The stadium air in xxxxxxxxxxx was no longer just oxygen and nitrogen; it was a pressurized soup of mana, ozone, and the literal sweat of eighty thousand terrified spectators. The holographic brackets pulsed in the sky like the heartbeat of a dying star. Above the Sovereign Pit, the name dollar glowed with a predatory, golden light that seemed to mock the multi-billion rupee sponsorship logos surrounding it.
Peng Yichen, the "Eagle of the High Heavens," descended into the pit. He didn't use the stairs. He rode a localized thermal of emerald-green wind, his white silk robes flapping with a sharp, whip-like snap. He looked like a god of the sky, his eyes sharp and predatory, his skin clear and glowing with the refinement of a thousand spirit-stones.
Opposite him, the Gold Knight stood as still as a statue in a graveyard. The matte-gold nanobots on Harish's frame hummed at a frequency that canceled out the stadium's background noise. To Harish, the world was a spreadsheet. He could see the structural stress on Yichen's ankles and the way the wind-mana was leaking from the Young Master's left sleeve.
"Three minutes, Penguin," dollar's voice boomed. It wasn't a shout; it was a resonance that vibrated in the marrow of everyone present. "I have a refrigerator compressor arriving at the back gate in exactly five minutes. I am not paying the 'failed delivery' fee or the 're-scheduling' surcharge because you wanted to play with fans."
In the mid-tier stands, where the air was thick with the smell of cheap spiced peanuts and nervous energy, Jaxon—the data-broker with the sweat-stained hoodie—was vibrating. His fingers flew across a cracked tablet, his eyes bloodshot from tracking the Agnihotri stock crash. Beside him, Silas, the veteran with the brass prosthetic, gripped the railing so hard the stone was beginning to spider-web.
"Did you hear him?" Jaxon hissed, his voice cracking. "He called him 'Penguin.' Do you have any idea what that does to the Peng Clan's brand? Their entire martial art is based on the Great Roc. Calling their Young Master a flightless bird is a 20% hit to their prestige stocks alone. I just watched a whale investor dump four million shares of 'Wind-Step Boots' because of that one sentence."
"Shut up about the stocks, Jaxon!" Silas growled, his brass arm hissing as it adjusted to the atmospheric pressure. "Look at the Knight's posture. He's standing in a Kiba-dachi, but it's... it's wrong. It's too perfect. You see the way the dust is avoiding his feet? That's not a mana-shield. That's a Vacuum-Point. He's anchored his reality so firmly that the world around him is being pushed away. I've seen Emperors who couldn't hold that kind of structural integrity."
"The rumors were right," whispered a woman behind them, a rogue cultivator with a jagged scar across her nose. "My cousin works in the GSC logistics wing. She said they did a deep-dive on the 'dollar' signature. It doesn't match any known player. They think he's a System Anomaly. A 'Hard-Reset' in human form. Look at his armor—those aren't plates. They're nanobots. But they aren't Earth-made. They move like they have a collective consciousness. Some are saying dollar is a sentient virus from the Tower's 50th floor that escaped and started a logistics company."
"A virus?" Silas laughed, though there was no humor in it. "If he's a virus, then the Peng Clan is the infection he's here to cure. Look at Yichen. He's turning purple. He's never been talked to like that in his life. He was raised on dew-drops and ancient scrolls. Now he's being told he's an inconvenience to a refrigerator repair."
"It's the arrogance of the commoner," Jaxon muttered, wiping sweat from his forehead with the back of a greasy hand. "That's the scariest part. He doesn't hate Yichen. He just... he doesn't value him. To dollar, the Young Master of the Peng Clan is less important than a 1500-rupee compressor. That's not just strength. That's a different level of existence. It's like a human being annoyed by a very loud mosquito while they're trying to balance their checkbook."
"Arrogance!" Yichen roared, his voice carrying the weight of centuries of clan pride.
He tapped his silver-plated heels together. [SHOOO-OOM!]
The air in the pit didn't just move; it ignited. Emerald friction sparks flew as Yichen activated the Soaring Heaven Roc Steps. To the human eye, he simply ceased to exist. He became a green blur, a hurricane of silk and high-frequency vibrations that circled the arena floor. The centrifugal force was so intense it began to pull the dust and discarded ticket stubs into a swirling vortex, centered directly on the Gold Knight.
"Sky-Drift Dash!" Yichen's voice echoed from everywhere and nowhere.
He appeared in Harish's blind spot, his fingers held in the "Talon-Beak" strike, a move designed to pierce through enchanted dragon-scale. [KRA-ZAK!]
Harish didn't even turn his head. He didn't raise a hand.
✨ Radiant Movement: Lightstep Drift!
[V-ZIP!]
To the audience, it looked like a frame-skip. Harish's golden silhouette "glitched" three inches to the left. It wasn't a dash; it was as if the universe had made a typo and corrected his position instantly. Yichen's talon pierced the empty air where Harish's neck had been a millisecond ago.
"You're dragging your left heel," Harish's modulated voice critiqued, sounding like a bored math teacher. "Every time you accelerate, you lose 0.04 seconds because your heel strike is too heavy. It's creating a 15% aerodynamic drag. You're basically an eagle with a shopping bag tied to its leg. Inefficient. Wasteful. My father would charge you extra for wasting the electricity in the shop with all this unnecessary wind."
In the high-altitude observation deck, Kaelen stood behind her Porcelain Mask, her breath hitching. Beside her, Master Chu-mu was trembling so hard his tea was splashing over the rim of the cup.
