NOVGO.NET Chapter 30: Sand And Thunder
Chapter 30: Sand And Thunder
The roar of twenty thousand paying spectators shook the arched competitor tunnel, vibrating through the sand floor beneath his worn market sneakers.
’Twenty thousand people paid thirty credits each just to watch corporate champions pose for cameras,’ he thought, stepping onto the perimeter boundary.
The indoor arena smelled of ozone and fresh popcorn, its circular floor covered in raked white sand beneath glaring overhead floodlights tonight.
Broadcast drones circled the open dome in lazy loops, beaming live holographic feeds to street corners across all six busy city districts.
Ruby leaned against the spectator rail in her unadorned jacket, watching the stadium with the detached boredom of an off-duty medic resting.
"Hah! Fifty credits says our boy does not even take his hands out of his fleece pockets!" Bram bellowed across the benches.
"You are going to lose your dinner money, old man," Corin shouted back, clutching his carved staff with a dry mocking chuckle.
’Those three clowns are definitely betting with money they do not have,’ he thought, adjusting his collar against the dry arena air.
The corporate champion stepped into the circle from the eastern tunnel, wearing crimson silk armor that rippled like liquid fire in light.
Kest carried D-rank certification and a spear humming with his celestial patron’s heat.
The crowd cheered as Kest raised his spear, accepting the applause with a performer’s smile.
He pointed his glowing spearhead across the white sand, locking his arrogant gaze onto the unranked free agent in faded gray sweatpants.
"Let us show the donors what an independent porter is worth without a patron buying his lunch," the prodigy announced into his microphone.
’This kid spent four years learning stage poses while I packed protein boxes on night shifts,’ he thought, resting his weight evenly.
The stadium monitors refreshed their charity tickers, displaying corporate donation pledges climbing into six figures as the challenge entered the public broadcast.
Fin stepped onto the raked sand without taking his hands from his fleece pockets, his worn sneakers leaving quiet, shallow impressions behind.
The referee raised a white baton toward the high ceiling, dropping his arm as the starting horn blared across the packed dome.
Kest lunged across twenty paces in a heartbeat, thrusting his spear forward in a blinding arc wrapped in searing orange embers aggressively.
"You call that an elite academy spear thrust?" he muttered, shifting his sneakers two centimeters to the left as flames whistled past.
Fin tilted his head four centimeters to the left, letting the whistling blade brush harmlessly past his dark collar without flinching once.
The prodigy pivoted on his heel with fluid grace, snapping the butt of his weapon around in a vicious horizontal sweep immediately.
He ducked beneath the whistling timber, shifting his weight between his heels with the clean economy of a busy packing line worker.
’His balance tilts three degrees forward on every recovery,’ he noted, tracking the wasted kinetic momentum with calm, mathematical precision.
The sand recorded every wasted maneuver the champion made, scoring deep trenches beneath his embroidered silk slippers while the challenger barely moved.
"Agh! Stop dancing and draw your weapons, rat!" the young frontline brigade snarled, his pale forehead glistening with sudden beads of nervous sweat.
"You are wasting good footwork on empty air," he answered, pivoting along the perimeter line without raising either hand from his waist.
Kest unleashed three rapid thrusts in frantic succession, each fiery strike stabbing into the sand where the porter stood a breath prior.
The prodigy’s breath turned ragged as his sponsor’s divine heat began cooking the lining of his expensive silk breastplate from within painfully.
Gage leaned over the balcony, losing his smile as instinct warned him something was wrong.
Fin read the champion’s shoulders, knowing the boy exhausted his patience and prepared to gamble his patron’s pride on one final blow.
Kest gathered his remaining mana, igniting celestial fire along the spear from grip to tip.
"Burn to ash in the name of Ignis!" the champion roared, lunging forward with an all-out thrust aimed directly at his throat.
Fin stepped into the attack, reaching the pocket before the spear extended to its full length.
’Thirty points of compressed golem density right between the eyebrows,’ he thought, pulling his right hand from his gray pocket smoothly.
He slipped past the blazing tip without blinking, feeling the heat roll harmlessly over his skin thanks to his passive resistance trait.
"Time to sit down and rest," he whispered, tapping Kest squarely in the center of his forehead with one extended index finger.
A concussive shockwave cracked across the arena floor, spraying white sand thirty meters into the air like an exploding marine mine blast.
The prodigy’s spear flew backward from his fingers, his eyes rolling up into his skull as his legs folded like paper cards.
The young champion skidded twenty meters across the white floor, plowing a deep trench before coming to rest limp against the boundary.
’Clean knockout, zero broken bones, and nobody can claim excessive violence on camera,’ he calculated, blowing sand from his thumbnail quietly.
Twenty thousand voices stopped together, leaving the stadium silent around the two fighters.
"Oof... that sounded like an artillery shell hitting an empty melon," Bram yelled from the bleachers, clutching his winning betting slips.
Fin looked down at Kest, standing amid the disturbed sand like a foreman surveying unfinished work.
He walked over to the unconscious boy, signaling the waiting medics to examine him before anyone tried to move him.
A single electronic chime broke the suffocating silence, followed by the charity donation board detonating into a cascade of flashing green numbers.
The spectators recovered enough to roar, shaking the viewing suites with their response.
Gage crushed his goblet in the private box, spilling wine across his cuffs.
"What did that insolent gutter rat do?" Gage snarled through clenched teeth, his captain aura flaring with suppressed fury and sudden alarm.
In the Association directors’ gallery, three high-ranking administrators choked on their imported cigars, scrambling for their private communication tablets in panic.
"Who cleared that porter’s registration in District Four?" an executive hissed, his fingers trembling as he pulled up the municipal intake records.
"The old intake lists a food packer, but the annex certified him D yesterday," an assistant stammered, checking the blank screens in panic.
"A food packer does not drop a certified D-rank prodigy with one finger," the executive snarled, wiping sweat from his flabby neck.
"Find the clerk who signed his intake voucher and bring me his complete genetic telemetry before this broadcast leaves the city," he ordered.
Down on the arena floor, the referee finally remembered his whistle, blowing three sharp blasts to signal the end of the exhibition.
Fin walked toward the southern exit, leaving the crowd behind with the measured pace of someone ending a shift.
Ruby waited by the tunnel partition, her arms crossed over her tactical jacket while her dark eyes followed the high executive balcony.
"You could not have made it look like a lucky counter?" she asked softly, walking beside him into the shadow of the tunnel.
"A lucky counter invites people to try again tomorrow," he answered, wiping a grain of sand from the corner of his right eye.
"Now upstairs knows you are holding a hammer," she replied, listening to the crowd chanting the Halden porter’s name echoing down the ramp.
’Now upstairs knows I have teeth, but they still do not know the jaw,’ he thought, feeling his Pulse hum steadily at nine.
"Let them hold their papers while we buy groceries," he said, stepping out into the evening breeze behind the stadium perimeter gates.
High above the stadium rim, an executive stylus paused over a blank cell dossier, hesitating above the line where an assignment belonged.
Across the plaza, Ruby mouthed a warning toward the clerks without using her radio. She pointed at their forms, then shook her head before anyone recorded his name.