Sairaorg let out a loud, enthusiastic laugh, his eyes shining with pure combat excitement.
"Then I won't hold back at all! Our battle will be more than legendary! Here I come!"
"..." Alear maintained a complex expression. Did he suddenly turn into Kung Fu Panda? Who did he think he was, Tai Lung? All that was missing was him raising his fist and delivering a speech about destiny to complete the scene. Still… it fit him annoyingly well.
Without further words, Sairaorg's demonic aura exploded like a shockwave. The ground beneath his feet violently cracked at the exact moment he lunged forward, vanishing from his original position and crossing the ten meters between them in less than a second. His fist came straight in, without hesitation, a direct and brutal strike, charged with enough force to pulverize rocks, showing no sign of restraint.
Alear took his hands out of his pockets, his pink-magenta eyes glowing faintly as he assessed the charge. Sairaorg's speed was, indeed, impressive—before the two weeks of training in the world of his Longinus, even being able to track his movements with his [Mystic Eyes], reacting in time to dodge would have been extremely difficult. At best, he could have defended. But now it was different. His body no longer lagged behind his mind; the muscle memory from his past life and his refined physical condition allowed him to react almost the instant he thought.
Because of that, at the exact moment of impact, he tilted his body to the side with surgical precision. Sairaorg's punch scraped past his shoulder, releasing an explosion of air that made the wind howl around them. In the same flow of movement, he rotated his hips and counterattacked without hesitation, a short, direct, explosive strike guided by the principles of [Bajiquan], hitting the Bael heir square in the abdomen.
BAM!
The impact echoed like a dry explosion. Sairaorg was blasted backward, his feet dragging across the dirt ground as deep grooves opened beneath his trajectory. He only managed to stop several meters later, letting out a low grunt, one hand pressing against his struck abdomen. His eyes were wide open, not in pain, but in genuine surprise.
"...What a heavy blow!"
Alear did not give him time to recover. The next instant, he activated [Transposition]. His body simply vanished from where he stood and reappeared in front of Sairaorg, already moving, rotating his hips to deliver a fast, high kick straight to the face.
The timing was perfect—materialization and attack fused into a single flow.
But Sairaorg reacted purely on instinct. His torso leaned backward in a precise, almost unnatural arc. The kick passed just above his nose, slicing through the air with a sharp whistle. He returned to an upright stance immediately, like a released spring, and the smile on his face only widened.
"Oh? So this is the famous trait of the Gäap family?! [Transposition]… incredible! You can really move like that so naturally!"
Alear landed his leg calmly, without losing balance, a slight smile appearing on his lips as he observed him.
"I still have a lot to learn. You dodged without much difficulty… even though it was an almost instantaneous move. Between the moment I appeared and the full execution of the strike, you had just over three milliseconds to react, and yet you managed it. Impressive!"
Considering the kick was executed at roughly the speed of sound—about 343 meters per second—and the distance between them at the moment of teleportation was at most one meter, the reaction time available was around 0.003 seconds. And yet, Sairaorg managed to dodge. He was truly a strong opponent...
Sairaorg let out a vibrant laugh, the sound filled with pure excitement.
"Impressive is you! Your strike was extremely heavy and your speed was truly incredible with that unfair lineage trait of yours! A truly worthy opponent!"
His eyes burned with even greater intensity. The ground beneath his feet shattered again—this time, there was no warning. He surged forward like a living projectile, his entire body propelled by refined brute force taken to the extreme. His first strike came as an uppercut, heavy enough to launch an opponent into the air. Alear tilted his torso slightly, letting the punch pass mere centimeters from his chin, feeling the displaced air tear against his skin.
Before the strike even finished, Sairaorg had already rotated his body, following up with a side kick aimed at the ribs.
Alear took half a step back—the bare minimum—and raised his forearm.
THUD!
The impact reverberated through his body like a hammer. Even though he blocked it, the force behind the strike was absurd, the kind of impact that pierced defenses and shook everything inside. Still, he held firm. At the last second, he had applied a [Reinforcement] directly to his body, combined with his own defensive magic, [Hierro].
The name might not have been the most creative, but its function was undeniable. The technique replicated, through magical means, the concept of an impenetrable skin similar to that of the "Arrancars" from Bleach. It was not an innate racial ability like in the manga, but rather a Magecraft he had developed in his past life, inspired by the legendary invulnerability of Achilles. Maintaining it required constant control, but thanks to his experience, it had become almost instinctive—a hidden layer that absorbed and redistributed impact, preventing real damage from penetrating deeply.
Before, he simply could not apply it to this body. The problem was not lack of power, but understanding. The [Hierro] he had created was based on the "mystery" of Achilles' invulnerability, something that, without a clear mental image, could not be reproduced properly in this world where imagination and sufficient magical power were required to give birth to magic.
