The arena lay under the Sun Palace, a buried coliseum beneath a gilded crown.

People knew it nationwide as the venue for the Fist Accord, a ring of grudges settled like storms bottled in glass. Long before that, it was the pride of Twin Towers City, a landmark like a blade standing in the skyline.

Groups that didn’t want an all-out bone-breaking war picked it as neutral ground, a sandbox of sand and steel. They sent officers to duel, letting a single bout decide a feud like a coin tossed into fate’s well.

Fine sand covered the floor, a pale skin of grit. Mixed in were scraps of flesh and snapped teeth, stubborn trash like pebbles caught in a riverbed.

Disgust rose first, sour as old coffee. Jiang Bailu’s sneakers sank into the grit, and her brow pinched like a tightened string.

“So dirty… I’m not going down on this floor.” The thought dropped cold as rain.

She had one reason to be here. Under the name Mechbreaker, she would answer an Official Hero’s challenge—step into the first fight like a swan diving into winter water.

Only a moment ago, she’d learned her opponent’s name: Soldier Hero. It sounded corny, like tin stamped with a crest.

While Jiang took in the ring, Soldier Hero entered from the far gate, a shadow cut from iron light.

He looked like a soldier pulled from a medieval film reel, a knight walking out of smoke. His full-body armor was well-made, the surface pocked with bullet marks like hailstones. The protection looked real, stone-solid.

But that was only true for ordinary people, leaves in the wind.

Mechbreaker, the role Yekase once played, started as stress relief from the crushing 9-9-6 grind—she tore mechs for fun, breaking steel the way waves break shells. She never bragged. Her fame came from bare-handed deconstruction, no—online it got mythologized as battlefield art.

Armor that shrugged off bullets was a wall to a civilian. To Yekase, it was a nimble toy mech, a tin crab that scuttled but still got cooked.

No matter how nimble, could an armored soldier out-dance Mechbreaker weaving through war like a comet?

Why would the Official Heroes arrange such a bad matchup, oil to her fire?

The answer flashed like a blade.

Because they’d pre-shaved the ranks of the freelance heroes—cut Yekase’s hand of cards down to a lonely ace.

Because they already knew Mechbreaker’s “in-the-suit” had switched to Jiang Bailu—someone had listened through the walls of the war room.

Out of all the eyes and ears present, which pairs belonged to Gu Xiangshi’s people? Against spies like smoke under the door, even Yekase hadn’t managed a counter.

A chill rose from Jiang’s core, frost curling her breath.

In that instant—

Soldier Hero hooked his sword along his left forearm, lowered his body like a drawn bow, and charged straight at her like an arrow loosed.

Since they were already watching, there was no reason to hide. She let the mask drop like a curtain.

“Coffee Moon!” The word chimed like porcelain.

She called up the trench-coat ghost, a pale shape like a moon under glass. It drifted forward to meet the steel.

“Hah!” His shout hit like a drum.

Soldier Hero didn’t swing for Coffee Moon as she expected. His front foot slammed down with a clang, armor ringing like a bell, and he slipped past with nimble footwork, still driving for Jiang like a stormline.

He was more flexible than she’d guessed. He must be good at controlling muscle, a man whose body was an instrument. People like that were usually deft with Mind Energy, though thinking tactics in the middle of a charge was like counting raindrops—useless.

Jiang skewed the space in front of his head, laying a deflection field like a pane of invisible water.

He couldn’t see the transparent effect and ran straight into it, a fish into net.

His head rotated a clean 180 degrees, bizarre as a puppet’s neck twisted by unseen hands. It was only interference; once he left the area his neck would right itself, no harm left like the tide retreating.

But that first glimpse of behind-you horror stopped his sprint like a hand on the chest.

Coffee Moon sailed over his helm, seized the opening, and threw a punch like a falling star.

“—!” Soldier Hero snapped his sword horizontal above his head and caught it, steel to phantom like ice against wind.

Coffee Moon’s whole body was Jiang’s power made visible, a moonlight construct. Those fists were her most concrete vision of “attack,” each knuckle packed with her full effect.

If they landed, they would skew.

Not smoke and mirrors, but real distortion—like a bruise in reality that stayed after you peeled the bandage. Like the time she turned Li Dapao’s world into origami with a flurry.

The fist met the sword, and that plain knight’s blade didn’t snap. It held firm, a river stone under a torrent.

Jiang blinked, surprised, but kept her will steady. Coffee Moon pressed the attack, a ghost pouring rain. Soldier Hero had eaten one trick and didn’t rush blindly again; he stayed in close, fighting within arm’s reach, sword a metronome in tight quarters.

He probably thought the flying ghost was Jiang’s summoned beast, a specter bound like a hawk.

Jiang’s imagination for close-quarters was thin—a sketch instead of a painting. Coffee Moon’s attack set was too straightforward, punches drawn in straight lines. Soldier Hero’s sword parried every one, a door swung shut.

“Ten-Step Slash!” He shouted, the name ringing like iron.

He slid his blade off Coffee Moon’s knuckle, then chopped straight down, a clean cut like an axe head.

“Coffee Moon!” Jiang answered like a bell.

Coffee Moon’s skew had two flavors. The fist’s tangible distortion—and free-cast deflection fields, invisible walls laid like glass panes.

Distortion didn’t affect that sword. Then what about deflection?

A field bloomed in front of Coffee Moon, an unseen wall like water under moonlight.

The blade tip slid into the field and bent upward, like dipping into a pond’s surface. Soldier Hero had seen the effect once and didn’t stop—he tried to push the entire attack through the field, commit the cut like a swimmer breaking the skin.

He wasn’t wrong. Once the blade left the field, it would snap back to normal shape. If the tip ended up inside Coffee Moon right then, he could shred the ghost in a single breath.

