40 Glitch in the Matrix

"We surrender!"

The moment the match began, Kevin and Kiana raised their hands in the air and surrendered at the same time.

"What the—!" Ziro exclaimed.

All the players and viewers present in the arena and the real world couldn't believe their eyes and ears.

"Did they just surrender together?!" One of the players yelled.

"Yeah, they did."

"What happens when both players surrender at the same time?" Nier asked curiously.

"I have no idea as this has never happened before," Alina replied.

Everyone glanced at the mascot to announce the winner.

[Since both players surrendered simultaneously, they are both out of this tournament!], the mascot announced.

"Tch!" Ziro clicked his tongue and banged his fist on the ledge.

[The Participants Of The Next Round Is… Byldger And Norio!]

"Tch!" Ziro clicked his tongue and banged on the door again, but for a different reason.

After some seconds, Kevin and Kiana appeared from behind and stood beside the party.

"Yo, guys," Kevin greeted.

Alina pulled Kiana close to her and asked, "Why did you surrender?"

"Well," Kiana shrugged and replied, "I had no intention to fight Kevin."

"We were rooting for you, you know?"

"You all were rooting for me?" Kiana asked with a surprised look on her face.

"All of us, except Ziro. He was rooting for Kevin."

Kevin turned to Ziro with a baffled look on his face and asked, "You were rooting for me?"

"Yes," Ziro nodded and continued, "We can't let these girls beat us, can we?"

'I was simply rooting for you because I wanted to beat you personally.' Ziro hid his true intention behind his words.

"Still, though." Sera quipped and remarked, "You two surrendered at the same time, and the timing was perfect. Had you decided to surrender together beforehand?"

"Actually…" Kiana and Kevin glanced at each other and sighed.

"When we first found out that we were going to fight against each other, I decided to retreat," Kiana replied.

"But I knew that if I did that, Kevin wouldn't like it, and he will retreat too. So I decided to fool him instead."

"..." Ziro raised his brows and thought, 'As if fooling is any better than retreating.'

"I told him that I won't be going easy on him and that he should go all out on me too. And he agreed." 

"However, I planned to surrender as soon as the match started. Everything was going according to my plan until Kevin decided to surrender too," Kiana sighed.

"Who knew you were thinking of the same thing," Kevin commented with a grin.

Kiana glanced at Ziro and Alina and uttered: "This is called true love."

Ziro knitted his brows and rolled his eyes before saying, "So are you saying that I should also surrender 'if' I was matched against Alina?"

"No." Kiana shook her head and asserted, "I am saying how both Kevin and I were thinking of the same thing."

"You two must be childhood sweethearts, right?" Sera asked with a curious look on her face.

"Hell no." Kiana sneered and glanced at Kevin with a grin on her face: "We were after each other's neck all the time until the last year of high school."

"Like seriously?" Sera questioned.

"Yeah." Kiana nodded. "I once hid illegal drugs in his bag and filed a report against him."

"And I once messed with the school elevator to kill her," Kevin joined in.

"How did you guys fall in love with each other then?" Nier asked curiously.

"Let's save it for later, shall we?" Kiana tittered and pointed her gaze on the field: "I want to see how this match goes."

'Same. I am more interested in the match than their love story,' Ziro sighed.

He watched carefully as the match against Byldger and Norio began.

[Three! Two! One! Go!]

As soon as the match began, Norio dashed at Byldger and passed through the ring.

"..." Ziro gritted his teeth in annoyance after seeing that and thought, 'What in the hell just happened?!'

[The Winner Of This Match is… Byldger!]

"What an idiot!" The viewers laughed.

"That Norio…." Kevin muttered. "It looked like he crossed the line on purpose."

"Why would someone lose on purpose in an event like this?" Kiana asked curiously.

"I don't know. But to me, it seemed like that," Kevin replied. "I saw Norio's last match, and he was one of the few who impressed me."

"You are just thinking too much," Kiana remarked. "Maybe he was simply planning to push his opponent out of the ring and ended up doing that."

'Kevin is right. That guy lost on purpose.' Ziro's rage for Byldger was growing more and more.

'I am going to kill him… no matter what happens!' he decided.

Suddenly, everything around Ziro started distorting as though it was glitching.

Everything stopped as there was no flow of time.

Ziro's eyes reflected everything as the distortion aggregated with the glitch.

However, when Ziro blinked, everything went back to normal, or so it seemed.

When Nero gazed at the field, Sera was fighting against her opponent.

'...!' Ziro immediately glanced to his right to make sure he wasn't seeing things, and it was indeed Sera who was fighting on the field.

'But… she was here, standing beside me a second ago.'

Sera dashed at her opponent and jumped in the air. She landed a back kick on him as he stumbled on his feet near the edge of the ring.

Then, Sera jumped and punched him in the face.

[And The Winner Of this Round is… Sera!], the mascot announced.

Everyone present in the arena, and the viewers started clapping in applause.

"That was an excellent match!" Kiana awed.

"Yeah. It continued for ten straight minutes." Kevin added. "This might be the longest match up until now in this tournament."

Ziro was still confused about the current situation, but he shrugged it off as it would be his turn soon, and he needed to concentrate on that.

Ziro opened his menu to see how many matches were left in the queue before his match, but what he saw surprised him and made him more confused than before.

According to the tournament report, Ziro's match with Idania had already ended an hour ago, with Ziro as a winner.