People who expect to “land a single hit on a KING” usually fall into one of two categories: the battle maniacs whose blood runs so hot they don’t need their brains supplying oxygen, or the reckless fools whose brains were never supplying enough oxygen to begin with.
As for me—I like to think I don’t belong to either. But even when I package myself as the “calm and collected type,” I can’t deny one fact: I still never anticipated that Xieyi Mayne would possess a skill capable of rewriting “causality.”
At the end of the day, what humans call “calmness” is mostly just bravado before you actually get hit where it hurts.
The scythe collided with the knight’s lance.
The lance’s rugged circular guard ring struck the blade of the Witch’s Scythe like a merciless uppercut.
Rather than technique, this felt more like a weight-class crush—I was already losing in sheer mass, and the power the user poured into the weapon made any talk of fairness pointless.
It was like trying to negotiate fairness with a sledgehammer using a ruler; the ruler would simply snap first.
“Yoruichi, don’t underestimate a KING!”
Almost at the exact moment the two virtual weapons clashed, Xieyi Mayne’s voice rang out.
Her tone suddenly sharpened, as if she had ground her emotions into a blade.
The next instant she lifted her face to stare straight at me, and those golden eyes burned with something I hated yet found painfully familiar.
“BHAO is a shackle, an inescapable curse—you should just quit the game and go work at a company like your uncle and aunt! Even a regular office job would be better than playing BHAO! Someone who has never become a KING could never understand!!”
She suddenly poured on more strength.
The already uneven weapon contest instantly turned one-sided.
The lance pressed down, numbing my arms and even making my teeth ache.
“Ah, that’s right—I don’t know anything.” I answered in a low voice, my tone as flat as if I were admitting “the miso soup in the cafeteria today was too salty.” Yet that very sentence felt like handing her my softest spot on a platter. “Because you always handled everything alone, Mayne. You never told me any of it.”
I twisted my steps to redirect the impact through my hips and waist, swallowing the pain and resentment in one gulp. In that brief breathing window I activated the skill again.
I issued the command: “MERGE INTO SHADOW.”
Wearing the murky cloak, my body melted into darkness like liquid.
In that instant I felt an absurd sense of relief, as if I had finally returned to the field I was best at: disappearing.
“Wearing a murky cloak and then melting into the shadows like liquid—this is the Night Witch’s signature technique! Niya-chan isn’t mistaken! UNKNOWN NAME WARRIOR’s true identity is the NIGHT WITCH! That also explains why UNKNOWN NAME WARRIOR is always wrapped in a cloak and why even the character ID looks blurred out!”
Whew… this Niya-chan really is something.
I had naïvely hoped the audience had bad eyesight or had simply never heard of the Night Witch.
Looking at it now, that hope was about as meaningful as “hoping tomorrow’s exam gets canceled”—a pointless prayer, even a little laughably self-deceptive.
Even as I sank deep into the shadows, wrapped in that comforting blackness, I could still feel the scorching gazes stabbing down from the spectator stands.
Those looks weren’t admiration; they were spectacle.
Like people standing at the edge of an accident scene—equal parts afraid and excited.
Looks like—no matter what, I can’t escape “identity exposure” this time.
And amid the normal confusion and excited anticipation, I caught one gaze that stood out even more sharply and made my stomach clench.
The owner of that gaze—golden hair, presence so strong it was like a spotlight had been switched on.
“Heita…?”
My brain froze on the spot.
Wasn’t this guy supposed to be busy with club activities?
Why is he watching my match from the stands?!
Ah… ah… this time it was completely over.
A full-school live broadcast was bad enough, but live in-person viewing dragged the embarrassment from two dimensions straight into three.
At least on a screen you could claim “pixels are unclear.” In person there was only “no excuses left.”
“Completely… exposed now.”
I muttered inside the shadows.
The tone was less despair and more the helpless acceptance of “so we’ve finally reached this point.” But life was like that—the harder you tried to stay low-key, the more the spotlight fate threw on you.
While I was trapped in the surreal terror of “how do I live after my identity is exposed,” Xieyi Mayne had already raised her overly sharp lance and thrust it toward me.
“Oh ho, according to online data— the Night Witch’s shadow-merging skill can completely nullify energy and magic damage. Although it’s hard to explain how a low-dimensional state can ignore high-dimensional energy attacks, physical damage still applies!”
…She even cited “online data.”
True to her President title—she had to include sources even when she was cutting someone down.
Ugh…
She was right.
