The roar of more than fifty thousand spectators shook the walls of the entrance tunnel, yet it sounded strangely distant to Yuzuki as he walked toward the arena. His hands remained inside the pockets of his dark trousers, partly to maintain his usual relaxed appearance and partly to keep anyone from noticing how stiffly he was holding his left side. Beneath his shirt, medical tape bound his cracked ribs and supported the torn muscles around his spine. Every step produced a dull pull across his lower back, but the fresh blindfold Shizuku had tied the previous night sat comfortably over his eyes, muting the worst of the Six Eyes without leaving him blind.
Morning light flooded the arena when he stepped out of the tunnel. The floor still carried scars from the earlier quarterfinals despite the repairs, with several sections of stone replaced in lighter shades than the rest. Chrollo emerged from the opposite entrance wearing a simple black shirt and trousers, his dark coat absent and the cross on his forehead exposed beneath hair that had been combed away from his face. He carried no visible weapon, and his expression held the same calm Yuzuki remembered from conversations where neither of them had needed to pretend they were enemies.
They stopped several dozen metres apart. There was no theatrical threat between them, only an uncomfortable familiarity. Yuzuki had rejected the Spider more than once, and Chrollo had never entirely accepted the answer. Shizuku cared for both of them in different ways, which made the silence heavier than any hatred would have.
Chrollo's gaze briefly moved across Yuzuki's stance. "Your left side is worse than it looked on the broadcast."
Yuzuki shifted his weight slightly. "That's a rude thing to tell someone before a fight."
"It would be ruder to pretend I hadn't noticed."
"Fair."
The referee checked both fighters, retreated beyond the marked boundary and raised one arm. The announcer's voice thundered from the speakers, introducing the first Battle Olympia semifinal before the bronze bell rang through the arena.
Chrollo summoned Skill Hunter into his right hand and opened it immediately.
Black fog poured from his free palm.
It spread low across the stone at first, rolling outward in thick waves before rising around them. Within seconds, the centre of the arena disappeared beneath a dome of darkness. The crowd vanished from sight, followed by the walls and the pale sky above. Even the heat of the stadium lights faded as the fog swallowed the surrounding space.
Yuzuki remained where he was.
The blindfold made no difference inside the darkness, but the Six Eyes still gave him pieces of information. The air shifted whenever the fog moved. Pressure changed where something passed through it. Aura clung unevenly to the vapour, creating countless false trails that made Chrollo's position difficult to isolate.
Yuzuki could see too much and not enough.
'It's not hiding everything. It's making everything look important.'
A faint scrape came from above him.
Three shapes descended through the fog, their passage disturbing the air before Yuzuki could clearly identify them. They were roughly human in size, but their movements were too stiff and too evenly timed to belong to living fighters.
Yuzuki activated Infinity.
The first curved blade slowed before reaching his shoulder. Two more stopped near his back and neck, suspended at the edge of the spatial barrier. The attackers were crude conjured bodies, their featureless wooden faces barely visible through the darkness.
They did not withdraw when the blades failed.
One struck again from a different angle. Another twisted its arm and pushed, as though testing whether greater pressure would change the result. The third moved lower, dragging the tip of its weapon along the edge of the barrier.
Chrollo remained somewhere outside Yuzuki's reach.
'He's watching.'
Yuzuki could not tell exactly what Chrollo had learned from the first exchange, but the puppets were too disposable and their attacks too weak to be intended as a serious threat. They were being sacrificed to see how Infinity behaved.
The five seconds passed quickly.
When Yuzuki released the technique, he stepped away before the puppets could fall into him. The first collapsed against the floor. He caught the second with a short palm to the chest and sent it into the third, tangling their limbs together.
The fog behind him moved.
Yuzuki turned as Chrollo appeared from the darkness and drove a short strike toward his injured ribs. There was no wasted motion and no attempt to overpower him. The angle alone made the attack dangerous.
Yuzuki dropped his shoulder and twisted just enough to let the hand pass across his shirt. Pain flared along his side even without a clean hit. He answered with an open palm aimed at Chrollo's wrist, hoping to disturb the hand controlling the book.
Chrollo shifted the book closer to his chest and turned his forearm against the strike. Their arms collided once, then separated. Yuzuki tried to step inside, but Chrollo's foot touched the outside of his ankle and spoiled his balance before he could settle.
A palm struck Yuzuki's shoulder and sent him sliding several metres through the fog.
He remained upright, though the sudden movement pulled painfully against his back. Chrollo did not pursue. By the time Yuzuki steadied himself, the Spider had already disappeared into the darkness again.
'He waited for the barrier to end.'
