CHAPTER 15: The Fifthteenth-Fracture

We faced each other in the center of the arena, locked in a standoff that felt like the collision point of two worlds.

I’d already begun mapping Alric’s scalar imprint—the subtle anomalies he emitted since the first time we met. His magic didn’t behave like standard arcana. It warped localized constants, bending the rules of magical engagement to favor him. But now something new pulsed from him. A green glow, deep and spiraling, began to envelop his form. Not raw mana—this was structured. Defined. Calculated.

Law Magic.

Alric raised his hand, and sigils spun into the air—six green rings orbiting his arms like judicial seals.

“You don’t get it,” he said, stepping forward. “This isn’t just power. This is order. You’re an error in the system, and I’ve been chosen to erase you.”

The air crackled.

Principal Lyra’s voice boomed: “BEGIN!”

Before her final syllable finished, I moved.

I yanked both hands from my pockets, scalar numbers spilling from my fingertips like threads of energy. With a blink, I altered the gravitational vector around Alric—crushing him with the weight of a small star.

The arena floor beneath him cratered. Even Saaya could see the pressure, the distortion in the very air that surrounded him.

“You think you’re clever—” he growled, raising his palm to the sky.

A glyph snapped into place. “LAW: Inviolability—Gravity within five meters of caster is nullified.”

The pressure vanished.

He rocketed forward. Before I could blink, his fist crashed against my barrier.

The impact cracked through the air. My shield flickered. I was forced backward, boots scraping against stone.

“LAW: Equal Exchange.”

My barrier buckled—and then part of my own kinetic force surged back at me, blasting me across the arena.

I tumbled, regained my stance mid-air, flipped, and landed on my feet.

I wiped a trail of blood from my lip.

So that’s how he played.

He didn’t just cast spells—he rewrote the conditions of combat.

I countered with a scalar burst—altering the refractive index between us, skewing his perception of distance and time.

He adjusted immediately.

“LAW: True Geometry. All illusions, shifts, and spatial warps within my domain revert to natural constants.”

My distortion vanished.

He surged forward again.

We clashed in the center.

Fists. Elbows. Knees.

His strikes were enhanced by the battlefield rules he created. Each punch carried amplified momentum. Every time I tried to shift the physical constants of his motion—mass, speed, air drag—his magic restored the “law” before it took effect.

But his system wasn’t perfect.

There were openings—slivers of chaos between structured rules.

I twisted into a low spin, kicked at his shin with a burst of scalar propulsion. It connected. He faltered.

I jumped, sending a punch toward his ribs, laced with a micro-singularity. The gravitational spike cracked his protective aura and knocked him back several meters.

He skidded to a stop, breathing hard.

Then he smiled.

“LAW: Punishment. For every action taken without mana resonance, backlash will be inflicted tenfold.”

My body convulsed—like needles of fire stabbing down my spine.

Saaya stood in the audience, eyes wide. Her mouth moved, but the pain dulled my senses. I couldn’t hear her.

I dropped to one knee.

Alric began walking forward again, that confident swagger returning.

“This is the price of breaking the system. Of trying to cheat your way through existence,” he said. “You manipulate numbers, but I dictate reality.”

I clenched my fists. “You think you’re dictating reality?” I stood, trembling but smirking. “Then let me remind you—law is only stable until it’s redefined.”

“Shut up, reject!” he yelled, slamming his fist into my face.

My shield flickered again. The impact broke through, blood running down the side of my face as I dropped to the ground.

Then it shifted.

Blue lines spread beneath my feet—rippling like circuitry. My glyph spun faster now, spheres pulsing with energy.

I overrode his laws.

Temporarily.

The gravity field flipped. Air temperature plunged. All kinetic energy in a five-meter radius drained in a single moment—then inverted.

Alric went flying—his own body caught in the chaos of unbalanced equations.

I flashed toward him mid-air, grabbed his collar, and drove a knee into his stomach repeatedly before flipping him over and blasting him into the arena floor with a scalar pulse.

