**Back to present. The Crimson Dragon's castle**
Raeyn bolted toward Milo at an incredible speed. Not only had she been a blur, but her figure and movements began to distort from Milo's point of view. Milo's red gas, which she used to cause explosions, was also being countered nonstop by Raeyn like she was swatting flies. It got to the point where even if one of the blasts did hit her, she came out of the smoke and debris without as much as a scratch.
Milo's last attack was from the air as she swung her massive club down onto the tower they were on. A direct hit to Raeyn, as this blast was so huge, there would be nowhere to hide or dodge it. The blast itself took out the beams from the floor below, causing them to shift down one level from where they were on the rooftop. Milo flipped down from her height in the air and waited for the smoke to clear to see if she had defeated her enemy. The walls from the lower floor were still standing, blocking the view of Ryo's quarters now. Nearby Crimson Dragon Knights and Blue Phoenix Knights on the lower level they were now on were caught in the impact of the fallen ceiling, some of them with minor injuries, and others not so fortunate.
With her scythe, Raeyn blew the smoke away as she strolled casually along their incredibly decimated battlefield—cinders and all.
"Why… Why, why, why, why, why!! Why are you still standing!? And how are you unscathed!? What kind of madness?—" Milo screeched. She was so annoyed that her fixed and perfect-seeming purple hair with blue streaks was a mess now from all the scratching she had done throughout the battle.
Raeyn, with her purple and yellow eyes, gave her a cold and dead stare. She wasn't planning on having small talk with Milo any longer. All she cared about now was winning.
At this time, Milo forced her hands together into a hand sign.
"Gas Reaction Magic: Frozen Death."
The aura around Milo began to thicken, then in an instant, blew out from around her all over the surrounding area. Engulfing the whole battlefield with a white gas in a matter of seconds.
From where Raeyn stood, the white gas blew past her, fluttering her silver and purple hair against its winds as it blasted by.
"Let's see how you handle this spell, you bitch!" Milo shouted from a distance.
Nearby, an eaglehawk had flown a little too close to the battlefield. When it breathed in the white gas, it froze over and crash-landed onto the roof they were on, shattering into pieces. And the nearby Crimson Dragon Knights and Blue Phoenix Knights in the vicinity, also breathed in the white gas. Each one froze in place where they were, encased in shards of ice.
Raeyn, however, continued to breathe in the air normally. And Milo, immune to the negative effects of her own gases, observed her, awaiting her demise. But Raeyn's expressionless face had said it all.
"It's already begun, but why still? Why is she still standing there unaffected?" At closer inspection, Milo observed Raeyn more intently, who stood there in the same stance and cold stare.
She was most certainly breathing the white gas, but instead of the cold, it seemed to be heat that emanated from her. Her porcelain skin sweated as she breathed out hot air from her mouth.
"You're probably wondering why, no matter what you do, it seems it's not affecting me," Raeyn spoke finally, her voice monotone as it had been since she was summoned. "Actually, it is… Just not in the way you think…"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, I guess I'll indulge you one last time. You're not winning this battle anyway…"
Milo ground her teeth, enraged and insulted. She swung her club to her yet again, causing a shockwave. The chemical reaction caused an ice wave, forming large ice shards on the ground as they traveled in Raeyn's direction. When it reached her, she swung her scythe down and shattered the wave instantly. Melting afterward. Milo saw the heat from Raeyn's scythe all the way where she was.
Acting like nothing happened, Raeyn continued to explain as Milo remained agitated.
"My ability is Contrary magic. Whatever happens to me, or the things I choose to be affected by my mage craft, has the opposite effect, contrary to what would normally happen. Your gases, for example… The one that slows your enemies makes me faster each time I breathe it in." Raeyn, while talking, readied her stance and bolted toward the large shards of ice that Milo laid before her.
