Yi Kang-mu stood across from Yi Seong-ryu and Laurel in the clearing, his lone remaining warrior—Tae-yang—at his side. The morning sun filtered through the canopy, creating dappled patterns on the forest floor.
"Tae-yang," Yi Kang-mu said calmly, his eyes never leaving his opponents. "Take that one."
He gestured toward Carl.
The scarred warrior nodded and moved toward Carl, who met him halfway. The two broke off from the main group, their battle taking them deeper into the trees, the sounds of their combat fading into the distance.
That left Laurel and Yi Seong-ryu facing Yi Kang-mu alone.
Laurel stepped forward, placing himself between the young prince and their opponent. "Yi Seong-ryu," he said quietly, "don't interfere. Only join the fight if you see I can't win."
The fourteen-year-old prince nodded, gripping his sword but holding position.
Yi Kang-mu smiled—a cold, predatory expression. He reached up and rolled down his kimono robe from his upper body, letting the fabric fall and be held only by his rope belt at his waist. His torso was lean and muscular, covered in old scars that spoke of countless battles.
"Let me show you," Yi Kang-mu said, "what real power looks like."
He opened his Pulse Nodes.
The effect was immediate and dramatic. Vital energy poured out of him in visible waves, shimmering in the air like heat distortion. But instead of letting it disperse, he used it—channeling every ounce into physical enhancement.
His body changed before Laurel's eyes. Muscles bulged and grew, his frame expanding as the vital energy reinforced every fiber. Within seconds, he looked like a different person—bulky, powerful, almost berserk in appearance.
Then he vanished.
Laurel barely registered the movement before agony exploded in his gut.
Yi Kang-mu's fist had appeared from nowhere, driving into Laurel's stomach with such force that he could feel it almost burst through his back. The impact lifted him off his feet and sent him flying backward, crashing through brush until his back slammed against a tree trunk with bone-jarring force.
Blood sprayed from Laurel's mouth.
Before he could even process the pain, Yi Kang-mu was there again, that impossible speed closing the distance in an eyeblink. A massive hand grabbed Laurel by the throat and pinned him against the tree. Blood continued to gush from Laurel's mouth as Yi Kang-mu's grip tightened.
But pain had a way of sharpening focus.
Laurel opened his own Pulse Nodes—all of them, across his entire body. Vital energy flooded out, and with desperate precision, he gathered every bit of it into his right arm. The limb glowed faintly with concentrated power.
He grabbed Yi Kang-mu's hand.
And swung.
The enhanced prince was lifted off the ground and hurled through the forest like a projectile, crashing through trees and underbrush until he disappeared from sight.
Laurel collapsed to his knees, coughing blood, but forced himself to stand. His body screamed in protest, but he couldn't stop now.
He closed his left eye and covered it with his left hand, concentrating massive amounts of vital energy into that single point. Ever since the battle in the white house, he'd been working on this—an optical advantage, a way to never be caught off-guard again.
When he removed his hand and opened his eye, it glowed brilliant blue.
The technique was still imperfect, still developing, but it worked. By reading an opponent's current position, weight distribution, muscle tension, and momentum, Laurel's enhanced eye could predict their next moves with startling accuracy.
Yi Kang-mu emerged from the treeline, completely unharmed, his Titan form still active.
He charged again.
This time, Laurel saw the attack before it landed. He dodged left—Yi Kang-mu's fist passed through empty air. Another punch came; Laurel ducked. A kick; Laurel sidestepped.
For a full minute, Yi Kang-mu attacked relentlessly, and Laurel evaded every strike. The blue glow in his left eye intensified with each prediction, each successful dodge.
But then Laurel got cocky. He tried to counter-attack while dodging, and his timing was off. Yi Kang-mu's fist connected with his face—once, twice, three times, four.
Laurel staggered back, blood streaming from his nose and split lip.
Yi Kang-mu stopped attacking.
Laurel looked up, confused, through his swelling eyes.
