Chapter 11; Bravo!
On the right side of the stage, the fight had reached a different kind of conclusion.
Kurael and Shiunoko had been exchanging blows for several minutes.
He had used his abilities more creatively, while she had stopped relying on the reflections as her primary tool, shifting instead to something more direct.
She used her foresight to anticipate his movements a fraction of a second before they completed, positioning herself at the edge of his reach before he fully committed to a direction.
Shiunoko alternated seamlessly between using her reflections as a means to attack and using them as substitutes.
It was, by any objective measure, a good fight. Neither of them held a decisive advantage.
Kurael was aware of this reality. He was also aware that he was expending Ryoku at a rate he could not reliably track, because he had not done the foundational work of understanding precisely how much he had at his disposal and exactly how each application of his authority drew from it.
He did not know how to balance the ledger. He acknowledged he had not mastered his abilities, and this created a significant gap in his defense.
He had managed to land one more hit on the real Shiunoko, a grazing strike to her left shoulder that she had mostly absorbed by rotating into the momentum, and she had landed two solid counterstrikes on him.
One struck his ribs and the other caught the side of his jaw, making the arena briefly tilt in his vision.
He had not gone down. She had not gone down, either. They stood at a distance of several meters, both perfectly still, breathing heavily.
Then, Kurael's heart sank as a cold chill ran throughout his body, so intense he could feel it within his very bones.
'What is this? ' . He could not help but shiver, the thought echoing inwardly as he turned his gaze toward Shiunoko.
He noticed she experienced a similar reaction to his own, though her state appeared much worse.
Her already pale skin paled even further. The pupils of both Kurael and Shiunoko constricted simultaneously, both seized by an extreme premonition of unfathomable danger.
The sensation demanded so much of their attention that, for the time being, they could not bring themselves to care about their duel.
Kurael did not know exactly what the danger was, nor could he tell how it would affect him. All he knew was the direction from which the malevolence originated, and that was the opposite side of the stage.
'What foe would require the use of such power to invoke this much fear, dread, and danger?'
'Isn't this a bit over the top? Has that man lost his mind?' Kurael thought, unable to understand why Ryo would go to such lengths.
Kurael did not know Ryo's character well enough to judge. As far as he was concerned, Ryo was a stranger.
However, his initial impression of the man contradicted the reality unfolding before him. Madness, unsheathed and all domineering, was all Kurael could perceive.
'I see nothing, I feel nothing, I speak of nothing, I hear nothing, I taste nothing, therefore, I understand nothing... ' Kurael did not know why these specific thoughts drifted through his mind.
It felt as though his very body was screaming at him . And He listened .
Closing his eyes, gritting his teeth, covering his ears, and crouching low to the shattered floor. He did not dare peek to see Shiunoko's reaction, nor did he care.
'Why would I concern myself with the condition of my enemy? It is best I focus entirely on my own survival', Kurael reasoned, bracing for the impact of whatever threat approached.
Then, a single compact, dense word was uttered across the distance. The syllable carried the fundamental concept of dimension itself. Compressed within its sound was the complete, unabridged history of what the word had been, currently was, and would become, filling every angle of perception that Kurael could comprehend.
"¿¡‽■■■■‽¡¿"
Kurael partially heard, mostly felt, and barely saw the manifestation, tasting, thinking of, and understanding the word almost in its entirety.
Even though he had suppressed the majority of his own sensory perceptions, the precaution was simply not enough.
He managed to survive, but only barely. Even with his eyelids pressed tightly shut, he wept tears of blood. While his mouth remained closed, the metallic taste of blood filled his throat.
A succession of loud, ear-rupturing booms echoed in the distance as the heads of the identical spectators exploded violently. The destruction was so immense that a dense, crimson mist of blood and viscera filled the atmosphere.
A surging sea of blood poured from the stands, flowing directly into the excavation canal that separated the arena floor from the spectators.
Kurael slowly opened his eyes, only to witness an unexpected sight. The stage was completely surrounded by a ring of crimson, where headless spectators sat silently in the stands, their upper bodies completely obliterated.
'Absurd... This is far too absurd. That Mr. Ryo Itsukizu , is an abomination incarnate', Kurael pondered, staring at the carnage.
The Eigengrau sky above grew considerably darker, drawing Kurael's gaze upward.
A sharp fracture ripped through the space-time of the atmosphere, revealing an inner sky hidden within the rift.
A singular, prolonged thunderclap originated from the tear, completely drowning out the sound of the exploding heads below.
