A pressure descended across the broken training grounds. Gohan burst forward, a flash of pure speed, his boots barely kissing the cracked stone. I anticipated it, but I pivoted left; however, he was already there.
A low, sweeping kick aimed at my knee. I leaped backward.
My fingers condensed Pure Essence to a single point and drove it forward in a spear-thrust for Gohan's shoulder. He pivoted and redirected my thrust with two fingers, slamming his palm into my sternum.
I grunted, feeling my ribs groan under the focused strike, but I rolled with it, letting my body fall backward into a breakfall, using the momentum to launch a sweeping kick at his ankles. He leapt over it, twisting in midair, trying to catch me with a spinning elbow.
I ducked inside it, running two rapid jabs to his side, aiming to off-balance him.
He absorbed the first, twisted to deflect the second, and drove his knee upward toward my chin. I caught it, barely, using both palms to absorb the force and shove it aside.
We separated for a heartbeat, breathing hard. The sunset had burned away completely now.
Only the silver glow of Essence, along with the torches placed along the stone walls, lit the battlefield.
"Light Step," I whisper calmly. My whole body began to shimmer — threads of Light Essence, gold, weaving across my limbs, outlining every muscle in a faint, ghostly glow. The world slowed. Or maybe I left it behind.
Light Step.
The ground cracked beneath my feet, a delayed echo as I vanished.
In a single instant, I was there, right in front of Gohan.
His eyes showed no change, he was prepared, but there was a hint of surpise towards me.
I struck as fast as the speed of light itself. A high kick snapped toward his temple, pivoting instantly into a spinning elbow for his jaw, then a sweeping palm strike meant to drive him back.
Each strike blurred ghost-images flickering across the battlefield. And for a heartbeat, just a heartbeat, Gohan was on the defensive.
He blocked the kick, then jerked up at the very edge of reaction time. The elbow brushed his chin, and the palm strike forced him half a step back, his boots scraping against the cracked stone.
From the sidelines, the others could barely comprehend what was happening. To Terra, Lucian, even trained and battle-hardened, was partially keeping up with the movements.
Their jaws hung open in awe, frozen. Toho narrowed his eyes, straining. He could follow much better than they. Not perfectly, but enough. Enough to read the flow.
Back on the field, I pressed harder, chaining attacks together faster, sharper. And for a moment, just for a moment, I believed I might break through.
Then Gohan moved.
Faster than light.
No Essence trick. No spell. Pure speed. He blurred, not as a human, but as a phenomenon.
Before my kick could even connect, he sidestepped, like a ghost slipping through the folds of space itself. Then he countered with a brutal, perfect strike.
He caught my wrist mid-strike, so fast I didn't even see the grab, and drove an elbow into my ribs.
Pain exploded, sharp and immediate, and I staggered back, gasping. I felt as if a thousand needles drove into my at the same time.
Gohan was there, chasing me with machine precision. I forced my Essence to spike again, hurling myself into a desperate dive to avoid his next blow, launching a retaliatory kick upward at his ribs.
Gohan caught my ankle with one hand, as if catching a falling leaf, and spun and slammed me into the cracked stone ground with terrifying, effortless strength.
The impact rattled through my bones. The ground beneath me spiderwebbed with new fractures. The others gasped audibly.
I coughed, tasted iron in my mouth, but tucked my legs and rolled away, springing back into a crouch. Gohan stood tall across from me, breathing even, not a hair out of place.
His eyes gleamed, not with mockery, not with disdain, but pride.
"You're better than I thought," Gohan said, voice deep and steady, carrying across the broken field like a command. I wiped blood from the corner of my mouth and allowed myself a slight, sharp grin.
"And you're still holding back," I said, my voice steady despite the aching in my side. He chuckled — a rich, rumbling sound — and lifted his hands again.
"We're just getting started."
I used Light Step once again while activating another spell:
"Twin Strike," I said while getting back up.
Immediately, I blitzed forward once again. It looked like I just magically appeared there. That's the speed of light.
I threw a punch aimed at his face. Gohan looked surprised that I was going for a direct punch without guarding myself.
He scoffed, "Fool."
He neatly side-stepped, dodging my attack, and lowered himself, preparing to bash my ribs. But just before he could, the punch landed on his cheek, full force.