"You're good," Yi Kang-mu said, actually smiling now. "Better than I expected. But you haven't seen everything yet."
"The technique I use," Yi Kang-mu explained, his voice calm despite the violence, "is a physical full-body enhancement. To reduce muscle tears and injury, I don't just enhance my body to the maximum I'm capable of all at once. I do it gradually, separating it into three modes."
He gestured at his current form. "What you've been fighting is my Titan form. Now you're going to see my Colossus form."
More vital energy poured out of his Pulse Nodes. His body, already enlarged, grew even larger. Muscles stacked upon muscles, his frame expanding to monstrous proportions. His trousers, already tight against his enhanced legs, began to tear at the seams.
When the transformation completed, Yi Kang-mu stood nearly seven feet tall, his body a mass of rippling power that seemed barely contained by human skin.
He charged.
This time, when Laurel tried to dodge, Yi Kang-mu was faster. The predictive eye showed him the attack coming, but his body couldn't move quickly enough to avoid it completely.
Yi Kang-mu's fist caught Laurel's left arm. The bone didn't break, but the pain was excruciating—like his entire arm had been crushed in a vice. Laurel cried out and stumbled back, cradling the injured limb.
He couldn't use that arm now. Every movement sent lightning bolts of agony through his shoulder.
Laurel's technique was different from Yi Kang-mu's. While his opponent enhanced his entire body simultaneously, Laurel focused his vital energy on one part at a time—concentrating 100% of his power into whichever body part needed protection or enhancement at any given moment.
If an attack came at his gut, he'd pour all his energy there to withstand it. If he needed to throw a punch, he'd channel everything into his arm for maximum force.
It was efficient and powerful, but it had a fatal weakness: it required him to move his energy faster than his opponent could strike.
Against Yi Kang-mu's Colossus form, he was too slow.
Another punch caught him in the ribs—even with vital energy concentrated there, he felt bones crack. A kick to his leg nearly buckled his knee. A palm strike to his chest drove the air from his lungs.
Laurel accepted that he couldn't win through defense. He began taking the hits, using his vital energy to protect himself as much as possible, but still absorbing tremendous damage.
Blood ran from his mouth, nose, and ears. His vision blurred. His breathing became labored.
And then something changed.
In the intensity of near-death, under pressure beyond anything he'd experienced before, Laurel's technique evolved.
He'd always moved 100% of his vital energy to a single body part. But now, subconsciously, desperately, he did something different.
He moved only 60% to his head, where Yi Kang-mu's next punch was aimed.
The remaining 40% stayed distributed throughout the rest of his body.
The punch connected with his head, but instead of the devastating damage it should have caused, Laurel merely grunted and stayed standing. The distributed energy had allowed him to maintain structural integrity across his entire body while still concentrating defense where needed.
Projection—fourth stage of Vitra mastery. The ability to separate one's vital energy from the physical body and reform elsewhere. The ability to divide and control portions of vital energy independently.
Laurel had just achieved it through sheer survival instinct.
Hope sparked in his eyes.
He concentrated energy in his forehead and drove his head forward in a devastating headbutt that caught Yi Kang-mu square in the face. The enhanced prince staggered back, dazed, momentarily concussed.
Laurel didn't waste the opening. He poured energy into his right fist and swung with everything he had.
The punch connected cleanly, sending Yi Kang-mu flying backward.
Yi Kang-mu landed hard but rolled to his feet, shaking off the daze. His expression, which had been confident bordering on amused, now showed genuine anger.
"Enough," he growled. "I'll end this now."
Even more vital energy flooded out. His body expanded again, muscles becoming grotesque in their size and definition. His movements became less controlled, more savage. The trousers finally tore completely, leaving him in tattered rags.
Berserk mode.
He attacked both Laurel and Yi Seong-ryu—who had moved closer during the fight—with wild, powerful strikes. Each punch carried enough force to shatter stone. Each kick could break trees.