Tenebrous dark gray clouds with a deep purple hue began to spiral around a central point within the fracture.
Inside the coliseum, the remaining spectators in the highest rows flinched in unison, five hundred thousand identical faces reforming from the bloody remnants before turning their gaze upward.
The light filtering through the rift came from an unrecognizable source.
The supersonic concussive force that accompanied the phenomenon arrived a fraction of a second later, rolling across the stage floor in a visible wave. Kurael planted his feet firmly.
The wave struck him directly in the chest, and he leaned into the pressure rather than bracing against it, letting the force move through his frame rather than spending Ryoku reserves he was no longer certain he possessed much of .
When the shockwave passed, he looked back toward Shiunoko. She stared at the crack in the sky with an expression he had never seen from her before.
It was not mere alarm tho, but something far personal. Her usual serene composure remained present, but something deeper had surfaced, the distinct emotion of just staring directly into the jaws of death while death stared back.
The vulnerability lasted only a moment before she looked back at him.
"It seems," she said, "that the other side has concluded."
"It indeed, appears that way," he agreed.
They looked at each other for a long moment.
'What did that crazy man possibly do to partially satisfy this damned contract? A display of power, valor, or perhaps strategy?'
Kurael did not know, but an idea began to sprout in his mind.
He turned to face the section of the stage that had been reduced to a pit of fine white sand and clear black glass.
Surrounding the stage was a sea of crimson.
Combined with the intrinsic sky, the view was unique and wistful. He considered taking a deep breath, but the air remained thick with a crimson mist that smelled heavily of blood and viscera.
"If I may ask, what have you been up to?" the graceful voice of Shiunoko asked, her tone carrying a hint of genuine curiosity.
"Most would not have noticed it, but I am among the exceptions."
Kurael remained silent for a while. He let out a slow sigh but did not turn to face her, choosing instead to look toward the sky as he responded in a calm, indifferent tone.
"Why don't you look into the near future to find out?"
The corner of Shiunoko's lips flinched as she shifted her posture slightly
"Suprised?... It becomes rather obvious once one notices it."
Kurael found it peculiar that she seemed to never directly absorb a heavy blow. She always switched places with one of her reflections when caught in a position she could not dodge.
Furthermore, she evaded, dodged, and moved in a manner that suggested she knew exactly what Kurael would throw at her, next.
Kurael knew his assumption might be wrong. Perhaps her battle sense is simply far more advanced and superior to my own.
'I'll just have to test the waters and watch her expression once she figures out my ruse', he thought as he grinned nwardly.
"Ryo Itsukizu, I give you my thanks for providing such a brilliant idea," Kurael spoke aloud with a low chuckle, raising his right hand which was currently clenched into a fist.
Then, he slowly opened his palm.
Shiunoko winced, narrowing her eyes as she gazed at Kurael's movements.
Even though the simple gesture showed no direct hostility, she could not help but flinch.
Her skin paled once more. Her eyes widened and her pupils constricted as she instinctively took a step backward.
Gritting her teeth, she manifested her reflections in front of her, substituting her own position with theirs.
Kurael's grin slowly turned into a chuckle, and the sound gradually deepened into a bone-chilling laugh.
"Ha ha ha, You saw it, didn't you? I am certain you are surprised. Shaken, even."
'Tsk, I am already at my limit. With what I'm about to do, I will completely deplete a rather massive chunk of my Ryoku reserves, but I have no choice. I am already about to pass out, and this is the best I can do,really' , Kurael lampooned.
He kept himself conscious solely by channeling his remaining Ryoku directly to his brain,as he was still experiencing the heavy cognitive static left behind by the Holistic Signifier Ryo had recently unleashed.
This method of Ryoku management was unsustainable, and a heavy state of somnolence began to overtake his senses.
Suddenly, the temperature dropped instantly, rendering everything within a wide area around Kurael intensely brittle. Violent, loud, gunshot-like cracking sounds erupted as the structural integrity of the stage shattered.
The surrounding air condensed into a dense, pouring mist of azure liquid before rapidly freezing into a snowy layer of solid air across the floor.
Immediately following the flash-freeze, the air within their lungs rushed out violently. Their blood felt as though it were boiling and their innards bloated.
Their eardrums bulged outward, filling their heads with a dull, throbbing ache. The skin across their faces and hands stretched taut as the dissolved gases in their bloodstreams expanded as their blood boiled, causing their veins to swell blue against their flesh.