That much was obvious. What Yuzuki did not know was whether Chrollo had guessed the cooldown already or was still measuring it. The distinction mattered, but he could not afford to assume either answer.
"You're counting," Chrollo's voice said from somewhere ahead.
Yuzuki kept turning slowly, searching for the disturbance created by his movement. "You are too."
"Of course."
"Then we should both stop. It's becoming impolite."
A faint sound that might have been a laugh came through the fog.
Another puppet entered from the right. Yuzuki avoided its blade without using Infinity, caught its wrist and drove it into the floor. A second attacker appeared behind it, followed by a small projectile from above. Chrollo was no longer testing one simple angle. He was forcing Yuzuki to decide which attacks deserved the barrier and which could be handled through movement.
Yuzuki blocked the projectile with his forearm and immediately regretted it when pain travelled down the injured limb. The object was only a small piece of stone, but something about the aura clinging to it made him release it rather than catch it.
It landed near his foot.
The fog swallowed Chrollo again.
Behind the reinforced glass of the private viewing box, Kastro leaned forward with both hands against the railing. The arena feed showed almost nothing beyond the outer shape of the black fog, leaving the overhead aura-sensitive cameras struggling to produce broken silhouettes.
"He could have attacked harder after Infinity ended," Kastro said. "Instead, he touched Yuzuki's ribs once and withdrew."
Bisky stood beside him with her arms folded. "He wasn't trying to win that exchange."
"He wanted to know how Yuzuki moved while hurt."
"And where he looked first." Bisky's eyes narrowed at the scattered movements hidden within the fog. "Chrollo is collecting habits. Yuzuki had better stop giving him clean ones."
Wing watched a secondary monitor displaying a rough map generated from the arena's pressure sensors. Several small objects had begun accumulating around Yuzuki's side of the ring.
"Those pieces of stone weren't all there before," he said.
Bisky looked toward the screen but did not answer.
Inside the fog, Yuzuki became aware of the debris only after nearly stepping on a second marked fragment.
The aura attached to it was faint and partially hidden by the sensory noise surrounding him. He crouched without touching it, allowing the Six Eyes to study the residue. The mark resembled the ones Chrollo had used against Orion, though Yuzuki could not tell whether it carried the same function or merely looked similar enough to invite that assumption.
'Sun and Moon. Probably.'
Probably was not good enough.
A puppet descended behind him. Yuzuki shifted aside and kicked its knee inward, using the collapsing body as cover from another stone projectile. The fragment struck the puppet and fell beside the first mark.
Yuzuki noticed a brief movement through the fog. Chrollo's shoe brushed another broken tile, and his free hand dipped low for only a moment before he continued walking.
When the tile rolled away, aura clung to its surface.
Yuzuki finally understood that the scattered debris was not accidental. He still could not see the complete pattern, but Chrollo had been placing marks while the puppets and fog kept his attention divided.
Yuzuki moved away from the nearest cluster.
A puppet forced him back.
He changed direction and found another marked fragment blocking the easier route. Chrollo was not simply surrounding him. The spaces between the objects were uneven, leaving some paths wide and others narrow.
Yuzuki glanced toward the hidden spectator stands. He could not see them, but he knew the arena's layout well enough to judge which side of the floor faced the largest section of the audience.
Most of the marks lay in that direction.
A cold unease settled in his stomach.
He did not yet know whether detonating them would endanger the crowd. Chrollo might have wanted him to believe that. But even the possibility was enough to affect how he moved, and Chrollo knew it.
"You put them close to the stands," Yuzuki said.
Chrollo's voice came from his left. "Did I?"
"You know where they are."
"So do you."
"Not all of them."
"No."
The simple answer irritated Yuzuki more than a taunt would have.
He heard the soft turn of a page.
One of the puppets rushed from the darkness. Yuzuki stepped around it, but another appeared near the route leading away from the audience. The attack forced him toward the centre, where the floor contained fewer marked fragments but offered Chrollo more space to approach from either side.
Yuzuki stopped before the movement could become predictable.
His Infinity cooldown was nearly over. He could feel the technique becoming available again, but Chrollo had already seen the activation once and had almost certainly formed a useful estimate.
The fog shifted around him.
Thin lines of red light appeared beneath the darkness.
One mark lit up, followed by another several metres away. More joined them until a broken pattern surrounded Yuzuki across the damaged arena floor. The lines did not form a perfect cage, and several sections remained hidden beneath rubble and fog, preventing him from seeing exactly where the safest route lay.
Chrollo stood at the outer edge of the pattern with Skill Hunter open in one hand.
He did not detonate anything.
He only turned to a bookmarked page.
Yuzuki remained inside the glowing field, listening to the last seconds of his cooldown disappear while the black fog moved around him like a living wall.
---
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