Chapter 321: First Win

Marcus turned away from Liam and faced the crowd.

He spread his arms wide, the gesture of someone who had decided the audience needed to be part of this moment, and he pointed back at Liam with one hand, his expression carrying the specific arrogance of someone who had done this enough times to be comfortable performing in front of several hundred people while also being in the middle of a fight.

"This guy," he said, loud enough that the speakers caught it and carried it through the arena, "is a weakling."

The crowd responded.

Some of it was laughter. Some of it was the specific sound of people who had placed money on something and were now having feelings about that decision. Some of it was booing, directed at Marcus, coming from the sections that had decided they liked Liam for reasons that had nothing to do with his performance so far and everything to do with the fact that they did not like Marcus.

"I knew I shouldn’t have bet on him." Somewhere to the right, loud and mournful.

"I did." A different voice, closer, carrying the weight of a person sitting with a bad decision.

"How much." The person beside them.

"Enough." A pause. "Too much."

"WHY." Pure disbelief.

"He seemed confident in the corridor." Defensive now.

"He seemed terrified on the floor." Immediate response.

The commentator’s voice came through above all of it, warm and entirely comfortable with the direction things were going.

"Well folks it appears our young challenger is not exactly winning the hearts and minds of the audience tonight. Which is fine. Truly. We are not here to make friends. We are here to watch what happens when two very different types of people share a very small space. And what is happening right now is."

A pause.

"Interesting. In a direction I did not fully anticipate."

More laughter.

Liam stood on the stone floor and watched Marcus perform for the crowd and felt the smile come to the corner of his mouth before he stopped it from going further.

’He is doing exactly what I did to him,’ he thought. ’He watched the rock trick and he learned from it in about thirty seconds and now he is using the same principle. Make the other person react from frustration. Make them charge. Make them sloppy.’ He kept his eyes on Marcus’s back. ’He is smarter than I gave him credit for.’

The smile stayed at the corner of his mouth.

He let it.

"Big talk," Liam said, loud enough to carry, "from someone whose legs were shaking when I hit him."

Marcus stopped performing for the crowd.

He turned around.

The arena went through a specific kind of shift, the noise dropping just enough that the quality of everyone’s attention changed direction, the crowd doing what crowds did when something had been said that required reassessment.

"Did that actually happen." A voice from the left, genuinely uncertain.

"I didn’t see it." Someone beside them.

"I saw something." A different section, less certain.

"He went to one knee." The analytical voice from the upper section, measured and clear.

"Marcus doesn’t go to one knee." Someone two rows down from them, flat and certain.

"He did tonight." The analytical voice again, unbothered by the disagreement.

The commentator cleared his throat through the speakers.

"Now. Now now now. Let us address what our young challenger has just claimed. Because if what he is suggesting is accurate, if Number Eight Marcus Vell actually felt that punch, actually showed something on his legs from it, then ladies and gentlemen we may be watching a very different fight from the one we thought we sat down to watch." He paused. "If. That is a significant if."

Marcus looked at Liam across the cage floor.

Then he laughed.

It was not a small laugh. It was the specific laugh of someone who wanted a room full of people to hear it, the laugh performing its own argument, the sound of it saying everything he wanted it to say without him having to use words.

"He’s lying," Marcus said to the crowd, turning partly back to them, one hand gesturing toward Liam. "I didn’t feel a thing. Not one thing. You all saw what happened. Did I go down? Did I stop? Did I show you one second of being hurt from whatever that was?"

The crowd murmured.

Some agreement. Some uncertainty. The room divided by what it had actually seen versus what Marcus was now telling it it had seen.

Liam looked at him.

"Then take it again," Liam said.

Marcus looked at him.

"Show everyone it’s nothing," Liam said. "If I’m lying and you felt nothing, stand there and let me hit you again and prove it. What do you have to lose if you’re right?"

The crowd went quiet in the specific way crowds went quiet when someone had said something that was either very smart or very stupid and the room had not yet decided which.

Marcus stared at him.

"I’m not that stupid," he said.

"Then apologise for lying," Liam said.

"Apologise for what."

"For telling this room something that is not true," Liam said. "You felt it. Your legs said so. And you are standing there telling several hundred people that you didn’t because you don’t want them to know that a rookie with one punch made Number Eight go to one knee on this floor." He looked at him directly. "What do you actually have to lose if you’re right and I’m wrong. Stand there. Let me hit you. Prove it. Or admit you felt it."

Marcus said nothing.

The crowd was doing the thing crowds did when a logical corner had been constructed around someone they respected and they were not sure how they felt about watching it happen.

"DO IT." The coaching voice from before, apparently still present and still committed.

"Do it do it do it." Building, spreading through sections, the rhythm of it finding itself organically.

"DO IT. DO IT. DO IT."

The arena had found its voice and its voice wanted one specific thing.

Marcus looked at the crowd.

Then he looked at Liam.

Then he smiled the smile of someone who had decided that the audience wanted a show and he was going to give them one.

He spread his arms wide, both of them, his hands open, his whole posture opening outward in the gesture of a man making himself completely available, his feet planted on the stone floor and his chest forward and his chin up.

The crowd produced the sound of several hundred people getting exactly what they asked for.

The commentator’s voice came through warmly.

"Ladies and gentlemen. Number Eight Marcus Vell is standing there. Arms wide. Completely open. Inviting our young challenger to take his best shot. This is either the most confident thing I have ever seen on this floor or the most foolish and I genuinely do not know which one it is yet."

Marcus looked at Liam from his open position and his smile carried everything it needed to carry.

"Getting scared now?" he said.

Liam said nothing.

He looked at Marcus standing there with his arms spread and his chest forward and his smile in place and his feet planted on the stone floor that had seen thirty-nine wins and two losses and was about to see something it had not seen before.

He settled into his stance.

He felt it in his right hand, the thing Wrath had been training him to find, the thing on the other side of the glass, and this time it was not a fraction or a glimpse or something that arrived and left before he could hold it.

This time it sat in his fist like it had always been there and had simply been waiting for the right moment to be used.

The air around his knuckles compressed.

Not visibly. Not in a way anyone watching could have pointed to and described.

Just a density, a specific gathering of something that lived in him and had learned over weeks of sessions and a tree in a forest and a man with grey hair throwing a rock in the air that this was what it was for.

Marcus looked at him.

"Well?" he said.

Liam moved.

Whoosh.

The distance between them ceased to exist in the specific way it ceased to exist when Flash Step was used properly, not the stumbling half-version of before but the full committed version, and Liam was in front of Marcus before Marcus had registered that he had left the spot he had been standing on.

His fist drove forward.

Into Marcus’s stomach.

Not through him. Not past him. Into him. The punch landing with everything behind it, the trained thing and the Flash Step and the weeks of the forest and Wrath and the tree, all of it arriving at one specific point on Marcus’s body at the same time.

Marcus did not fly.

He did not move at all.

He stood exactly where he had been standing with his arms still spread and his chest still forward and for one full second the arena was so completely silent that the sound of nothing was the loudest thing in it.

Then people started to see it.

On the back of Marcus’s chest, visible through the fabric of his training vest, a circle the size of a fist had appeared.

Red and specific, the entry point of something that had gone in the front and come out the back, the force having traveled through him the way his own power traveled through other people, turned inward, the shockwave completing its journey and announcing its arrival on the far side of him.

The silence held.

Marcus looked at Liam.

His arms came down slowly.

He went to his knees.

And then he went to the stone floor and he did not get up.

The arena stayed silent for three full seconds.

Then it was not silent anymore.