Ellis clutched his side, his fingers slick with the crimson heat of his own blood. It leaked through his grip, staining his palms.
Son of a bitch. He’d been blindsided.
The arrogant, polished smile he usually wore fractured, his composure slipping toward a string of curses. No. Stay calm. You’re a gentleman. A professional. He inhaled sharply, forcing the rage into a cold, hard knot in his chest before glaring down at Calder.
Since the Novice Trial, Ellis had been a juggernaut. He didn’t lose; he didn’t struggle. He simply steamrolled everything in his path. The idea of being "rat-fucked" by a nobody was an insult he couldn’t stomach.
"You're a dead man," Ellis spat, his eyes burning with lethal intent.
Beside him, Nina’s expression darkened as she stared at her interface. "Careful. This one’s a problem." She had seen the leaderboard refresh. A new name from The Ember Republic had surged upward, and their local map was suddenly peppered with new icons.
The man standing before them was carrying an entire hoard of flags.
Normally, the two of them wouldn't fear a lone wolf, but the situation was precarious. Nearby, Sword Saint Kaito Miura and the Gunsmith Tyren were already regaining their footing. If they didn't end this quickly, they’d be caught in a four-way meat grinder.
"Give me three minutes," Ellis hissed, teeth bared. "Just hold them for three minutes."
Nina didn't waste breath. She nodded once, hoisted her massive staff, and pivoted to face Kaito and Tyren.
Ellis leveled the Trident of the Tidegod at Calder, a sneer twisting his face. "You think I'm afraid to get my hands dirty? I stayed up here to give you a chance to live."
He lunged. Riding a crest of conjured seawater, he swung the heavy trident in a brutal arc.
"Switch! Steel Cleave!"
Calder’s Chain Scourge snapped into its Ossein Sword form instantly. He met the trident's overhead strike with a violent, upward slash.
CLANG!
The impact sent a jarring vibration up Ellis’s arms, nearly numbing his elbows. His eyes widened. He actually blocked it?
Ellis was a Dual Path: Warrior-Mage, wielding the SS-Tier [Sea God] class. With an Affinity Score north of 90, his post-advancement stat growth was a hair’s breadth away from a SSS-Tier Talent's 400-point ceiling. Whether he was throwing spells or swinging steel, his output was top-tier. He had just washed away Kaito and Tyren with a single wave—so how was this man standing his ground?
"Are you an SS-Tier too?" Ellis demanded, narrowing his eyes.
Calder didn't answer. He simply raised the Ossein Sword in his left hand and hammered down a heavy vertical strike.
CLANG!
Ellis caught the blade on the shaft of his trident, and then the world turned into a blur of sparks and screaming metal.
The two collided in a frantic exchange of blows. Ellis moved with the weight and speed of a hurricane, his trident a whistling blur. But Calder was a ghost, his twin Ossein Swords parrying and counter-attacking with terrifying precision.
The sound of their clash was like a hammer on an anvil, echoing across the island. To the average player, they were nothing more than flickering shadows.
"Jesus... look at them go," a spectator whispered from the sidelines.
"Can anyone even see what’s happening? I can't track the blades at all."
"Their stats are on another level. We're playing a different game."
Until now, the "Monsters" on the leaderboard had mostly dealt in mass destruction—one skill, a dozen deaths. But this—this raw, visceral, blade-to-blade combat—showed the true gap in their power.
Even Kaito Miura, watching from a distance, felt a chill. He was stunned twice over: first, by Ellis’s hidden martial prowess, and second, by the fact that this newcomer wasn't just holding his own—he was winning.
Nina might not have seen it through the chaos of her own fight, but Kaito’s trained eye saw the truth. Calder’s movements were sharper, his recovery faster. Every time the Ossein Swords flickered, they left a new shallow red line on Ellis’s skin.
It didn't look like a duel. It looked like Calder was playing with him.
"Damn you! DAMN YOU!"
Ellis screamed internally. He could feel it—he was stronger, his weapons were higher quality, and his Trident of the Tidegod was a "Rare" growth weapon. Calder’s bone swords looked like junk; they should have shattered under the Sea God's might.
And yet, they held. Worse, Calder’s angles were impossible. No matter how Ellis shifted his weight or changed his rhythm, Calder was already there, waiting.
-120!
-110!
-130!
The damage numbers floated up in a steady stream. As a Dual Path, Ellis had a massive health pool and defense, boasting over 2,000 HP at Level 11. But even that was melting under the relentless attrition.
His Agility is higher than mine, Ellis realized, his face pale. He's dictating every second of this.
"Enough!" Ellis roared. He decided to tank a hit, ignoring a slash across his shoulder to bring the Trident of the Tidegod down in a crushing blow.
CRACK!
Calder blocked, but the sheer physical force sent him skidding back across the wet sand. He remained upright, his expression unreadable.
"Tide God's Mantle!"
Ellis didn't care about his wounds. He bellowed the command, and the surrounding ocean responded. Deep blue energy erupted from the waves, spiraling toward him. Within seconds, a suit of translucent, shimmering azure armor encased his bare skin, and his eyes glowed with an oceanic light.
(The armor required the user to be unencumbered by physical clothing to manifest, a tactical necessity rather than a stylistic choice.)
"Nina! Forget them! Kill this bastard with me now!" Ellis barked.
He didn't wait for her to agree. He swung the trident forward. "[Tidal Surge]!"
A wall of water erupted behind him, roaring toward Calder. Nina reacted instantly, pivoting from Kaito. She slammed a thick wall of ice between herself and the other two, then leveled her staff at the surging wave.
"[Frost Spike Frenzy]!"
Ice and water—a lethal combination. The massive wave was suddenly pregnant with thousands of jagged frost bolts, a dual-element catastrophe. Kaito Miura, who had barely survived a sequential hit from these two earlier, felt his scalp go numb. A simultaneous hit was a death sentence.
