Elyon stood upon the ledge, his eyes staring straight downwards towards the champion.
Gladys did the same. For a while, they sized each other up, then Elyon jumped.
As he fell, his irises changed to display the number "4"
He crashed against the once-pretty sand. His landing stirred a cloud of sand.
From that fall, a normal person would sustain some broken bones. Yet no harm came to him since he multiplied his bone toughness by four.
The visible fear left Gladys's face; now it was determination to win this tournament and head to sleep.
"Who are you? And how did you kill my clones so easily?"
Elyon scoffed
"Wouldn't you like to know?"
Gladys looked at him, confused.
"I mean, yeah? That's why I am asking"
Elyon seemed taken aback.
"Oh, I'm Gladys"
For whatever reason, Elyon thought that saying his name would be funny.
Gladys looked at him funny, then his whole demeanour changed once he pointed his spear towards Elyon.
"Enough talk, let me cleanse your sins"
"I'm a sinless being already. What do you want to cleanse?"
While Gladys and Elyon were trash-talking each other.
Eve managed to get a hold of herself.
The remaining petals of carnations that were drifting through the air landed at Eve's feet in the form of a sword. Those last petals transformed into Nightfall, just like nothing happened.
"Do not expect another miracle from me"
"What do you mean?"
Nightfall's eye blinked a couple of times before it responded.
"Your total accumulated suffering since the moment you were born managed to buy me only two minutes."
Eve remained quiet.
"Suffer some more if you wish to use those powers again."
Then, its eye closed.
Eve sighed, and she walked over to the seat where Elyon had just been a couple of moments ago.
She looked from side to side, then she finally realised where she was.
She was standing alongside the judges of the Colosseum, the spectators.
They were still chanting the champion's name, too lost in their insanity to acknowledge that one of the fighters was next to them.
Eve looked at a woman, then a man, and a child.
Eve wanted to be acknowledged by these people, but what she realised in that moment left her feeling uneasy.
They were humans.
Every one of them.
They sought pleasures in watching criminals eat each other. And yet, the spectators and the fighters wore the same skin.
She was no different from them.
And they weren't any different from her.
So she took a seat.
She puts her hands next to her mouth.
While the others kept screaming
"Gladys, Gladys, Gladys"
A single person started yelling another name.
"Elyon, Elyon, Elyon"
As she kept yelling his name, something else clawed at her mind. And this had nothing to do with the crowd but rather a certain dream she had.
---
Elyon sighed and pointed his index finger towards Gladys.
"Like I told you...champion. I have no clue where you can get a beef stew for cheap. Are you even allowed to leave this Colosseum because you know...you are the champion. What use is there in leaving this village to eat food and impress ladies with your physique?"
A vein almost burst in Gladys's forehead out of anger.
"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?"
Elyon waved his hand from side to side.
"Ah, the youth and their problems. Always putting themselves before others."
Gladys's grip tightened on the trident, and he dashed towards Elyon.
"25"
Gladys crashed into an indestructible invisible wall.
His breath was knocked out of his lungs from the collision. He backed up a couple of feet from the wall, and then he yelled with all his might.
"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU?"
"10"
A voice came from behind him.
Elyon multiplied his total speed by ten times over
"Your fucking end, champion"
''20"
A punch landed against Gladys's backside, carrying the weight of one thousand five hundred kilograms of force.
Gladys was sent flying, yet his flight came to a very abrupt end when he hit the invisible wall in front of him.
Gladys felt like the whole world was upside down, but in reality, he was.
He could barely breathe; he knew for certain that quite a lot of bones in his body had broken from that punch.
Elyon gave him time to let him get up, since he was just toying with him.
After a while, the champion managed to get up, just barely.
Elyon looked at the champion, and he pulled out ten gold coins. He inspected them for a bit, then he looked back at Gladys.
"Let's see if you are as greedy as Eve"
He gripped the coins hard in his hand,
"15"
Then he threw them towards the champion.
The speed at which they shot out was too fast even for Gladys to see them.
Three out of the ten gold coins missed their mark. Yet the other seven found their mark. Since Elyon multiplied only the speed at which they left his hand, and not their durability. Shrapnel of gold was stuck deep in Gladys's body.
The champion was growing quite fearful for his life.
And so he decided to do what he knew best.
Bring beauty to the world.
One
Then two
Then four
Then eight
Then Sixteen
Then thirty-two
sixty-four.
Then, finally, one hundred twenty-eight clones.
"10"
Every clone of his burst into a rainfall of blood
Yet Gladys's clone's blood wasn't the only thing that started to fall.
Elyon's eyes started to bleed from overexertion. He was well beyond his limit, but he was having so much fun.
Both of them waited until the rain passed and the sky was once again clear.
"I wonder what my mind can come up with!"
Elyon yelled with all his might, and a maniacal smile was visible on his face.
Gladys just looked at him, waiting.
Elyon bent down and picked a handful of bloody sand.
"20"
Elyon chucked the fist of sand towards Gladys; to the champion, it was basically like a sandstorm rolled in. He was momentarily blinded, that was until the sand cleared, and Elyon was no longer in front of him.
Gladys looked up in the sky because he couldn't see his opponent, and what looked back at him...was the sun.
