Chapter 574: Defeat
’He’s too weak,’ Max thought, his gaze cool and emotionless as he watched Garry struggle to rise from the shattered arena wall. It wasn’t arrogance—it was observation. In that instant, Max had already analyzed everything he needed to know.
Either Garry was simply too weak... or Max was far too strong... or perhaps, more accurately, it was both. The gap between them was glaring, and Max understood exactly why.
On paper, Garry stood at the peak of the Expert Rank, while Max was still at the seventh level of the Seeker Rank—a full realm below. That alone should have made Garry the superior fighter, but reality said otherwise.
The reason, Max knew, wasn’t just raw strength or talent. It came down to how they had grasped their inheritances. Both of them were using powerful inheritances in this battle, tapping into the legacies they had comprehended in the true inheritance trial.
But where Garry had barely scratched the surface, only managing to learn the foundational level of the Overlord Armor inheritance, Max had gone much further. His own inheritance—no, inheritances—had been mastered to perfection, polished enough until they became extensions of his very being.
That level of mastery wasn’t just a boost in power—it was transformation, allowing Max to fight as if the inheritance was his birthright.
The disparity was clear in every clash, every swing of the blade, every exchange where Max blocked or countered with ease while Garry struggled to keep up. And yet, Max wasn’t blind to the truth.
Deep down, he believed that if they had fought without using their inheritances—just a straight fight, weapon to weapon, skill to skill—then maybe, just maybe, Garry wouldn’t have been defeated so thoroughly.
He might have lost, but he wouldn’t have been humiliated like this. The problem wasn’t just strength. It was understanding. One fought with borrowed power not fully understood. The other had made that power entirely his own.