Re: Tales of the Rune-Tech Sage

Chapter 135: Facade of Invincibility

CH135 Facade of Invincibility

***

Alex left the arena grounds and walked into the tunnel leading out of the coliseum.

Only when he was certain he was completely out of sight did he finally release the tension in his muscles.

His body faltered slightly—he nearly collapsed.

Pain surged through his muscles.

His internals screamed in agony.

His mana pathways were completely dry, his core locking down what little mana remained—just enough to stop him from slipping into mana shock... or worse, mana deviation.

Contrary to the façade he’d maintained in the arena, his victory had been far from easy.

He was not the invincible warrior he had made himself appear to be.

If anything, he had given his absolute best performance across both duels—

Pushing his body to the absolute limit in order to deliver an overwhelming, flawless victory.

Could he have won without going that far?

Yes.

He didn’t need to brutalise Kurt with a five-minute barrage.

He didn’t need to Spell-Dominate Viscount Lars’s Heaven Punishment.

He could have just prevented the man from casting it altogether.

So why did he?

Simple.

Shock and Awe.

Back in Alex’s previous life, one of the most effective conventional military tactics was exactly that:

Shock and Awe —

A method of using rapid, overwhelming violence within a short period to demoralise, destabilise, and psychologically break the will of the opponent.

’Violence isn’t just a weapon... It’s a message. A very brutal message.’

It was a tactic that could be applied by anyone— From a lone operative behind enemy lines to the full force of a military invasion.

You didn’t need to kill everyone.

You just needed to crush the first few opponents so completely that the rest overestimated your strength and recalculated the risk of opposition.

And in the Fury family?

That was exactly the kind of message Alex needed to send.

The Fury family was full of rebellious, ambition-driven, egotistical lunatics who would leap at any opportunity to challenge him.

Rather than deal with their constant provocations one by one, Alex chose the cleaner, more brutal option—

Nip the problem in the bud.

Even if it meant seriously damaging his body in the process.

Going into the duels, the only person Alex was certain he could defeat decisively was Kurt.

Kurt had underestimated Alex’s strength as a warrior.

So Alex played into that assumption and used it to stage the first phase of his operation.

Since no one expected much from him as a warrior, overwhelming Kurt—brutalising him in front of the crowd—dramatically raised Alex’s profile.

But in truth?

Alex wasn’t nearly as strong as everyone now believed him to be.

He hadn’t actually trounced Kurt for five straight minutes.

What he had done... was knock Kurt out in a single moment.

One decisive instant.

One blow.

And from then on, Kurt was unconscious and completely defenceless.

The rest? The entire five-minute barrage?

Just theatrics.

A perfectly constructed illusion meant to cement Alex’s ruthlessness, brutality, and—most of all—the illusion of overwhelming strength.

To everyone watching, it looked like he dominated Kurt in a prolonged one-sided assault.

When in reality, he had only ensured the boy didn’t recover or defend himself.

This carefully executed performance had served its purpose brilliantly.

By the time he entered the second duel against the six heirs, they were already psychologically defeated.

They tensed up before the fight even began.

Had they been in a normal state of mind, five-against-one?

Alex wouldn’t have stood a chance.

The knight would’ve soaked his attacks.

The berserker would’ve locked him down.

The rogue would’ve struck from the shadows.

And the swordsmen?

They wouldn’t even need to fight.

But that’s not what happened.

Because of Alex’s duel with Kurt, the hiers went into their duel with him nervous, hesitant, overestimating his capabilities...

... and that gave Alex the opening he needed.

This was especially true after Alex’s theatrical declaration that he would kill Viscount Lars.

That moment created a short but critical window—

A window where the heirs would engage him while in a psychological debuff, if one could call it that.

Alex knew that if the fight dragged on too long, the heirs would see through the illusion of his invincibility.

They’d regain their composure... and once that happened, he’d be in real trouble.

So, he had no choice.

He had to defeat them quickly.

That was why he went all in—

Even using physical techniques he hadn’t fully mastered or learned to execute safely.

He gambled everything.

The illusion of invincibility had to be established... and more importantly, it had to be maintained.

As for why he didn’t simply wipe the floor with them using magic during that brief opening?

Well... that’s another story in itself.

---

When Alex first arrived at the venue and inspected the coliseum, something had struck him as off.

The mana ambience was odd—

Too refined in certain areas, too thinned out in others.

And beneath it all... a familiar pulse.

Array Formation energy.

Subtle. Hidden. But not too well hidden.

Someone had recently installed a formation—

And it didn’t match the venue’s original array layout.

It wasn’t hard to deduce the intent.

Someone had tampered with the arena’s infrastructure.