'That movement...' Kaelen thought, her inner mind a whirlwind of confusion. 'The Lightstep Drift. It's a derivative of the Sun-Breaker's Footwork. But it's... it's stripped down. It's the version Chu-mu taught me in the tower, but without the "spiritual fluff." It's pure, raw geometry.'
"Master," Kaelen whispered, her eyes fixed on the Gold Knight. "The way he moved just now. He didn't use mana to push the air. He used the Zero-Point Pivot. That's an advanced technique of our sect. How does a corporate intern from a tech company know the 'Heaven-Slayer's' foundational footwork?"
Chu-mu didn't answer for a long time. He just stared at the arena with the look of a man who had seen the end of the world. "Disciple," he finally croaked. "That's not 'knowing' the footwork. That's owning it. Look at the angles. He's not following the manual. He is the reason the manual was written. Kaelen... I think the reason your brother watches those webseries isn't to be entertained. It's because he finds the villains more relatable than the heroes. He's not roleplaying a tycoon. He's roleplaying a human."
"But the 'Dawnflash Slash' he's preparing now," Kaelen pointed down. "That's the move you said took three hundred years to master. You said it required the heart of a burning star."
"And look at him," Chu-mu whispered. "He's doing it with a basket of laundry in his mind."
Furious, Yichen leaped into the sky, his mana flaring into the shape of a massive, translucent emerald bird that spanned the width of the pit. The shadow of the Roc fell over the stadium, turning the afternoon into a sickly green twilight.
"Great Roc Piercing Spear: Storm Descent Pierce!" [WHHH-RUUUM!]
Yichen dived like a falling meteor. The air screamed in protest, a high-pitched sonic boom shattering the glass in the VIP lounge. The pressure was so great that the stone floor of the arena began to crack before he even hit it.
Harish finally shifted his weight. He didn't draw a sword. He didn't even look up. He simply extended his right arm, and the nanobots on his gauntlet began to vibrate at the speed of light, gathering every stray photon in the stadium.
⚔️ Radiant Sword Art: Dawnflash Slash!
[F-SHAAAAAAA!]
A horizontal arc of pure, blinding white light erupted from Harish's arm. It didn't just meet the wind-spear; it audited it. The light sliced through the emerald mana, not by overpowering it, but by finding the "seams" in Yichen's technique.
[K-BOOOM!]
The emerald spear shattered into green glass shards of mana that rained down like deadly glitter. The impact sent a shockwave through the stands, knocking over Jaxon's tablet and sending Silas's brass arm into a diagnostic reset. Yichen, caught in the backlash of his own broken technique, was forced to spiral upward, his white robes now scorched and tattered.
"Sunshadow Shift," Harish whispered.
[BLIP!]
Harish disappeared from the ground. He didn't fly; he simply occupied a different coordinate. He reappeared mid-air, standing directly above the rising Yichen, his golden armor reflecting the stadium lights like a second sun.
"Wait! I haven't used my Life-Essence—" Yichen started, his eyes widening in a realization of true, soul-deep terror. He saw the "intern" above him, and for a split second, the Gold Knight's visor seemed transparent. He didn't see a God. He saw a man who was genuinely worried about a delivery truck.
"Time is up," Harish interrupted. "The driver just entered the parking lot. You're over budget, Yichen. Both in time and in ego."
Harish raised his hand toward the stadium lights, gathering the scattered photons into a single, dense point of singularity in his palm.
✨ Supreme Movement: Divine Flash Ascension! [V-WAAAAA!]
⚔️ Supreme Sword Art: Heaven's Luminous Verdict! [JJJJ-RAAAA-ZING!]
Harish descended like a falling star, but there was no weight to it—only light. He brought his palm down in a vertical arc. A pillar of white, purifying energy slammed into the arena floor, swallowing Yichen whole. It wasn't an explosion; it was an evaporation. The emerald wind, the pride of the Peng Clan, the "Eagle" himself—all of it was drowned in a sea of pure, logical radiance.
[TRRR-OOM-THUD!]
The stadium shook to its foundations. When the light cleared, a perfect, glass-lined crater remained in the center of the pit. Peng Yichen was face-down at the bottom, his mana circuits temporarily shorted out. He wasn't dead, but he would find it difficult to even lift a spoon for the next three weeks.
Harish stood over the unconscious Young Master, his gold paint slightly flaking at the knuckles from the thermal stress. He didn't strike a pose. He didn't look at the cameras. He checked his internal HUD.
[Delivery Status: Driver is at the Service Entrance. Call Incoming.]
"Vikram," Harish whispered into his comms, his voice returning to the tired tone of a grocery clerk. "Declare the win. I'm taking the ventilation shaft in Section B. And tell the driver to wait—I'll tip him an extra 50 rupees if he doesn't leave before I get there. This compressor is the only thing standing between me and spoiled milk."
"Master," Vikramaditya's voice crackled back from the VIP booth, where he was currently watching Vikas Agnihotri have a literal panic attack. "The GSC is trying to lock down the tunnels. They want an interview. They think you're a revolutionary."
"Tell them I'm a plumber," Harish grunted, already half-way into the ventilation duct. "A plumber of reality. And tell Kaelen to stop staring. She's going to give herself a headache trying to figure out the math."
The announcer, who had been frozen in shock for nearly thirty seconds, finally regained his breath and screamed into the microphone: "WINNER: DOLLAR! TOTAL AUDIT TIME: 2 MINUTES, 50 SECONDS!"
As the Agnihotri family's stock ticker flashed a [BLOOD-RED] -30% on the jumbotron, the Gold Knight was already a shadow in the darkness of the service tunnels, running toward a dented delivery truck.