"You think yourself invincible with that golden body," Nix sneered, his scarred face twisting. "But you're far from it. I don't fully understand how it works, but it's a cloak. A technique. And any technique, if I hammer it hard enough, will break."
He waved a hand. The air around him shimmered, and three orbs of dense, humming nullification energy coalesced. Instead of firing them, he sent them floating forward in a slow, deliberate triangle. Then, he himself became a beam of grey light, shooting toward Varja from a different angle.
Varja's eyes flickered left and right, tracking the moving orbs and the approaching General. *He knows. He can't overpower the armor, so he's probing for its mechanics.* Then, from one of the floating orbs, a blade of condensed energy *popped* into existence not from its front, but from its side, slashing through the air at a sharp, unexpected angle aimed at Varja's chest.
Instinct screamed. This wasn't a brute force attack. Something in its formation felt *off*.
Varja stepped aside, choosing not to take it with his body.
The blade curved in space, defying its own momentum, and sliced toward the back of his shoulder—a point he hadn't fully reinforced in his evasion.
***CRACK-SHUNK!***
The impact wasn't a blast; it was a deep, severing *thud* that vibrated through the entire arena. The sand beneath Varja's feet compacted instantly into glass. For the first time, Varja was forced to take a step back, his golden foot digging a trench.
He stared into the void where Nix had been, a flicker of pure, cold awe in his placid eyes.
He spat. A mouthful of bright red blood splattered onto the golden sand at his feet.
The action was simple. For the crowd, it was impossible.
In the central pavilion, Lia let out a choked gasp, her hand flying to her mouth. "Father… he's bleeding." The words were a whisper of shattered faith. Many had claimed her father had the strongest body in the world after Jiang. How could he bleed?
Gen himself was confused, his analytical mind racing. *That blade of light seemed different. It wasn't just dense; it cut with a different principle.* He catalogued it in his mental arsenal of Nix's abilities. He didn't like how the fight was turning.
Liang, Lorel, and Chubbs wore identical expressions of confusion and dawning dread. They, like thousands in the crowd, wanted to ask the question burning in the air, but were unsure who could possibly answer it.
On the arena, Varja wiped the blood from his mouth with the back of his wrist and settled back into his stance. His mind was a whirlwind of cold calculation.
*Something has changed. He has adapted. His nullification isn't just force now; it's seeking a specific frequency, a weakness in the structure. But how?*
He understood his own technique perfectly. **The Unbreakable Varja** was not simply hardened skin. First, he used **Shidow** to gather ambient Qi into a dense, swirling aura around him. Then came the hard part: using **Fendow** with insane precision to separate that Qi into its most fundamental, stable particles. He then used **Shidow** again to create microscopic, flexible links between them, weaving a three-dimensional web. Finally, he saturated this entire matrix with **Jingdao**, reinforcing every link until it became a single, elastic, yet indestructible armor—a second skin of solidified, intelligent energy. To the naked eye, it was just a golden body.
But Nix's blade had just severed those links. It hadn't smashed the armor; it had unraveled a tiny part of its weave. *How? And why now?*
The answer was simple: evade the blades. Do not let them touch the armor's matrix.
He began moving. Not with explosive bursts, but with the same slow, deliberate, world-slowing dance he had practiced for days in his pavilion—the same movements Gen had watched for hours.
The moment Varja started that strange, glacial dance, Gen shot to his feet, his chair scraping back.
In the stands, the crowd murmured, confused and anxious.
"What is he doing? Moving so slowly against *that*?"
"Is he giving up? Has he been wounded that badly?"
"That's not a fighting form! He's a sitting duck!"
Nix, amused, let his orbs hover. "Now you understand how it feels, right?" he called out, his voice dripping with condescension. "Domain spells are power bestowed upon us by the Council of Immortals themselves. They allow us to wield a fragment of the Damocles' power. But without proper training and talent…" he shrugged, the gesture immensely insulting, "…it's useless. Do you understand how weak you all are now?"
