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"Almost a hundred direct punches, and you're still standing," Heatblast commented, looking toward the sky with a tone of false admiration. "I have to admit it, Riser. You're an excellent punching bag."
Riser looked at him from above. Tears of pain and humiliation threatened to come out, but the pride of his clan was stronger. His aura began to mutate. The orange fire darkened, turning a deep crimson. He was about to burn his own demonic vitality to match the monster's level.
"I WILL NOT SURRENDER TO TRASH LIKE YOU!" Riser roared, his voice distorted by homicidal rage. "I'LL DRAG YOU TO HELL WITH ME!"
Yugo slightly lowered his stance. The fire in the cracks of his body stopped flickering and stabilized into a blue so pure and intense that it forced Issei and Kiba, a kilometer away, to narrow their eyes.
"Try it," the plasma colossus challenged, clenching his fists. "The warm-up just ended."
The synthetic sky of the pocket dimension, previously dark and dotted with false stars, began to dye itself a sickly orange that quickly mutated into a deep blood red.
Riser Phenex, the proud heir of immortality, was cornered. The physical beating he had received had fractured more than his bones; it had shattered his ego. In an act of absolute desperation that no noble in the Underworld's VIP room expected to see, Riser began burning his own demonic vitality.
His orange aura turned dark crimson, almost black at the edges. The heat emanating from him was no longer that of a healing flame, but the fire of purgatory, designed to consume life itself.
"I'M GOING TO REDUCE YOU TO ATOMS!" Riser bellowed, his voice distorted by fury, sounding more like a wounded beast than an aristocrat.
With a deafening flap of his flaming wings, Riser broke the sound barrier. He no longer tried to use magic from a distance; he threw himself directly at the colossus of volcanic rock, wrapping his limbs in tornadoes of crimson fire.
Heatblast did not flinch. The white and blue flames running through the cracks of his magma body crackled with anticipation.
The clash was titanic.
Riser landed a kick wrapped in dark fire directly against the alien's chest.
The force of the impact and the subsequent thermal explosion created a shockwave that swept away the remains of the Occult Club building, turning the wood instantly to ash.
For the first time in the entire fight, Yugo's thick rocky feet slid backward, leaving two deep trails of magma in the earth as he retreated a couple of meters. The impact zone on his armored chest glowed red-hot.
Riser let out a hysterical laugh, believing he had found a weakness.
"HAHAHA! DO YOU FEEL IT NOW, TRASH?! THIS IS THE TRUE POWER OF THE PHOENIX!"
Yugo lowered his gaze toward his smoking chest. Slowly, he raised a rocky hand and brushed off a few red sparks, as if wiping breadcrumbs from his shirt.
He lifted his pupil-less face toward Riser. His flaming jaw curved into a sadistic smile.
"You raised the temperature a couple thousand degrees," Heatblast conceded, his cavernous voice rumbling over the roar of the flames. "Not bad. For a second, I felt a slight warm breeze."
Riser's smile vanished, replaced by a grimace of pure hatred.
"But you're still making the same rookie mistake," the Pyronite continued, raising both hands. The blue plasma in his palms began to spin and compress. "You use fire to hit. I use fire to destroy."
Yugo did not launch a blast. He brought his hands together and created a solid disk of hyper-concentrated plasma, a ring of white fire spinning at the speed of a circular saw.
With a sharp movement, he threw it at Riser.
The noble tried to block it by crossing his arms, trusting in his crimson fire.
FSSSH!
The plasma disk did not explode; it cut. It pierced through Riser's flames and cleanly severed his left arm at the elbow.
Riser let out a howl of pain. Although his immortality acted in milliseconds, making fire sprout from the wound to regenerate the lost bone and flesh, the shock of dismemberment left him paralyzed for a fraction of a second.
That was all Yugo needed.
The professor propelled himself forward, using explosions of fire beneath his feet to fly low over the ground. He appeared beneath Riser and connected an upward hook coated in plasma directly into his jaw. Riser shot into the night sky like a rocket.
But Yugo did not let him escape. Creating a board of solid fire beneath his feet, the Pyronite surfed through the air, chasing the demon in midflight.
The aerial battle became a grotesque and beautiful spectacle of lights. Trails of crimson fire clashed against bolts of bluish plasma. Riser threw desperate whips of fire, but Yugo caught them with his own hands, absorbing the thermal energy and returning it in the form of devastating physical blows.