MERGE INTO SHADOW could nullify energy-type, magic-type, and all “unscientific” damage, but any physical collision that followed natural laws could still smash me until I questioned my own existence.
Worse, she had accurately thrust at me the exact moment I got distracted by the stands—which meant she had decided to get serious.
A serious Mayne wasn’t my childhood friend anymore; she was a machine that treated rules as weapons.
The situation looked extremely dangerous right now.
Never mind how she had pinpointed my position when I was almost one with the shadows—just the “riding the wind” momentum of that thrust was enough to send chills down my back.
But at least up until now—aside from that causality-rewriting skill of hers—everything else had stayed within my expectations.
Of course, saying that sounded cool, but the truth was that my so-called “expectations” were nothing more than a straw I was desperately clutching in the middle of despair.
“Gwah—!”
I leaped out of the shadows. Once the position was seen through, MERGE INTO SHADOW did little more than slightly boost mobility; it was almost no different from my normal state. Since hiding was impossible, I might as well come out honestly and meet her weapon with my own.
“Yoruichi, this duel was never fair to begin with. Your HP is far too low compared to mine, and besides—I’m a KING.”
Her tone was righteous, like she was reading aloud a verdict that said “your loss is only natural.”
She was right, but I still refused to give up.
“Then show me exactly how powerful a KING is—please fight me with everything you have!”
I heard my own voice trembling, yet I forced it into something resembling a provocation.
“Hah…”
Xieyi Mayne let out what sounded almost like a sigh, her tone softening for a split second.
“Then after this Reward Match is over, tell me everything that’s happened to you, okay, Yoruichi?”
She didn’t thrust immediately. Instead she gave me a chance to counter.
For me, that was obviously a godsend.
“Before that, you’ll have to defeat me first!”
I threw the words back at her and raised my scythe once more.
I had calculated the position of this strike.
The racetrack.
That red sports car was roaring toward us from the distance, like fate itself dragging its taillights closer.
And right on the path the car had to take—I had planted my third skill.
I silently recited the skill name in my mind: Voodoo Doll.
It could swap positions with me and take one fatal hit in my place.
Of course, I wasn’t stupid enough to swap myself onto the racetrack for a high-speed death experience.
What I wanted was to use its “fatal swap” to create a chance to defeat Xieyi Mayne.
The chance was random.
As long as the fatal moment swapped me behind her—even a KING with godlike reaction speed couldn’t instantly turn and block a slash from behind the instant her lance was committed and she entered attack recovery.
Yes.
I didn’t want to bet victory on a “maybe-or-maybe-not” possibility either.
But aside from that, my win rate was zero.
So I had no choice but to gamble.
A person who normally rehearsed eye contact in his head was now staking his fate here—it sounded like a joke, but I couldn’t laugh.
And right now, the only thing I needed to do was force Xieyi Mayne to use that “rewrite the causality of the hit” skill again and put it on cooldown.
As long as it went on cooldown, I would have a tiny opening.
I clenched my teeth and swung the Witch’s Scythe, as if flinging all the world’s humiliation away with it.
“Heh… haaah ha!”
From Xieyi Mayne’s mouth came the name of that ridiculously overpowered skill I both wanted to curse and had to admit was insanely strong:
“THE JUSTICE TRIAL!”
Golden light wrapped around her body like a sacred curtain.
The scythe trembled in the air, as if two opposing forces were yanking it at once.
Causality-reversing defensive ability.
It rewrote the “originally going to hit” future into the fact of “absolutely blocked”—and the cooldown was still so short.
Cheating. Real cheating. If this thing showed up in an exam it would be the ultimate “I will never get a question wrong” hack.
I smiled bitterly and raised the scythe—of course I wasn’t raising it willingly; the BHAO system forced my arm up like a paused puppet.
The next instant the lance engraved with sacred spiral patterns slammed into it right on schedule.
Clang—
The metallic clash sounded as ugly as reality laughing at me.
The clash between dark attribute and holy attribute could never produce any harmonious melody.
But this time Mayne’s lance wasn’t simply “blocking.”
It carried a spiral airflow and a powerful suction force.
That suction felt like it wanted to drag my wrists, my breath, and even my escape routes into her rhythm.
A true… full-dive player?
My heart sank heavily.
Many BHAO players could never become “full-dive players.”
The core of that title wasn’t “looking cool when using skills,” but—without using skills at all, using only the weapon and body model to produce effects that were practically “real martial techniques.”
Xieyi Mayne’s strike just now was exactly that: no skill, simply using the weapon’s properties to perform lance techniques.