Laurel, despite his breakthrough, was at his limit. He'd taken the most damage by far, his body screamed with pain from dozens of injuries, and his stamina was depleting rapidly. Even with the fourth stage of Vitra, he couldn't keep up.
Yi Kang-mu landed a crushing blow to Laurel's chest. Then another. And another.
Laurel became semi-conscious, barely able to stand, taking hits but no longer able to effectively defend or counter.
As his vision dimmed and his body began to shut down, Laurel saw it.
The light.
His life flashed before his eyes—memories he'd suppressed, memories of a family he barely remembered. His parents. A home. And then fire. Screams. Blood.
They'd been murdered when he was still a toddler. He'd been raised knowing only that someone had killed them, that the killer was still out there somewhere.
*I'm sorry,* Laurel thought as darkness closed in. *I couldn't put you at peace by finding your killer.*
He was ready to accept death. Ready to let go.
But then another thought intruded, sharp and angry: *Why die here? I'm not even fighting for myself. Why should I die fighting for nothing? I haven't found the person who murdered my family. I can't just go like this. I won't. I'll fight. I'll win. I'll fulfill my goal.*
Something changed in Laurel's brain chemistry.
His body, facing imminent death, triggered its last desperate survival mechanism. Adrenaline flooded his system in massive quantities—far more than normal, a true fight-or-flight overdose that temporarily overrode pain, fatigue, and injury.
His physique improved. His stamina increased. The pain that had been overwhelming him vanished as if he'd taken a massive dose of painkillers.
This wasn't Vitra. This was pure biological survival instinct.
Laurel screamed.
The sound echoed through the Forest of Ten Thousand Shadows, a primal roar of defiance that made birds scatter from the trees and sent shivers down the spines of anyone who heard it.
He threw a punch—the first one in what felt like an eternity that had real power behind it.
It connected with Yi Kang-mu's jaw.
And then Laurel didn't stop.
He unleashed a combo of attacks unlike anything he'd shown before—punches, kicks, elbow strikes, knee strikes, all flowing together in a continuous barrage. He gave Yi Kang-mu no time to think, no space to breathe, no opportunity to counter.
The adrenaline had turned off his pain receptors but also his inhibitions. He was fighting with the reckless abandon of someone who had nothing left to lose.
Yi Kang-mu, for the first time in the entire battle, was on the defensive.
Finally, the enhanced prince managed to land a solid punch that created just enough space—less than a second—for him to jump backward and open distance between them.
But as Yi Kang-mu landed, something felt wrong.
The world spun. Everything went dark.
His head separated from his body and fell to the ground.
Standing beside Yi Kang-mu's corpse was Yi Seong-ryu, his blade already sliding back into its sheath with a soft *click*.
The fourteen-year-old prince's hands were steady despite having just taken a life.
The plan had never been for Laurel to defeat Yi Kang-mu one-on-one. It had been to keep the strongest prince so focused, so enraged, so tunnel-visioned on Laurel that he completely forgot about the other opponent in the clearing.
Yi Seong-ryu had used *Iaijutsu*—the Japanese quick-draw technique. In the fraction of a second when Yi Kang-mu had jumped back to create space, the young prince had moved. One smooth motion: draw, cut, re-sheath.
By the time Yi Kang-mu had registered the movement, his head was already leaving his shoulders.
Laurel collapsed to his knees, the adrenaline beginning to fade and the pain starting to return. He was barely conscious, covered in blood, his body a mass of injuries.
But he was alive.
A slow clap echoed through the clearing.
Both Laurel and Yi Seong-ryu turned to see Carl emerging from the trees, apparently unharmed from his fight with Tae-yang.
"That was an interesting fight," Carl said with a slight smile.
He reached into his pack and pulled out the fireworks—the signal flares that would indicate a winner had been determined.
He lit them and pointed them skyward.
Blue fireworks exploded in the sky above the forest—the color designated for Yi Seong-ryu.
The competition was over.