John Smith knelt slightly, pressing his wound, panting, while thin lines of steam rose from his skin.He lowered his head for a second, as if savoring the pain:
"…How thrilling. The final field test."
He slowly raised his palm…then opened his hand completely as if summoning the elements.
He was not merely using an element.He was dismantling the atomic structure itself, then rearranging it.
"Model 9: Fragmentation of Dense Oxide."His voice was hollow, as though reciting a recipe.
Air gathered above his palm in the shape of a gray flame, shimmering with a faint blue gleam:
"Sodium oxide and hydrogen… processed under excessive pressure."
Then he pointed toward his bleeding chest:
"If this fails… I'll vanish."
The air around him began to tremble, the ground cracking with minute pulses of energy.
Opposite him, Oro Lex, though kneeling, opened his right hand slowly and lifted it toward the sky.His breath was heavy, his eye quivering, but his voice steady:
"…I thought your power was unbeatable."
A heat unbearable enveloped him.The energy accumulated in his skin, burning through his veins.But it did not consume him—it obeyed him.
"Controlling the heat of your molecules… I finally understood it."
He clenched his fist.
Every atom that John controlled… its temperature began to shift under Oro's will.It was a chess match between air and metal molecules, heat and cold, pull and push.
John did not back down.He smiled mockingly:
"Brilliant… a logical deduction. But can you withstand… this?"
He extended his hand forward, and the gray flame expanded to the size of his chest.
"Total Stress."
Oro Lex exhaled everything from his chest.He gathered his hands in front of him as if cradling a small sun.From the tips of his fingers… a thin fiery circle formed.
"Cleave of the Splitter: Thermal Version."
It was not just a slit in space…but a tear around which atoms melted.
Only seconds.
The air between them became a terrifying pressure wave.As if an invisible wall stood between them.Both unleashed their powers at once:
John launched a massive gray sphere, igniting and expanding, dragging iron, lead, and burning hydrogen with it.
Oro tore space with a glowing fiery rift, isolating his opponent's energy to melt it before it reached him.
At the point of contact…
—A silent explosion.It was not sound, but an echo pressing on their skulls from within.The ground shattered.A white shock ring burst outward.
Two seconds…Three…Then Oro screamed:
"I won't loseeeeeee—!"
His rift neared swallowing the gray sphere…But inside the split, a blue radiance surged:
"You're finished."John whispered.
At the last moment, he released the compressed oxygen inside the core of the gray sphere.An intense explosion blinded the eyes.A colossal mass of energy erupted, as if a meteor had struck the arena.
When the smoke cleared…Only one person remained standing, barely breathing.
John Smith, one knee on the ground, clutching his chest…but his eyes lingered on a charred, half-burnt corpse lying in the middle of the arena.Oro's hand was still extended, as if he had tried the final cleave to the very end.In John's chest, something pulsed—something like silent respect.He whispered:
"…A successful experiment."
John Smith knelt slightly, pressing the wound on his chest, panting, while the scent of scorched metal rose from him.He slowly lifted his palm, his voice hollow, as if reading a scientific formula:
"Ninth model… fragmentation of dense oxide."
Air condensed above his palm into a gray flame laced with blue sparks.Then he looked at his opponent and spoke without emotion:
"If this fails… I'll vanish."
Opposite him, Oro Lex was on one knee, sweat pouring from him, but he slowly lifted his head.In his eyes was something like total refusal of defeat.He raised his hand toward the sky, his voice trembling:
"If I don't take the risk… I'll never surpass this ceiling."
His hand nearly ignited.A terrible heat so intense that the air itself trembled around him.But it did not consume him.It obeyed.
John did not even blink:
"Your control over the heat of my molecules… won't prevent the end."
Silence.
Then a slow movement:
Oro closed his fist, and a circle of blazing fire appeared, spinning in his palm.The crack of bones echoed as he gathered everything in his chest:
"Cleave of the Splitter… thermal version."
John pointed forward.The gray sphere had grown to the size of his chest.From it extended a faint blue thread.Whispering, as if uttering a final secret:
"Total Stress."
The air exploded between them.
Oro unleashed a blazing cleave that tore the void before him.
John pushed a gray sphere devouring the molecules under terrible compression.
At the point of contact:silence…then a violent tremor that made the soil leap.The world turned white.
Two seconds…Three…Then Oro's scream burst as he forced the cleave to swallow John's sphere:
"I won't loseeee—!!"
But at the core of that sphere…a brighter blue flash gleamed.
