SSS Ranked Talent: I Can Upgrade My Skills Infinitely-Chapter 159: Round 2 - The Shadow, The Silent Blade

The silence that settled over the Arena of Tides was heavy, pressing down on the spectators like the ocean depth itself. The carcass of the Magma-Shell Behemoth, flipped and gutted by Valeria, lay as a smoking testament to the strength of the Void Sanctum. The Draconic Legion, previously disciplined and arrogant, shifted uneasily. Their siege breaker had been humiliated.

On the Obsidian Throne, Dragon King Apollyon did not rage. He did not scream. He simply tapped a clawed finger against the armrest of his floating chair. The rhythmic clack-clack-clack echoed louder than the murmurs of the crowd.

"Disappointing," Apollyon said. His voice was smooth, a low baritone that vibrated in the chests of everyone present. "Size and strength are easily countered by leverage. We require precision."

He gestured with a single finger. From the ranks of the Legion, a shadow detached itself.

It wasn’t a large dragon. It was barely taller than a man, bipedal, covered in scales that shifted color like oil on water. It didn’t walk; it flowed, its body elongated and sinuous. It held no massive weapons, only two jagged, crystalline daggers fused to its forearms. Its eyes were hidden behind a cowl of living shadow.

[Target Identified: Viperion the Shade-Walker]

[Level: 62]

[Class: Draconic Assassin]

[Status: Stealth Mastery / Lethal Poison]

The creature stepped into the arena. Or rather, it ceased to be where it was and began to exist in the arena. There was no movement in between.

Alvian watched from the sidelines, his arms crossed. He analyzed the mana signature. It was faint, almost non-existent.

"High stealth," Alvian noted. "High burst damage. A glass cannon, much like myself in the early days. He will aim for the vitals immediately."

He turned to his left. Seraphina was already spinning a dagger between her fingers, a look of bored intensity on her face. She wore her scavenger’s cloak, but beneath it, her upgraded gear hummed with the silent power of the Syndicate tech she had appropriated.

"You’re up," Alvian said. "Don’t blink."

Seraphina smirked, though her eyes remained cold. "I never do. Besides, I’ve been itching to stab something since we left the trench. Valeria got all the glory with the turtle."

"He relies on optical camouflage and mana suppression," Alvian advised, his voice low. "Don’t trust your eyes. Trust the gear."

"Roger that, boss."

Seraphina stepped into the arena. She looked small compared to the dragons, a speck of dust against a storm. But she didn’t flinch. She walked to the center, facing Viperion.

The announcer goblin, who had recovered from his shock at the Behemoth’s defeat, floated down on his manta ray.

"ROUND TWO! THE SHADOW DUEL! IN ONE CORNER, THE MISTRESS OF WHISPERS, SERAPHINA! AND IN THE OTHER, THE NIGHTMARE OF THE DEEP, VIPERION!"

The barrier rose. The crowd leaned in. They expected a flurry of blows, a clash of sparks.

"BEGIN!"

Instantly, the arena became empty.

Viperion vanished. He didn’t use a flashy skill; he simply stepped sideways into the light refraction of the water and ceased to be visible.

Seraphina vanished a millisecond later. She dropped into [Stealth], her silhouette dissolving into the ambient shadows of the coral pillars.

The arena was silent. There was nothing to see. The fifty thousand spectators stared at an empty circle of sand and rock.

"Where... where did they go?" a merchant in the stands whispered.

Alvian watched with his violet eyes. He didn’t need to see them to know the battle had already begun. The water currents were shifting in unnatural patterns.

Inside the arena, Seraphina held her breath. She wasn’t using her eyes. She reached up and tapped the temple of her mechanical eye—the artifact she had integrated long ago, now upgraded with Syndicate tracking algorithms.

[Chrono-Eye: Active.]

[Scanning Vector Displacement...]

[Heat Signature: Negative.]

[Mana Signature: Negative.]

[Sound: Negative.]

"He’s good," Seraphina thought. "He’s better than the Syndicate assassins. He doesn’t just hide; he erases his presence."

She moved. She didn’t walk; she drifted, letting the current carry her, making her movement indistinguishable from the background noise of the ocean.

A ripple. To her left.

Seraphina ducked.

SWISH.

A blade made of invisible force sliced through the space where her neck had been a fraction of a second ago. A lock of her violet hair was severed, drifting slowly to the sand.

"Close," she whispered.

She slashed back, her dagger trailing green poison. It hit nothing but water.

Viperion was fast. Faster than sound underwater. He was playing with her, testing her reflexes.

Another ripple. Behind her.