"The second one that nulls your enemies' magic enhances the effectiveness of mine." She went on as Milo began swinging hysterically in Raeyn's direction. Larger, spiked glaciers of ice formed on top of each other, redecorating the cindered area they fought on into a frozen battlefield. Raeyn continued to stay true to her bolted path as she shattered each glacier of ice that spiked out toward her.
"The third, the one that causes chemical reactions in the air, igniting it—simply nullifies when I make contact with it…"
The glaciers piled on insanely now, creating towers of ice on the cratered rooftop. Raeyn's foot got caught in the ice. Then, from her foot, it spread throughout her body, encasing her in a tomb of ice instantaneously. In a few short seconds, the ice tomb that engulfed her began to crack—and then melt. Her body heat alone was enough to break her free from being frozen within it.
Like an angel, she landed softly on the ground on her bare feet, melting the ice around her.
"And fourth, this ice gas—actually heats me up instead. Luckily, the ice you're creating around me is helping me regulate the temperature within my own body. And on top of that…" She proceeded her bolted charge toward Milo, shattering all the ice glaciers in her way continuously. She was so fast that it even rivaled Brand's top speed at this point. The air contorted around her as she sped; none could even breathe if she passed by them. In front of her now, Milo, with terror in her eyes, beheld this anomaly of a human being named Raeyn.
"When it comes to pain, the more painful… well… I can't even feel that anymore."
Stepping just inches away from Milo with her long, bare porcelain leg and bare feet, her scythe retracted all the way over to her left and just behind her as she swung it. She drew its slash so harshly that even color disappeared by its mere swing.
The impact twisted Milo in place and caused a tornado around them, wiping away the ice glaciers and shattering the ice on some of the knights around them, releasing them from their frozen stasis. The gases now were also being sucked up by the tornado and blown away upward to the open sky above them.
The spectacle lasted for thirty seconds. And when it ended, Milo was in the air unconscious as she landed back on the battlefield. The only one left standing now was a silver and purple-haired girl with a large scythe.
"For once, I'm grateful for this outfit, Ophelia, or rather—lack thereof, because… It's extremely hot right now," she said to Ophelia as she stretched out the collar of her white crewneck, revealing her collarbone. It was the most expression she's had at all since being summoned, though… one would have seen it as her talking to herself.
The winner atop one of the towers of the Crimson Dragon's castle, adjacent to Ryo's quarters, and the battle between the two 2nd Executives was Raeyn of the Black Wolves.
***
**Back at the Wolves Den**
Shadows engulfed a grove of trees in a small forest area that lay just past the clearing of the Black Wolves' steampunk home. As the shadows made contact with just about anything, they bound whatever got caught and crushed it completely. Animals that inhabited these parts fled from the anomaly, group by group.
Nash stood in the midst of this anomaly, with his short, slick back yellow-orange hair fluttering from the winds that blasted from the rampaging shadows. His back muscles flexed, moving the large wolf tattoo on his back with his slight movements as he stood there with the animals fleeing from all around him. Arms crossed, he had been assessing the situation at hand.
"Man… This guy is serious. Forbidden magic? Well, I shouldn't be too surprised."—He thought of Ophelia and Raeyn at this time, scratching his head—"But this is different. Like, majorly. What the hell is going on here?"
Completely out of the loop, with not just today's events but for the past two weeks, Nash took out his comm and started checking his messages. He even started messaging people back while the thick shadows continued their rampage all around him.
As he read the messages in the Black Wolves group chat, he saw towards the end that all the messages had been directed to him—from Havoc…
His forehead tightened a bit from seeing his name so many times, asking the same question in different ways.
"Keeper, Havoc… calm your ass…" he read. "So that's it. Fuckin' Greed…"
After going through all his messages, he sent one back to Havoc and threw his comm back in his pocket. When he looked up, a massive, black, shadowy whip shrouded him and wrapped him completely, leaving no visible trace. Then, with one quick flex…
PULSE!
The black whip shattered, and Nash stood there unbothered.
