instrument that weighed as much as an anvil, was already descending toward Vane's collarbone. The air pressure ahead of the swing parted Vane's hair.

Vane didn't block. You didn't block a train.

He dropped.

He collapsed his knees, letting gravity take him down faster than her swing could follow. The massive wooden blade whistled over his head, the wind shear alone cutting a shallow gash on his cheek.

Vane hit the floor, placed his palms flat on the wood, and kicked backward, sliding like a hockey puck.

"Too slow!" Ashe roared.

She didn't recover her stance. She simply twisted her torso mid-swing, using the momentum of the miss to fuel a horizontal slash that aimed to cut Vane in half at the waist. She spun like a top, her foot planting for the pivot.

Her foot hit the grease.

Vane had raided the maintenance shed for industrial lubricant—the kind used for heavy automaton gears. But he hadn't just poured it on the floor.

As Vane slid backward, he slammed the butt of his spear into the wood.

[Authority: Silver Fang – External Pulse]

He didn't use the mana to reinforce his body. He pushed the Silver Mana out.

It didn't look like fire or wind. It poured out of him like liquid mercury, a heavy, dense wave of silver light that rushed across the floor and infused the puddle of grease.

Usually, authorities were internal. They were meant to turn bones into steel. But Vane treated the mana like code. He forced the Silver Mana to bind with the lubricant, altering its viscosity, turning the puddle into a frictionless void.

Ashe's heel hit the Silver Slick.

The friction didn't just reduce. It vanished.

For a normal Elite, the fight would have ended there. They would have slipped, their spine would have twisted, and Vane would have put a spear through their lung.

But Ashe Razar was not a normal Elite. She was a Warlord.

As she felt the world slide out from under her, she didn't panic. She didn't flail. She roared, a guttural sound that slammed into Vane's chest like a physical blow.

[Authority: Warlord]

She didn't try to regain her balance on the grease. She drove her foot down.

CRACK.

She smashed her foot through the floorboards, shattering the wood and driving her leg knee-deep into the concrete foundation beneath. She anchored herself by literally destroying the terrain.

The grease didn't matter if you were part of the building.

With her leg buried in the floor, she halted her slide instantly. The sudden stop transferred all her rotational momentum into her upper body. She didn't lose power; she gained it.

She hurled the wooden sword at Vane.

It wasn't a throw. It was a cannon shot. The heavy timber spun through the air, tearing through the gloom.

Vane was still sliding backward. He had no leverage. He couldn't dodge.

'Spend it,' Vane thought. 'Don't hold it in. Cast it.'

He released his grip on the spear with one hand and thrust his palm forward.

[Silver Fang: Rejection Field]

He dumped 20% of his mana reserves in a single burst. The Silver Mana erupted from his palm, not as a beam, but as a shimmering, translucent wall of vibration. It was crude. It was messy. It was the kind of external projection usually reserved for Wind Mages or Telekinetics.

The flying wooden sword hit the silver field.

ZZZZZT.

The vibration screamed. The air distorted. The sword didn't stop—Vane wasn't strong enough to stop it—but the field deflected the vector. The heavy timber glanced off the silver light, changing its angle by five degrees.

It missed Vane's head by an inch.

The sword slammed into the brick wall behind him, embedding itself halfway into the masonry. Dust rained down.

Vane skidded to a halt. His hand was smoking. The skin on his palm was red and raw from the sheer friction of channeling that much density.

Silence returned to the gym.

Ashe pulled her leg out of the broken floor. She stood up, brushing splinters off her pants. She looked at the wall where her sword was buried. Then she looked at the silver residue fading on the floor.

She turned her blood-red eyes to Vane.

She wasn't smiling anymore. Her mouth was slightly open, revealing the tips of her sharp teeth.

"You projected an Authority," Ashe whispered.

She walked toward him. She didn't rush this time. She walked with the heavy, predatory gait of a creature that had just realized its prey had claws.

"An Elite can project mana," she said, tilting her head, her voice low and raspy. "Fireballs. Wind blades. Simple elements. But you..." She pointed at the fading silver light. "That is the Silver Fang. That is a physical enhancement authority. It is dense. It is heavy. To force that outside your body and shape it into a spell..."

She stopped ten feet away. The air around her began to distort.

"That isn't a warrior's technique, Vane. That is a Caster's logic. You are using a sacred martial authority like it's a cheap grease spell."

Vane leveled his spear. His mana channels burned. He felt hollowed out.

"It worked," Vane rasped.

Ashe stared at him for a long heartbeat. Then, slowly, the grin returned. It wasn't the mocking, bored grin from the cafeteria. It was wide, terrifying, and genuine.

"You are a heretic," Ashe said, delighted.

She reached up and tore the bandages off her ribs. She threw them on the floor.

"I like it."

A red aura began to bleed off her skin. It wasn't fire. It was pure, oppressive Killing Intent. The air in the gym grew heavy, the pressure dropping as if a storm were forming inside the room.

"I was going to treat you like a Duelist," Ashe said, rolling her shoulders. "But you aren't a Duelist. You are a Wizard who likes to stab people."

She lowered her stance. The floorboards groaned.

"Show me what else you can cast, Rat."

Vane felt the pressure. It was suffocating. She wasn't using a higher Rank, she was still an Elite, but the quality of her mana felt denser.

Vane stepped back. His heel touched a thin, invisible line he had strung between the squat racks.

He channeled the Silver Mana again. This time, not into the floor. Not into the air.

Into the monofilament wire.

The thin thread hummed. It began to glow with a faint, lethal silver light.

Make it sing.

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