“You must be so proud to see your boy here today,” said the climber president, smiling fondly at the man.

The fool, thought Samuel. He doesn’t have any inkling, does he?

Samuel smiled back and nodded his head.

“Yes,” he said. “It’s a true pleasure to see one’s own child grow up and train to become a climber.”

The climber president smiled and Sakura simply nodded her head at him.

Sakura was definitely suspicious of him.

It didn’t matter though any more.

It was already too late.

The plan would begin any moment now.

87

Max stood across from Cyrus in the large arena as the massive audience roared around them.

He was nervous but he didn’t want anyone to see it, especially Cyrus.

“The match will begin at the blow of my whistle,” said the referee.

Max gulped. For a long time now, he’d wanted an excuse to punch Cyrus in the face. The boy had given him plenty of reasons in the past, but now the opportunity was officially sanctioned by the climber’s guild.

There was just one thing that was bugging him. He actually had no idea what Cyrus’ trait was. That said, he was pretty sure Cyrus didn’t know the two different abilities he currently had up his own sleeve.

The referee leapt backwards and blew his whistle.

SHRIIILLLLL!

The match had begun.

The crowd let out a massive roar that tremored across the arena. They then quieted down to watch the opening moves of the match.

Max rushed towards Cyrus.

He wasn’t going to hesitate or dilly-dally, he’d attack as soon as he could

“You idiot,” snickered Cyrus.

Even now he was still an arrogant jerk, thought Max. But he could see why his current plan might appear idiotic: he was rushing straight ahead into an effectively unknown enemy.

Too bad for Cyrus it was all misdirection.

Max triggered shadow blink.

He emerged right behind Cyrus. His opponent’s shoulders jumped in surprise.

The whole arena gasped.

The only thing Max didn’t like about this strategy was that he didn’t get to see Cyrus’ smug grin disappear off his face as Max bested him.

Max swung a clenched fist right into the back of Cyrus’ head. As he propelled his fist forward, he sent as much mana as he could to imbue around his knuckles.

POW!

His fist smashed right into the back of Cyrus’ head. The power of the blow was enough to send Cyrus hurling across the arena.

“Incredible!” cheered the crowd.

Max watched as Cyrus was knocked back through the air. The boy must have low endurance stats compared to everything else. In a weird way that wasn’t surprising. The boy had spent his entire life with bodyguards and henchmen, he probably never thought he needed to train that stat. He assumed he was invincible already, but as Max had just shown him, he was far from invulnerable.