The prison shrank inward by another centimeter.

Rudrean felt the lattice hum against the air around him. Bluish crystallized metal, mana woven into a tight geometric weave that pressed in from every direction at once. The kind of trap built for prey that had not yet learned how to bite.

He smiled.

Then he moved.

Heavenfall Wind and Phoenix Flame surged outward from his body in a radial burst, condensed together at the perimeter into a rotating disc of crimson and cyan that struck the inner walls of the cage in a single expanding wave. The cage groaned. The metal flexed inward against the pressure for a fraction of a second and then shattered outward in a spray of broken light.

Crystal shards hung in the air around him like falling stars.

Rudrean was already through them.

His feet touched the arena floor lightly. Combat Art ribbons coiled tight around his arms. The halo above his head flared once, then dimmed back to a steady warm gold.

Rockwon’s expression did not change. He simply nodded once, as if the cage had been a polite greeting that had now ended, and lifted his right hand.

Light blue scales rippled across his forearm and condensed into a long, narrow saber of pale crystal energy. The blade extended almost three meters from his grip, humming with a continuous low tone.

"Good," Rockwon said with a smile. "Then we begin properly."

He vanished.

Rudrean tracked the displacement of air a heartbeat before the strike landed. Rockwon was fast, close enough that the gap between them was measured in fractions, not multiples. The saber swept in from his right, low and clean, aimed at his hip.

[Isalyn: It looks like he also has some kind of speed boost. Either an item or his Arcane Path. You’ll have to be careful. It seems we don’t have any advantage with the one whole stage of gap between you two.]

’It just means this is a chance for me to get better than what I was before this fight.’

Rudrean turned half a step into the strike instead of away from it.

The Cerulean Inferno manifested in his hand in glaive form. The two weapons met in mid air with a sound like a struck bell, crystal against compressed flame, and a wide ring of mana ripple expanded outward from the contact point across the arena floor.

And then, Rockwon suddenly went full lethal, going all out to aim at the limbs and vital points in a flurry of attack.

But instead of blood, sparks flew in rapid succession, spreading surprise and then shock!

The crowd reacted with a hungry and dumbfounded roar.

"What hell am I seeing?!"

"I fucking dumped my money into seeing that early-stage Core Genesis kid die within the first thirty seconds, and...it doesn’t seem to be happening."

"Fuck me. I bet on his death in the first five seconds!"

"How is he keeping up?"

Rudrean and Rockwon broke apart in the same instant. Rockwon flowed back five meters in a smooth glide of scaled motion. Rudrean reset his stance with the glaive angled low, ribbons trailing.

"Speed," Rockwon murmured, his pale eyes narrowing slightly. "And power."

’What the hell?!’ Rockwon was shocked internally. ’I am one whole stage higher than him, but he is almost matching my power and speed?’

Rudrean drew the bow form.

Heavenfall Wind and Phoenix Flame compressed at his fingertips into three projectiles. Crimson cores, cold cyan edges, each one rotating tight and humming a slightly different pitch. He layered ten Nihil Fury Blades into each.

He fired.

Rockwon’s saber blurred.

The first projectile met the saber edge and deflected into the arena wall, detonating in a small concussive burst that left a scorched crater. The second was cut clean through the middle, the two halves dissipating into harmless dust. The third clipped the edge of Rockwon’s shoulder and detonated against his scaled armor, blowing a chunk of light blue scale clean off in a spray of light.

The crowd’s roar climbed higher.

Rockwon glanced at the bare patch of his shoulder, then back at Rudrean.

"That should not have touched me."

"Then move faster," Rudrean said without any emotion, his focus on battle heightening.

He closed the distance.

Glaive and saber met again. And again. And again. Each exchange threw out wide concentric ripples of mana that distorted the arena’s air, the impacts ringing across the venue like struck temple gongs. The two of them moved in tight orbits around each other, sometimes airborne, sometimes skimming the floor, sometimes vanishing entirely as both burst through Astral Veil traces and reappeared in new positions.

Crimson, cyan, and pale blue spun through the air between them in long trailing arcs. The Combat Art’s ribbons left soft glowing afterimages wherever Rudrean moved. Rockwon’s scales caught the arena lights and threw them back in sharp prismatic flashes.

It was beautiful in the way that storms are beautiful.

It was also a problem.

Rudrean noticed it on the fifth exchange. His glaive was perfect. His projectiles were perfect. His positioning was perfect. But Rockwon’s saber kept arriving at the right place by exactly enough margin to deflect or redirect each strike, his scale armor absorbing the hits that did land and converting the impact into another wave of his own scaled mana that fed his next attack.

Rudrean was faster. Marginally.

Rockwon was more experienced. By a lot.

Two Bites of Infernal Maw could only do so much against that experience gap. The Arcane Martial Art was sharp, but it was a 1-star art being used by someone with a 5-star problem.

And Rockswon seemed to have mastered a powerful Arcnae Martial Art that incorporated with his Combat Art.

Rudrean was feeling the suppression closing in. It was like a hunter slowly creeping up to his prey after setting traps.

[Isalyn: I see it too. You need a shift. A big one.]

Rudrean’s eyes glinted with decisiveness.

He pulled back six meters in a sudden burst and let Rockwon’s pursuing saber miss by a finger’s width. His Combat Art let him reset that fast, as he could instantly fly around and displace his position at the cost of some Mana.

Rockwon adjusted his approach immediately, scales flowing into a different configuration.

But Rudrean’s mind moved faster than either of them. The Love-Bound Arcane interface opened in the back of his thoughts.

[3-star Arcane Martial Art: Seven Swings of Raging Decimation | 692,000 LP]

He purchased it.

The cost dropped from his pool. The Arcane Martial Art bloomed in his mind in a single, instantaneous unfolding.

Knowledge poured in. Isalyn’s mastery of it came with it, the way a key arrives with its lock already turned. Every refinement she had ever made to the art, every adjustment, every personal touch she had developed over years of practice, all of it threaded into his understanding at once.

Seven swings. Each one draws the user’s mana into a controlled centrifugal pattern. Each one harder than the last. The first swing was a light hit. The second was harder. The third harder still. By the seventh, the user’s full output was condensed into a single decisive blow with enough momentum to break a small mountain.

It was a beautiful art. Pure. Brutal. Patient.

But...it was not quite what he needed.

Rudrean ducked under Rockwon’s next saber arc and caught it with the glaive, redirecting the strike past his shoulder. The two weapons spun apart in a wide spiraling motion.

His mind was already working.

Seven Swings was about escalating mana compression across sequential strikes. Two Bites of Infernal Maw was about flame condensation across two near-simultaneous strikes that compounded each other.

They were not the same shape. But they fit.

He saw it.

The compression curve of Seven Swings, applied to the flame condensation of Two Bites. Two Bites’ fire feeding the centrifugal pressure of Seven Swings. Seven Swings’ patience giving the fire room to layer instead of detonate. And his Combat Art, with its unrestricted flight and refined wind-flame combination, providing the structural frame that held the whole thing together.

Seven escalating strikes. Each one carrying compounded flame and pressure from the previous strike. Each one shaped by the Combat Art’s effortless motion.

By the seventh strike, the impact would not be a swing.

It would be a sentence.

The knowledge crystallized in his mind in less than a second.

The arcane responded immediately.

A soft golden rain descended over Rudrean as he stood there with the glaive in his hand, and Rockwon’s eyes widened as he sensed the shift in the air.

’It seems I’ll have to use my one-time use trump card or I’ll end up dead.’ Rockwon’s eyes turned somber as the battle hadn’t gone the way he and everyone else had expected at all.