The distance vanished.
Rolan moved first, no rush, no waste. His boot scraped stone as the aura coiled down his legs and poured into the blade. The cut started low, then climbed clean diagonal, meant to open Quinn from hip to shoulder.
Quinn didn't back up. He stepped in.
The gauntlet met the flat of the sword a heartbeat before the edge could bite. Metal rang once, sharp. The strike slid off, thrown out of line by a fraction of an inch.
Rolan adjusted mid-breath. Wrist rolled, blade reversed, slicing for the flank.
Quinn's other hand dropped, caught the steel, and pressed it down like he'd known the angle before Rolan chose it. The second cut died before it lived.
They were close now. Rolan dropped his center, shoulder turning, and let the sword hand go for half a second, just long enough to drive an open palm at the side of Quinn's helm.
Quinn tilted his head. The strike scraped past, harmless.
Rolan's fingers found the hilt again. No time to reset. He thrust upward, tight and vicious, hunting the soft gap beneath the ribs.
Quinn shifted half a step. The blade cut empty air.
He's not faster, Rolan realized. He's earlier.
The thought didn't slow him. It sharpened him. Aura compressed around his arms. Three strikes came in a single breath high, low, center each one feeding off the last, hunting for a hole.
Quinn answered without flourish.
First cut: deflected outward by the rear edge of a gauntlet.
Second: caught and driven down, momentum murdered.
Third: Quinn simply stepped inside it. The blade passed behind his back as he closed the last inch of distance.
Too close.
Rolan's knee drove up hard into the midsection. It landed, dull and heavy. Quinn absorbed most of it, torso rolling with the impact, then his fingers locked around Rolan's wrist.
For one frozen second they stood chest to chest. Rolan's breath sawed in and out. Quinn's helm gave back nothing no sweat, no strain, only the faint mechanical hum of the gauntlets adjusting.
Rolan twisted hard, torque his wrist, driving his shoulder across Quinn's lead foot. The grip broke. He ripped free and slid back two quick steps, sword snapping up into guard.
Dust drifted between them.
Rolan's arms trembled, but his stance stayed low. He studied the man across from him, eyes narrowed, recalculating.
"Not bad," he muttered, "just so you know, I don't intend to hold back from this point onwards."
Quinn straightened. The gauntlets clicked once. He gave the smallest tilt of his head.
"Your not bad yourself, I say you should proceed. Don't hold back." he said, voice flat. "You're still predictable anyway."
Rolan's grip tightened on the hilt. He didn't step back. If anything, he settled deeper into his stance.
From where he stood, this was still a fight he could win.
Rolan moved first.
His blade sang out in a clean, decisive arc no feint, no warning. It was a statement: test me. Quinn didn't retreat. He simply shifted, half a step, angled just enough. Steel whispered past his throat, close enough to tug at the collar of his shirt.
Rolan flowed straight into the next cut, tighter, faster, then a heavy descending blow that carried his full weight through the shoulders. Each swing layered pressure, trying to force Quinn backward.
Quinn never gave ground.
His feet stayed planted, absorbing the space instead of surrendering it. When the third strike came, he met it with his gauntlet. Metal cracked against reinforced plating. The impact shuddered down his arm and into the stone beneath his boots.
He didn't budge. Rolan's eyes narrowed. That should have staggered him.
Instead, Quinn answered.
His counter was brutally simple: a straight punch, no wind-up, no flourish. The gauntlet slammed into Rolan's jaw with a dull, meaty thud. Rolan's head snapped sideways. His stance broke for the first time.
Quinn stepped inside the sword's reach before Rolan could reset.
The punches came fast and mechanical right hook to the ribs, left across the sternum, an uppercut angled into the clavicle. Each blow landed with amplified force, the gauntlets turning bone and breath into targets. Quinn wasn't brawling. He was dismantling. Mapping pressure points. Breaking structure.
Rolan's footing slipped. His guard loosened.
Then Quinn finished the sequence.
He drew his arm back a fraction and drove a final punch straight into Rolan's chest. The crack was quiet, almost intimate. The force lifted Rolan clean off his feet and hurled him backward. He hit the floor once, skidded, then slammed into the far wall with a sound like a sack of wet concrete.
Dust rained from the stone. For a heartbeat, nothing moved.
Then Rolan pushed himself up. One knee, then the other. His sword scraped against the floor as he used it for leverage. His breathing came short and ragged, but his eyes stayed locked on Quinn.
Quinn was already there.
Rolan slashed upward on pure instinct, a rising cut meant to split Quinn from groin to throat. Quinn leaned left. The blade sliced empty air.
Quinn's fist came across at head level, rotating through the shoulders with vicious torque. It caught Rolan mid-turn and lifted him completely off the ground.
Before gravity could pull him down, Quinn's hand shot out and caught him by the ankle.
He pivoted tight, controlled and slammed Rolan sideways into the wall.
The impact shuddered through the corridor. Stone cracked. Dust exploded outward.
Rolan dropped like dead weight, limbs loose, breath gone.
Quinn stepped forward, slow and deliberate. He raised his arm again, fist angled downward toward Rolan's skull, ready to drive it into the stone and end it.
Rolan never saw the ground coming.
The moment froze at the edge of collapse Quinn's fist suspended above him, the weight of inevitability pressing down without yet falling. Dust hovered in the air between them, thin and trembling, as if the dungeon itself held its breath.
Then Quinn changed vectors.
His hand didn't descend but it shifted.
