202 THE DUEL OF GRUDGE
[Multi Meta Auditorium]
The Multi-Meta Auditorium buzzed with anticipation. Today, Seris Nuralith, the heir of the mighty Nuralith family, had come personally to challenge Damen Dark in a Duel of Grudge.
The auditorium was packed with the leaders and representatives of Silver City's major families: Nuralith, Trionix, Aetheris, Draxis, and Veyran.
Each had come to witness the legendary contest, for in Silver City, any grudge could be formally settled through combat—and once the duel concluded, the dispute would be considered resolved.
That was the legal basis of a Duel of Grudge.
Damen knew his troubles with the Nuraliths were far from over, yet this duel presented the only path to a definitive resolution.
To ensure credibility, he had extended invitations to all five major families. With the Nuraliths involved, attendance was mandatory….and so, the city's most powerful elites gathered to watch the fate of a family feud hang in the balance.
The bell rang.
Damen stepped in, calm and collected, feeling the familiar hum of his newly assimilated Heart of Shu within him. Across the arena, Seris moved with fluid grace, water rippling around him as if he were part of the element itself.
Name: Seris Nuralith
Strength: BMeta Rank: A
Specialty: Hydromancy
Seris's eyes gleamed. "Damen Dark… your arrogance ends here. The Nuralith family will not forgive your transgressions for killing my cousin Carl."
"They'll have to forgive after I defeat you today," Damen replied, a smirk on his face.
Seris raised his hands. The floor beneath Damen cracked as water surged upward from hidden channels, forming tall, twisting pillars.
Damen barely leapt out of the way.
"Damnit, this came up so quickly," he muttered.
"Hydro Prison!"
The water pillars twisted together, attempting to trap Damen in a dome of pressurized water, fluid yet crushing with the force of steel.
Unlike Rela Draxis's vine prison, Seris' skill could be summoned instantaneously.
Damen's eyes narrowed. "Time to see if Sirocco's Vengeance is ready."
He activated the skill.
Instantly, a gale of wind whirled around him, slicing through the water dome like a razor-sharp blade of air as mist filled the arena breaking the dome.
"Impressive… but not enough!" Seris said.
With a flick of his hand, the water condensed into serpentine hydras, multiple dragon heads lunging at Damen with crushing force.
Damen dodged, flying higher, but the sheer number of constructs kept him occupied.
"This can't go on forever," Damen muttered, thinking quickly.
He combined the Core of Echo with Sirocco's Vengeance, charging a massive blade of compressed wind energy in his hand.
The gale fractured into multiple blades that slashed through the hydra heads.
"Sirocco's Vengeance—Echo Out!"
The hydra dissipated. Damen was about to strike again…but Seris smiled, unfazed.
"Hydro Mirror!"
A reflective wall of water rose, deflecting some of Damen's wind slashes.
The crowd gasped in excitement and awe.
This was a perfect elemental clash.. wind versus water, slicing, bending, each trying to dominate the other.
"You are not a bad opponent… too bad you became my enemy," Seris shouted.
Focusing, Seris summoned a massive water whale, erupting from the arena floor with snapping jaws aimed directly at Damen.
Damen grinned. "Well, I'm not fooling around anymore…"
He compressed his wind currents into a spinning tornado blade and thrust forward. The spiraling storm collided with the Leviathan.
"Sirocco's Vengeance."
The arena trembled as wind and water exploded outward. When the mist cleared, Damen hovered calmly in the center, his hands glowing with residual wind energy.
Seris staggered, breathing heavily, his water constructs dissipating around him.
"How… how can your wind blade be so strong?" Seris gasped.
"I told you… I was just fooling around earlier," Damen replied. "Those blades were weaker before. This is it's full strength."
Seris, exhausted, sank to his knees. "Impossible… how can your wind cut through… my hydromancy?"
Damen floated above, calm yet deadly. "Now, let's end this."
With a twist of his wrist, he unleashed a final chain of Sirocco's Vengeance, whipping the arena air into torrential wind slashes, striking Seris from multiple angles.
The young hydromancer had no room to maneuver.
The drone referee counted:
"10… 9… 8…"
Seris collapsed.
The arena was silent for a heartbeat, then erupted in cheers. Damen Dark had won again, this time against the strongest heir of the Nuralith family.
Macan Nuralith rose to his feet, fury burning in his eyes. Their champion had fallen—Seris, the family's brightest prodigy, had been defeated by Damen Dark.
"Imbecile", Macan shouted towards Seris' direction.
The loss hit the Nuraliths harder than anyone expected.
Across the stands, Jax Trionix smiled and applauded. He'd never been able to settle his grudge with the Nuraliths through ordinary channels; this public defeat pleased him immensely.
One by one, the other major families took their leave. Seris was carried away for treatment.
Only Damen remained in the arena. His pulse hammered in his ears.
The fight had been swift, and his victory had hinged on the Heart of Shu. Without it, he would have needed to reveal his Black Halo skill—and that would have invited a different kind of trouble.
----
Back at the secret base, Kail and Liorea watched the replay on the holoscreen. Kail jumped up the moment Damen entered.
"Big Brother—you won. The Nuraliths won't bother with you anymore," he said, grinning.
Damen didn't return the smile. He wasn't convinced the problem was solved. "They won't trouble me openly," he said. "But secretly? That's another matter."
Still, having the Nuraliths backed off in public was a meaningful gain. "At least they won't send choppers to school to harass me."
Liorea's face turned serious.
"You killed their heir," she said. "They won't let this Duel of Grudge be the last word."
Damen nodded. "You're right. This isn't the end."
"What do we do now?" Kail asked.
Damen considered for a moment, then looked at Liorea. "What do you think?"
She smiled, cold and practical. "We strike first. Preempt them—cripple their ability to retaliate before they get a chance."
"How do we preempt the Nuraliths?" Damen asked.
Liorea's answer was blunt. "Strike their piggy banks."
Kail's jaw dropped. "Rob them? Are you serious? The Nuraliths have Rank-A heroes guarding everything."
Damen wasn't fazed. "Kail, pull the accounts department roster for Nuralith. I need every name."
Kail and even Liorea blinked at him in surprise, but Kail hurried to his console and produced the list.
Damen scanned it: there were a few dozen names.
He cross-checked them against his mining app's favorite list and found some of the names on the list but not all of them.
"I need these people on my mining favorite", he murmured.
The next morning, he returned to the café outside Nuralith Tower, his eyes on every face. He was determined to add the Nuralith accounts team to his favorites—and when he returned to the base, he'd map their locations and routines.
-----
A week later, Damen pulled up the city holo-map and overlaid it with his personal tracking feed. He tapped and drew circles around several locations … unremarkable warehouses, a shuttered textile shop, a low-rise logistics office.
"Kail, pull up the logs for these coordinates," Damen said, tapping a cluster of marks.
"Right there, Big Brother,"
Liorea scanned the list and frowned. "None of these places look like official Nuralith sites, they don't seem important though," she said.
Damen's smile was slow and cold. "Exactly. If they're unimportant, why are finance officers and auditors showing up in these few sitesmultiple times a week?"
Liorea's eyes lit with understanding. "They're hiding something."
"Clever," Damen said. He flipped the holo to a street-view overlay. "Kail…do a sweep. I want schedules, vehicle IDs, delivery manifests. Everything."
Kail's fingers flew over his console. "On it. I'll cross-check CCTV, transaction timestamps, and their commuter logs. We'll find a pattern."
Liorea gave Damen a surprised look, "Wait, since when did you have the same ability as the Coracle… in finding people?"
Damen merely smiled at the question.
-----