"Do I really got to activate that thing? Guess I'll do what I can here. But first…" Nash said to himself nonchalantly with his eyes closed, scratching the back of his head with one hand and the other in his pocket. "Gotta take out the trash."
He opened his eyes slightly and glanced a great distance to where his target was. He dashed, and as he hopped from tree branch to tree branch, he drew closer to the source. When he caught sight of it, he stopped himself atop a large branch of a tall tree.
"There you are."
Henza, now in his distorted form, looked and acted like a wild beast. He resembled a mangled figure, lanky and with long white hair that seemed to flutter from his own aura alone. He had made his way farther into the forest away from the Wolves Den, probably not aware of his movements now—or conscious, for that matter.
When he sensed Nash there nearby, he whipped his head sharply toward him, revealing his haunting, blank white eyes. A group of black tentacles shot at Nash from where he was in the tree. Jumping backward, he caught himself with his hands on the same branch he had stood on and used the momentum to swing himself over and under onto another branch of the tree, pushing himself off and onto another one nearby. The tentacles completely destroyed the tree he once occupied.
Hopping from tree to tree, the tentacles followed behind, crushing each one he came from last. Henza stayed stationary the whole time, letting his shadow tentacles do all the work. He snarled at Nash from below as he continued to swing from the branches, agilely dodging each of his strikes.
Trying to find a good opening, Nash swung himself down to the ground. Before his feet landed, he adjusted his position in the air and used his feet to shoot himself toward Henza, using the bottom trunk of the tree, uprooting it drastically. He flew at Henza as he, in turn, met him with a large, shadowy punch of his own, and their fists clashed.
BANG!!
The impact caused the air to ripple. The black shadows that covered Henza's fist now shattered from the touch of Nash's. His fist, still engaged, made contact and caused a ripple of broken bones across Henza's right arm. Though mangled, he had an auto-cast that summoned the black aura rings around each fracture, snapping each of his broken bones back into place. He then swung a wave of shadow over Nash, whipping him away a few feet.
As Nash flew away, he noticed his arm was covered in those black aura rings. These were much denser than the one that wrapped around him earlier. So dense in fact that it broke his arm unforgivingly. His face held no emotion, for just as quickly as it happened, the sound of a clock gonged and his arm was whipped back into place as if it had never happened…
Six left… More than enough. He thought to himself as he looked at his hands and felt himself getting stronger. But when he looked up, he bore witness to Henza, who was facing upward.
The shadow tentacles that protruded from him were curved up toward the sky. His arms were out and curved inward, hands flexed and facing up as well. From above him, there was a black orb—a dense cluster of black aura rings hovering above him that was condensing unendingly.
When the black orb had condensed to the size of a small ball, Henza faced it in Nash's direction.
"Well, that's different," Nash said out loud, readying himself as Henza shot the orb, which turned into an enormous blast at him.
FEEUUUUMM!!
He threw his arms in a cross-motion in front of himself so as to block, and the huge blast hit him directly, sending him about half a mile away through the forest. The blast lasted for about eight seconds until it ultimately petered out.
When it was over, Henza relaxed his position, and the shadow tentacles around him settled, waving as they settled down. Steam seeped and trailed from his mouth. And smoke followed the cindered landscape, leading to where Nash was now.
From far across the forest where he landed, Nash lay contorted in a crater that spread out from behind him. His limbs and body twisted, mangled beyond recognition from the blast. One would assume he was dead, however… that didn't seem to be the case.
The sound of a large clock gonged once more, as if the long arm struck—sounding off. It pulsed like a heartbeat on top of Nash's disfigured body. And right then, his body reformed itself instantly, ignoring its previous disfigured state. However, it didn't seem the only thing that happened. His body had also seemed to improve along with it. Once he had contorted back to his original form, he simply sat in the middle of the crater he found himself in, knee up and right arm over it.
"Damn it. Five now. But it's fine," he said to himself.
