The Extra is a Genius!?-Chapter 618: Noel vs Roberto [V]

Roberto’s dimension had not vanished. It still existed under Noel’s feet, but only in scraps now, dim pieces of pale ground barely visible beneath the weight of "Eclipse Sun." The white world he had built was buried under darkness, not erased, and that made it stranger. Every surface swallowed by a black veil that breathed over the space and gave back almost nothing unless light forced it to.

That was the problem. Roberto stood inside a place that no longer obeyed him cleanly.

He was not panicked. Noel could see that much even through the dark. But there was discomfort in him now, real and visible, the kind that reached the body before pride could hide it. His head turned more often than before. His stance adjusted in smaller corrections. He was listening harder than he wanted to.

"Come on, then," Roberto said, his voice sharper now. "You wanted to end it, didn’t you?" A pale line of light cut out from him at once. "Radiant Slash."

For one instant the darkness split open. The white floor flashed into view. Roberto’s arm. The clean line of light crossing the space.

And Noel, already somewhere else. "Shadow Step."

The dark swallowed him again before the slash had even finished passing. Roberto pivoted toward the movement and snapped another skill forward. "Flashbind." Harsh light burst outward, flooding the black for a breath, but all it gave him was a fragment of Noel’s shape near his flank and the cold point that came with it.

"Glacialis." Roberto turned just in time. "Lumina Veil" softened the hit, but the ice still struck his shoulder hard enough to push him off his line.

"You only fight well when hidden?" Roberto asked, irritation cutting through the words now. "Is that it? A coward in the dark?"

Noel did not answer.

A thin tear opened behind Roberto. "Shadow Rift." Revenant Fang came out first, low and fast, forcing Roberto to twist and answer with "Sanctified Step." The distance shortened unnaturally under him, enough to keep the blade from opening his side cleanly, but not enough to stop the next attack. "Chain Flash." Lightning cracked through the dark and split across the air, the main strike hitting where Roberto had just moved and the branches forcing him into another adjustment he had not wanted to make.

Again the world flashed. Again it vanished. A pulse. A line. A brief circle of visibility. Then black again.

That rhythm settled over the duel quickly, and Roberto understood the danger in it almost at the same time Noel did. Every time he used light to see, to strike, to reset the space around him, he was also exposing himself for Noel to read.

Roberto kept talking because the silence was getting under his skin.

"Come on," he said, turning toward another movement he only half caught. "Say something." A harsh line of light tore through the dark again. "Or is this all you know how to do? Hide. Wait. Strike when no one can see you." The flash lit the space for less than a breath, enough to show empty ground where he had aimed and the pale edge of his own dimension beneath the black. Then the dark closed again. "Coward."

No answer. Only movement.

"Shadow Step." Noel appeared behind him for a blink, close enough that Revenant Fang scraped along Roberto’s side before "Lumina Veil" took the worst of it. Roberto turned and swung immediately, but Noel was already gone. A tear opened higher to the left. "Shadow Rift." Noel came out of it already cutting down, and Roberto caught the blade just in time, their swords crashing together hard enough that sparks flashed white and vanished in the dark.

"A rat, then," Roberto muttered through clenched teeth, twisting the bind to throw Noel’s sword off-line.

Noel gave him a short elbow to the ribs for that answer and disappeared again before the follow-up cut could land.

The duel had changed shape completely. Roberto attacked to reveal. Noel attacked to kill.

"Radiant Slash." Light split the dark once more, and in that clean white cut Roberto finally saw him, or thought he did. A silhouette low to the ground, one shoulder turned, enough to mark a target. Roberto fired at once with "Corona Breaker," the dense discharge punching through the dark in a bright tunnel.

It hit nothing. Empty ground. Noel had never been there.

The realization came a fraction too late. "Glacialis." The concentrated spear of ice struck from Roberto’s blind side and drove into his upper arm hard enough to force a sharp step out of him. Before he fully recovered, lightning cracked through the black. "Chain Flash." The main strike hit his guard, the branches snapping into his side and shoulder, forcing another adjustment he did not want to give.

Then Noel was inside his guard. Not from the front. Not from where the light had shown. From underneath the next angle Roberto tried to clear.

"Shadow Step." Revenant Fang came up fast and clean. The blade cut across Roberto’s torso before "Lumina Veil" could fully settle into place, opening him for real this time. Not a shallow mark. Not a scrape softened into almost nothing.

A true wound. Roberto staggered half a step, and for the first time since the darkness took his dimension, the blood that fell belonged clearly to him.

Roberto did not speak for a few breaths after that. When he finally moved again, the shift in him was obvious. Less noise. Less mocking. The irritation had not gone anywhere, but it had sunk deeper, turned harder. He wiped the blood from his side with the back of his hand and lifted his sword again, the small light around him swelling wider.

"Flashbind." The burst was larger now, harsher, washing across the dark in a wide white flare that forced the dimension into view for a blink. Roberto used that instant immediately, driving forward with "Radiant Slash" already following the line of his body, then layering "Sanctum Pulse" into the next motion to tear space open around him and force Noel out of any nearby angle.

The white flash vanished. The darkness returned. And Noel was still not where Roberto wanted him to be.

A shadow split behind the pulse’s dying edge. "Shadow Rift." Noel stepped out low and fast, not aiming for a killing blow yet, only pressure. Roberto turned just in time to catch Revenant Fang, steel crashing against steel, and for one tight second the fight returned to body range. Shoulder into shoulder. Roberto’s forearm slamming against Noel’s sword arm. Noel’s knee driving toward his thigh. Roberto taking it badly and answering with the guard of his sword toward Noel’s jaw.

Then Noel vanished. "Shadow Step."

Roberto’s eyes moved at once, but the dark kept the answer from him. He lit the space again with another sharp cut of "Radiant Slash," and this time he saw Noel clearly for one exposed instant.

Too close. "Voltage Needle." The thin line of lightning punched through the opening before Roberto could fully move, striking into his side near the ribs and forcing a sharper breath out of him. Noel followed immediately. "Glacialis." Ice drove into the same line of pressure, not deep enough to end it, but enough to break Roberto’s guard higher.

"Eclipse Rend." Blackness swept forward from Revenant Fang in a brutal arc, and Roberto met it with everything he had left in that instant, light flaring hard enough to keep the void from cutting him apart cleanly. Even so, the edge of it tore across him and opened a deeper wound from shoulder to chest. Blood fell again, darker than the world around it for the brief second the light still held.

Roberto stepped back. Only one step, but it was there.

His breathing had changed. Not ragged, not weak, just heavier now, and the look in his eyes had changed with it. The truth had reached him at last, not through words but through rhythm, through damage, through the simple fact that this was no longer discomfort.

If it continued like this, he could lose.

Noel stood somewhere ahead inside that steady darkness, sword ready, pressure unbroken, while Roberto remained lit only by the unstable remnants of his own light, breathing a little harder than before as the blackened dimension held around them and the next phase of the duel drew closer.