Chapter 2746 Means of Victory <TOC> Chapter 2748 Vai’s Reflection
Translator: SumTLMan
Having lost his sense of direction, Vai stumbled his way to the edge area of the arena platform.
Though still more than ten meters from the edge, he was already very close to the outer void.
Ghost Shadow’s eyes lit up; in the previous two formal wizards’ duels, victory had come by forcing the opponent out of bounds. Now it seemed he, too, could try the same?
He was tempted, but reason told him to wait; as long as Vai’s potions ran out, he would surely win.
But could he really wait until the opponent’s potions were exhausted? Would accidents occur during the attrition?
The opponent was, after all, a descendant of the Noah family; he surely had no shortage of potions and rune scrolls, and might even work out a way to break the mycobarrier?
At this moment, it was as if two different voices existed in Ghost Shadow’s mind, one named「Play It Safe」and the other named「Go For Broke」. They held diametrically different modes of thought and value orientations and, to defend themselves, argued incessantly.
Play It Safe followed the original fundamentalism of the ego, with『absolute rationality』as its core, citing maxims like「a hundred precautions, one oversight」and「one move short on the chessboard」as arguments to expound its view.
Go For Broke was the newborn radical faction; under the banner of『follow your heart』, it used stories of「hesitate when it’s time to decide and you invite chaos」to lay out its take.
For now, neither could persuade the other.
However, in such a stalemate,「Play It Safe」actually held the advantage; since one couldn’t convince the other, then do nothing, exactly in line with playing it safe.
Absent accidents, Ghost Shadow’s inclination would most likely not change.
But accidents tend to occur precisely「when you think they won’t」, and so it did.
Whether from extraordinary bad luck or something else, Vai’s path began heading straight toward the edge of the arena.
Before, he had merely hugged the vicinity within a dozen or so meters of the edge; now he was facing the void head-on.
Ghost Shadow’s heart gave a jolt, and the urge to give a helpful push rose again.
Yet the values of「Play It Safe」were Ghost Shadow’s own primal creed; he believed deeply that prudence preserved life. So even when the devil’s temptation had become a whisper, crooning by his ear, he still restrained the impulse.
He kept telling himself: the other party harbors a plot, is deliberately luring me over; I mustn’t take the bait.
But after this litany, he couldn’t help questioning himself: the opponent’s loss of direction was beyond doubt, Vai’s entering the fog was Ghost Shadow’s arrangement to begin with. Thereafter making him lose his bearings, and expanding the mycobarrier naturally by leveraging the property of the mother body attracting the child bodies, all of this lay within Ghost Shadow’s calculations.
Therefore, he shouldn’t be acting right now.
Then his walking toward the edge might not be a trap?
Perhaps he could try?
At that thought, his heart began to itch; yet years of clearing monsters in underground sewers had made him more restrained than peers at his level, and that habit of forbearance had sunk into his bones. Until all doubts were dispelled, he chose to err on the side of caution.
Not until Vai seemed to realize he was heading toward the edge and prepared to back away did Ghost Shadow finally lose patience.
Vai did not continue forward but chose to retreat; this showed that he had truly lost his way earlier and was not deliberately heading for the edge to lure an attack.
With that established, and with Vai’s endless potion drinking souring Ghost Shadow to the core, he finally decided to act.
However, even then he did not choose to rush in at once.
He had one last test to make.
He summoned a shadow modeled on his original appearance, which rose slowly from the ground’s darkness. Then, noiselessly, this shadow walked slowly toward Vai’s position.
It advanced until it was about fifty meters from Vai, then halted.
Vai did not notice that a pair of eyes in the fog was fixed on him; he kept edging back, avoiding a step off the platform.
As he retreated, Vai glared viciously toward the edge; though he said nothing, Ghost Shadow could infer his mood from the direction of his stare.
He was likely feeling the aftershock of fear while cursing the dome conjured by that black robed adjudicator.