As he got up and dusted himself off, in the sky, Henza had appeared, forming that same black orb from his mouth. This one had been fully charged as Nash had reformed himself, another direct hit, but this time… from above.
FEEUUUUMM!!
Once again, the black aura blasted down at Nash. Right on the same cratered spot he was in the middle of, expanding the size of the crater into an open dirt field. The blast cratered the ground even more, and a large explosion emitted from where Nash stood, in the center of it all. Again, another eight seconds of meandering blast. Something of this caliber would have decimated the Wolves Den ten times over if hit directly. But Nash seemed to be a special case…
When the debris finished showering, and the smoke faded enough to see, there was a figure in the middle standing upright, still and unwavering.
The sound of his gunmetal-cuffed chains echoed as they settled from the aftermath of the blast. His arms to his side, hands in fists, he looked up at Henza suspended up there in the sky.
"Sorry. Not gonna work a second time." Nash said.
He crouched down, one fist to ground, the other hand to knee, in a squatted position. A shared stance between him and Greed. He shot upward, shattering the already cratered ground below him, and bolted upward toward Henza. He pushed himself off the air in multiple directions, the trail like an upward lightning strike as he zigzagged and jumped off nonexistent walls in the sky, meeting Henza where he was up there.
His eyes glowed red, and his face was a shadow for half a second in what seemed like slow motion. His fist connected to Henza's gut, causing him to fly higher up at a staggering pace. Before he could get too far, however, he grabbed his ankles and began to use the momentum to flip them both multiple times, gaining speed. They flipped in the air until Nash finally let him go, shooting him like a falling star onto the ground and into the dirt field they both had created. A massive shockwave emitted from Henza's landing impact, spreading the dirt field even farther. The crater was about a few kilometers wide now as the two anomalies proceeded to create this new clearing within the forest they had battled in.
Though just as quickly, through the smoke of the blast, Henza shot out from the side and dashed out at an insane speed. His features looked more demonic as he ran.
Nash fell from his height and adjusted his body to lead with his head, straightening and controlling the direction of his fall. He followed Henza as he ran like a wild upright creature—Nash meeting him adjacent in the air like a jet.
The shadow tentacles that followed him shot up at Nash as he flew, but were ineffective as they made contact with him, bouncing off his pristine and muscled canvas. When Nash found a good angle, he adjusted his body yet again—this time, facing his feet toward Henza, knees to chest, he pushed off the air above him, crashing into him entirely, boots first.
They fumbled on the ground a few times until Nash had a good grip on Henza's head, holding him down to the ground and dragging him while still running at top speeds. The shadow tentacles stabbed the ground behind them, pulling Henza out of Nash's grip as he shot forward ahead.
Looking back to where Henza was, now suspended in the air and the shadow tentacles pierced into the ground holding him up, Nash bolted back with a right fist aimed directly at his head.
BANG!
The sound pulsed as Henza caught it with his left clawed hand, shrouded in shadow. Still suspended there with him, Nash felt a burning sensation from his fist where Henza had caught him, stationary and engulfing his whole arm now.
Shit! Nash shouted in thought, suspended there now with Henza.
He threw another fist at him, but Henza caught that too with his other shadowy claw—his left arm now also being burned. His skin turned a glowing red from the heat, like molten lava. It spread like leprosy all over his body as he began to resemble a burnt corpse now.
His skin was molten as Henza began ripping him in half in opposite directions. He let out a screeching, monstrous roar as he tore Nash in half completely. Then with both sides of Nash within his claws, he threw them ahead, piling both his halves on top of himself.
Henza tweaked, making crackling sounds all the while. This form and its magic had become additional power he had gained. Ironically, the same demon who killed his brother now bonded the outer layer of himself with the Forbidden magic he had cast earlier.
