SSS Rank: Spellcraft Sovereign-Chapter 103: Preparations (1)

He was here to measure.

The venue was half-buried, an old dome ring that used to run drift simulations for early cadets. They’d gutted the tracking glyphs, left the projection pads, and renamed it The Echo Cage. Ugly name. Loud name. It fit.

He stepped past two security glyphs at the entrance. Neither pinged. His system stayed dark, folded in like a fist. No rank tag. No spell ID. Just that quiet SSS-class hum buried behind a system used to hiding.

Inside?

Noise.

Not loud. But constant.

Flickering screens showed looped fight footage. A low rumble from the commentary booth rolled through the floor like mana tremor.

Dozens of bodies moved in the space, some in armor, some in off-brand gear, most somewhere between style and survival.

Lucen kept his eyes low.

Not submissive. Just curious.

He drifted left, avoiding the center aisle, letting his shoulder brush against a wall of chain fencing to feel the tension. Someone had enchanted the metal. Not strong. Just reactive. It hummed near mana discharge.

He passed a trio of duelists pacing near the prep room. One wore a cracked shoulder plate with a melted crest.

B-Rank by the way he leaned on his blade, weight forward, center exposed, no fear. Probably trained with real spar partners.

Another was tapping a spell menu open and shut over and over, fingers twitching. Nervous.

Lucen kept walking.

The arena floor opened just beyond, fifty meters of hard-burn composite, walls angled to rebound shockwaves.

Above it, four hanging glyph relays rotated slowly, absorbing, recording, translating.

Not many people were seated. This wasn’t the main event.

Which made it better.

He scanned the group nearest the rail. Combatants, not fans. People scoping out the venue, same as him.

One looked his way. Older. Short cropped hair, high-visibility goggles around the neck. Didn’t speak. Just logged Lucen in the back of her mind.

Lucen looked down into the ring.

Two were already fighting.

One wore medium-scale armor, light enough to move, heavy enough to show off. Wind affinity. You could tell by the angle of her footwork, fluid, but stopping sharp.

Her opponent had a hook-blade and a step-delay, trying to read wind bursts before reacting.

Lucen frowned under the face wrap.

’Too flashy. Delay’s too long. Spells don’t sync to movement. He’s over-reliant on counter flow.’

He watched the footwork again.

Sure enough. Every time the blade moved, the caster waited a half-beat. Defensive style. Safer. But too slow.

The crowd didn’t notice.

They cheered at impact. Not pattern.

Lucen tilted his head. ’That’s the problem with public fights. You’re not optimizing for kill—you’re optimizing for drama.’

He turned from the rail.

Walked the outer corridor once. Quiet. Counted the exits. The camera glyphs. The spacing of medical teams. There were only two. Bad odds.

He passed a girl near the water kiosk. She looked up. Blinked. Her hand hovered over a cast screen. He kept walking.

No one stopped him.

No one knew him.

He liked that.

Back near the prep bench, someone barked a laugh mid-conversation. Lucen caught the tail end of it.

"...bet he doesn’t even show. Big talk behind a filter."

Another voice answered. Male. Bored.

"He doesn’t need to show. He already won the promo match."

Lucen didn’t react.

Didn’t need to.

He left through the same door he entered. Walked back into the city light, pulled the mask down once he hit the main street, and let the noise behind him blur into traffic.

No fanfare.

Just information gathered.

He tapped his archive once without opening it.

Tomorrow, he’d load for real.

—

The air outside the Echo Cage hit sharp, like mana exhaust and fried oil soaked into the sidewalk.

Lucen adjusted the wrap down from his nose as he turned onto Kivel Street, the wind picking up just enough to lift the corner of his coat.

Neon signs buzzed overhead. One sputtered glitching between "BAR" and "B4R," like it couldn’t decide if it wanted to be edgy or functional. A noodle stand nearby hissed from the open wok.

The smell was strong, sweet soy and charred green onion, and Lucen’s stomach tightened, but he kept walking.

Behind him, the cage buzz kept fading.

In front of him, the city noise got real.

"Hey, she dodged it!" someone shouted to his right, teenage voice, cracked from yelling. "That wasn’t a deflect! That was full-step reposition, rewind the frame!"

Lucen passed them without looking.

Three of them, maybe fifteen. One had a mana pad still open, paused on the duel replay. Another had grease across her cheek and a skewer in her hand, sauce dripping from the end.

"She juked left," one girl said. "No way that’s pure Wind drift."

"She got help," the other said. "Probably internal booster glyph. No way she—hey, wait—is that the guy?"

Lucen didn’t slow.

The trio leaned out, craning a little, but he was already gone.

Two blocks further, the buildings narrowed. Lower ceilings. Brick that hadn’t seen new sealant in five years.

Mana faded here, not dead, just honest. The kind of neighborhoods where your cast rank mattered less than your credit tab, and where duels weren’t announced, just remembered by the damage.

A man sat on a crate near the curb, repairing the strap on a delivery bag. His fingers moved fast, rough, looping synth-thread through the buckle with practiced tension. He looked up once as Lucen passed, nodded once.

Lucen gave a faint nod back.

"Quiet out tonight," the man said. His voice was low, rough from age or drink. "Storm’s not late, just slow."

Lucen didn’t stop walking, but his reply came out easy. "Wind’s wrong for rain. Won’t break till morning."

The man chuckled. "So you’ve got ears, huh."

Lucen kept moving. "Just a bad sleeper."

The next corner turned onto Jaren stretch, where the streetlights buzzed more than they shone. Two kids were trading spell-sticker cards on the stoop of a shuttered pawn stand.

"That one’s fake," the smaller boy said, holding up a foil-edged icon. "There’s no way a B-rank healer gets ’Arc Surge’ as a base skill."

"Your face is fake," the other kid shot back.

Lucen passed them as one of them snorted and slapped the card out of the other’s hand.

Home was two more blocks.

His apartment wasn’t fancy, six floors, half-rented, shielded windows that creaked when it stormed. But it was his. Not traced. Not loaned. Just paid.

The panel by the door recognized him instantly.

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