Farrynelle had ignited her Divine Transformation without a shred of hesitation. Lightning now bled from her figure, dancing across her shoulders, trailing from her wrists and wrapping around her calves. Adelasta didn't even activate her Divine Transformation. All she did was ignite her crescent blades with crimson fire.
Her Mystic Eyes of Perception wete locked on Farrynelle's constantly morphing trajectory. The world around her slowed but her mind processed every single detail at lightning speed.
To everyone watching, the arena looked like a battlefield where two comets were colliding in an endless chain of controlled annihilation. Crimson flames and electric blue lightning streaked across the ring. Sonic booms erupted in every corner. The ground vibrated with every impact. Elyonari had paused healing Xander just for a second as she saw just how surgical Adelasta's movements were.
"Adelasta is absolutely terrifying."
She'd seen Farrynelle dominate the battlefield before. She was a Skyrover, one of the fastest warriors in Spheraphase. She didn't pull punches. But Adelasta was keeping up without being transformed. She was defending.
But it didn't last forever.
The moment came like a crack of thunder. Farrynelle spun mid-air with a cyclone of lightning, her twin chakrams forming a brutal X. Adelasta twisted to block, and she almost succeeded but she was just half a second too slow.
Blood sprayed across the floor. Her right arm had been sliced clean off.
The crescent blade clanged onto the floor but before it could hit, her body moved like it didn't care. The stub at her shoulder shimmered, rebuilding itself. The entire arm regenerated in three seconds. The discarded crescent blade and her cut off arm disintegrated into ash. The weapon returned to her. She flexed her fingers once.
She looked at the wound on her torso next where Farrynelle had followed up the first hit with a five-second rampage. Adelasta had let her do it. Her body flickered red and healed itself again in bursts of crimson vapor, and as if to spite it all, she smiled. Her blood dripped from Farrynelle's chakrams.
"Did you think that was enough to make me stop, darling?"
Those words threw Farrynelle off for a split second but it was enough. The next moment, Adelasta twisted forward and parried Farrynelle's attack so hard that sparks rained like wildfire over the entire arena.
She struck with such force that Farrynelle's arms shuddered from the shock of it. Adelasta still couldn't land a clean hit but now she was starting to press forward. She didn't need to keep up with Farrynelle's raw velocity. She just needed to know where she would be before she got there.
So she started predicting.
The air howled with every movement. The arena cracked from their steps. When Farrynelle flipped upside down to launch an overhead strike, Adelasta caught it with a reverse parry, twisted it mid-air and redirected her flames downward, causing an explosion of heat. Farrynelle shot back, somersaulting in reverse, landing on all fours like a predator but now, she was breathing heavily.
Her lightning dimmed for a moment.
Adelasta meanwhile, rolled her neck and exhaled calmly. The crimson on her blades darkened. She hadn't even broken a sweat. Then came the whisper.
"You're quick, Farrynelle. But speed without stability is just chaos in motion."
The moment froze. Everyone in the crowd held their breath. Farrynelle grinned and charged. Adelasta didn't retreat. She moved forward too.
The moment Farrynelle's lightning-cloaked figure vanished from one end of the arena, a flicker of red flared on the opposite side. Crimson flames burst from Adelasta's body as she spun her crescent blades into a defensive spiral, her eyes tracking every fractional movement Farrynelle made.
For the spectators, it was only flashes of scarlet colliding with bolts of blue, shockwaves rippling across the arena. For Adelasta, every time she spun, every time she tilted her head or shifted her foot, she did it to avoid a strike she could barely even perceive.
In a blur, Adelasta's blades parried. One chakram met the blade's curve and that's when it happened. Her lips parted and from the depth of her throat came a beam of fire like a dragon's breath, nearly burning Farrynelle. She twisted away, narrowly avoiding it but Adelasta had anticipated that.
She drove one blade directly into Farrynelle's side. Bone cracked. A grunt escaped Farrynelle as she stumbled back but she didn't stop. She tried to charge again and that's when her legs buckled.
Her knees gave way and she dropped. Her breathing went ragged. Her chakrams flickered and buzzed erratically as if they were responding to something inside her failing. Adelasta spun both blades slowly in her palms and tilted her head to one side.
"Well? Aren't you going to come at me?"
Farrynelle let out a screech of fury and charged blindly but halfway there, she vomited a torrent of blood onto the arena floor. Her steps faltered and she collapsed forward. Before her body fully touched the ground, Adelasta had already moved.
She kicked her face.
Farrynelle's face slammed into the marble with such force the shockwave shattered the floor beneath her in a web of fractures. The crowd flinched.
Adelasta didn't stop.
She crouched, gripped Farrynelle by the chin with her regenerated hand and whispered.
"You don't get to drop until I say so."
One crescent blade plunged into her chest. Blood burst from Farrynelle's mouth. Her eyes went wide. Adelasta drove the blade again right into her heart.
Farrynelle's heartbeat stuttered and nearly stopped. From the sidelines, Elyonari's eyes widened in horror. She bolted forward, vines already spiraling from her fingertips to heal, to stop the death unraveling before her eyes.
"Stop! Adelasta, she's going to—!"
"Not yet."
Elyonari halted mid-step.
Farrynelle's glowing white eyes flickered then faded. The light left them entirely and her irises returned to their natural, lightning blue color. The chakrams dimmed and slid from her hands. Her body began trembling from shock and blood loss. And that was when Adelasta healed her.
The blade still embedded in her chest dissolved into ash and crimson light emanated from Adelasta's hand. In mere seconds, all of her injuries knitted back together. The wound closed as if it had never existed. Her internal bleeding stopped. Her heart beat normally again.
Farrynelle blinked weakly.
"What… what's going on…?"
Adelasta slapped her across the face with such force the entire arena echoed with the impact. A wave of force exploded outward. Farrynelle skidded across the floor like a discarded doll. Blood flew from her mouth as her head cracked the ground on impact, leaving a visible dent.
Adelasta walked toward her slowly.
"I hope you're ready to face what you did. I really wish you didn't just ruin your marriage with Xander..."