He had lacked the structure, the exact understanding of how to turn that "concept" into execution in this world. But in the last two weeks, that had been easily resolved. With time and focus, he rebuilt the entire process mentally, refining every detail until it became logical and replicable within the rules of this world.
The biggest problem he had encountered in adapting his magical system was fundamental: in his previous world, all Magecraft was sustained by a "mystery" granted by the Root itself. Without that support, magic ceased to be something simply activated and instead depended entirely on his own understanding. He had to rebuild every technique from scratch, imagining with absolute clarity the processes behind each effect, from energy flow to final result.
Because of this, some spells took longer than others to recreate. It was not a matter of real difficulty, but precision: the more complex the concept, the more refined the visualization had to be. Still, for someone of his experience, it was far from an insurmountable obstacle—only time-consuming. And fortunately, in the past two weeks, he had managed to solve this problem, establishing a solid foundation that made the recreation of his magic consistent and reliable.
With these two supporting magics sustaining his body, facing a purely physical opponent like Sairaorg was no longer a disadvantage—it became an equal exchange. There was no reason to hesitate. The moment he absorbed the impact, he responded instantly. He rotated on his axis, his hips driving the entire chain of motion, and advanced with a short shoulder strike to break the opponent's base. In the same flow, without any pause, he launched an explosive punch—[Bajiquan] in its purest form: direct, compact, and devastating, concentrating all force into a single point of impact.
Sairaorg crossed his arms at the last moment, absorbing the blow, but the force still pushed him back, his feet carving deep grooves into the ground as he resisted the recoil through sheer physical strength.
And instead of being emotionally pushed back, he only smiled even wider.
"Yeah! That's what I'm talking about!"
Without pause, he advanced again.
From that point on, the exchange of blows erupted into a constant rhythm.
Fists clashed, evaded, and scraped through the air with brutal precision. Each contact produced dry cracks or small bursts of wind when strikes missed by mere centimeters. Sairaorg fought like a force of nature: direct, overwhelming, without hesitation or unnecessary technique. Every strike carried power capable of destroying structures through pure impact—his body itself a weapon of mass destruction, requiring no [Destruction Power], only brute strength refined to the extreme.
But Alear was the opposite.
His movements were economical, precise, and strangely calm, as if every action had already been calculated before it even happened. He did not meet Sairaorg's strength head-on; he redirected it, deflected it, let it pass by centimeters. His presence resembled a single leaf in the middle of a storm—apparently fragile, yet always out of reach of true destruction.
A slight shoulder shift, a minimal step, a nearly imperceptible tilt of the torso—enough to make Sairaorg's strikes miss or lose their impact alignment. And in the brief opening between attack and recovery, Alear countered.
His counterattacks were neither exaggerated nor wide. They were short, direct, and dangerously efficient, each strike carrying the precision of a blade capable of cutting steel, always aimed at the most subtle openings.
Sairaorg launched a brutal sequence: right, left, knee, elbow.
Alear dodged the first with a minimal head turn, blocked the second with his reinforced forearm, absorbing the impact with his whole body in sync. When the knee came, he was no longer there.
A side step.
A slip.
And then—
BAM!
A short punch landed into Sairaorg's ribs.
Sairaorg responded instantly, spinning with an elbow strike. Alear ducked, feeling the wind pass above his head, and counterattacked with a low kick to the supporting leg.
The impact shifted Sairaorg's balance for a moment.
A moment was all Alear needed.
He advanced.
Two fast punches to the abdomen. A third rising toward the chin... But Sairaorg caught him—his hand closed around Alear's fist at the last second.
The ground trembled beneath them.
For a moment, they were locked.
Force against technique.
Sairaorg smiled, his arm muscles tightening.
"Got you."
Alear did not respond.
His body simply… vanished.
[Transposition].
The next instant, he appeared beside Sairaorg, already rotating.
The kick came clean, horizontal—
CRACK!
This time it connected.
Sairaorg's head was snapped to the side by the clean impact. Still, he did not fall. His body rotated with the force, absorbing part of the damage as his feet scraped the ground, braking the recoil with effort.
He stopped… and then laughed.
He ran a hand across his face, cracking his neck as if he were just warming up.
"Man… this is too good."
His eyes returned to Alear, now sharper, carrying growing seriousness beneath the excitement.
"…I'm going to take this more seriously, Archduke. Be careful."
He lowered his center of gravity slightly. At the same moment, his demonic aura expanded again—denser, heavier, like an invisible tide pressing against the surroundings, distorting the very sense of space.
Alear adjusted his stance in response, without haste. The faint smile was still there, but now there was something more attentive in his gaze—he recognized that the fight had just leveled up.