It made sense: without the dome, Vai could have judged how far he was from the edge by the roars of those monsters in the void.
Now, unable to hear the outside and shrouded in fog, he had nearly slipped and fallen out of bounds.
Seeing Vai’s vicious look and cautious scanning of his surroundings, Ghost Shadow’s doubts vanished entirely.
He had created a shadow in his own shape precisely to see whether Vai still harbored some plot. Yet even at fifty meters the other had not noticed it, which meant his perception was still suppressed by the mycobarrier.
And fifty meters was an ideal distance for Ghost Shadow; within fifty meters his attack strength suffered no drop. So if even the shadow went unnoticed, his true body should be the same.
After multiple tests, he finally felt at ease.
His body slowly emerged from the shadows, and soon he was standing within the fog.
He looked at Vai in the distance, still stumbling, unaware of the danger about to descend, and gently removed his mask; beneath it, the corners of his lips faintly hooked up.
「It’s over.」The voiceless assertion conveyed Ghost Shadow’s utter confidence.
But the twist arrived right then.
In the distance, Vai suddenly stumbled and fell. At the same moment, a massive earth spike surged up from the ground several meters behind Ghost Shadow and, with thunderbolt ferocity, pierced straight through his body.
He hadn’t even reacted before the spike pinned him in midair.
The body at that moment was his true body. Flesh and blood were torn open into a great hole; like a ruined ragdoll, he was skewered upon the spike.
And in the distance, Vai stood up, turned his head, and looked toward Ghost Shadow.
「Yes, it’s over.」
……
The whole course of battle was baffling; even after watching the stored memory images, Angel could not find when Vai had ambushed Ghost Shadow.
Daus had said before that when he and Vai ventured outside back then, he handled the fighting, while Vai handled the setups.
Could it be that Vai had set up a scheme from the very start?
Angel pondered carefully and still thought it impossible. Vai’s actions were traceable: what he did, why he did it, and the results those actions produced, all were crystal clear.
Angel simply could not find traces of a prearranged scheme.
However, the final reversal kill certainly involved calculation. Perhaps the layout didn’t exist from the outset, but midway, when he turned the tables by plotting according to the opponent’s plan?
Angel followed this line of thought, seeking the underlying logic.
Two obvious points here posed problems: first, Ghost Shadow probed with a shadow, coming as close as fifty meters with no reaction from Vai; second, the instant Ghost Shadow’s true body rose from the shadow, Vai locked onto his position and delivered that massive impalement.
From these two points it could be seen that Vai could distinguish the real Ghost Shadow from the false. And judging by the earth spike’s readiness, Vai had even discovered his hiding place in advance; only because Ghost Shadow remained within shadow could Vai not strike, until he took on substance, whereupon Vai decisively unleashed the spike.
How had Vai managed that?
Recalling Vai’s various actions and combining them with his own knowledge of him, an answer loomed faintly in Angel’s mind.
……
「What just happened, why can’t I make sense of it?」Kael stared blankly at the scene in the arena.
One moment, Kael was still worrying about Vai; the next, the fight was over? The Sovereign of Wisdom had directly announced the result?
The situation before him reminded Kael of when, to study space knowledge, his mentor Aesop took him to the Shining Plane and shoved him into the Imperial Academy of Finance to study rational studies. Rational studies were essentially a kind of mathematics; when Kael first encountered them, the teacher would begin with the basics, one plus one, and after he took a brief doze, even just a yawn, he’d open his eyes to find the blackboard filled with formulas he couldn’t understand at all.
How similar that classroom moment was to now?
Only this time, Kael hadn’t yawned or dozed; he merely blinked once, and the battle had undergone an earthshaking change.
How many steps had been omitted in between? How had it suddenly jumped to the grand finale?
Kael looked around, then at Daus:「My lord……」
Daus naturally knew what Kael wanted to ask, but he himself had no definite answer at that moment. Moreover, he’d previously maintained that Vai’s chances of victory were low; if he now gave the wrong answer, wouldn’t that be another slap in the face?