As seconds passed, that same large clock gonged in Henza's ears once more. The long arm sound struck again as it pulsed on top of Nash's marred body, piecing itself together again, healing the burns he received all the while. It happened in a matter of seconds as if rewinding in an instant.
"Four left, by the fucking Keeper… and what was that just now? A second ability?" Nash pondered, ignoring his enemy in front of him, "Yeah… I get it. You bonded a demon's spirit over yourself with that Forbidden magic. No wonder you're losing control… No matter. I'll just end this quickly."
Nash had the ability of Adaptation magic. His body was able to adapt to any magic ability or physical damage cast or used on him, even if it managed to kill him in the process. His body was in a constant auto-cast called Nine Lives, so he was able to adapt nine times only. Because of this, he was not able to use incantation spells, but it was not as if he needed to.
He could also force an adaptation if he chose, like sacrificing one of his Nine Lives for enhanced strength or speed, but only double from his own natural strength and speed—for he could not adapt to others' natural attributes. It was for this reason that during his seclusion, he would train his body in order to keep up at high levels physically. Thus explaining his physique.
Once his body adapted, it remained that way indefinitely until he had to recharge in his room after two weeks, or once he had used all nine of his lives. He was the "Tank of the Black Wolves".
Adapted now, Nash stood up slowly as Henza stared at him with those lifeless white eyes, still twitching as he did so. He dashed toward Nash in a blink, disappearing from sight. Nash, doing the same, took a few slow steps before disappearing completely.
They bolted, meeting halfway, and clashing their fists and claws multiple times against each other. The burning from Henza's palms was ineffective against Nash now, the flashes from the heat sparking off his muscled body.
They caused fireworks from their high-speed attacks and lit the area around them in cinders. Nash was now just as fast as Henza, and his physical abilities were also enhanced. Though even without it, Nash was physically stronger than Henza to begin with, the enhancements he had adapted only made him twice as strong as before.
Fist after fist was thrown from Nash's side and claw after claw slashed from Henza's. The dirt field they continued to fight on continued to crater from underneath them, but they did not waver in their advances. The intense close combat scene lasted for thirty or so seconds until Nash had completely overpowered Henza—his attacks were slower now, and he was not even blocking anymore. The auto-cast bonding rings Henza used to protect and snap his broken limbs back in place were now completely shattered from Nash's consecutive strikes. Henza's magic could no longer keep up.
He jabbed with his left and right hooks, connecting again and again each time until Henza could no longer stand. The bonds were unable to reestablish.
At this time, he had shattered every one of Henza's bonds on his body as it contorted back to his wretchedly mangled original form. Every bone was broken from the shoulders down. All the damage he had taken since the start of the battle with Star and Brand had finally caught up to him.
Henza staggered, smoking from the intense battle, and began to fall backward. But just as he was about to hit the ground, Nash caught him by his tattered collar and held him suspended there for a few seconds as he said, "Though you may be an enemy, you're still human. I have my reasons, and so do you. I'm sure if my life played out the same way, I'd have resulted the same as you are now."—gently resting him onto the ground, he placed his hand onto Henza's heart and the sound of a large clock ticked once again, pulsing over Henza this time instead of himself—"and I'd want someone to show me mercy at my lowest. That's what a real man would do, at least."
Nash had force-adapted Henza's heart to support his body while he lay there unconscious. With all his broken and shattered bones coursing through him, there was no way he would last any longer as he was without Nash's magic. At this time, Henza stopped bleeding temporarily and his heart began beating slowly, stabilizing his lifeforce.
There at the outer forest and fields of the Wolves Den, the winner between a heavily burdened Vice Captain of the Blue Phoenix Knights and an Ace Member of the Black Wolf Knights, who had just woken up, was Nash—2nd Ace of the Black Wolves.
With Raeyn and Nash concluding their battles, only two matches were left: the one between the two Grade 2 beasts and the one with the wanted Crimson Dragon's Vice Captain and the possessed 1st Exec of the Blue Phoenixes.