"4"
Gladys was blinded, Elyon multiplied the sunrays that entered his retinas.
Unbeknownst to Gladys, Elyon was next to him. Gladys was just too panicked to realise, and he just looked at the sun for no reason.
"Ten", Elyon whispered in the champion's ear.
Suddenly, Gladys' eyes started to hurt ten times worse.
He screamed...yet his vocal cords started to hurt abnormally high.
Elyon went to Gladys's right, and he punched him in the liver. This time, he didn't multiply the force of the punch. But he didn't even need to.
Gladys fell to the ground in pain. He was experiencing so much pain that he was on the verge of passing out, yet he didn't, somehow.
And with the last of his consciousness, he remembered something.
So that was your name? Niece of mine, Eve, huh? I'm sorry I wasn't a better uncle, and I'm sorry for hurting you so much.
"2"
If I knew sooner, I would've gla-
Every thought that could have gone through Gladys' brain before he lost consciousness was gone.
Elyon doubled Gladys' cerebrospinal fluid temperature.
"2"
Elyon doubled the strength of the muscles in his legs. Then his foot came crashing down against the head of the champion. Gladys's head split like wet clay, and warm fluid coated Elyon's boot.
The champion was defeated. And Eve will never find out that she was responsible for another member of her family's death.
The 7th annual Grand Colosseum tournament came to an end.
The people woke from their daze.
"What happened to Gladys?"
"Why am I covered in so much blood?"
"What is going on?"
Even the announcer was speechless.
Eve got up from her seat, and she picked up Nightfall. Walking over the edge, she jumped. When she landed, her legs hurt a bit, but she was fine.
Elyon was standing over Gladys' corpse with the same maniacal smile on his face.
She walked over to him.
"Elyon, I have to tell you something"
There was something I blurted out when I was talking with Sarah, which I never meant to. But I still have to test it...does Elyon see me as a friend or does he just use me?
Elyon didn't look at her; he just kept looking at the corpse of Gladys.
Will he stop chasing after the gods if I ask him?
"Elyon, let's stop this. Everything, there is no point in seeking reve-"
Her words were cut out by Elyon's calm gaze.
"What are you talking about, Eve? We have a purpose of being here."
Eve just wordlessly stared back at him. She wanted to tell him what she saw in her dream. That the gods are too vast for the two of them. But the words can't leave her mouth. Because he didn't even acknowledge the idea.
"Stop your foolishness, Eve"
"foolishness?"
Eve's voice came out with much more hurt than she intended; her lower lip was trembling.
Elyon's gaze left Eve's face, and he looked at the crowd of people. He took a couple of steps back until he was in the middle of the arena.
"People of the Colosseum, we have in store another fight for the likes of you"
"Elyon? What are you doi-"
"A fight so grand will take place that you will be amazed. But first look at this show."
Elyon's irises changed to the number.
"1440"
Immediately, he began to bleed through every orifice in his body.
In that same moment, in his haste to start the fight, he didn't realise what he did to his body; he basically killed himself.
No
That was his last thought before his brain went into overdrive. Since he possesses a vast river of biological knowledge, he knew that he could live, somewhat.
Half of his skull was filled with blood, and the other half with cerebrospinal fluid.
Clotting speed recovery multiplied by "400", toes and fingers blackened from the lack of circulation
Microglia, the main cleaning crew in the brain, multiplied its reproduction rate and the speed at which they work by "300"
Neuroplasticity and neural rerouting multiplied by "1000" so his brain can work in the future.
Oxygen efficiency multiplied by "50" so his neuros won't die.
Elyon's irises were rapidly changing from number to number. He was starting to froth at the mouth. He was having a stroke, yet at the same time, his brain worked manually, so he wouldn't die; fluid was leaking from his ears.
His body became the perfect biological machine; his soul was an equilibrium of death and life. And somehow, he was still standing.
Since he was multiplying his body's reproductive properties so quickly and with such high numbers, it kept restarting his bleeding.
Then he added consciousness stability, which was multiplied by "50"
A single thought formed in his broken mind.
Lower
One by one, he began to lower the numbers. He was doing 50 subtractions per second. Once in a while, he had to cool down his brain, too. Then his eyes, then all of them all over again.
Eve watched in horror at what she was seeing.
In a single minute, Elyon managed to restart his brain.
He was born anew.
Both Eve and Elyon were reborn.
Yet something else happened in that minute, and a whole day passed.
Elyon entered the flow state of saving his mind because...
He sped up the day and night cycle.
He wanted to do that just that, to speed up the day and night cycle, but he didn't realise what price he would have to pay for toying with the laws of the world.
Once he was finished, he wiped his face of every fluid that left his body.
His blurry vision turned towards Eve.
"I live"
He barely blurted out. Everything in his body screamed at him to rest.
His eyes turned towards the crowd, and instead of resting, he yelled at the top of his lungs.
"EVERYONE, LET'S WELCOME INTO THE WORLD..."
The ground began to shake, and something was fast approaching from the core of the earth.
The spectators began to flee for their lives once the earthquake happened, and a whole day passed.
All of them were getting stuck at each exit.
"THE GOD OF NATURE"
Something left the ground and was a few meters infront of them.