Dust exploded.

The arena trembled.

Gasps echoed from the crowd.

But from the rubble, the green glow returned. Brighter.

He stood. Bloodied, but grinning.

“LAW: Final Edict. Until one fighter falls unconscious, all changes to natural law are denied. Only will and strength matter now.”

The battlefield froze.

No more laws.

No more scalar interference.

Just fists. Flesh. Fury.

My shield vanished.

His glyphs disintegrated.

We stared.

Then charged.

No magic. No tricks. Just raw combat.

We exchanged blow after blow. My knuckles split against his jaw. His elbow slammed into my ribs. The world around us vanished into background noise.

Time blurred.

Every strike became instinct. Every hit echoed with meaning beyond power—ideology, legacy, evolution.

I caught his fist.

He caught my knee.

Both of us locked.

Chest to chest.

Breath to breath.

Exhausted.

The Final Edict faded.

And the world began to bend again.

The Scalar Grid roared back to life like a long-starved engine. My body ignited with feedback—buzzing, humming, flexing. Constants spun in fractal loops around me, values rewriting faster than the eye could follow.

Alric noticed. His glyphs flickered—still active, but unstable. His aura trembled, his control fraying.

He readied a new law. But I was already inside the system, rewriting it from within.

I moved faster than before, feet barely touching the ground as I launched forward.

The moment his glyph ignited, I pulsed a counter-sequence into the terrain. His law bent—twisted—merged with mine.

He met me at the center, roaring, fist blazing with compressed intent.

I ducked beneath it. Struck his ribs with a palm sheathed in raw scalar inertia. The gravity stacked. Every punch I threw added more weight—like entire planets colliding into him.

He staggered. His breath cracked from his lungs.

But Alric was a fighter. He twisted back, caught my next punch, and retaliated with a brutal elbow aimed for my jaw.

I slipped beneath, pivoted, and reversed the momentum with a scalar fold—his own movement folding back on him.

He flipped backward and slammed a commandment sigil into the arena floor. A spiral of runes burst outward—redefining gravity, canceling friction, rejecting scalar influence.

I staggered, my leg nearly buckling. He charged, landed a devastating punch to my gut, and slammed me into the stone.

The arena spun.

I tasted blood.

But I recalibrated—overriding his glyph before it completed. I launched upward, spinning with a burst of force and landed a flying knee to his shoulder that cracked the air.

Alric flew across the field. He stopped himself with a glyph shield that shattered as he landed.

He tried to rise again. A new glyph formed—darker than before. Deeper.

But I didn’t let him finish.

I slammed both palms to the ground, rewriting the battlefield beneath us. Our equations tangled, clashed—but mine evolved, recursive, adjusting in real time.

A spire of stone erupted beneath him. He leapt to dodge.

I was already behind him.

He turned—too slow.

The glyph circle behind me reappeared—large, glowing electric-blue, three rotating glyphs surrounded by orbiting spheres.

My fist collided with his stomach. Then I pulled back—and forced the weight of the sun onto him.

Crushing him into the arena floor.

The stone shattered. Craters split outward. The pressure was visible.

The crowd sat frozen.

In the stands, Saaya was on her feet. Her eyes locked onto mine, her lips parted—no scream, no cry. Just breathless awe.

Beside her, Yuuka watched in still silence. Her usual smirk was gone. Her gaze was focused, sharp. She gripped the edge of her seat—but her mouth curled, just slightly.

My final blow landed.

His glyphs shattered.

His aura broke.

And Alric—scion of pureblood magic—was slammed into the earth beneath the weight of my system.

I floated down.

The crowd didn’t cheer.

They waited.

Alric groaned, reaching weakly toward the edge of the shattered floor.

I raised my hand.

Pressure surged.

He collapsed.

His glyphs—gone.

Mine—resonating with the field.

And Alric Vaeldren was unconscious.

The match was over.