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I Was ¥1.8 Million in Debt When the Legacy System Chose Me — a grounded rags-to-riches journey featuring business, romance, self-improvement and empire-building.
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50 Powerstones on my system novel equals 3 extra chapters. While 100 Powerstones here equals 3 extra chapters.
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The sealed space did not so much contain Excalibur's light as strain to survive it.
Where Guy Crimson's Tenma radiated the vast, devouring crimson of a dying star, Excalibur's ignition was clean, blinding, and absolute. It was more than holy energy. It carried the weight of victory itself, given shape through Loki's memories and Hephaestus's authority. When the two forces met, the spatial barrier did not merely tremble. It folded inward, the sealed battlefield buckling like heated glass until the entire pocket dimension resembled a miniature collapsing star suspended above the frozen earth.
Guy did not retreat. He leaned into the blinding torrent, Tenma's crimson aura flaring around the broadsword like fire spilling from the surface of a sun. His eyes burned through the glare, wide with predatory delight. "A holy light?" he called through the screaming space between them, his voice rich with mockery. "You brought a hero's blade to a clash between Primordials, Loki?"
"Hero's blade?" Loki laughed, his footing perfectly planted despite the force tearing trenches through the ground beneath them. "Don't insult the craftsmanship. It's an idea, Guy, and ideas are notoriously difficult to cut."
With a turn of his wrist, Loki drove Excalibur forward. He was not wielding some ancient holy sword stolen from another reality. This was Hephaestus at work: a temporary reconstruction forged from memory, dense magicules, and a clearly understood concept. It did not possess every impossible power ever attached to the legend, but what Loki had successfully recreated carried overwhelming physical force and the unwavering intent to overcome whatever stood before it.
The holy aura struck Tenma with crushing weight. Guy's blade met Excalibur's edge, and for a fraction of a second, heat itself seemed to lose meaning. The air vanished from between them. Light collapsed into a pinprick of perfect darkness before exploding outward with enough force to tear another layer from the barrier.
Guy adjusted his stance immediately. Excalibur was not simply cutting against Tenma. The longer it remained manifested, the heavier the surrounding space became, as though the weapon's authority demanded that the world acknowledge its presence.
'It's forcing its own rule onto the battlefield,' Guy realized, his grin widening. 'An absolute standard of authority.'
Before he could gather enough power to crush that rule beneath his own, Loki's posture changed.
"Standard swordplay gets boring," Loki said lightly.
Excalibur dissolved into a spray of golden particles. In the same instant, a crimson spear with a jagged, wicked head appeared in Loki's hand, and the pressure around them twisted in an entirely different direction.
Gáe Bolg.
Loki thrust. The motion itself was simple, but the strike did not travel normally. The distance between the spearhead and Guy's left collarbone ceased to matter. Cause and effect had been reversed. The blow had already reached its target, and Loki's thrust was merely the motion that followed.
Guy's instincts, sharpened through countless battles at the peak of existence, reacted before conscious thought could catch up. He did not try to block the spearhead or evade its path. Instead, he warped the space around his body, destroying the point the weapon had chosen as its destination.
CLANG!
The crimson spearhead appeared an inch from Guy's throat and struck the distorted barrier surrounding him. The diverted force shattered the space behind him, carving a trench several miles long through the sealed battlefield.
"Fascinating!" Guy roared, his laughter booming through the void. "The result comes before the thrust, and you call it a curse? You really are changing the rules with every swing!"
"I'm a versatile artist!" Loki called back, spinning the spear before allowing it to melt into crimson mist, denying Guy the chance to seize its shaft.
Before the mist had cleared, Loki was already inside Guy's guard. This time, he carried neither sword nor spear. A dull grey mace rested in his right hand, oversized and rough-hewn, as though it had been torn directly from the roots of a mountain.
The Crushing Mountain.
Guy raised Tenma to parry, prepared for another weapon built around reversed causality or holy authority.
He was wrong.
When the stone mace struck Tenma, there was no burst of magic and no elemental display. There was only weight, pure, brutal, incomprehensible weight. Hephaestus had compressed the force of an entire mountain range into a weapon small enough for Loki to swing like a war club.
BOOM!
The impact erased the burning air around them. Guy's boots tore through the reinforced ground as his arms absorbed the blow, the force humming through his bones and driving him back ten yards. His heels carved two glowing scars across the floor of the pocket dimension before he finally stopped.
