Gareth’s smirk died and the flames around his body intensified—no longer flickering casually at his fingertips but roaring to life, enveloping him completely in a cocoon of orange and red. The temperature on the stage spiked as the stone beneath his feet began to glow faintly.

He charged forward.

Fire-user close combat was always aggressive. The element rewarded confidence, punished hesitation, and encouraged practitioners to close distance fast and overwhelm opponents before they could set up defenses. Gareth moved like someone who understood that principle intimately as he charged towards Kael with a flame fists with a jet like flame at his elbow boosting the force of the puch.

Kael didn’t dodge.

He raised his fist in response.

Their fists collided.

BOOM!

The shockwave rippled outward, cracking the stage floor in a spiderweb pattern. The crowd flinched. The referee raised a barrier automatically.

Gareth went flying, launched backward as he traveled six meters before slamming into the arena’s edge, stone cracking behind him, a grunt of pain escaping his lips.

He stabilized himself as he shook his head looking towards Kael.

Kael stood exactly where he’d been. His raised hand was extended with flames licking across his fingers from the collision. He looked at them with mild curiosity, then encased his hand in a thin shell of mana, suffocating the fire until it died out.

He flexed his fingers with no visible damage.

Gareth’s expression shifted.

The arrogance was gone replaced with a serious expression.

"Why don’t we finish this in one attack?" Gareth said as he rose slowly.

"Agreed." Kael smiled. "Ensure not to bore me."

Gareth’s hands came together as fire gathered between his palms. A single point of light that grew brighter and hotter with each passing second. The air around it shimmered. The stone beneath Gareth’s feet started to melt.

"Destroyer Flames."

The name was apt. The attack wasn’t a blast or a wave—it was a beam of concentrated lance of fire that fired toward Kael with enough heat to warp metal and vaporize stone. The air itself seemed to part around it, pushed aside by the sheer thermal intensity.

Kael moved as both short blades cleared his storage ring in a flash. His hands crossed, drawing them, and darkness erupted along the edges—pure shadow energy coiling around the blades like living things.

He raised the right blade overhead with a downward diagonal strike.

Then the left blade with an upward slash.

The two movements flowed together seamlessly—right down, left up, crossing paths in front of him. The shadow energy followed the motion, separating into two distinct streams that merged at the intersection point into a single, massive attack shaped like an X.

"Sky Rending Technique, Form One: Falling Star."

The dark cross launched forward.

It met the flame beam head-on.

BOOM!

The collision was spectacular—darkness against fire, shadow against light, two techniques clashing with enough force to shake the entire arena. The shockwave was continuous rather than singular, a sustained roar of conflicting energies that pushed outward in all directions.

Gareth poured everything into his attack. Flames surged brighter, hotter, the beam thickening as he forced more mana into the technique. His teeth were gritted. His arms trembled. Sweat poured down his face.

Kael stood behind his Falling Star with his arms crossed.

He looked bored.

The clash continued. Ten seconds. Fifteen. Twenty.

The crowd had gone silent, watching the two attacks grind against each other, neither giving ground. Flames licked at the edges of the dark cross. Shadow energy crept along the beam’s surface. Both techniques were consuming mana at enormous rates, and both cultivators were feeding them constantly.

Twenty-five seconds.

Gareth’s face changed.

Thirty seconds.

His mana ran out.

The flame beam flickered before it finally collapsed. Without the opposing force, the Falling Star surged forward, dark energy howling as it closed the distance toward a suddenly defenseless Gareth.

"I give up!" Gareth screamed.

The referee moved as a water barrier materialized in front of Gareth.

The Falling Star hit the barrier.

CRACK.

The water shield lasted three seconds before shattering. But those three seconds were enough—the remaining energy dissipated against empty air, the attack dying before it could reach Gareth.

Silence.

Gareth collapsed to his knees, chest heaving, arms hanging limp at his sides. His clothes were singed. His hair was smoking. His mana reserves were clearly empty.

He looked up at Kael.

"You’re insane." The words came out hoarse. "How do you have so much mana?"

Kael stood with his blades still drawn, darkness fading from their edges. His breathing was slightly elevated as he shrugged.

Gareth stared at him for a long moment.

"Monster."

He pushed himself to his feet and walked off the stage without looking back.

The crowd erupted.

Cheers, gasps, whispered conversations exploding into shouts. A Rank 24—no, Rank 20—had just beaten a Rank 12 without breaking a sweat with a rank 6 cultivation base. Had tanked a fire-user’s close combat without taking damage. Had matched a finishing technique for thirty seconds and looked like he could have gone longer.

The referee raised his hand.

"Kael wins. Moving to Rank 15."

He looked at Kael with a smile.

"Are you done?"

Kael sheathed his blades.

"Of course not." He scanned the crowd, silver eyes moving methodically across the faces. "I still haven’t had my fun yet."

The referee frowned. "Rest and choose your next opponent. Standard procedure after two consecutive matches."

"I don’t need rest."

Kael’s finger rose again.

It pointed toward a specific figure in the crowd.

Orion Blake. Lion Clan. Muscular build that strained his uniform, lion ears flattened against his skull, a few other beast traits visible—slightly elongated canines, golden eyes with slit pupils, nails that were more claw than nail. Human face, though. Handsome, in a rough way.

Rank 9. Foundation Establishment Rank 8.

The Lion Clan’s passive aura—Royal Authority, they called it—weakened the fighting spirit of non-beast races. In a crowd, that aura stacked. In the arena, one-on-one, it was weaker but still present.

Kael was challenging him because Orion Blake was a body cultivator.

Kael wanted to test his limits.

"My next opponent will be Orion Blake."

The crowd around Orion parted. The lion-kin stood slowly, golden eyes fixed on Kael with an intensity that made several nearby students instinctively lean away.

He jumped down.

The impact when he landed on the stage cracked the stone beneath his feet—a perfect circle of fractures radiating outward from the point of contact, dust rising, the arena itself seeming to shudder.

Orion straightenedas he rolled his neck and cracked his knuckles.

His Royal Authority pressed outward—a subtle weight that made the crowd’s cheers fade slightly, their excitement dimming, their attention wandering. Not strong enough to affect Kael significantly, but noticeable.

Kael reached into his storage ring and withdrew two lengths of black cloth.

Void Binding Bandages.

He wrapped them around his two hands giving his a 200% physical strength boost. On top of Void Body Refinement Tier 3 Late.

Kael raised his wrapped hands and smiled.

Orion bared his teeth.