But that assumed the blade would leave the field.

Jiang compressed the field’s thickness, stretching it long in the vertical like a silk ribbon pulled tight.

The sword warped like a rolled edge; the farther it moved down, the more it bent inward, like a willow bow refusing the mark. It never touched Coffee Moon’s chest. Only when the old momentum spent itself did the blade slip out near the floor and spring back with a snap.

Her trick landed, light as a fox’s step. Jiang pushed the advantage, twisted Soldier Hero’s head again, and Coffee Moon drove a fist for his breastplate like thunder under skin.

“—!” Coffee Moon let out a thin, sharp war-cry, a sound like glass singing.

“Ten-Step Slash!” Soldier Hero adapted fast to the carousel vision; he dropped his body and slid out of the field, a shadow under a gate. As he barked the words, a force seemed to correct his impossible posture, snapping him into a stance that could bite. The sword tip skimmed the ground, folded into his arms, and his whole frame torqued.

Then he thrust, fast and vicious, with his side turned to Coffee Moon—through the gap between helm and shoulder like a snake striking from brush.

Jiang’s eyes and thoughts couldn’t catch that afterimage. Coffee Moon’s belly took the knight blade, unguarded, like cloth pierced by a nail.

“Ugh…” The ghost took the hit, and Jiang’s mind blanked a breath. Fatigue and pain surged together, twin tides in a narrow channel.

The ghost was linked to her spirit—an umbilical of moonlight. She couldn’t dismiss it; Soldier Hero would charge her body next, and she’d be bare as a sapling in frost.

She split her focus—one thread to pilot Coffee Moon through a second exchange, one thread to think like a candle in wind.

How would the Doctor fight this?

If she couldn’t read his technique, she’d stay reactive, a leaf chasing current. Her own power was strange, yes, but not brute enough to ignore his ability and smash through.

What was that Ten-Step Slash, really?

Soldier Hero hadn’t said a word since he entered. He’d shouted “Ten-Step Slash” twice—that had to be his signature. Think. How did it work?

“Ten-Step Slash!” He called again, the name a stamp on steel.

This time he triggered it after catching Coffee Moon’s punch on his blade. He slid the sword off the fist’s face, then arced a cut for Coffee Moon’s side, a crescent sweep like moonrise.

What was different?

What changed from a normal slash without the call?

No effect flare. No damage boost. Nothing—she couldn’t see it. The two attacks weren’t merely similar; they were identical, like two leaves from the same branch.

“……” Identical. So what?

His code name was Soldier Hero. Full plate. Knight’s blade. From head to toe, nothing like a modern hero—more like a plain adventurer from a fantasy tale, a brown cloak and bread.

What if his custom skill was just “perform a basic slash”?

Add one clause, the weird part from the second activation—force a basic slash even from a posture that shouldn’t allow power, a correction like an algorithm snapping a number into place.

If that’s all, there’s nothing to fear.

That sword seemed immune to her power, and the armor probably had the same resistance. That’s how he made such simple fighting into Official Hero stock—stone and iron against tricks.

But a deflection field doesn’t target the sword. It targets the space the sword occupies, the current the fish swims in.

Deflection fields need time to form. Once formed, you can’t move or reshape them unless you cancel and reassign. And if you don’t make the blade pass through the field—if you just create a field mid-blade—the tip that never entered won’t skew with the middle. It stays true like a needle’s point.

That’s how Soldier Hero found his time gaps. He used fine swordcraft to catch every punch, a clockmaker’s hands.

Fear of the unknown gone, she felt her lungs open. Now she could play at full.

Coffee Moon hammered a twin strike to the ears, fists splitting the air like cymbals. At the same time, Jiang marked the next field’s place, a dot on a star map.

Two points formed a line. To block two punches without a time gap, his sword had to appear in exactly one spot in that instant, the only doorway in a wall.

Cold light flashed. The blade rose from below, tracing a line up Coffee Moon’s chest and belly like chalk across slate. The ghost’s shape dimmed and blurred, but its movements didn’t flinch. It held like a lantern in rain.

Soldier Hero felt trouble bloom. He’d thought the ghost was a summoned thing, fragile as paper. He guessed wrong about its life. Even a killing cut didn’t make it disperse.

And now—this was when he should use Ten-Step Slash, force his posture back, reclaim power, and draw the blade to guard the punch path.

Jiang bit down on the spinning nausea from a gut-splitting sword, teeth on leather. Her right hand lifted, pointing to a spot tens of meters away, finger a spear.

“Ten-Ste—”

“Coffee Moon!” She cut in like thunder.

The field was already buried there, a trap set like a pit under leaves.

The knight blade, reaching to cover, bent over Soldier Hero’s head and clanged against his own helm, a church bell struck wrong.

“Hit him!” Her voice cracked like a whip.

“——————!!” Coffee Moon answered with silence that howled.

Clang!

The iron helm took twin fists at once, a muted metallic shock like rocks under a river.

Coffee Moon’s damage came from direct-contact distortion; its raw hit hurt less, like rain on a drum. But it didn’t mind punching tin. It feared no ache.

Clang clang clang clang clang clang clang clang!

Coffee Moon’s fists became a storm, rain so hard it left streaks, a blur beating Soldier Hero’s helm into a dented moon.

It treated his head like a sample in a shaker, waiting to be mixed to uniform.

It punched until the knight’s blade slipped from his hands, a fallen feather on sand.

It punched until his knees dropped with a thud, a prayer to stone.

It punched until he fell forward, face to grit, and didn’t stir—quiet as a snuffed candle.

—A knockout!

No applause rose from the empty stands, only cold lights humming like winter insects. In the arena’s chill, a woman’s voice announced the result, distant as a bell from a tower.

Soldier Hero cannot rise again.