The plane to Boston lifted at eight sharp.
Team Nemean had settled into a rhythm with travel by now. Bags overhead, windows half ignored. Emma already on her phone, probably managing three different layers of image, money, and expectation at once. Dominic sat with the steady stillness of a man who lived on the ring. Alex leaned back with her eyes half closed, withdrawing inward the way she did before fights. Jake and Jack shared one side of the row, trading quiet remarks over clips from yesterday's matches. Joanne was reading comments about Team Nemean online and making faces at half of them. Janet had a notebook out. Séline and Camille sat together in that calm, sharp silence that never felt empty. Alexei had somehow brought protein bars enough for a platoon.
Phong used the time the way he always used it.
He briefed the team.
"The home team is Boston Jokers," he said, low enough not to feed the cabin ears more than necessary. "Three divers."
That got everyone's attention.
He glanced down at his notes.
"The leader is Shirlene Liu. Level thirty-nine. Pugilist. She shared the same class with Josh." He did not need to say more than that. Everyone already knew what kind of problem a fast close-range striker could become.
He continued.
"Then there's the duo. Andre Holmes and Mathias Watson."
Phong shifted the notes slightly.
"Andre is an Arcane Archer. Similar space to Joanne's class line."
Joanne raised a brow. "Spell Sniper but with more theater, probably."
Phong's mouth twitched once. "Probably."
"Mathias Watson is a Stone Warlord," he added. "Evolved from Stone Warden."
Jack nodded slowly. "Branching evolution a bitch, huh?"
That barely even registered as strange anymore. By now, everyone had seen enough of the system to know that class lines forked, bent, and specialized despite not cracking the mechanism behind it just yet. Nevertheless, Stone Warden becoming Stone Lord, Stone Warlord, or something else entirely was no longer surprising. It was just another reminder that the system loved variety where humans preferred categories.
Dominic listened, then gave the simplest possible answer.
"We can handle them."
By "we," he very clearly meant Alex.
Phong looked up from the notes and shook his head.
"It's not the team I'm worried about."
That made the mood shift. Everyone there had learned to listen when Phong said that. He did not scare easily, but he did recognize patterns too quickly for comfort.
"The coach," he said. "Was Adam Choi."
Emma looked over immediately. "I know the name, but not much else."
Phong nodded.
"There's nothing useful on him in English. But Vân found material on a Chinese dark web site that hosts underground death battles between divers."
That alone got Jake's full attention.
"Of course that exists."
"Of course Vân knew where to find it," Joanne added.
Phong ignored both.
"In that space, Adam Choi built a reputation as Adam 'the Gambit' Choi. Prediction success rate around ninety-three percent."
That silenced them.
93% was high enough to matter. High enough to mean pattern recognition, class knowledge, and fight prep at a level beyond normal coach work. Someone like that was not simply shouting advice from the sideline. He was building traps.
Phong looked from one face to another.
"He studies classes intensively," he said. "Don't take him lightly."
No one joked after that.
Boston greeted them with colder air, sharper wind, and a city already awake for the match.
The venue was the largest stadium in the city, a place built for football and concerts, now redressed in league branding and sponsor glare. Massive screens looped fight clips over the outer gates. Vendors shouted over one another about energy drinks, team scarves, and commemorative cups. The crowd had a different flavor from Maine. Less cozy local pride. More volume, sharper edge. Boston loved spectacle, loved a home team with attitude, and the Jokers had built theirs carefully.
And Rico was here to steal the show.
When Team Nemean arrived, Boston Jokers were already inside answering interviews near one of the side stages.
Phong saw them before the cameras fully turned his way.
Shirlene Liu stood at the center, compact and sharp, the sort of woman whose body looked built around velocity rather than size. She did not posture like Josh did. Less false grandeur, and no rich-boy cruelty dressed as confidence. Her expression stayed relaxed, almost amused, while the reporters circled. Her hair was tied back high and practical, dark jacket open just enough to show the fitted fight wear underneath.
To her left stood Andre Holmes.
Tall, stylish, broad-shouldered without looking heavy, with a deep green long coat cut like a Ben 10 in Alien Force cosplay. His braids were tied back with silver bands, and every gesture he made seemed too smooth not to be intentional. He was the kind of man who knew cameras existed and made peace with using that.
Mathias Watson stood on the other side.