And considering the timing, it had everything to do with his duel.

Alex’s first thought?

Sabotage.

But if it were truly dangerous, Earl Drake would’ve noticed.

And if the Mad Earl hadn’t acted on it, that meant it posed no threat to the audience.

Which left only one conclusion—

The array was set up specifically to affect him, within the duelling arena.

In other words... a trap.

Alex quickly realised what was going on.

’So this is a test, huh?’

It made sense.

Earl Drake likely saw this as a way to prepare Alex for the future.

After all, stepping into traps was inevitable on the path of cultivation.

Better to give him a taste of it now—before the stakes became life and death.

So Alex chose to make the most of it.

He immediately instructed the OmniRune Core to begin hacking the formation.

It didn’t take long.

The array turned out to be a support formation—

One designed to temporarily amplify a mage’s casting capability far beyond their natural limits.

In fact, it could support a spell up to Grade 7— A tier normally reserved for Great Mages.

Had it only been Grade 5, or even Grade 6 at a stretch— Alex could have overpowered and hijacked the spell directly using the OmniRune Core’s AI’s assistance

But a Grade 7?

That was out of his league.

To hijack it, Alex couldn’t try to dominate the spell in the moment of activation.

He would first need to dominate the array formation itself.

And that... would take time.

It also meant he’d have to sacrifice something else—

He couldn’t use magic while the OmniRune Core was occupied with hacking the array.

This was the real reason why he handicapped himself against Kurt.

Since he wouldn’t be able to cast magic anyway during the early parts of the duel, he decided to make a spectacle out of it.

So he leaned fully into the ”I’ll fight you as a warrior” declaration, and played the role of a martial fighter—A calculated persona to elevate his mystique and buy OmniRune time to do its work.

By the time the duel against the heirs began, OmniRune had already breached the formation circle.

Alex had full access to hijack its control whenever he needed.

He could have stopped Viscount Lars from casting the spell altogether.

But once he assessed the battlefield and noticed the Armoured Knight was still standing strong...

...he chose a better option.

Rather than waste mana and effort defeating the Knight himself, Alex let Viscount Lars burn his own mana to activate the enhanced spell.

Then, when the time was right, Alex stole it—

And redirected the full brunt of the Grade 7 lightning strike... straight into the knight.

It was the moment Alex turned someone else’s trap... into his own weapon.

However, what Alex hadn’t expected...

Was that the insane old mage would actually cast a Special Warfare Spell—

A rare, high-tier class of Grade 7 and above spells designed exclusively for battlefield annihilation.

He had other plans.

He didn’t want to kill the knight.

So, he couldn’t just redirect the full force of the spell straight at him.

Instead, Alex had to weaken the output of the spell— all while it was charging.

Complicating things even more, due to the power level of the spell, Alex couldn’t completely sever Viscount Lars’s connection to the spell matrix.

At best... he could block it.

So each time Viscount Lars shouted ”Heaven’s Punishment!”, the spell formation did respond.

Only, Alex had already taken control of its output channel and kept the spell from firing.

The spell never stopped.

Its energy accumulating... growing stronger and more volatile with every failed cast attempt.

Which meant when Heaven’s Punishment finally evolved into Alex’s so-called Heaven’s Fury, it wasn’t just due to his magic.

All Alex did was apply a key modification. He altered the output channel of the spell formation, dumping all the accumulated energy at once.

This created the illusion that he had empowered the spell.

Even after limiting how much direct of control he fought for, Alex still suffered serious backlash.

If not for his unique talents—[Extreme Mana Capacity] and [Elemental Affinity Enhancement]—he wouldn’t have lasted a second standing after the spell fired. Let alone delivered a speech and walk off the arena grounds with his own two feet.

After all, he was just an early Intermediate-ranked mage attempting to manipulate a spell meant for Great Mages, two entire ranks above him.

The fact that he pulled it off—and survived—was a testament to his real achievement:

Rune-Tech magic.

For it did all the heavy lifting.

-

Staggering, Alex leaned against the tunnel wall for support.

His legs buckled beneath him.

At that moment, Fen broke the command to stay hidden.

Without waiting, the wolf morphed into his Direwolf form, and somehow managed to lift Alex onto his back without worsening the injuries.

As soon as Alex mounted, the Solmir components of his True Name triggered, working passively alongside the Everspring Rune.

It was just enough to help him stay conscious—or at least upright—as Fen tore out of the coliseum and sprinted through the streets of the City of Ashes.

Their destination: the secluded Back Mountain lodgings of Ashen Castle.

Fortunately for Alex, they made it just in time.

The moment they crossed the threshold... he blacked out.

***