The ringing in Evan’s ears wasn’t just the residual frequency of Bruce’s song, it was the sound of his own kinetic momentum fracturing against a wall of reinforced flesh.

He stood in his low defensive stance, his boots dug into the churned arena dirt, but his thighs were already trembling under an invisible, crushing weight.

The spatial leap using the Shadow Teleportation Blood Worm had been flawless.

A perfect execution of predatory positioning.

But the reality of the impact had rewritten the rules of the engagement.

Because Bruce had successfully siphoned away a massive portion of his vitality using that Strength Borrowing Singing Blood Worm, the ratio of power had tilted disastrously.

Bruce now wielded half of Evan’s original muscle mass fused onto his own body.

Bruce didn’t look like a singer anymore.

He looked like an immovable monolith of stolen momentum.

Wheezing slightly from the unexpected thud to his shoulder blade, Bruce slowly turned around.

The warm, polite smile he had offered during the handshake was gone, replaced by a cold, calculating glint in his eyes that revealed his true heritage as Darcy’s hidden bloodline.

He didn’t look angry but rather he looked analytical.

He was calculating the exact decay rate of his advantage.

’Ten minutes,’ Bruce thought, his chest expanding as he reset his breathing rhythm.

’The worm can only hold this bastard’s strength for ten minutes before the voice goes hoarse and the vessel breaks. I have to break him before the clock runs out, or I’m the one who ends up in the dirt.’

Evan didn’t know about the ten-minute restriction.

All he knew was that the system continued to glitch and flicker against the dark background of his consciousness:

[ WARNING! ]

[ Host’s Physical Strength Has Decayed By 52% ]

[ QUEST STATUS ]

[ Defeat Bruce: 0% Progress. System Unlocking Sequence At Risk. ]

’Man surrenders to the dark only because he believes the night is infinite, entirely blind to the truth that his dawn was just a breath away,’ Evan thought, his teeth grinding so hard a thin trail of dark blood leaked from the corner of his lip.

’Shatter that illusion. No winter holds the power to outlast time, the peak is already within your reach, if only you dare to take the final step.’

With a guttural growl, Evan forced his leaden legs to move.

He couldn’t rely on raw power anymore, so he relied on pure, unadulterated speed and shadow path angling.

He lunged forward, low to the ground, his body cutting through the air like a razor blade.

He targeted Bruce’s blind spots, the knee joints, the floating ribs, the soft tissue beneath the jaw.

But Bruce wasn’t just physically superior right now, his tactical mind was sharp, trained in the brutal, uncompromising street fights of the sect’s bastards.

As Evan came in for a swift, blinding jab to his throat, Bruce didn’t even bother to dodge.

He simply let out a sharp, resonant bark, a localized, explosive frequency from his throat that acted like an invisible kinetic shield.

The soundwave detonated right in front of Evan’s face, the concussive force stopping his forward momentum instantly and throwing his upper body off balance. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

’Too slow kid,’ Bruce muttered, his voice carrying the deep, echoing vibration of his musical path.

Before Evan could recover his footing, Bruce’s massive arm tore through the air.

Fueled by Evan’s own stolen strength, the punch was a terrifying blur.

Evan raised his arms in a desperate cross-guard, but the sheer, monstrous impact slammed into his forearms with the force of a falling meteor.

The bones in his wrists creaked under the immense pressure, and the kinetic shockwave sent him flying backward across the sand.

Evan crashed hard, rolling over his shoulder and digging his fingers into the dirt to stop his slide.

His arms were completely numb, the nerves firing uselessly as his muscles refused to contract properly.

Up in the competitor ranks, Santiago’s noble facade completely disintegrated.

He leaned so far over the stone railing his chest was pressed against the cold rock, his face pale as he watched his friend get systematically dismantled.

’No... this is impossible. The distance... Evan’s foundation should have bypassed that elemental resonance. Why isn’t he capitalizing on the shadow path?’

Hannah stood beside him, her usual sarcastic wit entirely swallowed by a heavy, suffocating dread.

She could see the faint, emerald-green light of her own permanent worm resting in her robes, but she knew that path couldn’t save Evan right now.

’He’s trapped in a cage of sound, Santiago. You can’t outrun a weapon that changes the density of your own blood just by being heard.’

Down in the sand, Evan struggled to stand.

His aperture was churning, his Qi trying desperately to find a loophole in the musical curse, but Bruce’s mind was too disciplined to give him an inch of breathing room.

Bruce took three slow, deliberate steps forward, his chest heaving as he began to sing a new, deeply unsettling melody.

It wasn’t loud, but it was incredibly dense, a minor key that seemed to vibrate directly inside Evan’s skull.

The Song of the Broken Vessel.

With every note Bruce struck, the physical strength remaining in Evan’s body didn’t just decrease, it began to turn against him.

His own muscles clamped up in painful, violent spasms.

His knees buckled, forcing him down onto one joint in the dirt.

He tried to activate the Shadow Teleporter Blood Worm a second time to escape the perimeter, but the mental strain of the musical frequency shattered his focus before he could put his senses in the aperture.

Bruce stood directly over him now, looking down with a mixture of cold respect and absolute impatience.

’Nine minutes,’ Bruce thought, noting the faint tremor starting to form in his own fingertips as the blood worm’s limit approached.

’Time’s up.’

Instead of using a weapon, Bruce simply raised his heavy, iron-tempered boot and brought it down in a swift, devastating stomp aimed directly at Evan’s chest.

Evan tried to roll away, but his body was a prisoner to the song.

The boot connected flush with his sternum.

CRACK.

The sound of fracturing cartilage echoed across the immediate area.

The sheer, overwhelming force of his own stolen strength, weaponized by Bruce’s perfect physical execution, completely emptied Evan’s lungs.

His vision instantly blurred into a chaotic vortex of white spots and dark shadows.

He rolled onto his side, coughing violently as the sand beneath his face stained crimson.

He tried to look up, his dark eyes still burning with that fierce, rebellious desire to hit level ten, to unlock the shop, to revolt against the horizon.

He could see the system notification hovering in his fading peripheral vision:

[ CRITICAL FAILURE ]

[ Physical Consciousness Falling Below 12%. Quest ’Defeat Bruce’ Failed. System Functions Remaining Locked. ]

The heavy, metallic taste of defeat filled his mouth as his forehead finally touched the cold, blood-stained sand of the colosseum floor.

His fingers twitched once, twice, and then went completely still.

The veteran referee stepped between them, his hand cutting through the air to call the bout.

’Match over! The winner by physical capitulation... Bruce!’

The crowd erupted into a bewildered, chaotic roar, completely stunned by the Evan’s sudden and absolute downfall.

Up in the VIP pavilion, Darcy simply took another slow sip of his tea, his expression entirely unreadable, while beside him, Harry’s fingers slowly relaxed from his ivory porcelain mask.

Down in the dark tunnel, Santiago and Hannah ran toward the arena gates, the chilling reality of the colosseum settling over them like a winter shroud.

Evan had fallen.