Calder looked up at the approaching wall of death. He didn't retreat. He stepped into the surf, his pace accelerating until he was a blur across the water's surface.
Just as the magic was about to swallow him, his eyes sharpened.
"Wavecleave."
"Blink."
Calder vanished.
Ellis blinked, confused, until a sudden, icy chill pierced his back. He spun around, only to find Calder standing behind him, face cold and indifferent. One Ossein Sword was buried deep in Ellis’s chest; the other was pressed firmly against his jugular.
"You've been cooperative so far," Calder said, his voice a low rasp. "I'd prefer not to kill you. Hand over the flags."
The agony finally registered, a white-hot spike through Ellis’s lungs. His bravado shattered like glass. "Wait—wait! Take them! Just don't kill me!"
One stab had deleted nearly half of Ellis's health bar. He didn't hesitate, coughing up every flag in his inventory: three SSS-Tier Conquest Banners and three SS-Tier Banners.
The leaderboard flickered and rewrote itself:
1. Calder: SSS-Tier War Banner 4, SS-Tier Conquest Banner 12
2. Nina: SSS-Tier Conquest Banner 3, SS-Tier Conquest Banner 4
3. Kaito Miura: SSS-Tier Conquest Banner 2, SS-Tier Conquest Banner 4
4. Tyren: SSS-Tier Conquest Banner 2, SS-Tier Conquest Banner 2
Ellis had been stripped bare. Calder had surged from the shadows to the absolute peak, the undisputed king of the battlefield with sixteen flags in his possession.
"Holy shit! He did it!" The Ember Republic players in the regional chat erupted. They had watched Calder get pinched between the top two players and assumed he was done. Seeing him not only survive but turn Ellis into a hostage was beyond their wildest dreams.
Calder wasn't finished. He twisted the blade in Ellis’s chest just enough to keep the man pinned. If not for the lingering protection of the Tide God’s Mantle, Ellis would have been a corpse. He stared at Calder with pure, unadulterated terror.
Calder retracted his swords, then planted a boot firmly in the middle of Ellis’s back, pinning him to the ground. He looked up at Nina, Kaito, and Tyren.
"You can hand them over now," Calder said. "Or I can come over there and take them from your bodies."
Nina and the others weren't about to surrender. Nina, her mana dipping and her big spells on cooldown, glanced at Kaito. "A truce?"
Kaito exchanged a look with Tyren. "Agreed."
A desperate alliance was formed. Ellis, still pinned under Calder’s boot, was no longer a player—he was an object.
"Switch."
Calder’s right arm shifted, the bone blades lengthening into the black, spiked [Chain Scourge]. With a flick of his wrist, the chain lashed around Ellis’s neck like a leash.
"Move," Calder commanded.
Ellis’s face flushed with a mix of shame and fury. He was being treated like a dog. But with his health in the red, one tug on that spiked chain would end him. He had no choice. He summoned the waves once more, acting as a high-speed mount for the man who had just humiliated him.
"Faster," Calder hissed.
Fuck my life, Ellis thought, pushing his speed to the limit. His talent for wave-riding was unmatched in the water, allowing him to bypass terrain and close the gap to the trio in seconds.
"You really are a suicidal fool!" Tyren laughed, a jagged, cruel sound. She leveled her heavy weapons at the incoming pair. "[Storm of Lead]!"
A hail of high-caliber projectiles tore through the air. Ellis tried to veer off, but the chain around his throat tightened, forcing him to stay the course.
"We're going to die! We're going to die!" Ellis wailed.
Calder ignored him. As the bullets reached them, he extended his other arm, manifesting multiple strands of the [Chain Scourge]. The black chains whipped through the air with supernatural speed, a chaotic dance of steel.
Ping-ping-ping-ping!
Every single bullet was batted aside.
Ellis squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for the end, but it never came. He opened one eye to see the chains rotating like a high-speed fan, deflecting Tyren's entire barrage. Not a single scrap of lead touched them.
How is he doing this? Ellis was floored. Most players would have dodged or used a shield. This level of mechanical precision—intercepting individual bullets with a whip—was insane.
To the onlookers, it looked like a suicide charge. Explosions and muzzle flashes obscured Calder and Ellis. Tyren, confident in her SS-Tier firepower, smirked. Her [Storm of Lead] had the highest DPS on the island.
"Caught the whole burst," Tyren gloated. "Nobody survives that."
Nina didn't share her confidence. "Stay alert. He has a displacement skill."
Tyren waved her off. "He's not teleporting. I saw him cut through the wave earlier—it's a trick. My skill is auto-locked. If the explosions are still happening, he’s still in the kill zone."
She opened her mouth to continue her boast, but a cold, flat voice drifted from directly behind her.
"Is that so?"
The three of them froze. Before they could twitch, agony flared.
Tyren tried to turn her guns, but the black [Chain Scourge] had already wound around her like a constrictor. It cinched tight around her joints, the armpits, the thighs, the collarbones. The barbs dug deep into her flesh, draining her strength and locking her in place.
Beside her, Nina was in the same state. The chains had bound her arms to her torso, and her massive staff clattered uselessly to the sand.
Kaito Miura, ever the professional, had reacted the fastest. He didn't try to save his 'allies'; he leaped backward to create distance. But he never finished the move. Ellis, driven by a desperate need to vent his rage, lunged forward and drove his trident straight through Kaito’s gut.
Kaito’s eyes bulged. His katana slipped from his nerveless fingers. Ellis gave the trident a vicious, spiteful twist.
The Sword Saint coughed a mouthful of blood and went limp.
Tyren watched her teammate die, her face contorting in terror. She felt the cold breath of the man behind her.
"The flags," Calder said.