And in the next instant:
An overwhelming force poured from the contact point.
A colossal shockwave swept the earth.
A white blaze erased all vision.
The struggle raged on.And no one knew which force would devour the other.
When the blaze faded, nothing remained in the field but a column of dense smoke.The ground itself was scorched, colored black and gray, with red cracks glowing with remnants of terrible heat.No one moved.For a moment, the spectators thought both had fallen together.
Then…a heavy step emerged from the heart of the smoke.
Oro Lex.
He was coughing blood, his chest half bare, his skin blistered and reddened from exposure to heat and explosion.But he stood.He raised his trembling arm, staring into the void ahead as if confirming:
"…Is it over?"
At his feet remained a circular crater where John Smith had been, nothing but gray powder drifting.No body.No final cry.Only complete disintegration.
A flash crossed Oro's mind, like a brief false memory of what had happened at the final moment:
John had pushed the sphere of total stress until it clashed with Oro's cleave.
Oro felt helpless, that even the heat of the sun would not suffice.
At that moment, he summoned something he had never dared touch before: "Nuclear Decay."
He dismantled the cleave into its simplest atoms, turning them into fuel for an explosive thermal core.
In a single second, he multiplied his heat many times over… but at a terrible cost.
A heat that set the air itself ablaze, turned the soil into stone, and evaporated John's body before he even realized he had lost.
Oro returned to reality, breathing heavily.His body trembled.His knee nearly collapsed.But his mind was steady:
(I… did it.)
Jamie Forth's voice rose coldly in the arena:
"The winner… Oro Lex."
The echo of those words struck his chest like a metallic bell.He felt no victory.All he felt was the painful emptiness in his chest, and the stench of burnt flesh lingering in his nose.
Suddenly…a strange tightness seized his head.Something like memories and images flooded in, fleeting moments of John Smith's life, techniques, obsessions, experiments.He saw his curious gaze as he wrote in old notebooks.He saw his hands stained with the blood of his trials.And he heard an ancient whisper:
"…All I seek is to understand the world."
Then the voice faded.
Oro opened his eyes, gasping.He had won.But he felt something small in his heart break.
Slowly…he lowered his burned arm.Then fell to his knee in the silent arena.
When the smoke calmed and he dropped to his knee, Oro felt his chest no longer had room for breath.But what weighed on him was not the burning… but something else.
Something seeping into his veins.
At first he thought it a hallucination.A strange pulse ran from his fingertips to his temple.Then he noticed something he did not understand:
The air around him… became clearer.More "flexible."As if he could feel every molecule or atom touching his skin.
He slowly raised his hand…and saw minute metallic sparks gathering and separating in the air between his fingers.As though every tiny particle swam under his command.
(…What is this?)He tried closing his fist.The particles gathered into a small gray vortex, glimmered for a moment, then scattered.A chill rushed down his spine.This time it was not the heat of the sun.
A strange memory flickered in his mind, not his own:
"If you understand the molecular level… you will possess your freedom."
Words he had never spoken.Yet he saw them written in unfamiliar handwriting in an old notebook.He saw John's finger turning the pages.
(Is this… his power?)
A sharp dizziness struck him, as if drowning in layers of consciousness not his own.As if his memory had merged with someone else's.
Then…a flood of information poured involuntarily into his mind:
The structure of iron and how to realign it in a magnetic field.
The ratios of hydrogen to oxygen to create a spark or an explosion.
The laws of separating sodium in an aqueous solution.
The balance of negative and positive charges when moving molecules at extreme speed.
All of this… like an intensive course he could not yet comprehend.
He raised his trembling hand again.He focused his attention.Very slowly, he saw the dust particles gather… then scatter.At that moment he realized he could control the arrangement of molecules.Not just heating them or splitting them as with the sun's heat.But rebuilding their structure… or destroying it.
A deep confusion overwhelmed him.How could a man who had just died leave behind something so fragile and powerful?What price would he have to pay to wield such manipulation?
He closed his eyes slightly.His body groaned with exhaustion.But he felt something else growing within him:a mixture of awe… respect… and disgust with himself for feeling curiosity in a moment like this.
(John Smith… what curse have you left in my body?)
Deep inside he felt that possessing this power would change him forever.It would alter his limits.And perhaps he would continue the path of the man he had slain, against his will.
He opened his eyes.In the heart of the smoke, he rose slowly to his feet.Aware that the next battlefield awaited him…and that the atoms of the world were now closer to him than ever before.