Seraphina spun, bringing her daggers up in a cross block.

CLANG!

Sparks flew from thin air as Viperion’s crystalline blade impacted hers. For a brief second, the force of the blow revealed his outline—a shimmering distortion in the water.

He was strong. The impact drove Seraphina’s boots into the sand.

"Found you," she hissed.

She kicked out, aiming for his knee. The distortion vanished. He was gone again.

The crowd gasped. They saw only sparks appearing from nowhere, heard only the clash of metal on metal echoing through the silence. It was a ghost fight.

Seraphina reset her stance. Her mechanical eye whirred, processing the data from the brief contact.

[Target Analysis: Attack Pattern detected.]

[Probability of Flank: 85%.]

[Probability of Aerial Strike: 15%.]

"He likes the blind spots," Seraphina analyzed. "He thinks I rely on sight."

She closed her organic eye. She relied entirely on the machine. The world turned into a grid of wireframes and vectors. She saw the displacement of the water molecules.

There.

A disturbance in the current, ten meters away, circling rapidly to her right side—her blind side. He was accelerating, preparing for a killing blow.

Seraphina didn’t turn to face him. That would give it away. She waited. She let her shoulders slump slightly, feigning confusion, feigning panic.

"Come on," she thought. "Take the bait."

Viperion took it. He surged forward, a silent torpedo of death. He aimed for her kidneys, a strike meant to cripple before the kill.

Five meters. Three meters. One meter.

[Proximity Alert: Lethal.]

"NOW!"

Seraphina didn’t dodge. She dropped. She collapsed her body structure, falling flat against the sand in a move that looked like a puppet having its strings cut.

Viperion’s blade slashed through the empty air above her.

His momentum carried him over her prone form. For a split second, he was visible, his camouflage disrupted by the violent attack. He looked down, his reptilian eyes widening in surprise.

Seraphina looked up. Her mechanical eye glowed red.

"[Shadow Arts: Vertical Thrust]."

She drove her dagger upward. She didn’t aim for his armor. She aimed for the soft, unarmored scales of his underbelly as he flew over her.

SHHK!

The blade sank deep. Green poison, distilled from the Sea Snakes and refined by Alvian’s alchemy, flooded the dragon’s system.

Viperion shrieked—a terrible, high-pitched sound. He crashed into the sand, rolling away, clutching his stomach. His stealth flickered and died, revealing his bleeding form to the crowd.

He tried to stand, but his legs spasmed. The neurotoxin was fast.

"You..." Viperion hissed, black blood leaking from his mouth. "You... cheated..."

Seraphina stood up, dusting the sand off her cloak. She walked toward him, spinning her dagger.

"I didn’t cheat," she said, her voice amplified by the silence of the arena. "I just have better eyes than you."

Viperion roared, lunging for one last, desperate strike. He was slow. Sluggish.

Seraphina stepped to the side effortlessly. She grabbed his extended arm, used his momentum to spin him around, and drove her second dagger into the base of his skull.

CRUNCH.

The assassin went rigid. Then, he went limp.

[Target Neutralized.]

[Winner: Seraphina!]

The barrier dropped. The crowd erupted again, the sound deafening. A human—a mere rogue—had out-stealthed and out-fought a Draconic Assassin.

Alvian nodded slowly from the sidelines. "Acceptable efficiency."

Seraphina walked back to the team, wiping her blade on her cloak. She looked tired, the mental strain of the Chrono-Eye taking its toll, but she grinned at Alvian.

"Two to zero," she said. "Your turn, Godslayer."

The score was 2-0.

The tension in the Arena of Tides had shifted from anticipation to a palpable, suffocating dread. The Draconic Legion, thousands of elite monsters capable of leveling kingdoms, stood in stunned silence. Their siege breaker had been flipped like a turtle. Their master assassin had been gutted like a fish.

The myth of draconic superiority was cracking.

King Apollyon sat on his throne of obsidian, his expression unreadable. His golden eyes, burning with the light of a thousand dying stars, swept over the corpses of his champions. He did not look angry. He looked... bored.

A massive Red Dragon, a General of the Legion, stepped forward from the ranks. He bowed low before the King.

"My Lord," the General rumbled, smoke pouring from his nostrils. "Allow me to take the third round. I will burn the human mage to ash. I will restore the honor of the—" 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

Apollyon raised a hand.

"Sit down, Ignar."

The command was soft, but the General flinched as if struck. He stepped back, head lowered.

"Honor?" Apollyon mused, his voice amplified by magic, reaching every corner of the arena. "You speak of honor as if this were a contest of equals. It is not. It is an extermination."