Wrath’s voice carried a calmness under restraint, with no hint of mockery; it was merely recounting past facts.

“After turning yourself into this, have you finally gained the ability to take a full punch from me?”

As he spoke, he kept twisting his severed arm, grinding away the coagulated flesh and bone shards so the wound could heal properly.

Although his current regenerative ability could be called defiant of the heavens, lacking the Game’s instantaneous repair meant the injury still had some effect.

Sun listened to him and, thinking back on all the times he had lost to Sin in the past, showed no anger either.

That slightly grotesque, menacing face broke into a smile, and he asked:

“Is that hand of yours injured?”

“Better now? Do you need me to wait longer?”

“Finishing someone off while they’re wounded is hardly dishonorable!” Wrath’s voice suddenly rose in pitch, without warning, and charged forward.

Sun wasted no words either and rushed to meet him.

Their bodies collided repeatedly within this space, bouncing each other back again and again, producing a series of explosions.

Fist against fist, leg against leg, they battered each other relentlessly.

Neither used any special moves — it was pure physical collision, as if by tacit agreement they treated the first round as a test of raw bodily strength.

Sun had sacrificed all the power he had obtained; astonishingly, that gave his physical strength a level comparable to Lu Ce’s.

Whether it even surpassed him was hard to say.

“I remember, you seemed to have many faces.”

While fighting, Sun even took the initiative to speak.

Then his huge hand, capable of gripping an ordinary person’s waist, suddenly lunged for Lu Ce’s face.

“Is this face of yours one that can actually fight?!”

Wrath’s eyes were full of killing intent. He chose not to dodge or evade, instead stepping straight in, lifting his right foot and driving it into the other’s face!

Boom!

No defense, trading wounds for wounds, they separated again amid a thunderous blast. There was no mark on Lu Ce’s face; you couldn’t tell he had just endured a face-to-face explosion.

After all, the level of that mask had been certified by the gods as unfathomable.

But Sun was tilting his head back high; several bony spurs at the base of his skull were snapped and had pierced into the flesh.

The cervical vertebrae in his neck looked badly injured and could not be straightened at once.

He grabbed his head with both hands and twisted forward hard, wrenching and twisting until there came a metallic clattering like chains rubbing against each other.

“Not bad...... still fun to fight you.”

Sun sneered and stretched his massive body.

During the battle, his mind seemed even clearer than when he had first appeared. It was as if only in this life-or-death contest could he know who he truly was.

“Bones loosened up, right? Time to get serious, isn’t it?!”

“We two should decide life or death......”

“This face of yours probably isn’t the best at fighting. Bring out that golden one, the red one!”

Sun laughed arrogantly, spreading his arms as he embraced his power.

His words clearly struck Wrath’s fatal weak point — he was effectively saying Wrath’s strength was inferior to Gluttony and Pride.

A dense black energy, as if condensed into substance, seeped from his body and suppressed the space around them.

Thud... thud... thud!

A fierce heartbeat sounded from Sun, like a war drum, signaling that he felt threatened.

Yet he only laughed instead of flinching and took a sudden step forward.

“Ha ha ha ha! Yes! This is the feeling I wanted.”

“Then come!”

Lu Ce also stepped forward. He clenched his hand tightly and a Heart-Piercing Thunder appeared in his grip.

That long club burst with power similar to Sun’s, for it was the divine weapon obtained when they had defeated Judgment back then.

And Judgment’s remaining strength had already been consumed by Sun.

So Sun was slightly taken aback.

Just as their killing intent neared the critical point, Lu Ce suddenly stopped and looked up at the sky.

Sun: ?

Wrath’s trait — an extraordinarily sharp and powerful intuition.

Especially now, fully unleashed, that intuition was almost capable of catching ghosts and gods.

He could feel that in the endless void, many pairs of eyes — some scornful, some indifferent — were watching them.

Sun grunted, “What, scared to fight now?”

Lu Ce ignored him, still looking up, clutching Heart-Piercing Thunder, and said calmly:

“You’re all here......”

Yes, he could feel the gods watching them from beyond this Final Battlefield.

They were like Roman nobles, watching the beasts they had locked in an arena tear each other apart.

“They are watching us.”

That sudden, out-of-nowhere remark left the spectators — who had been anxiously watching the fight — feeling puzzled.

[: Does only Sin know we’re watching?]

[: Is that a problem?]

[: ...I feel like he isn’t talking about us.]

Sun, however, showed no misunderstanding. He planted his fists on the ground and fell silent.

Wrath lowered his head, lightly stroking his Heart-Piercing Thunder, and said quietly:

“I should have killed you earlier. In any earlier game it would have been simple.”

“Then I wouldn’t be trapped in this situation, circled by the gods in this space, forced to fight you like a trapped beast in an arena.”

“Killing you today feels so unpleasant...... there are others I want to kill, but I can’t.”

Wrath was normally a man of few words; his nature was to act rather than speak. Yet now he surprisingly told Sun so much.

He looked up as if he could sense those gods watching the fight, feeling their mocking gazes.

“For them, us dying is all the same. This fight has no winner left.”

Sun straightened up and asked:

“Finished talking?”

Then he suddenly burst into thunderous laughter:

“Ha ha ha ha ha! I thought — what the hell — that you were going to say something meaningful, but it’s just this crap!”

“Been a while, and you sure got a lot less guts!”

“No winner — so what?!”

“Is the pursuit of power and the peak something that needs to consider these useless things?”

“No matter which one of us wins, after killing the other, we just deal with their gods’ stuff afterwards, right?!”