A few minutes earlier…
The metallic ring of weapon against weapon echoed continuously across the dark expanse.
Amon lunged forward driving his right cleaver toward Gajeel's head. Gajeel didn't back away; his right arm, already encased in a thick club of iron, swept up to meet the blow.
Sparks of purple Mahō and sheared metal burst between them. The force of the impact sent a shockwave rippling across the Black Water beneath their feet. Capitalizing on the lock, Amon's third crimson eye on his temple twitched. He raised his left hand, whipping the second purple cleaver toward Gajeel's exposed ribs.
Before the energy blade could connect, Gajeel's left arm transformed. The flesh and muscle changed in an instant, expanding into a second Iron Dragon Club. He brought the heavy iron pillar across his torso, smothering the trajectory of Amon's secondary strike.
'He can transform both arms into clubs at once?' Amon thought, his three red eyes widening in brief surprise behind his messy white hair.
Gajeel didn't give him time to re-evaluate. With a sudden thrust of his core, he extended his iron arm and drove the flat head of the club straight into Amon's chest. The blunt force launched him backward. His long, black robe billowed as he flew feet through the air, his footwear dragging across the firm surface of the Black Water until he halted his momentum and dropped into a low crouch.
A wet, violent swirling sound echoed directly beneath him.
He glanced down. The Black Water under his shoes was spiraling rapidly into a dark vortex. Instinct screaming, he leaped backward into the air just as a geyser-like pillar of black water shot skyward where he had been standing a second prior.
He touched down five feet back. Another water pillar erupted. He leaped again. Another gush of water thrust toward the dark sky.
Through the falling spray, Amon caught sight of Gajeel standing motionless, both arms transformed into heavy iron clubs. Gajeel thrust them forward in unison. Before they reached Amon, the massive iron shafts curved outward—one sweeping wide to the right, the other arc-ing to the left—forming a crushing metallic pincer designed to slam him between them.
Amon's three eyes tracked both instantly.
He crossed the twin blades of the cleaver knives. in front of his face, catching both expanding iron clubs at the exact moment they snapped inward.
The force of the double impact blew the surrounding mist outward in a clean circle. He stood his ground, his small legs locked, bracing against the immense weight of Gajeel's Magic.
'You two may be strong,' Amon thought, his stitched mouth twitching into a dark grin, 'but you haven't realized that you're facing someone who doesn't have a limit.'
Beside Gajeel, Juvia stepped forward. Her small hands swept through the air, drawing upon the surrounding ocean. A thick, sharp sphere of Black Water condensed in midair before her extended palm. With a single gesture, she launched the hydro-sphere straight at Amon.
Locked in place by Gajeel's iron clubs, Amon couldn't dodge or raise a blade to defend.
The water sphere slammed straight into Amon's chest, shattering into heavy spray on impact. The raw force lifted him completely off his feet, sending him skipping across the rigid Black Water like a thrown stone before he skidded to a halt on his stomach.
He pushed himself up, panting heavily, dark blood trailing down his stitched chin from his wounds.
Juvia and Gajeel were already moving in unison, closing the distance without offering a single second of rest.
'They aren't giving me time to breathe. They're trying to overwhelm me. But... I can feel it.'
Juvia thrust her hands forward, launching five water orbs simultaneously in a wide fan pattern.
Amon didn't back down; he charged forward, his twin cleavers becoming a purple blur as he slashed through projectile after projectile, dispersing them into harmless rain.
Behind the curtain of water, Gajeel was already in mid-sprint. Having retracted his iron arms back to normal length, he threw a heavy, straight punch, extending his right iron club toward Amon's head.
Instead of raising his cleavers, Amon opened his hands, letting both purple energy weapons dissolve into thin air.
He dropped his center of gravity, bending his knees deep and lowering his stance directly beneath the path of the incoming iron clubs.
Amon caught the massive iron club with his bare hands. His feet skidded back an inch across the liquid floor, but he held fast.
"My body..." Amon rasped, his voice echoing through the quiet space as thick, dark veins bulged across his small, pale arms. "With each passing moment... It's growing stronger. My senses are sharper than they've ever been!"
