Vikramaditya's Effortless Victory

While Amrit's journey through the preliminary rounds was a series of quiet, conceptually baffling victories, Vikramaditya's was a performance of a different, yet equally absolute, form of dominance.

His first matchup was against a fierce-looking female warrior from a northern clan, a woman whose body was covered in glowing blue tattoos and who wielded two savage-looking hand-axes. Her killing intent was a palpable, icy wave that washed over the arena, causing many in the crowd to shiver. She was a seasoned killer, a veteran of countless tribal wars.

As she stood on the platform opposite Vikramaditya, her face was a mask of feral intensity. She snarled, her blue tattoos glowing brighter, and prepared to charge.

Vikramaditya simply stood there, his hands clasped behind his back, a faint, gentle smile on his lips. His golden aura, the very essence of harmony and destiny's favor, bloomed around him. It was not an attack. It was not a defense. It was a simple statement of being.

The warm, golden light washed over the northern warrior.

The effect was instantaneous and profound. The icy killing intent that had surrounded her for years, the rage that had fueled her in a hundred battles, simply… melted away. It was like pouring a cup of warm water on a block of ice. Her ferocious snarl faltered, her aggressive stance softened. The glowing blue tattoos dimmed.

She looked down at the axes in her hands as if seeing them for the first time. The weight of all the lives she had taken, the violence she had wrought, suddenly settled upon her not as a source of pride, but as a heavy, sorrowful burden. Her eyes, which had been burning with a warrior's fire, filled with a sudden, overwhelming wave of regret and weariness.

Tears began to stream down her face. She dropped her axes, the weapons clattering loudly on the obsidian platform. She fell to her knees, covered her face with her hands, and began to sob, not in pain, but in a moment of soul-shaking, life-altering catharsis. She had been a warrior her entire life, and in a single moment, in the presence of the Son of Destiny, she no longer wanted to fight.

Vikramaditya watched her, his expression one of gentle pity. He gave a slight nod to the stunned official.

"The match is concluded," the official announced, his voice trembling. "Vikramaditya wins by… by spiritual concession."

Vikramaditya walked over to the weeping warrior. He placed a hand gently on her shoulder. "The path of violence is a heavy one," he said softly, his voice full of a genuine compassion. "Perhaps it is time to find a new path, one of peace."

The woman looked up at him, her eyes filled with a dazed, tearful gratitude, as if she were looking at a living god who had just freed her from a lifetime of chains.

The crowd watched in stunned, reverent silence. This was not a victory of combat. It was a victory of ideals. Vikramaditya had not defeated his opponent's body; he had conquered her will to fight.

His subsequent matches followed a similar, surreal pattern.

He faced a demonic cultivator, a young man whose body was wreathed in shadows and whose Prana was a chaotic storm of negative energy. Vikramaditya's harmonious aura simply unraveled the man's demonic techniques. The shadows fled from the golden light, and the chaotic Prana was soothed and pacified against its user's will, leaving him powerless and confused. He surrendered.

He faced a prodigy from a lightning-fast assassin sect, a youth who moved like a blur. As the assassin lunged, he found himself inexplicably stumbling, his perfectly timed footwork failing as a loose stone on the otherwise flawless platform seemed to appear from nowhere to trip him. A sudden gust of wind, a "fortunate coincidence," blew dust in his eyes at the crucial moment of his strike. His daggers, thrown with perfect accuracy, would be nudged off course by another "random" gust of wind. After a series of such "unlucky" accidents, the assassin, his confidence shattered, conceded the match in sheer frustration. The world itself was refusing to allow him to land a blow.

This was the true horror of fighting the Son of Destiny. It wasn't just his personal power; it was his [Fate's Favor]. The laws of probability and chance actively conspired to ensure his victory.

Amrit watched Vikramaditya's matches from the contestant area, his Void Perception active. He saw what the others did not. He saw the threads of fate, the lines of causality, bending and warping around Vikramaditya. He saw the faint, golden hand of the world's will gently nudging events in his favor.

It was a power far more insidious than any physical attack. How do you fight an opponent whose greatest ally is the universe itself?

By the end of the preliminary rounds, Vikramaditya, like Amrit, had advanced to the main bracket without receiving a single scratch. But where Amrit's path was paved with the broken pride and terrified confusion of his opponents, Vikramaditya's was paved with their tears of catharsis, their frustrated concessions, and their dawning, reverent awe.

Amrit was a force that broke the rules. Vikramaditya was a force that the rules themselves served.

After the matches concluded for the day, the two of them happened to cross paths near the exit of the arena. The crowd of students around them instinctively fell silent and backed away, giving the two titans a wide berth.

"Your methods are… efficient," Vikramaditya said, his tone not accusatory, but observational. He was referring to Amrit's systematic dismantling of his opponents.

"As are yours," Amrit replied, acknowledging the effortless, reality-bending nature of Vikramaditya's victories.

"I offer my opponents a chance at peace, a path away from conflict," Vikramaditya stated, a hint of righteousness in his voice. "You offer them only confusion and defeat."

"You offer them a place in your song," Amrit corrected him. "I offer them silence, so they might have a chance to compose their own. Whether they choose to is not my concern."

Vikramaditya sighed, the sound heavy with the weight of his destiny. "We are truly oil and water, you and I. There can be no reconciliation between our paths." He looked towards the main tournament bracket, now displayed on the runic screen. Their names were on opposite sides, fated to meet only in the final, if they both made it. "It seems destiny wills that we settle this at the very peak. I look forward to it. I will show you that harmony is an infinitely greater power than the void."

He gave a final, polite nod and walked away, his golden aura leaving a trail of warmth and serenity in the tense air.

Zian came up beside Amrit, letting out a breath he had been holding. "His power is terrifying. It's not about combat; it's about making combat unnecessary. He doesn't win duels; he ends them before they start. He is the perfect protagonist."

"Every story has an ending," Amrit said, his gaze still fixed on the bracket.

He now understood the true nature of his ultimate rival. Vikramaditya was not just a powerful cultivator. He was the living embodiment of the world's will, the champion of fate itself. To defeat him would require more than cutting space or moving like a ghost. It would require an act of supreme, conceptual defiance. It would require proving that a single, determined, discordant note could, in fact, shatter the entire symphony.

The preliminary rounds were over. The main event was about to begin. And the collision course between the Anomaly and the Son of Destiny was now set in stone.