Fingers closed into Rolan's hair tight, uncompromising and yanked upward with mechanical certainty.
Rolan's body followed whether it agreed or not.
The motion was abrupt, violent. His spine snapped into alignment as he was dragged up from the ground, boots scraping uselessly against stone before losing contact entirely. For a fraction of a second, he hung there suspended, held not by strength alone but by something colder: control.
Quinn didn't look at him.
Rolan's weight adjusted in Quinn's grip limp in places, resisting in others but it didn't matter. Quinn had already decided where the motion would end.
He turned and threw him. There was no flourish to it, no dramatic wind-up. Just a clean transfer of force from shoulder to arm, from arm to release.
Rolan's body cut across the corridor.
A rough trajectory. Not straight but controlled.
He hit the ground hard once, then again momentum dragging him forward as friction tore at his clothes and skin. The sound was ugly, uneven. Stone against flesh. Impact layered over impact.
He didn't stop immediately, as he slid eight meters. The distance stretched out between him and Quinn and toward the others.
By the time he came to a halt, Rolan's body had already lost cohesion. One arm twisted under him, his sword barely retained in his grip, the blade dragging a faint line along the stone where it scraped.
For a moment he didn't move. Then breath forced its way back into him. Ragged and unstable. His fingers tightened around the sword first out of habit.
He planted it against the ground, using it as leverage, dragging his upper body up inch by inch. His shoulders trembled under the effort. His legs lagged behind, delayed, unresponsive for a fraction too long before finally obeying.
His body listed slightly to one side, knees not fully locking, weight unevenly distributed. Blood ran freely down his face, cutting across his features in uneven lines, dripping from his chin to the floor below.
His breathing had degraded further.
Each inhale shallow, each exhale audible. But still he was standing.
Across from hi, Quinn advanced step by step. Consistent and uninterrupted.
The distance closed again not with urgency, but with certainty. Quinn's posture hadn't changed. His shoulders remained level, his movements economical, his intent unreadable but absolute.
Rolan saw him coming and he chose to move.
There was no time to rebuild structure. No space to recalibrate. What remained of his form condensed into a single decision.
Attack.
His grip tightened on the sword. His shoulders rotated slower than before, but still precise enough to execute. The blade came across in a diagonal strike, aimed not at Quinn's center, but slightly higher.
The shoulder was targeted hit. The edge struck Quinn's shoulder plating with a clear metallic impact sharp, distinct.
And then the strike landed but it carried no weight. It was as if the force behind it had been stripped away before contact.
Rolan felt it immediately, the absence of transmission. The structure of the attack had collapsed before it could resolve.
And Quinn didn't react.
His body remained exactly where it had been grounded and unaffected.
Then he answered, the counter came from below. A rising motion tight, compact. Quinn's fist drove upward. The uppercut connected under Rolan's guard, catching him clean beneath the jaw.
This time the force transferred completely. Rolan's body left the ground again in full displacement.
His feet lifted cleanly off the stone, his spine arching as the impact traveled through him, snapping his head back and breaking what little structure he had managed to regain.
For a moment he hung in the air weightless and disconnected. Then gravity reclaimed him, he dropped with a face-first.
The impact was blunt and immediate no attempt to catch himself, no reflex left to soften the fall. His body hit the ground flat, the sound heavy and final, breath driven out of him again in a harsh, involuntary release.
He didn't rise this time. Quinn closed the distance.
He reached Rolan where he lay and stepped forward, placing one foot firmly onto his back. The pressure was deliberate centered not enough to crush, but enough to pin.
Rolan's body reacted instinctively, muscles tightening, a strained attempt to push against the weight.
Quinn bent slightly, his hand reached down not hurried, not tentative and found Rolan's right arm.
He gripped it just above the wrist. Then at the elbow, a two-point control.
Rolan's body tensed immediately.
Quinn didn't pull but twisted.
The motion was controlled precise in angle and application. Brute force, The kind that doesn't need excess. The joint reached its limit and went past it. The sound came first. A sharp, internal crack clean and irreversible.
Rolan's body convulsed under Quinn's foot, the tension snapping into something raw and uncontrolled.
And then he screamed. It tore out of him sharp, fractured, carrying the full weight of pain that couldn't be contained or redirected. It echoed through the corridor, bouncing off stone, filling the space with something that lingered even after the sound itself began to fade.
Quinn didn't release him.
He held the arm in its broken position for a fraction longer ensuring the damage was complete, not partial.
Then he let go.
Rolan's arm dropped uselessly, no longer responding, the structure gone entirely.
Quinn's foot remained where it was.
Ending any attempt at resistance before it could form.
A few meters away the others watched. No one moved or intervened. The space between them and the fight had become something else entirely. And behind Rate, Camilla tilted her head slightly.
Her posture was relaxed. Her gaze fixed on the scene with a clarity that didn't match the brutality unfolding in front of her. There was no tension in her expression.
A subtle curve touched her lips, not quite a smile, but close enough to suggest the direction.
Her eyes tracked the sequence not the violence, but the execution. The timing, the structure, the efficiency.
To her, this wasn't chaos but was performance. And she was entertained quietly.
Back at the center, Rolan's breathing had collapsed into uneven fragments, his body barely responding beneath the weight holding him down. Pain radiated through him in sharp, disjointed waves, each one stealing coherence from the next.
But Quinn remained exactly as he had been from the start.
And the moment held there with Rolan pinned, broken, and screaming beneath him.