Twin Strike.
Gohan was launched but immediately recovered. He rubbed his lip and looked down at his hand—a drop of blood.
"Where the hell did you learn an advanced spell like that?" He said, sounding impressed.
Twin Strike - A combination of Reality and Spatial Essence. Once the spell is activated, the user can throw an attack; however, if the attack misses the opponent, and the opponent is still near, then Twin Strike duplicates the same attack, aimed at the same place on the opponent, invisibly.
I responded to his question simply: "Training."
Truthfully, I only responded that way simply because I was exhausted. I hadn't spent too much energy during the battle, but Twin Strike drains a lot.
"Let's make this fight more interesting." Gohan yelled, "Why not use our Innate Techniques?".
Innate Techniques - Everyone is born with an Innate technique; some are even born with multiple. Each method is an ability that can give you an advantage in a fight.
The battlefield shifted. Gohan straightened, his smirk fading into something colder, sharper. Then it hit.
A wave, invisible but undeniable, rippled outward from him. The air thickened in an instant, distorting like heat haze but far heavier, pressing down on my body, my bones, even the Essence inside me.
I staggered half a step. It's his Innate Technique. Gohan's voice cut through the dense air, calm and absolute:
"You stand on my ground. Move, if you can: Dominion."
That's what it was. His domain of compressed Essence and warped gravity. Inside its range, fifteen meters, maybe a little more, the very world bent to Gohan's will. Every movement became sluggish. Every thought felt like it had to crawl through mud.
I gritted my teeth, Pure Essence burning through my veins as I forced my limbs to respond. Visually, nothing has changed, but up close, it makes a significant impact.
I lunged forward, low and fast, trying to drive a strike straight into his ribs. It felt like sprinting through a collapsing mountain.
My Light Step, once razor-sharp, once fluid, faltered inside the Dominion Pulse. My body dragged behind my thoughts, a half-second delay that cost me everything.
Gohan barely even moved. He leaned aside, watching with clinical detachment as my strike whistled harmlessly past his shoulder.
A counter came, brutal and precise, his palm flashing toward my face.
At the last possible moment, I twisted away, feet skidding over the broken stone, and burst outward, Light Step flashing once more as I escaped the crushing range of his Dominion Pulse. The instant I crossed the fifteen-meter mark, the pressure vanished.
Like stepping out from under a collapsing tower, I gasped once, sharp and ragged, and felt my body snap back to its proper speed, my Essence flowing smoothly again.
Out here, outside his dominion, I could move freely. Then, I noticed it. It wasn't a significant detail, but noticeable. You could see the drops of sweat running down the side of his face.
He definitely can't keep the Dominion for a long time.
Gohan charges at me; his Dominion Pulse technique is around him, so he's trying to get me in range.
I maintain my distance and dodge around him, keeping 20 meters between us. He tries to get closer, to slow me down, to make sure I'm in the effective range, but I use my Rift spell to teleport and maintain distance.
Soon, I decided to start attacking again:
"Rift Barrage!" I called out.
The air around Gohan shimmered, folding, and six rifts tore open in a ring. Gohan's eyes narrowed.
From the rifts, multiple Pure Essence bullets and spears launched forward, blasts sharp enough to punch through stone, rapid enough that even Gohan had to acknowledge them.
He dodged the first two, fluidly, easily, but the third clipped his shoulder, staggering him for a half-second.
I surged forward, fast but careful to stay just outside the fifteen-meter boundary and hurled another burst of Rift Barrage directly at his legs, forcing him to leap upward to dodge.
The moment he jumped
"Blink Strike!" A spell combining my Spatial Essence affinity and Light.
I disappeared from my spot, flashing midair, and reappeared above him, heel descending in a vicious axe-kick. Gohan twisted in the air to block, but even he couldn't dodge cleanly. My heel smashed into his raised arms, driving him downward like a meteor.
He slammed into the cracked training ground hard enough to raise a cloud of dust and broken stone. I landed lightly, feet skimming the ground, already preparing another Rift spell to maintain pressure.
Inside the smoke, I saw him rise, slow, deliberate, brushing dust from his shoulders. His lip curled into a grin.
"That's more like it," Gohan rumbled.