"DAMN YOU! DAMN YOU! DAMN YOU!" Riser shrieked, his mind crumbling. He was short of breath, covered in his own evaporated blood, and every strike from the rock monster reminded him that he was not the untouchable god he believed himself to be.
At the edges of the field, the magical barrier protecting the Gremory peerage began to crack.
"Buchou, the heat is melting the shields!" Issei warned, sweating buckets as he fed the barrier with the power of the Boosted Gear.
Rias, Akeno, and Asia channeled all their magic to keep the dome intact, watching with a mixture of terror and fascination the hell unfolding in the heights.
Riser, after receiving an axe kick from Yugo that sent him crashing into the academy building's rooftop, realized a terrifying truth.
He could not win in a physical exchange. His fire was being devoured or surpassed by the anomaly's plasma. If the fight continued like this, Yugo would torture him until his mind, not his immortal body, completely collapsed.
He had to erase him with a single blow. He had to incinerate the dimension itself if necessary.
The heir of House Phenex struggled to his feet on the cracked rooftop. His wings of crimson fire expanded to a grotesque size, spanning dozens of meters.
His eyes shone with fanatical and suicidal madness.
"IF YOU WANT TO BURN, THEN WE'LL ALL BURN!" Riser roared, his voice resonating with demonic echoes that made the Underworld's screens tremble.
Riser brought both hands together above his head. He stopped healing his minor wounds. He halted every instinct of self-preservation and channeled all the energy in his reserves, added to his own life force, into a single point.
The sky above the dimensional academy began to twist. The air became so hot that the glass in the windows of nearby buildings melted, falling like liquid rain.
Above Riser's hands, a massive sphere of crimson-and-black fire began to expand.
It grew until it reached the size of the entire gymnasium. It looked like a dying sun, a mass of pure destruction that gravitated with terrifying force, threatening to melt the battlefield's very reality.
"BEHOLD TRUE DEATH!" Riser roared, bleeding from his eyes and nose due to the overwhelming effort. "PHOENIX STAR OF ANNIHILATION!"
Floating several dozen meters away, Yugo Hano stopped his advance. The Pyronite remained suspended in the air, his pupil-less white eyes reflecting the colossal crimson sphere of death threatening to wipe them all from the map.
The heat was suffocating, the apocalypse was imminent, and Riser Phenex was about to unleash his final judgment. Yugo slowly lowered his arms, and the fire of his body began to whistle.
The "Phoenix Star of Annihilation" pulsed in the night sky, an immense mass of crimson-and-black fire that threatened to incinerate the replica of Kuoh Academy down to its foundations. Riser Phenex, on the verge of madness and bleeding from the immense magical effort, was ready to throw down his final judgment.
Heatblast, floating several dozen meters away, looked at the colossal thermal sphere. The white and blue flames on his head crackled.
Suddenly, instead of preparing a frontal counterattack, Yugo shut off the thrusters in his hands and let himself fall. A few meters from the ground, he detonated a burst of fire beneath his feet and shot in the opposite direction, cutting through the air at supersonic speed until he landed heavily on the rooftop of the academy's new building.
The impact of his rocky boots cracked the rooftop concrete, which began to melt almost immediately because of his body temperature.
Riser let out a hoarse and bloody laugh from the sky.
"WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU'RE GOING, COWARD?! YOU CAN'T ESCAPE THIS! I'M GOING TO REDUCE YOU TO ASHES!"
But Yugo was not escaping. He was looking for height and the perfect stage.
"I've waited two damn lives to do this without looking like an absolute idiot," Yugo thought, his otaku mind and killer instinct fusing into a single feeling of pure, irrational, absolute euphoria.
The colossus of rock and magma straightened on the edge of the rooftop. He spread his legs slightly to keep his balance and, with dramatic slowness that made the entire Underworld hold its breath, raised both arms straight toward the night sky.
"Let's end this...!" Yugo roared, his cavernous voice resonating in every corner of the dimension and on every screen of the demonic aristocrats. "Everyone, lend me your energy!"
Issei Hyoudou, who was protecting the girls behind the barrier at the edge of the field, opened his eyes wide, feeling his geek soul leave his body from sheer excitement.
