Degritone dismissed his sword and sat down, tilting his head back and closing his eyes. "Why did I have to get my worst match up immediately? Or at all?"

He heard footsteps rapidly approaching him and felt something tap his throat armor. Opening his eyes and looking down, he saw the little girl pulling her spear back for a thrust. He looked at his health bar and saw it full. A thrust to his chest similarly did nothing. "Please," he said, "please surrender. I don't want to hurt you. I'm not allowed to lose, but I would hate myself if I hurt you."

"This is a fight, right? So fight me!" She said, smacking him with the side of the spear.

Degritone's heart sank further. Standing, he said, "We're both going to wish you hadn't told me to do that." He flicked her to apply Mark of Antipathy before summoning his Mana sword, activating Empower, Omen of War, and Swordsman's Territory so he wouldn't miss. Timed with his hit was a cast of Omen of Famine, Omen of Pestilence, and Bloody Aura set to only apply Acidic Blood.

Solemnly, Degritone brought over three hundred thousand damage crashing down on her head. Luckily, Degritone didn't have to see any gore as he was whisked away to a waiting room with benches all around and a few other people. He sat down where he was and looked at his hands. Tears welling up in his eyes, he sat, staring. He didn't notice as people began appearing slowly around him, as Melena sent him a message, and as a small hand started rubbing his back. Tears soaked into his gloves.

He didn't even realize that, after multiple minutes, the scenery around him changed. He didn't notice as someone tried desperately to do anything to him. Finally, he noticed when a kick ineffectually hit his face. "What?" Degritone asked aggressively.

"Are you going to fight me, or have you already given up?" He heard a late teenage boy's voice.

He looked up and and asked, "Has round two started?"

"Round two started over 20 minutes ago! I've been trying for so long to kill you now, I don't know how you've survived!"

"Give me another few minutes," he said and laid down. He raised his arm and activated his calming image, the storm outside his bubble of calm worse than it's ever been. The man jumped back when reality around him began to warp and was caught up in the storm, soon getting ripped apart by the forces at play.

Tears rolled off his face, completely soaking his sideburns. It wasn't long before a small body entered his vision and reached out to take his upward reaching hand. Recognizing the clothes and hand, he released his image to open his hand, grabbing Melena's hand and pulling her into a hug.

She returned the hug and said, "It'll be ok, Degritone. I already found her and she said she didn't feel a thing."

That got him to actually make a noise. Squeezing his Patron with all he had, he cried and wailed. About three minutes of crying later, he was hiccuping. Finally, he tried speaking. "I hur-ur-ur-urt her-er."

Rubbing his back, Melena responded, "She didn't feel a thing."

"I-y-y-y-y dam-m-m-mag-ged her."

"She was moved before a single atom of her skin could be displaced."

"N-no, I d-dealt da-amage to her."

A few seconds passed before Melena responded, "And two different lolis asked you to do so. She, herself, asked you to."

"I could-d have disobey-yed."

"If you were in the same position again, knowing what it put you through, would you disobey?"

"No."

"Then there's nothing to cry about. She asked for you to fight her, I asked you to win, and she wasn't hurt at all. Everything is fine."

Degritone sniffed before taking a deep breath. A couple deep breaths later, he responded, "Thank you," as he released the hug.

"Of course. You're my protege."

He gave a weak smile and placed his hand on her head. After a few seconds of staring at each other, Melena said, "How about we get you to a real seat?"

Degritone nodded and stood up after Melena did. They walked through a doorway and arrived at the same waiting room he'd appeared in before. It was huge, enough to fit millions of people simultaneously. He couldn't even see the far walls as the ceiling itself fell below the horizon before they came into view. They found an empty bench and sat down together.

After 6 minutes of sitting and composing himself, Degritone was about to speak up when a calm, smooth, male voice spoke up nearby. "Melena, glad I found you. It's so rare to see you nowadays. And that must be your new protege. Good to finally meet you, Degritone," they said. Degritone turned to look at the origin of the voice.

He saw the same type of creature as his Condensing teacher, but a foot taller and about 2 feet less long with white armor plates and a fancy blue design on its forehead. Degritone nodded at the creature and saw that the loli he'd beaten was riding on top of it.

"Ah, good. I was worried she'd left," Melena said. "Degritone, this is So'ejan, the Patron of Duels, and the winner of every single Architect Tournament he's been a part of. As one of the few Patrons I personally know, I thought I'd have him find the girl you beat to have her prove there's no hard feelings."

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Degritone nodded and the little girl jumped off So'ejan before walking up to Degritone. She offered a handshake, which Degritone took as he said, "Sorry." The two Patrons began talking to each other.

"Don't be. Justin says that in a competition, you should be mad at yourself when you lose, not your opponent."

"And who's Justin?"

"My brother! He used to play football before the system came, but now he uses a spear to stab monsters! He was even able to stab right through our village monster! Twice!"

With a near-imperceptible smile, Degritone said, "Oh? He sounds so cool!"

She nodded rapidly. "He is! Our city recently got these cool golems that help us fight occasionally, but Justin says not to trust them, so I won't. He says that the person who made them wants to do bad things with me!"

Degritone chuckled. "Nah, I don't. I cried for at least 30 minutes just for beating you in a fight. I wouldn't do anything bad to you."

She jumped back and drew her spear, pointing it at him. "You're the bad man who took over our city?"

"I wouldn't say I'm bad," Degritone said. "Though, no sane person would say that they're bad. No, I'm just a guy with some power and a goal. Would a bad guy cry for half an hour because they attacked one little girl?"

