[The Shattering Arena]
Cynthia watched the blurs of light with narrowed eyes. She realized that Yoru wasn't just fighting; she was playing a high-speed game of mental chess. Every time Gudmaro began to synchronize with her rhythm, Yoru would instantly shift her stance, her flow, and her mana frequency. She was a shapeless ocean that he couldn't grasp.
"Nice one, Yoru," Cynthia whispered, a rare grin of approval crossing her face.
Gudmaro, sensing he was being outplayed, growled in frustration. He slammed his hands together, forcing the space around Yoru to invert. In a flash of violet light, he warped the coordinates of the air and the ground, flipping Yoru upside down and placing her inches above the "dead zone" outside the arena.
The world held its breath. But Yoru didn't fall.
She extended a single finger, touching the very edge of the obsidian with the precision of a needle. Using that microscopic point of contact, she channeled her mana to negate the gravity, performed a lightning-fast backflip, and launched herself like a railgun bolt directly back at Gudmaro's chest.
Gudmaro didn't dodge this time. He roared, his perfection twisting into a mask of pure rage, and charged head-on.
"GAAHHHHHH!" Yoru's scream echoed the thunder of her golden aura.
"GAAHHHH!" Gudmaro countered, his violet mana screaming back.
Their fists collided in the center of the ring. The impact wasn't a sound—it was a tectonic event. The Space-Warping Barrier, designed to hold God-tier power, began to spider-web and shatter like glass under the pressure of their combined mana.
Outside the barrier, the shockwaves hit like physical hammers. Techyon, Lapis, and Alya were sent flying backward by the sheer atmospheric pressure.
But Cynthia remained rooted to the spot, her feet melting the stone beneath her to anchor herself. She didn't even blink as the wind tore at her hair. She reached out a hand behind her, not looking back.
"Hold my hand, young boy," Cynthia commanded.
Techyon scrambled up and grabbed her hand. The moment he touched her, he felt the terrifying, stable warmth of the Neutron Star—a heat that didn't burn him, but shielded him from the chaos.
Lapis gritted his teeth, his fingers dancing as he stabilized his own center of gravity. "I've got you!" He forced a localized space-warp, anchoring Alya and himself to the mountain and casting a secondary barrier to keep the group from being blown off the peak.
Inside the crumbling dome, the two monsters were still locked fist-to-fist, neither willing to give an inch of the "Perfect" ground.
[The Cracked Arena]
The air screamed as the two forces ground against each other. For a moment, it looked like Yoru's golden light was swallowing Gudmaro's violet void. She leaned in, her muscles bulging with the effort of pushing the God backward toward the edge.
But then, the momentum snapped.
Gudmaro's aura flared with a sudden, sickening density. With a guttural roar, he overpowered her. The shockwave sent Yoru crashing into the obsidian floor, the impact cratering the ground beneath her.
Gudmaro stood over her, his chest heaving, a manic laugh bubbling in his throat. "Now... I will show you what true perfection looks like. You thought you were the only one who could wield the blade?"
A jagged, yellow Mana Blade hissed into existence, manifesting directly from his palm. It was a perfect mimicry of her signature move. "Try your own medicine, Yoru. Split Blade!"
"NO!" Techyon screamed, his feet already leaving the ground to rush the arena. But a hand like iron clamped onto his shoulder.
"Just wait and watch," Cynthia commanded. Her voice was steady, but her eyes were glowing with a dangerous, white-hot intensity.
"But he'll kill her!" Techyon argued, desperate to save his leader. He looked at Cynthia and froze. Her expression wasn't one of indifference—it was the look of a predator waiting for the right millisecond to strike.
If she doesn't stand up in three seconds, Cynthia thought, her mana beginning to boil, I'm turning this mountain into a second sun.
Gudmaro lunged, his yellow blade aimed directly at Yoru's heart. "I am going to turn you into dust!"
SH-THWIP.
The sound wasn't an impact. It was the sound of a cold wind passing through a hollow space. Gudmaro froze. He looked down to see a Deep Blue Split Blade protruding through the center of his chest.
"What...?" Gudmaro coughed, violet ichor staining his lips. "How...?"
Yoru looked up from the ground, a trickle of blood on her chin but a sharp, mocking light in her eyes. "You forget who the real user is, Gudmaro. You copied the shape... but you missed the essence."
"But I adapted!" Gudmaro yelled, his voice cracking with shock. "I felt that frequency! It shouldn't be able to touch me!"
"You spent so much time using Lapis's Matter and Antimatter techniques," Yoru said, standing up slowly as the blue blade hummed inside his chest. "You forgot that energy is a spectrum. My original Split Blade was positive energy. I simply inverted it into a High-Density Negative State. To your 'Perfect' body, it's like being stabbed by something that doesn't exist in your memory."
She leaned in close, her smile cold and triumphant. "Oh, I am sorry. Is this hurting you? I thought you were... Perfect."
[The Obsidian Crater]
A translucent screen flickered into existence before Yoru's eyes, visible only to her as the air around the arena distorted from the negative pressure.
[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION]
Target Status: Critical Breach.
Effect Applied: [TRUE PARALYSIS] – Negative Frequency Lock.
Duration: 120 Microseconds (Infinite in High-Speed Perception).
Gudmaro stood frozen, the blue blade still humming through his ribs. He tried to command his cells to move, to warp space, to do anything, but his neural pathways were firing into a void.
Wait... that means... Gudmaro's thoughts screamed behind his immobile eyes. No! My perfection is meant to be a closed loop! How can there be a frequency I didn't account for?!
Yoru didn't give him an answer. She moved.
She became a golden and blue blur, turning the "Perfect Being" into a literal punching bag. Each strike landed with the force of a tectonic shift. A jab to the throat, a cross to the ribs, a roundhouse that sent shockwaves rippling through Gudmaro's dense muscle.
She finished the sequence with a devastating Axe Kick that drove Gudmaro deep into the floor of the arena, the obsidian shattering into a million pieces beneath him.
Yoru leaped back, her boots skidding as she created distance. The golden aura of her 100% power began to spiral inward, mixing with the dark, negative blue energy bleeding from her palms. The two colors didn't merge; they fought each other, creating a chaotic, flickering energy that made the very atmosphere of the mountain begin to disintegrate.
She drew both hands back, her fingers clawed as if holding the weight of a planet.
"Everything... Ends now..." Yoru's voice was a chorus of a thousand echoes. "FINAL ANNIHILATION BEAM!!!!"
A pillar of dual-colored light—shimmering gold laced with streaks of void-blue—erupted from her hands, aiming directly at the paralyzed God in the center of the crater.