After pondering a moment, Daus did not answer Kael but said to Angel:「Looks like you were right earlier.」
After a pause, he continued:「You saw his setup back then, didn’t you?」
Angel chuckled softly and said nothing. In truth, he didn’t know what to say.
Daus took the silence as acquiescence, exclaimed in admiration, then said to Kael:「Since he spotted the layout early on, you’d better ask him…… I only noticed a clue at the very end.」
In this way, Daus smoothly shifted Kael’s question onto Angel.
But Kael, still bewildered, failed to notice the deflection; he even felt it reasonable. Lord Super Dimensional had made a judgment from the start, surely he’d detected something fishy early, so having Lord Super Dimensional explain it was actually better.
Meeting Kael’s expectant gaze, Angel didn’t answer immediately but mercilessly jabbed through Daus’ ploy:「Your way of changing the subject is awfully clumsy…… So you don’t know why Vai won, do you?」
Daus gave an awkward smile:「How could that be? I understand Vai far more, and far deeper, than any of you.」
Angel shrugged:「Then say it.」
Daus pressed his lips together, wishing to steer the topic away, but Kael was already regarding him with doubt. If he truly deflected now, wouldn’t that confirm his ignorance?
Besides, Vai would be stepping down any moment; with his temperament, if he got hold of this handle, he’d harp on it for decades.
So it was best to settle the topic before Vai came down, to avoid being nagged later.
Yet Daus truly wasn’t sure how Vai had won. He had several candidate answers, which one was it?
As his thoughts whirled, he noticed Angel eyeing him with amused interest.
「Vai understands you, that I know. But it seems you don’t understand Vai at all……」Angel said, glancing toward the stage.
Vai noticed the look, straightened, placed a hand to his chest, and made a「mission accomplished」gesture toward Angel.
Seeing Angel’s sly, impish expression, Daus knew he was up to mischief.
Angel was surely, one hundred percent, pondering what venomous words to slander him with and sow discord between him and Vai!
For all he knew, Angel had already prepared his speech and, once the dome was withdrawn, would immediately whisper to Vai over the mind connection.
Anxious, Daus blurted out, regardless of right or wrong:「Nose!」
Angel narrowed his eyes.
Daus:「The reason Vai could defeat Ghost Shadow is that he’d already fixed Ghost Shadow’s position in advance. From the setup of that earth spike you can tell it was absolutely not arranged on the spot, it had to have been laid beforehand.」
「And determining Ghost Shadow’s position, and telling the real from the false, relied on Vai’s olfactory talent.」
The more Daus spoke, the clearer it became; much he hadn’t figured out before now seemed to fall into place:「It’s true that Vai hasn’t fought for years, and his real combat experience has declined a lot. But he hasn’t been idling all these years. Running a divination shop, he uses his Death Scent talent almost daily; with such day-in, day-out honing over the years, his sense of smell is extremely keen.」
「Earlier, though Vai entered the mycobarrier and was attacked multiple times by Ghost Shadow, he thereby also caught Ghost Shadow’s scent.」
「Unfortunately, he was being attacked continuously, and with hyphae invading him, even having Ghost Shadow’s scent he couldn’t mount an effective counter.」
「So he simply pretended he had no idea where Ghost Shadow was, let the other steal attacks on him, and waited for an opening.」
「When Ghost Shadow stopped attacking him, the chance appeared. He started drinking potions, started recovering, began locking onto Ghost Shadow’s position by smell…… and that’s how he turned defeat into victory.」
「One could say Ghost Shadow’s hesitation made Vai’s victory; of course, his acting was quite good too.」
「Worth mentioning: Vai had actually, quite early on, more or less decided how he would win.」
Chapter 2746 Means of Victory <TOC> Chapter 2748 Vai’s Reflection