Elyon stood upon the ledge, his eyes staring straight downward toward the champion. Gladys did the same, and for a long moment, the two men sized each other up before Elyon finally jumped. As he plummeted through the air, his irises shifted to display the number "4." He crashed heavily against the once-pretty sand, his landing stirring up a thick cloud of dust. From a fall like that, a normal person would have sustained shattered bones, yet no harm came to Elyon since he had multiplied his bone toughness fourfold.
The visible fear left Gladys's face, replaced now by a grim determination to win this tournament and finally head to sleep. "Who are you? And how did you kill my clones so easily?"
Elyon scoffed. "Wouldn't you like to know?"
Gladys looked at him, completely confused. "I mean, yeah? That's why I am asking."
Elyon seemed taken aback by the literal response. "Oh. I'm Gladys." For whatever reason, Elyon thought that claiming the champion's own name would be funny.
Gladys looked at him oddly, his entire demeanor changing the moment he pointed his spear toward Elyon. "Enough talk. Let me cleanse your sins."
"I'm a sinless being already," Elyon replied
"What do you want to cleanse?"
While Gladys and Elyon were busy trash-talking each other, Eve managed to get a hold of herself. The remaining petals of carnations that were still drifting through the air landed at her feet, coalescing into the form of a sword. Those last petals transformed into Nightfall, looking exactly as if nothing had happened.
"Do not expect another miracle from me," Nightfall spoke, its central eye blinking a couple of times before it continued. "Your total accumulated suffering since the moment you were born managed to buy me only two minutes."
Eve remained quiet.
"Suffer some more if you wish to use those powers again," the blade warned, and then its eye closed.
Eve sighed, walking over to the very seat where Elyon had been standing just a few moments ago. Looking from side to side, she finally realized where she was. She was standing alongside the judges and spectators of the Colosseum. The crowd was still chanting the champion's name, far too lost in their fanatical insanity to even acknowledge that one of the fighters was standing right next to them.
Eve looked at a woman, then a man, and then a child. She wanted to be acknowledged by these people, but the realization that hit her in that moment left her deeply uneasy. They were humans. Every single one of them. They sought sick pleasure in watching criminals eat each other alive, and yet, the spectators and the fighters wore the exact same skin. She was no different from them, and they weren't any different from her.
So, she took a seat. She placed her hands next to her mouth, and while the thousands of others kept screaming, "Gladys, Gladys, Gladys," a single person started yelling another name: "Elyon, Elyon, Elyon."
As she kept yelling his name, something else clawed at her mind. This had nothing to do with the roaring crowd, but rather a certain dream she had just experienced.
---
Elyon sighed and pointed his index finger toward Gladys. "Like I told you... champion. I have no clue where you can get a beef stew for cheap. Are you even allowed to leave this Colosseum? Because you know... you are the champion. What use is there in leaving this village to eat food and impress ladies with your physique?"
A vein almost burst in Gladys's forehead out of pure anger. "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!"
Elyon waved his hand dismissively from side to side. "Ah, the youth and their problems. Always putting themselves before others."
Gladys's grip tightened on his trident, and he dashed furiously toward Elyon.
"25."
Gladys crashed violently into an indestructible, invisible wall. The sheer force of the collision knocked the breath clean out of his lungs. He backed up a couple of feet from the barrier, clutching his chest, and yelled with all his might, "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU?!"
"10," a voice called out from directly behind him. Elyon had multiplied his total speed ten times over.
"Your fucking end, champion."
"20."
A brutal punch landed square against Gladys's backside, carrying the shattering weight of one thousand five hundred kilograms of force. Gladys was sent flying, yet his trajectory came to a very abrupt end when he smashed into the invisible wall in front of him. He felt like the whole world was upside down—which, in reality, it was. He could barely breathe, knowing for certain that a significant number of bones in his body had broken from that single punch.
Elyon gave him time to struggle back up, deliberately toying with him. After a while, the champion managed to stand, just barely. Elyon looked at him, pulling ten gold coins out of his pocket. He inspected them for a bit, then looked back at Gladys. "Let's see if you are as greedy as Eve."
He gripped the coins tightly in his fist.
"15."
Then, he hurled them toward the champion.
The speed at which they shot out was too fast for even Gladys to see. Three of the ten gold coins missed their mark completely, yet the other seven found their target. Because Elyon had only multiplied the speed at which the coins left his hand, and not their durability, they shattered upon impact. Shrapnel of jagged gold was now stuck deep inside Gladys's body.
The champion was growing genuinely fearful for his life, so he decided to do what he knew best: bring beauty to the world.
One.
Then two.
Then four.
Then eight.
Then sixteen.
Then thirty-two.
Sixty-four.
And then, finally... one hundred and twenty-eight clones materialized.
"10," Elyon called out.
Every single clone instantly burst into a rainfall of blood. Yet, the champion's blood wasn't the only thing that started to fall; Elyon's own eyes began to bleed heavily from extreme overexertion. He was well beyond his physical limits, but he was having far too much fun to care. Both of them waited until the crimson rain passed and the sky was once again clear.
"I wonder what my mind can come up with!" Elyon yelled at the top of his lungs, a maniacal smile plastered across his face.
Gladys just looked at him, waiting. Elyon bent down and scooped up a handful of bloody sand.
"20."
Elyon chucked the fistful of sand directly at Gladys. To the champion, it was as if a sudden sandstorm had rolled in. He was momentarily blinded, and by the time the sand cleared, Elyon was no longer in front of him. Gladys looked up into the sky searching for his opponent, and what looked back at him... was the sun.
"4."
Gladys was completely blinded; Elyon had multiplied the sunrays entering his retinas. Unbeknownst to Gladys, Elyon was already standing right next to him. The champion was simply too panicked to realize, staring blankly at the sun for no reason.
