The arena floor exploded.
Null and Khaos launched at each other with enough force to shatter stone. Their fists met at the exact center—his wrapped in warped space, hers radiating pure Destruction. The impact created a thunderclap that made the ancient coliseum groan.
BOOM!
The shockwave flattened everything within fifty meters. Sand was scoured away, leaving cracked bedrock. The air itself screamed in protest as two immense forces collided.
They separated, sliding back through the devastation they'd created. Both were grinning.
"YES! THAT'S IT! MORE!" Null laughed, wiping blood from a split lip that was already healing.
"YOU'RE NOT SO BORING AFTER ALL!" Khaos called back, her usually perfect hair now wild, her eyes blazing with predatory joy.
No more testing. No more holding back.
They moved.
Marcus gripped the stone railing hard enough to crack it. The sheer pressure washing over the coliseum made his warrior's instincts scream.
This pressure… My blood is boiling. This is a real fight.
Beside him, Elarion watched with calculating eyes, trying to deconstruct what he was seeing. "Null's not just teleporting. He's using micro-folds in space, attacking from multiple angles almost simultaneously."
"And Khaos?" Marcus asked, not taking his eyes off the battle.
"She's not just destroying things. Her power seems to unravel energy itself." Elarion's voice carried a rare note of awe. "Their control over such fundamental forces is absolute. This level of mastery shouldn't be possible at their age."
Below, the impossible continued.
Null attacked with a storm of instantaneous spatial jumps, appearing from seventeen angles at once to strike.
Khaos spun, her Destruction energy exploding outward in a sphere. [Destructive Nova]. The wave of power didn't just block his attacks; it unraveled the spatial distortions he created, causing sixteen of his strikes to collapse into nothingness before they could land.
The seventeenth got through.
His knee, augmented with spatial force, caught her in the ribs. She flew backward, caught herself mid-air, and retaliated with a focused beam of destructive power.
Null bent space around himself like a lens. The beam curved, missing by inches, and carved a molten trench through the coliseum wall behind him. The ancient stone that had stood for millennia slagged into lava.
"Close!" he laughed, already moving again.
"Not close enough!" She met his next charge head-on.
They traded blows at speeds that made them blur. Each impact created localized shockwaves, buckling the bedrock and sending tremors through the entire arena.
CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!
Fist met palm. Knee met elbow. Forehead met forehead in a brutal clash that sent spider-web cracks racing up the coliseum walls.
"They're not human," Elena whispered from her position.
"Neither are we," Orin reminded her, his demonic features pronounced in the crimson light.
"Not like this." She watched Null take a direct hit from a blast of Destruction that should have disintegrated him. He used a spatial distortion to shunt the worst of the energy away, laughing as his torn clothes smoldered. "This is something else entirely."
The storm wall was descending now, eating the highest tiers of seating. They had maybe ten minutes before it reached the arena floor. Neither fighter seemed to care.
Null raised his hand. Space itself condensed, hardening into a blade that warped the light around its edge—a sword of pure spatial force.
Khaos matched him. Destruction was given form, a blade of crackling dark energy that threatened to unmake anything it touched.
They met in the center of the arena.
VWOOM!
The clash of their blades created a pillar of raw energy that punched through the coliseum's roof, scattering the storm clouds above for a moment. The blades locked, neither giving ground. Spatial force fought raw Destruction in a contest of absolute power.
"Beautiful," Khaos breathed, her face inches from his.
"Perfect," Null agreed.
They pushed off simultaneously, the separation creating another shockwave. When the dust cleared, a massive, superheated trench bisected the arena—glowing with residual energy where their attacks had met and scoured the stone.
Marcus found himself breathing hard just from watching. "How long can they maintain this output?"
"Longer than the storm gives them," Elarion noted, pointing upward.
The crimson wall was descending faster now. It had already consumed the upper half of the coliseum. The available space was shrinking rapidly.
"They'll have to finish it soon," Marcus said.
Elarion shook his head. "Look at them."
Both fighters stood on opposite sides of the trench, bruised, bleeding, and their clothes torn. And both were smiling like they'd found heaven.
"They're not trying to win," Elarion realized with a start. "They're trying to make it last."
Null wiped blood from his eye. A lucky hit had opened a gash across his forehead. It was already healing, but the sting felt wonderful. Real pain. Real challenge.
"Ready for round three?" he called across the divide.
"I was born ready," she replied, Destruction already gathering around her form.
The storm wall touched the arena floor at the edges. The sand began to sizzle and disintegrate. Their battlefield was now a circle, maybe a hundred feet across and shrinking. Less space meant less room to dodge. Less room to dodge meant more confrontation.
Perfect.
They charged again, meeting in the center as the world collapsed around them. Each blow shook the foundation of the arena. Each clash brought them closer to the inevitable conclusion. Null couldn't remember the last time he'd been this happy.
Neither could Khaos.