She scrunched up her face as she thought before saying, "Probably not, but I'm going to trust Justin and stay away! He wouldn't lie, though I guess he could not know you..." She strapped her spear to her hip and went to stand next to So'ejan.

Degritone shrugged and said, "Sad, but understandable. What's your name?"

"Melissa!"

"It has been nice to meet you, Melissa. I'm Degritone, though you probably already knew that."

She nodded and placed her hand on So'ejan's side, right over the plate over his arms. "Can we go look for Justin now?"

"Sure," So'ejan responded, picking her up and placing her on his back. "Melena, Degritone, I'll see you in a few rounds. We need to go find this little one's brother."

Degritone held up a hand in goodbye while Melena nodded. "We'll speak more later," she said. After they were out of earshot, Melena turned to Degritone and said, "You look a lot better, now that you've met her."

"It's visible?"

Melena nodded. "Your eyebrows aren't scrunched up, your bottom eyelids and upper cheeks aren't tensed up, and you have a very slight smile, as opposed to your frown of before."

"Huh. Even I couldn't tell those things in the mirror between my neutral and content faces. But yeah. Thanks for setting that up."

"Of course. Can't have my protege be sad."

He placed his hand on her head. After a few seconds, he said, "Anyway, shouldn't we work on a perception Skill?"

"Honestly, if you could conjure a storm as turbulent as the one in the previous fight, you could probably breeze through all the fights in your bracket."

"Nah. The storm's strength is based on how bad I'm feeling, mentally. I still have a bit of sadness from the void thing, but nothing as unbearable as what is required to make a storm that big."

After a quick mouth quirk of disappointment, she said, "Dang. Oh, well. We'll start working on it after the next round. The remaining few minutes before the next round wouldn't be enough to really get started."

Nodding, Degritone said, "So, how's your run going?"

"Surprisingly well. I have never got past the first round in the Patron bracket before this tournament. Ash and Deception are definitely going to be made fun of for a long while after this tournament, but I won't win this next one. I'm guaranteed to be going up against So'ejan now, given I am definitively the weakest and him definitively the strongest of those remaining. I usually face him or Fire in the first round. Don't know what changed to make Ash and Deception fight me before either of those two."

"Does having a protege somehow give you power or something?"

"Not that I know of, and I love obscure system knowledge."

Degritone shrugged. "Oh, hey. We going to talk about Swordsman's Territory?"

"Oh, yeah. We should. Activate it and describe what you were doing and intending when you made it. And if you know, describe what it actually does."

Nodding, he stood and created his sword before activating his Skill. "I was fighting an enemy with way too high Agility for me to actually hit. I could react if I ever saw them, but they could get behind me, hit me, and get out before I could actually manage to get my arm around to land a hit. I needed a Skill to help me against that kind of enemy, so I kept imagining a field around me where I could predict enemy attacks.

"I-I-I-EYE-MOUTH, PLEASE! I know it reads the current quantum wave functions of every atom in a range and displays the most likely outcome of the next few seconds for me, which was figured out by Chuuni, which he used to prove it by manipulating his wave to have a most likely outcome of elsewhere, but then manually collapse the function to a place that wasn't predicted.

"It should also-also not be 100% accurate, since quantum wave functions are chance and people have free will, but it should be accurate 99 point so many nines I'd die of old age before I can say them all percent of the time."

"Quantum what?"

"Oh, right. That's like 100 years ahead of the telegraph... Uh... You should have wave-particle duality by now, I think, if I remember my timeline correctly and the telegraph exists. Basically, wave-particle duality applies to all particles, not just light. It's one of those many things I know a little about, so I won't try to describe it in too much detail because I'd probably be wrong.

"The very, very basic idea, though, is that because atoms are also waves, where they exhibit particle-like behavior is determined by its wave. When a wave 'collapses,' the position of the atom is determined and the wave begins slowly spreading out. I imagine Chuuni modified his wave functions to have a peak, or most likely chance, at existing in somewhere, then manually determined where it collapsed to, rather than keep the most likely one."

"I really need to visit your world and read about all these things one day."

"That would be fun. I should focus on getting the internet back up once I get back so you can properly experience modern life. Anyway, Swordsman's Territory?"

"Right. The last line before the math basically means that the image used to form it was in a weird, almost-but-not unheard of state where it enters tier 1 without being able to be normally materialized. Basically, you repeated an image in your head long enough that you temporarily gained a tier 1 image, but spending any amount of time thinking of anything else made you unable to pull it to the front of your mind quick enough for it to stay tier 1. The resulting image is very fuzzy.

"That method of Skill creation can only really be used by the truly desperate, as literally a single stray thought or even unexpected sensation causes the loss of the image's tier 1 status, or potential for tier 1 status, and needs to start over entirely. With enough use, however, it may be possible to get it back to a normal state, usually around Skill level 500 or so, maybe down to 250 if you actually tried to fix it. What's its level right now?"

"423."

"Then there's no reason to try to fix it yourself. You will passively fix it in a few levels. I wouldn't be surprised if it's fixed the next time it levels up, now that we've had this conversation and your subconscious knows what to do, even if you don't actively try to fix it."

Nodding, Degritone dismissed his sword and sat back down. A little less than a minute of comfortable silence and head pats later, Melena said, "Go ahead and get suited up. Next round starts in just a few seconds."

"Sad. I want to spend more time with you," Degritone said as he stood and began creating his armor and sword.