[The Sky Arena – High Atmosphere]
Carod skated backward on the frozen obsidian, his armor now a frost-bitten blue. I have a great idea, he thought, his tactical processors clicking at light speed. If I can't hit him with precision, I'll hit everything at once.
"[TYPE SWITCH: WATER LEVEL 2 — BLIZZARD FORM]!"
A pulse of absolute zero mana erupted from Carod's core. The entire Sky Arena was instantly transformed into a wasteland of jagged ice and blinding snow. The temperature plummeted so fast that the mana-barriers groaned under the thermal shock.
"I can do massive AOE attacks now, boy!" Carod shouted through the howling wind. "Let's see you dodge the very air you breathe!"
Lapis stood in the center of the storm, his magenta aura acting as a heater. "Not today. [MATTER TECHNIQUE: MAGENTA]!"
Lapis held out his hand, and a swirling orb of dense, violet-pink light manifested. It began to act like a miniature black hole, its gravitational pull sucking in the snow and ice, crushing the blizzard into a tiny point of singularity.
Carod didn't flinch. He pointed his gauntlet at the orb. "Icicle Spear! Destroy his Magenta!" A massive, spiraling lance of ice shot forward, aiming to pierce the core of Lapis's technique.
Lapis gritted his teeth. I can warp space, so this low temperature is nothing to me, he thought, his eyes darting to the future. But the problem is my physical state. My body is starting to stiffen from the cold.
Abandoning the long-range game, Lapis dissolved the orb and blurred forward. He closed the gap in a millisecond, engaging Carod in a brutal hand-to-hand exchange. Because of his Honoured Eyes, Lapis was a ghost. He parried every heavy strike and landed three lightning-fast punches to Carod's chest plate. He was completely dominating the physical exchange.
"Absolute Frozen!" Carod roared, trying to grab Lapis's throat to flash-freeze his blood.
Lapis caught the wrist, twisted his hips, and used the momentum to reflect the freezing energy back into Carod's own arm. "Is that your limit, Captain? I thought a Z-Elite would be harder to kill!"
Up in the stands, Nefa leaned her chin on her hand, her emerald eyes fixed on Lapis. "You know, Techyon... that boy is really handsome when he's being arrogant."
"Lapis! You can do it!" Techyon cheered, his heart racing. "He's winning! He's actually winning!"
Yoru, however, didn't cheer. Her face was grim, her green eyes narrowed. "He is going to lose this battle, Techyon."
Techyon turned to her, confused. "But why?! Look at him! He's dominating the Captain! Carod can't even touch him!"
Nefa sighed, her playful smile fading. "He's 'dominating' because the Captain isn't using his powers properly. He's testing the boy. He hasn't taken him seriously for a single second... and the moment he does, this arena will become a graveyard."
The ice from the blizzard form didn't just melt—it sublimated directly into gas as Captain Carod's armor began to vibrate with a high-pitched, metallic scream. The frost-blue plating shifted, turning into a translucent, crackling white.
"Now I am getting a bit serious, Lapis," Carod's voice was no longer a human growl; it was the hum of a power grid. "You are a worthy opponent. The things I heard were not rumors—you really are the strongest Z-Rank adventurer of this era. You truly are the Gifted One. But now, witness the gap."
[TYPE SWITCH: LIGHTNING FORM — VOLTAIC]
Lapis's magenta hair stood on end as the static in the air reached lethal levels. "This mana level... it's not just electricity," Lapis whispered, his Honoured Eyes spinning wildly. "It's the fundamental force of electromagnetism."
Then, reality broke.
To the naked eye, the two warriors simply vanished. In the span of a single heartbeat, they clashed ten million times. The sound wasn't a series of bangs, but one continuous, deafening roar that shook the floating arena to its core. Blue lightning and magenta gravity sparks erupted in every corner of the battlefield simultaneously.
Clang-Clang-Clang-Clang!
Lapis gritted his teeth, his vision blurring. I am only keeping up with him because of my space-warping and Honoured Eyes, he thought desperately. If I stop calculating for even a nanosecond, his lightning will cook me from the inside out.
Suddenly, as if someone had pressed a universal pause button, the chaos stopped.
The two stood thirty feet apart. Carod was wreathed in white lightning, and Lapis was steaming, his magenta aura flickering like a dying candle. Neither moved.
"Why did they stop?" Techyon asked, his hands gripped onto the railing of the viewing seats. "Did someone land a hit?"
Nefa didn't blink, her emerald eyes tracking the invisible mana flows between them. "They didn't stop because they're tired, Techyon. They're analyzing. Right now, their brains are working faster than their bodies."
"Absolutely right, Nefa," Yoru added, her face pale. "They are calculating how their passive abilities are interacting. Carod is trying to find the delay in Lapis's future sight, and Lapis is trying to find a frequency in that lightning that he can warp. The next person to move... will likely end the fight."
Lapis stood his ground, his salt-magenta aura beginning to spiral into a massive, concentrated sphere of gravitational force. His voice was a strained rasp. "I am finishing this battle... right now. Domain Expansion:—"
He never finished the sentence.
A sudden, violent cough racked his chest, and thick, dark blood began to leak from his nose and the corners of his Honoured Eyes. The magenta light around him flickered and died like a blown-out candle. Lapis stumbled, his knees hitting the cold obsidian floor.
"What..." Lapis gasped, clutching his head as if his skull were about to split. "That... should not be possible. My brain sparks... they aren't firing. My mana circuit is... dead?"
Captain Carod didn't move from his spot, but the white lightning wreathed around him calmed into a steady, rhythmic pulse. "It's because of me, Lapis. You were so focused on the 'big' attacks that you didn't notice the micro-volts."
Carod gestured to the air between them. "While we were clashing those millions of times, I wasn't just trying to hit you. I was planting microscopic lightning spears within your nervous system. They weren't meant to damage you—only to paralyze. But because your Future Sight forced your body to move even when your nerves said 'stop,' you pushed yourself past your physical limits. Your brain is short-circuiting from the strain of fighting its own paralysis."
Lapis looked up, his vision swimming. He had been so confident in his eyes that he hadn't realized his body was being sabotaged from within.
"You are a monster of talent, Lapis," Carod said, his voice dropping into a tone of absolute authority. "But you are still a boy playing with matches. Now, look at this. This is the true power of a Z-Elite."
Carod raised both hands. The white lightning of his current form didn't disappear; instead, the obsidian floor began to glow with an orange, volcanic heat while the wind began to howl in a localized hurricane.
"Elemental Fusion"
The air turned into a swirling vortex of molten rock and electric discharge. The power level in the arena spiked so high that the viewing stands' barriers began to crack.