Eik vanished. He was fast. Faster than what he had shown at the Crucible.

Whirling around swiftly, Gilim brought his deadly weapon to bear in a powerful lunge directly at where he sensed Eik's presence. The Earthling was pierced perfectly through the chest, the spear boring through completely and coming out of Eik's back.

Gilim sneered with self-satisfaction, expecting that to the swift and fitting end to a farce of a fight, but that expression only held for a moment as the figure that hung on his blade suddenly melted into blue liquid, its face plastered with a mad grin that warped hauntingly.

"Not," a voice sung from behind him as he once more spun, the spear brought around in an arc only to hit nothing but air. "fast enough!" Eik finished as he hammered a solid fist into Gilim's kidney, sending him to his knees within the first second of the duel.

The Ougi fighter gasped and clutched the impact site with a hand but managed to keep a tight grip on the handle of his spear with the other. He just needed a moment, then he would get up, display his power for all to see, and make Eik Magnasen regret his transgressions.

"Stand up, you overly proud brat!"

"Brat?" Gilim repeated with acid in his voice, forcing his knees to straighten as his A-ranked body quickly recovered. "I'm older than you!"

"And everybody knows I'm childish as all hell, so what does that say about you, brat? Sucks to finally be called out on your arrogant attitude despite all of your achievements being a result of being coddled like a baby by every person you've ever met, doesn't it?"

Monsters would try to kill you with almost frantic enthusiasm, sure, but one thing they didn't do was insult your emotional maturity and question the legitimacy of your own life and accomplishments. Being the grandson of the patriarch of the great Ougi clan came with a ticket to inherent fame and respect that would make anyone wholly unused to such indignity.

"I'll kill you!" Gilim yelled as he charged in, activating a movement skill as he chased a slippery Eik around the arena, swinging and stabbing his spear with the precision of an A-ranker but with the control of a madman.

Eik used his own Movement Boost, a standard version of which he could now maintain for minutes at a time, to escape again and again. In the past two years he had unlocked different stages of the ability, the strongest of which would put the ability on cooldown in only a couple of seconds in exchange for an effect strength multiple times more potent than the standard.

Every time Gilim lunged for him, he would dance out of the way and avoid the blade leaving only millimeters between his body and the wicked edge. He wasn't going to end this in one blow, but he would show the bastard that they couldn't be compared.

"It's a matter of time now, Eik! You may have powerful attacks, but as an offensive specialist, your defensive capabilities will be lacking! You need others to support you to show your full potential!" the Ougi representative howled for everybody to hear. "This fight involves none but the two of us! The moment you stumble or your ability fails, I will be there! I will never let you go!"

Technically it was true that Eik's offensive prowess were much greater than his defense, but Gilim seemed to be operating under a misconception—that Eik was so desperately focused on avoiding and defending, that he wasn't capable of launching a counterattack.

And judging by the jeers and cheers of the spectators, many of whom probably hadn't yet heard the news of Eik's overwhelming breaking of the A-rank raw damage output high scores in the Crucible, it was a misconception shared by many.

"This is it!" Gilim shouted as his spear abruptly erupted with crimson energy, his attack speed elevating at once.

In the blink of an eye, Eik appeared right in front of the arrogant man, completely turning the tables as he was suddenly close enough to seize the blood spear by the shaft and thrusting it off course. Flowing smoothly into the next movement, a punch to the solar plexus crumpled Gilim like an empty can of coke under the tracks of a military tank.

Following it up with a knee to the face and a left hook straight to the ear, Gilim was sent to the flat stone tiles once more.

Eik stepped back and waited without saying a word. His actions would do the talking this time.

Slowly, Gilim got to his feet. "L-Lucky hit, I'll give you that," he coughed. "But you… you had better start deploying your toxin for real soon," Surprisingly, the spear-wielder now turned his blade on himself and cut into his own stomach, hissing with pain as he drove the weapon deep.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Immediately, a haze of red hummed into existence around him and the very feeling in the air told Eik that this seemingly foolish act of self-harm had done something to enhance his power wildly. Judging only by the requirements for the buffs being stabbing a blade into one's own stomach, it couldn't be an effect that lasted long.

And Gilim did indeed seem to be looking to end it quickly as he immediately launched a flurry of mad strikes, all aiming precisely and aggressively at Eik's vitals. Eik responded by batting away every lunge as Backflow surged through him, empowering him to the point where the air crackled around him. While he didn't need Backflow to match Gilim, a good show was what the people had come to see.

Some manner of frenzy must have gripped the Ougi fighter, because even as hostile aura roiled from Eik's body, he didn't flinch once in his relentless assault. Although attempts to defend against Eik had been minimally effective until then, unlike before, Gilim now completely dropped any effort to close vulnerable openings in his approach.