Sairaorg advanced like a living tank, his demonic aura now so dense that the air around him seemed to vibrate with oppressive weight, and unleashed a direct, crushing punch toward Alear's face, the fist tearing through space with a sonic roar that made the ground tremble in anticipation.
Alear, with his [Mystic Eyes] tracing the perfect trajectory, activated [Transposition] at the exact moment, his body dissolving before impact and reappearing at Sairaorg's right flank, already mid-spin, his leg raised in a fast, reinforced spinning kick aimed directly at the Bael heir's face, the air hissing from its speed.
Sairaorg reacted on instinct, pulling his arm in fluid motion and crossing it in front of his face, the impact of the kick exploding against his forearm with a dry crack that echoed like thunder.
BAM!
The kick was strong enough to force him to slide backward several meters, his feet carving deep grooves into the hardened earth, his body tilted but steady, eyes filled with pure adrenaline.
Alear narrowed his pink-magenta eyes, evaluating his opponent's insane resilience without losing his calm rhythm, and activated [Transposition] again in a flash, vanishing from his position and materializing directly beneath Sairaorg with an explosive rising kick, his hips propelling his leg like a compressed spring, striking the exposed stomach cleanly.
CRUNCH!
The blow pierced through the defense with concentrated force, forcing the air out of Sairaorg's lungs in a dull grunt as his torso involuntarily bent forward.
But Sairaorg did not care about the pain. Instead of retreating, he spun his entire body and delivered a colossal punch toward the exact ground where Alear was still suspended after the kick, his fist colliding with the earth like a meteor.
BOOM!
A massive crater ten meters in diameter formed at the point of impact, rock shards flying in all directions and a shockwave lifting dense dust like a mist.
Alear anticipated the brutal counterattack at the last moment and vanished with another [Transposition], reappearing exactly ten meters ahead.
In the center of the field, dust still rose in dense spirals, while the newly formed crater made the absurd level of their exchange clear. The ground already showed cracks and uneven terrain, as if it were on the verge of collapsing if they continued at that pace. Residual shockwaves still rippled across the field—a physical echo of the violence of their blows.
A light sigh escaped Alear, more practical than tired.
"Let's stop here for now, Sairaorg. If we continue like this, we're going to completely destroy this training field."
Sairaorg froze mid-advance. His fist was still clenched, demonic aura pulsing around him, but for a moment his face showed an almost childish frustration. His excited smile wavered, giving way to a look of pure disappointment as he lowered his arms with an audible huff.
"Tch… you're right. What a waste! It was just getting interesting…"
He ran a hand through his sweaty, messy hair, trying to vent his frustration through the gesture. But it didn't take long for the spark in his eyes to return, that same uncontrollable excitement now directed toward the future.
"Alright then! This battle of ours will have to wait for a worthy moment… how about a Rating Game? You and me, when you have your full peerage and decide to officially enter the competitions."
Alear allowed a genuine smile to curve his lips, crossing his arms calmly as he nodded.
"That's fine by me. It'll just take a while before I want to enter Rating Game competitions. When the time comes, my debut match might be with you. What do you think?"
Sairaorg let out a laugh that seemed to make the remaining rocks in the field vibrate, his eyes shining with satisfaction that went beyond combat—it was the recognition of an equal. He stepped forward and extended his clenched fist.
"Deal! And don't you dare take too long, Alear. I'm going to train until my bones creak just to make sure that when that day comes, I can repay that punch to the stomach with interest!" Sairaorg flashed a wide, honest smile. "From now on, consider me your rival… and your friend."
Alear gave a short laugh, relaxing his stance. The pink-magenta glow in his eyes softened, and he returned the gesture, bumping his fist against the Bael heir's with a firm crack.
"Friend, then. But don't overexert yourself training, Sairaorg. It would be a shame if my rival showed up to our debut with back pain."
"Hah! Impossible!" Sairaorg gave Alear a heavy pat on the shoulder, nearly driving him into the ground a few centimeters.
The two continued talking for a while longer, still exchanging animated words about the fight and their future confrontation, as the battle atmosphere slowly faded from the training field.
Nearby, Kuisha and Mio exchanged silent glances before beginning to approach.
_______________
(A/N: So… what did you think of this brief exchange of blows?
The fight between Alear and Sairaorg is only just beginning — they will face each other at full power in a few chapters, during Alear's debut in the Rating Games. This first clash was merely a taste, serving to establish the beginning of both their friendship and rivalry.
Alear will see Sairaorg as a true breath of fresh air in a demon world filled with figures obsessed with politics and power. In addition, Sairaorg will be developed further from here on and will receive more spotlight in the story.
In the next chapters, we will have the meeting with the Phoenix family.
Feel free to leave suggestions on what you would like to see in the story in the future.
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