He laughed and raised both hands. Above, the **Tomb of the Fallen God** reactivated. The thousands of null-swords didn't fall. Instead, they began to hum, vibrating in a deep, resonant harmony with the geometric patterns on Nix's own armor. They were no longer just weapons; they were part of a synchronized system.
Nix turned, and from the central orb, that strange, seeking blade of light formed again. He shot forward.
Varja, seeing Nix arrive, felt adrenaline—a foreign, thrilling chemical—flood his system. His heart hammered. The thought was absurd, even to him. Ever since he had completed the Unbreakable Varja, he had never felt *threatened* by anything. It wasn't that Nix could break it with raw power; it was that he was attacking its very essence.
Running through the calculations with extreme seriousness, Varja gathered his focus as Nix descended.
Just as Nix struck, Varja *moved*.
His body seemed to travel across space by leaving itself behind. He didn't blur. He left a perfect, solid afterimage in his original spot as his real body appeared three feet to the left. The blade of light passed through the afterimage, which dissipated like smoke.
Nix whirled, striking again. Another afterimage. Then another.
To the onlookers, it was like Varja was a slow shadow, leaving ghostly copies of himself that lingered for a heartbeat, while his real body moved too fast for them to understand.
"What was that?!" someone exclaimed.
On the pavilion, Gen smiled, a fierce, understanding grin. *That was the 'Return to Origin' spell. A mixture of **Jingdao** for explosive acceleration, **Shidow** to compress and manipulate the space he travels through, and **Heidow** to combine his afterimage with the displaced air. It lets him fake a position and 'teleport' the reality of his body elsewhere.*
On the arena, Nix's face darkened. He dove again in a blinding arc of light, even faster.
To no avail. Varja's shadow still evaded.
"You have barely a minute left out of the three!" Nix taunted, coming to a halt. The floating swords above hummed louder. "You don't look very arrogant anymore."
"It will be enough," Varja said, his voice calm. "I am waiting for you."
"You must have noticed," Nix smirked, pointing upward. "The swords pointing down can nullify Qi. That's why your armor, or even this stupid skill of yours, will not last. Now die, already."
Varja nodded. This was pretty obvious to him after the last strike. He gathered all his remaining Qi, compressing it around his body in a final, brilliant corona of gold.
Nix dove. Not in a straight line, but in a faint, shimmering arc that was too complex, too fast for most eyes to follow.
At the point of impact, Varja tilted his body. It wasn't a full evasion. The seeking blade of light sheared through the upper part of his left shoulder, carving a deep, blackened furrow through the golden armor and into the flesh beneath. At the same moment, his own fist, having traveled in a shorter, brutal arc, connected with Nix's temple.
***CRUNCH.***
The sound was wet and final. Nix's face darkened in shocked surprise, but it was too late. The force of the blow, the last of the Unbreakable Varja's power, arched his body sideways in a grotesque, limp curve.
But Nix did not let go. His free hand, already moving, condensed a nullification blade and plunged it straight into Varja's chest, directly over the heart.
***THOOM.***
A wave of silent force erupted from the point of mutual destruction. It shattered the remaining barriers around the arena with the sound of a thousand panes of glass breaking. The blade's residual energy lanced out, a scything beam of grey light that sliced through the corner of the central pavilion, shearing off roof tiles and a supporting pillar.
Gen and the others were forced to scramble back in fear as wood and stone rained down around them.
The arena fell utterly silent.
Gen and the others rushed to the ragged edge of the damaged pavilion, looking down in terror.
On the sand below, neither Varja nor Nix was moving. They were frozen in that terrible, intimate pose: Varja's fist against Nix's jaw, Nix's blade buried in Varja's heart. A statue of mutual annihilation.
Gen's heart was beating wildly, a drum of frantic hope and dread in his ears. *Who has won?*
Liang was at the edge of breaking, his knuckles white on the splintered railing. Lorel had her hands pressed to her mouth. Lia Kai was already in tears, silent sobs shaking her shoulders. Her brother, Lio, showed only a faint, hard concern, as if he didn't care, or perhaps didn't dare to.
Then, on the arena, someone moved.