They felt immensely heavy, bloated to nearly twice their normal volume, yet they weighed no more than they did before.
They stood at the side of the stage, two swelling silhouettes against a backdrop of warped bone and a silent, raging storm.
By the tenth second, the total lack of oxygen began to darken the edges of their sight, the brilliant white of the coliseum fading into a gray twilight.
Their hearts beat frantically, a desperate rhythm pumping oxygen-depleted blood to brains that were rapidly starving.
By the fifteenth second, the stage seemed to tilt. The sharp shadows and the shimmering wall of air blurred together into absolute darkness.
At the exact perimeter of the area of influence, a violent boundary layer formed where the normal, warm air met the ultra-dense, freezing vacuum Kurael had created.
The edge of the sphere resembled a hyper-intense, shimmering mirage, forming a perfectly spherical, warped glass-like wall separating the combatants from the audience.
Both could see the remaining spectators staring in absolute horror through the shimmering boundary, but no sound passed through the void.
The only sounds remaining were internal: the wet slap of their hearts against their ribs, the frantic rushing of blood through their carotid arteries, and the internal creaking of their own joints.
It was a lonely, claustrophobic symphony of the physical body.
Looking around, the white bone appeared sharper yet detached, the colors unnaturally stark against the deep, near pitch-black backdrop of the sky.
The moisture in their eyes and noses vanished completely, creating a stinging, drying sensation.
It was a surreal, gothic isolation. Kurael looked outward, and the world resembled a photograph with all the life drained out of it.
He reached out, encountering zero resistance, only a chilling, dead emptiness that pulled the heat from his skin into the nothingness sharing the stage.
Suddenly, the surrounding atmosphere collapsed inward at the speed of sound.
The resulting implosion hit them with an omnidirectional shockwave, with the equivalent of a physical hammer blow.
The air rushed from all sides to the center point where Kurael stood, colliding with itself and with their bodies simultaneously.
The concussive impact knocked them off their feet, fracturing bone and threatening to render them instantly unconscious from the blunt-force trauma.
A deafening, thunderous crack and a sharp sonic boom echoed violently off the ivory structure of the coliseum. Because the air struck the bone floor with such sudden pressure, the vibration traveled through the structure itself, sending a deep, resonant shudder through the ancient arena.
After a few seconds of absolute, deathly silence, the sudden return of sound carried enough force to jeopardize their eardrums.
In the immediate aftermath of the crash, the stage was plunged into a dense, ghostly mist.
The sudden drop in pressure followed by instant compression caused the moisture in the returning air to condense instantly, weaving a thick, swirling fog that cloaked their bodies in a shroud of white vapor.
Through this mist, the distorted view of the coliseum snapped back to normal.
The frozen air exploded outward with another concussive thunderclap before the elements finally settled.
Survining the physical trauma of the implosion, their bodies experienced a brutal, agonizing rush of relief.
The crushing weight of the atmospheric pressure returned, slamming their expanded tissues and swollen veins back down to their normal size.
The skin ceased its terrifying stretching, and the moisture on their tongues and eyes stilled into a normal, wet chill.
Air forced its way back into their collapsed lungs, ramming down their throats to inflate their chests with a violent, involuntary gasp.
The coliseum returned to a cathedral of calcified silence, a vast, circular expanse of polished, ivory-white bone.
Once the shockwave fully dissipated, they were left standing in an impossible stillness, a sharp, painful ache throbbing through their entire bodies.
Slowly, they walked toward each other, step by step.
When they closed the distance, they both raised a fist and delivered a soft punch squarely to each other's faces.
However, they were so depleted of strength that the respective strikes amounted to nothing more than soft taps.
They both collapsed flat onto the stage, far too weak to remain standing.
Above them, from the Pulvinar, Mnemoscopus's voice arrived. The usual theatrical grandeur was absent, replaced by something quieter and considerably more attentive.
"Bravo, quite a show! Quite a show!" the entity spoke. "A part of the contract has been satisfied."
The five hundred thousand spectators erupted into noise.
Shiunoko looked toward the Pulvinar, the brief expression that lived just underneath her serenity returning to her features.
Kurael watched her look at the palvinar, turning his own gaze away to look at the crack in the sky , before she could look back down.
"Kurael," Mnemoscopus's voice continued, echoing over the arena floor, "I have three more requests before I can fully fulfill the contract."
What Mnemoscopus said fell upon deaf ears tho;
Kurael had already drifted into unconsciousness.