Yanking it sideways.
Through his visor’s gap, she saw his eyes widen in shock. That split second of surprise when the rules changed.
Talia’s katana found the gap between breastplate and helmet with a clean, final swing.
The knight crumpled, and the cathedral fell silent, only to be disrupted by the soft ping of a notification.
—
[ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: DECISIVE VICTORY]
First to eliminate their opponent in the Multiversal Solo Combat Challenge
Reward pending
—
Talia pulled her blade free, already turning toward the opposite altar and her prize. Behind her, Sir Garrett’s form began dissolving into golden light.
“May you find peace,” she said quietly, and meant it.
She walked across the cathedral with measured steps, her drone returning to hover at her shoulder. The nave felt longer now without combat to focus her mind. Each footfall echoed in the vast space, the only sound besides the faint hum of dissolving light behind her.
The opposite altar loomed ahead. The golden sphere atop it pulsed with a steady rhythm, like a heartbeat made of light. She glanced back at where she’d started. The pedestal that had held “her” power had vanished, leaving only smooth stone.
She climbed the altar steps and stood before the sphere. Faith power. The ability to believe something into reality, to make conviction tangible. From a knight who thought his fifteen-year-old world was eternal.
Her hand hesitated above the light. Not from fear, but from the weight of what she’d learned. If the System could fabricate entire civilizations, what else was false? What other lies had they accepted as truth?
The sphere pulsed, waiting.
She pressed her palm against it.
Light exploded outward. Faith power flooded through her, alien yet somehow comprehensible. She felt it seeking harmony within her, weaving through her existing superpowers like a golden thread. The sensation was neither pleasant nor painful, just strange.
The cathedral began to fade at the edges, dissolving like Sir Garrett had.
Through the light, she caught glimpses of other arenas. They shifted as she thought of her friends. Then she saw them. Annie screaming profanities at something massive moving through murky water. Augustus dodging through impossible geometry. Alexander racing upward through a crumbling tower.
Then the light swallowed everything, and Talia saw no more.
***
Annie watched the Spinosaurus test its barrier with growing dread. The creature wasn’t just scary big; it was relentless. Its massive head brushed against the shimmer, then its shoulders, then its tail lashed out in what looked like calculated strikes. Testing for weaknesses. Learning the dimensions of its cage.
Seven tons of muscle and teeth, and it moved with an intelligence that made her stomach clench.
Her drone hovered beside her, wobbling slightly in the humid air. For a moment, she imagined it was nervous too, then caught herself. Stupid. Alexander wouldn’t program fear into a drone. That was all her, projecting onto everything around her.
The countdown showed ten seconds.
The Spinosaurus stopped its pacing and turned to face her fully. Even through the barrier, she could feel the weight of its attention. It tilted its head, studying her the same way she’d been studying it.
Five seconds.
“Okay,” Annie muttered, forcing her whole upper body to shift to metal. “Just don’t die. That’s the whole plan. Don’t die.”
Three.
Two.
One.
The barriers dissolved.
The Spinosaurus looked at her, cocked its head slightly as if curious, then took a deliberate step backward. Its eyes never left hers as it slid into the murky water with barely a ripple. Within seconds, it had vanished completely beneath the surface.
“Oh fuck.” Annie’s voice came out higher than intended. “Oh fuck fuck fuck.”
She stood on a stone platform maybe ten meters across, ancient and slick with moisture and algae. Dark water surrounded her, but she could see other structures jutting from the swamp. Broken pillars, partially collapsed buildings, toppled statues creating stepping stones and bridges. A whole ruined city turned into an aquatic hunting ground. The mist drifted across everything, limiting visibility to thirty meters at best.
Ripples appeared to her left. Then behind. Then her right.
It was circling.
Her drone tried to track the movement, sensors struggling with the murky water. Annie turned constantly, trying to keep eyes on every direction at once. Her arms were fully metal now, shaped into rough blades. Not that they’d help much against something that size.
The attack came from her blind spot.
The Spinosaurus erupted from the water at the platform’s edge, jaws wide enough to swallow her whole. Annie threw herself right, twisting in the air as her right arm extended into a longer blade. She brought it down across its snout as she passed, felt the impact jar up through her shoulder.
The blade sliced across leather and barely left a mark.
“That’s not good,” she breathed as the creature slid back into the water. “That’s really not—”
It surfaced again, and she could swear it was smiling. Water cascaded off its sail as it rose just enough to speak.
“You break so easily, metal thing.”
The words froze her. Then the Spinosaurus opened its mouth wider, and she saw her left arm between its teeth. Metal fingers still twitching. It chewed noisily, metal grinding and crumpling between jaws designed to crush bone.
Annie looked down at her left side. The entire arm was gone, jacket sleeve shredded and hanging empty. No pain, no blood. Her real arm safely phased out of reality while the metal one had taken its place. But the speed of it, the fact she hadn’t even seen the attack coming...
She was still staring at where her arm should be when the Spinosaurus swallowed.
Then it lunged.
Seven tons of predator hauled itself onto the platform. Stone cracked and tilted under the weight. Annie stumbled backward, one arm gone, platform failing beneath her feet, and the Spinosaurus bearing down with teeth like knives.
The water below looked very dark and very deep.