The characteristic of a knight’s lance was weight and inertia—heavy enough to turn “blocking” into “suppression.”
And her silver-white lance was different again—the shaft was engraved with fine spiral patterns from tip to butt.
When swung with the right force and rotation, it would form a sucking vortex.
To make a heavy lance rotate silently while swinging… she must have mastered some kind of technique.
I suddenly remembered what Ameno Yotsuba had said about the “hidden leveling system.”
The kind of training that repeated movements until they reached the marrow and forged the body itself into a weapon.
…Maybe Mayne had already unlocked her own hidden level.
What a terrifying KING… Rider King.
She had defeated the former Death Metal Band, seized control of Blue Sea Academy from the delinquent upperclassmen, and transformed the N2 district from an apocalyptic style into a medieval knight style.
Xieyi Mayne.
None of that looked like something the cheerful childhood friend who used to argue with me over desserts could have done.
And right now I could clearly feel it—the Witch’s Scythe was trembling in my hands.
“Even though you’re praised as the legendary Night Witch, if you want to stand against a KING—you still need to raise your tier first, Yoruichi!”
Mayne’s words were as clean and sharp as a knife.
A layer of white frost instantly covered her silver lance, as if some status effect had been applied.
Yet at that exact moment, I smiled instead.
“That’s more like it,” I said softly, as if convincing myself.
“To duel a KING who’s finally gotten serious—this is my honor… no, it’s an opportunity I’ve been hoping for.”
Logically, all I had to do now was “pretend to be killed by her” and the plan could continue.
But if I acted too cooperative, she would definitely notice.
So I had to keep acting—act even more like someone who refused to admit defeat—even though I had already staked victory on randomness.
“Please show me even more moves,” I gripped the scythe tighter, the corners of my mouth curving into an arc almost as dangerous as the blade itself.
“I’ll take every single one.”
I sounded impressive.
The reality was that under that powerful suction I could neither escape nor easily contend with JUSTICE PIKE head-on.
Then Xieyi Mayne’s attack arrived right on schedule. She shouted loudly:
“Anyway, you’ve already won this Reward Match, Yoruichi—just let this one strike of mine end it!”
The silver lance erupted with white light, as if countless fangs and bolts of lightning were coiling around it.
The air tore open and everything around me seemed to be vacuumed away in a single second.
My vision turned white, my hearing swallowed by the storm.
Impossible to block…
The words echoed in my mind.
This wasn’t the KING’s exclusive LAST SKILL, yet it possessed power close to one.
No matter how realistically I tried to act—in the face of an attack like this, anyone would die in one hit. It was no longer just a matter of “HP”; even at full health it wouldn’t be enough to survive this.
I met the white light with a bitter smile.
The high temperature swallowed my black form, and the pain penalty felt like red-hot wire being tightened around my nerves.
Ugh… A groan slipped out; I bit down hard.
With the Voodoo Doll in play, I can still tank this one time…
I even almost felt a flicker of smugness.
But the next second the system prompt hit me like cold water to the face:
CHASE THE STARDUST armament damaged—temporarily unequipped.
—I parted my lips slightly.
The cloak that had served as my disguise to hide my real appearance had been shattered by that single strike.
“De… defeated! Our great KING, our President Xieyi Mayne, has defeated the Witch in a single blow! So the tier difference in BHAO really does have a massive effect on actual combat?! Is the legend of a low-tier player challenging a high-tier one destined to end here?!”
The spectator stands immediately began their post-battle analysis.
People were always quick to summarize lessons after someone else took the hits, as if the faster they analyzed, the more they could prove they hadn’t been the one on the receiving end.
“Aaah, just as expected—the Witch couldn’t do it!”
“Yeah, yeah. No matter how exaggerated the legends were, against a KING she still couldn’t even last one hit.”
They spoke as if it were obvious.
After all, the entertainment value of this Reward Match hadn’t been high: aside from the identity reversal of UNKNOWN NAME WARRIOR, the “perfect clash with the KING” everyone had been looking forward to simply hadn’t happened.
So I could understand their disappointment.
But in the middle of the crowd, that conspicuous golden figure let out a completely different voice.
“That’s not true…”
Someone turned around as if soothing a child who didn’t understand the rules: “The match is already over, kid—there’s no point saying that now, is there?”
Yet Heita stubbornly lifted his head.
His voice wasn’t loud, but it was unusually firm:
“No… I believe the Night Witch would never be defeated this easily!”
Premium Chapter
Login to buy access to this Chapter.