Less flashy than Andre. He looked like Jack if Jack had been raised by a team whose branding department thought "intimidation" should be visible at ten meters. Cropped hair, thick wrists. Stone-toned coat over reinforced gear. Not dumb in the face, which Phong appreciated immediately. A lot of people mistook bulky earth-type classes for simple fighters. Both the Jamesons and Mathis were more than willing to prove them wrong.
And then there was Adam Choi.
He stood just behind them, hands in the pockets of a modest dark coat, looking so ordinary that the eye wanted to pass over him.
That was exactly why Phong disliked him on sight.
He was a neat Cantonese man with trimmed hair, calm eyes, and the sort of stillness that meant he was always watching one layer deeper than everyone else. If Phong had to put it into one comparison, Adam was the exact opposite of José Mourinho. The cameras loved his team. They barely lingered on him.
Phong knew better.
At the interview station, Adam said into a microphone with polite certainty, "I believe I have found the key to unlocking Alexandra Vogel."
The reporters almost trampled each other. That line spread through the press pack faster than blood in water.
When Team Nemean's turn came, Dominic only said, "I have total faith in Alex."
It was not flashy.
It was not clever.
And somehow that made it stronger.
Emma handled the rest like a woman born to inflame rooms.
She teased the crowd. Gave them rivalry. Fed them spectacle without ever handing them anything important. She made the bystanders feel like witnesses to something larger than sports, which in fairness they were. By the end of three minutes, even half the neutral audience had begun leaning toward Team Nemean just because Emma knew exactly where fan loyalty liked to imagine itself.
Rico, somehow, understood camera innocence on instinct.
He said very little, kept his sentences short since toddler speak tend to be received as cuter, especially coming from a talking raccoon. He played the part of chaotic mascot with enough restraint that people projected charm instead of danger onto him. Then, right in front of a sponsor row, he accepted a can from an energy drink executive and chugged it like it was holy duty.
The cameras loved it.
Boston loved him even more.
Phong nearly died inside.
In the changing room afterward, the mood changed again. Now they could put down the mask reserved for the public and don the thinking hat.
That was when Phong made his suggestion.
"Field someone else first."
Every head turned.
He kept going.
"Not Alex. Just for today."
Emma rejected it instantly.
"No."
Phong looked at her.
"If we do that after the interviews," she said, "we turn our own statement into a joke."
She was not wrong. They were in this league for the spot light, for the visibility, so their influence could later be used as leverage. They could not afford to think purely for victories anymore. Still, Phong did not like Adam Choi. Did not like the way the man had said "unlocking" as if Alex were a safe someone just needed time to open.
Before Dominic could answer, Alex did.
"I'm going first."
That settled it.
Somehow, for team Nemean, once Alex decided on something with enough coviction, they trusted her almost immediately, like it was conditional reflect. Alex had gone head first into the fray and handled more problem than they could count these past 2 years, that they respected her competency on an instinct. Even Phong had a moment of self doubt.
Maybe Alex could handle it despite Adam clearly set this up to get her.
Maybe she could steamroll everything coming her way.
The stadium roared when her name was announced. Across the ring, Boston roared louder when Shirlene Liu stepped out to meet her.
Pugilist against Arbieter Mindblade.
The commentators immediately started selling history. Alex undefeated in the league so far. Shirlene was the home favorite despite Adam decided to strategically forfeit their first match to wait for team Nemean. Beast of New York against Boston's own sharp-fisted answer.
The opening looked clean for Alex.
That was the cruel part.
It looked exactly like the kind of fight she should control.
Her constructs formed with familiar discipline. Spear. Two shields. Bows. Vajra. Dragon Slayer. Then, a heartbeat later, the additional pair came out: whip and rapier. She did not use Bai Hu's storm. Did not summon the psychic tiger. This was Alex in controlled mode, the style she trusted most when she wanted information and dominance together.
Shirlene came in light on her feet.
She might not have the level 90 privilege early like Josh, yet her speed, reading, and confidence in her own body was on par with the bastard if they didn't take teleportation into account. She guarded high, stepped at angles, and tested the edge of Alex's threat zone without committing too hard too soon.
Yet, the first exchange favored Alex immediately.
The whip snapped low and forced Shirlene to shift right. The spear cut off the right lane before she fully took it. One bow loosed high, the rapier flicked in like a needle.
Shirlene slipped the arrow and turned the rapier with her forearm guard, but the motion cost her just enough that the vajra nearly found her liver.
The crowd hissed.
Shirlene's face tightened.
Alex saw that and pressed.