Gajeel's eyes widened in shock. With a guttural roar, Amon locked his fingers into the solid iron. Using his legs as a press, he hoisted Gajeel's extended arm upward, lifting not just the weapon, but Gajeel's entire body off the ground.
Amon pivoted on his heel, using the weight of Gajeel's iron body as leverage. He spun in a tight, violent circle, transforming himself and Gajeel into a metallic whirlwind. Juvia, standing close by, was struck by Gajeel's swinging legs and swept up into the rotational momentum.
"You may have more physical strength than me!" Amon screamed over the rushing wind, his eyes burning with chaotic light as he glared at the spinning form of Juvia. "And you might know more about magic than I do! But none of that matters when I grow faster than anything in this world!"
He released his grip, hurling both vestiges across the realm. They slammed onto the hard liquid floor, tumbling across the Black Water before coming to a stop.
Juvia was the first to recover. Pushing herself up with fluid grace, she skipped forming a sphere. Instead, she manipulated the water around her feet into a high-pressure jet, launching herself forward like a missile.
Still weaponless, Amon pulled his left arm back, pulling his small fist tight. Timing the strike to the split second, he drove his fist straight into the heart of the oncoming torrent.
The collision acted as both a block and a counter. The impact dispersed Juvia's jet stream, but the intense water pressure completely shredded the dark sleeve covering Amon's left arm, tearing the fabric to ribbons and injuring his pale skin.
Dark blood dripped from his left forearm and bruised knuckles, falling onto the black floor.
He didn't even look at the injury. He simply flicked his wrist, splashing the blood away into the dark sea.
"Go ahead and try that water trick again," Amon hissed toward Juvia, his three eyes locking onto her vestige. "I can feel it with every passing second... My body keeps growing. I've got so much power rushing through me right now, it feels like I might explode!"
Amon did not possess Albion's analytical mind. He didn't understand the origins of his non-human blood, nor did he care to find out. Where Albion analyzed, Amon simply felt and acted.
With a flick of his wrists, the twin purple cleavers remanifested in his palms, solidifying from floating purple butterflies. He pointed the right blade directly at Gajeel, who was pushing himself back up to his feet.
"Come at me!"
Gajeel accepted the challenge without a word, his arms instantly transforming into heavy iron clubs as he charged. Amon sprinted forward to meet him.
They met in the middle. Gajeel swung his right iron club in a brutal horizontal sweep, the same angle he had used to damage Albion's ribs earlier.
But Amon was faster now.
Before the iron club could complete its arc, Amon swung his leg, stomping his foot heavily onto the top of Gajeel's extended iron arm, pinning the weapon directly against the solid Black Water floor.
Using the pinned club as a step, Amon leaped upward. He raised the purple cleaver in his uninjured right hand and thrust it forward. Gajeel raised his left iron arm to intercept.
A sickening, metallic rupture shattered the air.
"You fakes..." Amon's raspy, stitched voice hissed through the violence. "All of you... getting in my way!"
The heavy iron club that formed the left arm of Gajeel's vestige completely shattered, exploding into useless iron shrapnel.
"Come on! Just try and stop me, you fakes!" Amon screamed.
In a single, fluid motion, he stepped inside Gajeel's guard. Using the heavy purple energy cleaver in his right hand, he drove an upward, blinding slash directly through Gajeel's shoulder joint.
The vestige's left arm was severed clean off, spinning through the air before dissolving into dark gray ash.
Amon stood in the spray of fading energy, his three crimson eyes wide with predatory delight, his dark stitches stretching painfully as his mouth twisted into a wide grin.
"You all bleed the same way!" Amon cackled.
Gajeel's vestige staggered backward, his form destabilizing under the shock of the damage. Within seconds, his body completely collapsed into dark fluid, dissolving back into the ocean beneath them.
The vestige of Gajeel was no more.
Farther across the plane, Albion lay in the pool of his own blood, his chest bare, his breathing shallow.
His breath caught in his throat. A cold sweat broke across his bare, wounded chest as a sudden wave of dread washed over him.
'I was wrong...' Albion thought, his eyes trembling as he watched Amon raise the second cleaver toward the defenseless vestige of Juvia. 'He's growing too fast.'
He stared at his own blood-stained hands. His voice, when he finally spoke, was quiet.
"Why did I think…that I was the only one who had Adaptive Evolution?"