Loki remained where he was, resting the absurd stone club across one shoulder as his eyes gleamed with playful menace. "Excalibur for authority, Gáe Bolg for certainty, and the Crushing Mountain for simple, uneducated violence. Are you having fun yet, Lord of the North?"
Beyond the burning shell of the barrier, the observers watched in tense silence. Testarossa's fingers rested lightly against the hilt of her rapier, her red eyes following every flash within the sphere. "He's cycling through concepts," she murmured. "Hephaestus changes what each weapon demands from the opponent. Guy is being forced to adapt to a completely different kind of attack every few seconds."
"It's obnoxious," Velzard said flatly, though her icy gaze never left Loki. She stood with her arms crossed, her presence freezing the loose magicules around her. "He's building weapons and assigning each one a different rule. It should not be enough against Guy. Guy has faced nearly every weapon and fighting style this world has ever produced."
"That is precisely why it is effective, Lady Velzard," Diablo replied, a faint and unsettling smile touching his face. He did not appear concerned. If anything, he looked deeply entertained by his brother's performance. "Guy understands disciplines. Loki refuses to remain inside one. He is not challenging a master with superior technique. He is forcing a critic to judge a different work of art every few seconds."
Dagruel's booming laughter shook the mountain pass beneath them. "Gahahahaha! The brat has courage! Forcing Guy Crimson onto the defensive, even for a moment, is no small achievement. And that stone club carried genuine weight!"
Milim Nava sat cross-legged upon a floating piece of broken earth, her chin resting in her hands as her dragon-like pupils followed the exchange. "Loki's fast, but Guy still hasn't stopped smiling. Look at how he's standing."
She was right.
Inside the barrier, the last traces of air burned away. Loki swung the Crushing Mountain again, determined to maintain control of the battle and batter Guy's guard apart beneath its impossible weight. A brief, arrogant smile crossed his face. For the smallest fraction of a second, he believed he had completely seized the rhythm of their duel.
That was all Guy Crimson needed.
Guy did not block the mace, nor did he retreat from it. He stepped forward into the narrow dead angle of the swing, entering the space before the weapon could gather its full momentum.
"You're brilliant, Loki," Guy whispered, suddenly close enough for his voice to brush Loki's ear. "Truly brilliant. But you've started believing your ideas make you untouchable."
Loki's eyes widened. He tried to dissolve the mace into magicules and retreat through folded space, but Guy's left hand snapped around his wrist like an iron shackle.
PAAAN!
The Crushing Mountain stopped in midair. Guy's fingers tightened with enough force to crush Loki's arm, disrupting the flow of his magicules for the briefest instant. "You're so busy changing the stage," Guy continued with a laugh, his face only inches from Loki's, "that you forgot who owns the theatre."
Guy did not answer with some grand Ultimate Skill or overwhelming magical display. Tenma moved in a short, brutal thrust, executed with the flawless precision of a warrior who had spent millennia refining every possible way to kill.
Loki leaned back on instinct as Hephaestus coated his chest and shoulders in dense defensive scales. It was not enough. Guy's blade was too fast, too precise, and carried the concentrated pressure of his immense aura.
Tear.
Tenma pierced the defensive scales, cut through Loki's shoulder guard, and opened a clean crimson line across his collarbone. Golden-tinged Primordial blood sprayed into the empty space between them, burning like white-hot embers as it scattered.
Loki clicked his tounge as the force sent him skidding backward. Guy released his wrist at the perfect moment, allowing the remaining momentum to throw him twenty yards across the cracked ground. The wound burned with the lingering bite of Guy's aura, refusing to close as quickly as an ordinary injury should have.
Loki pressed his fingers against his collarbone and drew them away wet with his own blood.
Across the battlefield, Guy made no effort to pursue him. He stood tall with Tenma held loosely at his side, a single drop of Loki's blood sliding down the crimson edge. Then he threw back his head and released a roar of genuine, wild delight that shook the foundations of the barrier.
"Ahahaha! Yes! Excellent!" Guy shouted, his eyes blazing with ecstatic heat as he raised the bloodstained blade. "You bleed just fine, little brother! You aren't some god hiding behind a curtain. You're right here in the dirt with me!"
Loki stared at the blood coating his fingers before lifting his gaze to Guy's delighted, demonic grin. The surprise slowly disappeared from his face, replaced by a sharp and thoroughly wicked smile. He dragged his bloodied hand across his neck as his aura surged with a new and dangerous heat.
"All right, Guy," Loki murmured. "No more prop comedy. Let's get dangerous."
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