The next fifteen seconds were textbook suffocation. Alex was a nightmare for most melee class, as she had way too many options and angles on a 1v1 to defend all 360 degree around them. Shirlene tried to close. Alex denied one route after another, her constructs shaping the ring into a geometry problem no pugilist wanted to solve at full speed. Each time Shirlene committed to an entry angle, something was waiting there. The vajra threatened bone. The whip stole rhythm. The rapier punished overextension. The spear denied area just like how Jack would do with his pillar. And Dragon Slayer stayed the Damocles blade hanging over Shirlene's head.
Shirlene got in once anyway.
That alone proved she deserved the level.
She slipped under the whip, angled past one shield, and got close enough to brush Alex's sleeve with a short inside strike that would have wrecked a lesser fighter's balance.
Alex's answer was immediate.
Rapier crossed low. Dragon Slayer swung in an wide arc to force a retreat. One bow dissolved and reformed behind her as a shield just in time to stop the follow-up. Then the whip wrapped Shirlene's wrist for half a second—enough for the spear butt to drive into her ribs and send her stumbling back out.
Again, Shirlene showed pain.
Her breathing looked rougher now. She shook her arm once as if the nerves had gone hot and wrong. Her footwork lost the faintest touch of spring.
Phong watched from ringside and felt the fight settling into expected shape.
Alex was cutting her apart with attrition.
Her fighting style with her constructs was in a way similar to Josh's. The bastard would circled his enemy with blink and wore them down. Alex did the same with the mental pain caused by her constructs.
Shirlene tried to change pace.
She began baiting. Showing a limp. Over-selling shoulder damage. Letting the audience see exhaustion. Alex did what she should have done: she tightened the noose and ready to fiish the hunt.
Another rapier touch.
A whip strike across the thigh.
The vajra threatening the knee and forcing a bad retreat.
Shirlene's expression twisted. She gritted her teeth. Even the home commentators started saying she might be running out of chances.
Adam Choi did not move.
Inside the ring, Alex built the ending.
One shield drove Shirlene toward the boundary. The whip cut off her left. The spear feinted centerline to keep her hands high. Dragon Slayer returned to Alex's grasp with all the quiet finality of a verdict.
The crowd rose.
Shirlene looked trapped.
Her mouth even opened on what could have been a curse or a breath dragged too hard.
Alex stepped in to finish it.
Dragon Slayer came down.
And Shirlene smiled.
A small, vicious smirk.
It appeared so suddenly that Alex only registered it a fraction too late.
Shirlene had not been collapsing.
She had been waiting.
The giant psychic blade fell. Shirlene did not try to tank it. She burst forward under the angle instead, too tight for the heavy construct to adjust fully in time. One hand caught Alex's collar.
The crowd gasped.
Shirlene's hips turned.
Her stance dropped.
And with a throw so clean it looked rehearsed in somebody's worst dream, she used Alex's own forward commitment against her and flung her bodily out of the ring.
Alex hit outside the boundary hard enough to skid.
The horn sounded before the audience fully understood what had happened.
For one suspended second, the whole stadium froze.
Then Boston detonated. The noise hit like a physical force.
Commentators screamed over each other. Home fans lost their minds. Cameras cut to Alex, to Shirlene, to Adam Choi, to Team Nemean's bench, then back again so fast the main screen looked drunk.
And through that chaos came something even more surreal.
The commentary feed abruptly changed. For half a second there was static, then Rico's voice flooded the stadium speakers.
"Listen. Caffeine is strategy."
Phong closed his eyes.
Somewhere between Alex being thrown and the control booth panicking, Rico had apparently infiltrated the commentators' station, stolen their coffee, and seized the microphone with the conviction of a raccoon drugged on purpose.
"This what happen when people not respect energy economy," Rico continued. "Also team should invest in better beans."
The feed cut in and out under shouts from unseen staff.
The crowd, already half insane from the upset, somehow got louder. Rico immediately became Boston's favorite with the shenanigan only a raccoon vibrating with caffeine could commit.
In the ring, Shirlene raised one fist and let Boston have their moment.
Adam Choi did not celebrate. He only watched Alex get back to her feet.
And in that stillness, Phong understood exactly how bad this was going to get.
Alex's first defeat had come sooner than anyone in Team Nemean expected.
At the hands of a level thirty-nine Pugilist and the coach who had looked at her like a locked mechanism.
By the time the officials restored the proper broadcast and the commentators started babbling about adaptation, traps, and class study, Adam Choi's name had already started spreading through the East Coast like aftershock.
The Gambit had found a way to do what had thought to be unthinkable: steal a win from an Arbiter Mindblade in a 1v1.