His Dominion Pulse still wrapped him like a living storm, but it wavered slightly, his breathing heavier now, his focus split. Then, he deactivated his Innate Technique. I could feel it. I took a few steps forward and confirmed it.
My lips curled into a grin, too. Gohan rolled his shoulders once, a ripple of controlled power flexing through his frame.
"Alright," he said, voice low but crackling with intent. "No more games. I'll push a little harder."
Not his full strength. I could feel it, a tightening of Essence around him, the way the ground trembled ever so slightly under his feet.
I responded in kind—a slight increase; however, I'm almost drained out of Essence. I feel more sluggish and dizzy. A bright flash appears before my eyes.
Gohan struck first, stunningly fast, with a right hook, Essence swirling around his fist in dense, vibrating layers. I slipped under it, feeling the shockwave shear a line through the dust above my head, and lashed out with a low, piercing kick aimed at his planted foot.
He hopped back and retaliated with a spinning backfist, fast enough to blur.
I raised my arm to block, Essence hardening my skin like tempered steel, but even so, the force rattled straight down my bones. I used my Rift spell to once again teleport away, keeping my distance.
For a slight moment, I was tempted to use my Innate Technique, but I'll hold off on that for now. He stood there, calm, calculating eyes gleaming under the fading light like a general surveying the battlefield.
"Echo Form," Gohan intoned.
The air shimmered around him, and suddenly, three perfect copies of Gohan blurred into existence, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with him. Not illusions. I could feel each one pulsing with actual Essence, enough to make telling the real Gohan from the Echoes nearly impossible.
I narrowed my eyes, heart hammering. I needed to stay calm. They all moved at once, sprinting toward me in perfect synchrony, no wasted motion, no openings.
I relaunched Rift Barrage, sending a hail of bullets at them, but the clones split, weaving effortlessly through the blasts, closing in from three sides.
I dodged left, feinting with Blink Strike to flash behind one of the Echoes, striking with a sharp, clean palm. It dispersed, collapsing into vapor. But I overextended, and the second Echo slammed a stiff knee into my side, Essence reinforcing the blow.
Pain blossomed. I twisted, forced my body to absorb the momentum, and ducked low to avoid a follow-up strike. The third Gohan was on me instantly, hammering down with a brutal axe kick.
I threw up a desperate guard, barely blocking it, the force pushing me a foot into the ground. Then, through the corner of my eye, I saw the real Gohan.
"Lock Field," Gohan whispered.
A translucent grid snapped into existence around me, thin glowing lines that twisted space itself into a cage. I lunged for an opening — a weak point in the grid — but the moment I touched it, the Essence repelled me violently, tossing me backward into the center. Trapped.
And the last Echo pressed the assault, keeping me occupied with fast, hammering strikes. Gohan stood outside the Lock Field, arms folded, watching. He was forcing me to burn Essence, to exhaust my stamina, to drain myself dry. I gritted my teeth, rallied my strength, and slammed my palm into the ground.
Rift Surge
An explosion of spatial energy erupted outward, shredding the last Echo into mist and cracking the Lock Field's structure. I gasped for air, Essence flaring wild around me, and dashed out through the rupture. But Gohan was already there.
"Weight Rend."
He thrust his hand forward, and invisible chains of gravity seized my limbs mid-sprint, jerking me to a crawl. It wasn't Dominion Pulse. It was targeted. I fought it, Light Step flickering desperately under my skin, but my movements dragged slower, heavier, every step a battle against the very earth. Gohan approached calmly.
"You're good," he said, voice low. "But you're still fighting the battle I let you fight." Gohan shifted, then slammed his fist into my gut with a heavy, thunderous impact. Air fled my lungs. Pain exploded through my core. I stumbled. The world spun. I tried to rise. But Gohan was already there, kneeling over me, palm glowing with compressed, sharp Essence.
"Yield," he said. I slammed my fist weakly against the ground. The only surrender I could manage. Gohan's Essence dimmed instantly. The crushing pressure easing away.
He stood, offering a hand. I hesitated, then gripped it, letting him pull me back to my feet. The others were silent, stunned. Even Terra and Lucian watched with wide eyes, breathless. Only Toho gave a slight, approving nod. I wiped blood from my mouth, grimacing.
"You win," I muttered.