"N-No way...! Is that the stance of...?! Sensei, you are my god!"
Right between Heatblast's immense open palms, a tiny spark of light appeared.
At first, it was no bigger than a marble. A small sun of white plasma. But then, the thermodynamics of the battlefield began to go insane.
The residual heat from the destruction of Kuoh, the scattered flames in the forest, and even the heat radiating from Riser's own sphere... all of it began to be sucked upward, converging in Yugo's hands.
The little sun grew. From a marble, it became the size of a beach ball. Then the size of a car. Then a house.
In a matter of seconds, a monumental, blinding "Spirit Bomb" of white-and-blue plasma floated above the new building, competing in size with the Phoenix's attack, but surpassing it astronomically in temperature. The heat was so intense that the Rating Game's dimensional barrier began to creak, showing cracks as if it were glass about to break.
Yugo looked toward the invisible magical camera floating in the sky, knowing perfectly well that the high nobility was watching every one of his movements. Knowing that she was watching.
"I AM SONA SITRI'S PAWN!" the plasma colossus bellowed, his declaration shaking the foundations of the Underworld. "AND ANYONE WHO OPPOSES HER WILL HAVE TO GO THROUGH ME!"
In the Underworld's VIP room, the crystal wine glass Sona Sitri held in her hand shattered. The heiress of water froze, her face completely dyed a furious red, her heart beating at an unhealthy speed, and a feeling of pride so overwhelming it almost stole her breath. Tsubaki had to cover her mouth to hide a smile upon seeing her stoic mistress completely disarmed by her "monster's" public declaration.
On the rooftop, Yugo decided that if he was going to be theatrical, he would take it to the final consequences.
For the first time since using the Omnitrix, he deliberately channeled his demonic power through his alien biology. Not to attack, but for pure aesthetics.
Behind the colossal Spirit Bomb of heat, an immense and complex magic circle unfolded in the air. It was not the crimson of the Gremory, nor a generic circle. It was a deep blue, gigantic, and beautifully detailed magic circle, bearing the proud crest of House Sitri. A magical trail that framed the plasma apocalypse with terrifying elegance.
Riser Phenex, blinded by the light and terrified by the thermal signature of that artificial sun, hurled his attack in an act of pure desperation.
"DIEEEEEE!"
The immense "Star of Annihilation" descended toward the new building.
Yugo lowered his gaze toward the blond noble. The sadistic smile returned to his rocky face. He leaned his body forward, aiming both hands toward Riser.
"PHOENIX!"
With one final impulse, Yugo threw the massive plasma Spirit Bomb.
The impact was not an explosion. It was an eclipse.
When Heatblast's white-blue sun collided with Riser's crimson star, there was no resistance. Yugo's plasma, infinitely hotter and denser, literally swallowed the demon's attack. The immortal flames were disintegrated and absorbed by the sphere of thermal energy, which continued its implacable descent toward Riser.
"AAAAAAHHHH!" Riser screamed, raising both hands and slamming them against the surface of the plasma sun that threatened to crush him.
The Phenex heir planted his feet in the air, burning every last drop of his immortality just to avoid being instantly disintegrated. His hands melted and regenerated a thousand times per second. He barely managed to halt the advance of the monumental sphere of heat, his wings tearing apart under the pressure. He was a millimeter away from being completely erased.
From the rooftop, Yugo watched the aristocrat's pathetic effort to cling to life. His otaku side and executioner instinct aligned to deliver the ultimate finishing blow.
Bringing both hands to one side of his body and then violently thrusting them forward in a final burst of pyrokinesis, Yugo released the most classic and sarcastic line in his repertoire.
"I HOPE WE CAN FIGHT AGAIN!" Heatblast roared with brutal irony.
Yugo applied double the kinetic and thermal pressure to the Spirit Bomb.
The plasma sun suddenly expanded. Riser Phenex could not resist for even a microsecond longer.
His barriers collapsed, his life force surrendered, and the immense white sphere swallowed him completely, impacting directly against the ground of the athletic field.
The white flash consumed the entire pocket dimension. The sound of the detonation was so absolute that it seemed as if the world itself had fallen silent. The main screen in the Underworld's VIP room abruptly cut out in a burst of static, unable to process the level of destruction Sitri's Pawn had just unleashed.