As strikes were avoided and deflected left and right, the energy released from Gilim's spear shaved deep grooves into the stage that extended dozens of meters along the reinforced stone, a testament to the power of a genuine A-ranker. The energy barrier around the platform did its job, lighting up but remaining perfectly stable despite the onslaught.

Picking one of the many vulnerable moments at random, Eik hammered a fist into Gilim's ribs, a blue needle piercing and delivering a small dose of toxin directly into the A-ranker. He gasped but otherwise barely seemed to notice, his eyes red and mindless. He simply kept attacking.

He was at least twice as fast as before and the strength of his blows had nearly doubled as well. Eik continued to defend against every single lunge. He had yet to get hit once.

Three more quick but potent injections entered Gilim's system, and not only did discoloration quickly spread from each injection site, his movement gradually grew sluggish and uncoordinated as he was sapped of vitality.

Eventually it reached a point where the spear was going wide and weak while Eik simply slapped him across the face again and again, the A-ranker's body's working hard to remedy the reddening of his cheeks as fast as it was being inflicted.

"T-Take me… seriously," Gilim demanded with a drawl.

"I apologize," Eik said. "I have stained your honor as well as the honor of the great Ougi clan by underestimating your great greatness. For that I am eternally ashamed and will seek to rectify this grave mistake by giving you the courtesy of going all out."

His aura exploded outward with an intensity completely unlike anything he had demonstrated in front of Gilim until then. The particles of Profound Toxin mixed into the unusually transparent white haze stung the A-ranker's skin and drained his strength further.

A crown of piercing blue rose into the air above Eik's head, and with its appearance something in the atmosphere changed.

Gilim felt it in the pit of his stomach. This was no longer a fight between two A-rankers. This was nothing but prey facing a predator.

At the beginning of the duel he had somehow managed to convince himself that this was a fight he could win. Before he had really noticed, that conviction had faded, replaced by a sober certainty of the opposite.

As a spectral mask, the face a swirl of eerie patterns, settled over Eik's face, ghostly streaks of paint-like blue flitted about his body like striking serpents.

Then, anticlimactically, Eik put his hands in his pockets and simply watched Gilim in silence, his gaze conveying something firmly between mild interest and absolute apathy. After a few seconds, Gilim began to feel rather silly, what with how tensely he was anticipating a counterattack from Eik.

Ever so slightly, and directly against his gut feeling, he relaxed his defensive stance and looked at Eik askance.

"What?" Eik asked.

"What are you doing?" Gilim questioned. Frankly, he had never felt quite the disrespected. Just as he had resigned himself to a humiliating defeat at the hands of a social nobody, his opponent simply… stopped.

"Waiting."

"For what?" he asked with a frown as his concern returned ten fold.

In response, Eik raised a finger and pointed to the sky. "For you to notice that." Eik said.

Now Gilim also began to take notice of a cacophony of screams of panic and fear from the audience on the other side of the energy barrier as they desperately attempted to evacuate themselves. His parents and entourage were doing everything they could to put distance between themselves and the epicenter of it.

He even caught a glimpse of Andihar Dayarunar and his grandfather Gul, both of whom gaped at something above, exchanging frantic words between them. But they were both S-rankers. If they were reacting like that at just the sight of it, then just what…

With a quivering lower lip and a stomach that had already dropped into his groin, he finally followed Eik's finger and slowly turned his eyes to the sky.

All color drained from his face and his jaw flapped open involuntarily. This was… No, what was this?

A tear formed in the corner of his eye as he looked from the absurd phenomenon above to Eik and then back up. "I— What is…?" he stammered. The tear rolled down his face and in all honesty, he could not say whether that was from fear or from awe.

"Oh, that?" Eik asked with a barely suppressed grin. "It's one of my newest little tricks. Do you like it?"

"I…" was all Gilim could manage as he stared up.

It looked as if the sky above the entire city of Gimleh had been completely and utterly enfolded by a gravity-defying sea of roiling blue. It shone brilliantly, seemingly bathing the entire world in vibrant color, the movements of the waves shifting across the surface casting strange shapes onto the city below like a light behind a tank of water.

Slowly, it settled. Clouds were obscured completely and whether the substance itself glowed so vividly or the rays of the sun were still vaguely visible through the ocean was impossible to tell. It looked like the end of the world made manifest.

"Can you guess what its called? This endless sheet of potential." Eik asked.

Gilim didn't respond, his mind unable to comprehend anything besides the inconceivable sight.

Eik spoke softly. "Apocalypse Canvas."

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