"Ten," Elyon whispered into the champion's ear.
Suddenly, Gladys's eyes started to hurt ten times worse than before. He screamed, yet his vocal cords immediately began to ache with an abnormally high level of pain. Elyon stepped to Gladys's right and drove a vicious punch straight into his liver. This time, he didn't even multiply the force of the punch—he didn't need to.
Gladys collapsed to the ground in agony. He was experiencing so much pain that he was on the very verge of passing out, yet somehow, he held onto consciousness. With the absolute last of his thoughts, a memory sparked in his mind:
So that was your name? Niece of mine, Eve, huh? I'm sorry I wasn't a better uncle, and I'm sorry for hurting you so much.
"2."
If I knew sooner, I would've gla—
Every remaining thought that could have gone through Gladys's brain before he lost consciousness vanished into nothingness. Elyon doubled the temperature of Gladys's cerebrospinal fluid.
"2."
Elyon then doubled the strength of the muscles in his own legs, and his foot came crashing down against the head of the champion. Gladys's head split like wet clay, and warm fluid coated Elyon's boot.
The champion was defeated. And Eve would never find out that she was responsible for the death of yet another member of her family.
The 7th annual Grand Colosseum tournament had officially come to an end. The spectators slowly woke from their daze, looking around in complete confusion.
"What happened to Gladys?" "Why am I covered in so much blood?" "What is going on?"
Even the announcer was left utterly speechless.
Eve got up from her seat, picked up Nightfall, and walked over the edge of the stands before jumping down into the arena. When she landed, her legs hurt a bit from the impact, but she was fine. Elyon was standing over Gladys's corpse with the same maniacal smile plastered on his face. She walked over to him.
"Elyon, I have to tell you something."
There was something I blurted out when I was talking with Sarah, something I never meant to say. But I still have to test it... does Elyon actually see me as a friend, or does he just use me?
Elyon didn't look at her; he just kept staring down at the corpse of Gladys.
Will he stop chasing after the gods if I ask him?
"Elyon, let's stop this. Everything. There is no point in seeking reve—"
Her words were cut off instantly by Elyon's suddenly calm gaze. "What are you talking about, Eve? We have a purpose for being here."
Eve just wordlessly stared back at him. She wanted to tell him what she had seen in her dream—that the gods were far too vast for the two of them. But the words couldn't leave her mouth, because he wouldn't even acknowledge the idea.
"Stop your foolishness, Eve."
"Foolishness?" Eve's voice came out with much more hurt than she intended, her lower lip trembling.
Elyon's gaze left Eve's face, turning instead toward the crowd of bewildered people. He took a couple of steps back until he was standing dead center in the middle of the arena. "People of the Colosseum, we have in store another fight for the likes of you!"
"Elyon? What are you doi—"
"A fight so grand will take place that you will be amazed! But first, look at this show." Elyon's irises shifted rapidly, locking onto a massive number.
"1440."
Immediately, a torrent of blood began to bleed through every single orifice in his body. In his fanatical haste to force the next fight, he didn't realize what he had just done to his own biology; he had basically killed himself.
No.
That was his last coherent thought before his brain went into an overdrive state. Since he possessed a vast, deep river of biological knowledge, he knew that he could still live, somewhat. Half of his skull was filled with pooling blood, and the other half with cerebrospinal fluid.
His clotting speed recovery was multiplied by "400," causing his toes and fingers to turn black from the sudden lack of circulation.
Microglia, the main cleaning crew in the brain, multiplied its reproduction rate and operational speed by "300."
His neuroplasticity and neural rerouting were multiplied by "1000" so his brain could actually function in the future, while his oxygen efficiency was multiplied by "50" so his neurons wouldn't instantly die.
Elyon's irises were rapidly changing from number to number, a blur of motion. He began to froth at the mouth. He was actively having a massive stroke, yet at the same time, his brain worked manually to keep him from dying. Thick fluid leaked steadily from his ears. His body became the perfect, biological machine; his soul hung in a delicate equilibrium between death and life. Somehow, he was still standing.
Because he was multiplying his body's reproductive properties so quickly and with such high numbers, it kept forcibly restarting his internal bleeding. Then, he added consciousness stability, which was multiplied by "50."
A single commanding thought formed in his broken mind:
Lower.
Elyons hands were embracing the clouds and his foggy gaze fixed onto the heavens.
One by one, he began to lower the numbers, executing fifty subtractions per second. Once in a while, he had to manually cool down his overheating brain, then his eyes, then all of them all over again. Eve watched in absolute horror at the grotesque sight unfolding before her.
In the span of a single minute, Elyon managed to restart his own brain. He was born anew. Both Eve and Elyon had been reborn today.
Yet something else had happened in that fateful minute, a whole day passed.
Elyon had entered such a profound flow state while saving his own mind because he sped up the actual day and night cycle of the world. He had wanted to do just that, to manipulate the cycle, but he hadn't realized what a severe price he would have to pay for toying with the laws of reality.
Once he was finished, he wiped his face of every fluid that had escaped his body. His blurry vision turned slowly toward Eve. "I live," he barely managed to blurt out. Everything in his body screamed at him to rest.
Instead of resting, his eyes snapped back toward the crowd, and he yelled at the top of his lungs,
"EVERYONE, LET'S WELCOME INTO THE WORLD..."
The ground beneath them began to violently rupture and shake, and something massive was fast approaching from the very core of the earth. The spectators broke into a frantic panic, fleeing for their lives the moment the earthquake struck, and a whole day passed in seconds as everyone became bottlenecked and stuck at each exit.
"...THE GOD OF NATURE!"
Something left the ground and was a few meters infront of them.