Chapter 138: The Combat Event 7 [Bonus]
"China versus Australia," Julie repeated, and the colosseum finally remembered how to scream.
It was the matchup every betting house on the planet had circled in red. The undefeated monk against the only human being who had ever beaten him. Three years of debate, settled at last on the grandest stage in existence.
"THE REMATCH!" Julie’s voice soared. "Ladies and gentlemen, are we about to witness it?! Tianzun! Mercury! The mountain and the storm that once moved it! Nations, CALL YOUR FIGHTERS!"
Every camera in the arena swung to the Chinese alcove.
Tianzun did not move.
A young man beside him did. He stepped past the monk, a long lacquered case slung across his back, and made for the bridge with unhurried grace.
The cameras whipped to the Australian alcove.
Mercury did not move either. She poured herself a fresh cup of tea, and the broad-shouldered man lounging on the rail beside her kicked off it, cracked his neck, and sauntered down toward the stage with his hands in his pockets.
The colosseum made a sound like sixty thousand people being personally betrayed.
[Marypaz13: NO. NO NO NO. WHERE ARE THEY GOING]
[Demiurge666: both countries said "not yet" AT THE SAME TIME lmaooo]
[GodOfDegenerates: the two main characters looked at each other and said "save it for the finale"]
[Zorgus: think about it though. neither ace wants to show their cards before facing Phantom. this is chess]
In the American alcove, Nectron grunted. "Smart. Both of them."
"Mm." Nicholas’ eyes hadn’t left the stage. "The rematch is worth more later. Right now, every card shown is a card I get to study for free." His gaze sharpened. "Which means whoever wins this match was considered strong enough to spend in front of the whole world. Watch closely."
’Because there’s a real chance I’m fighting the winner.’
"CHANGE OF PLANS, EVERYONE, AND WHAT A CHANGE!" Julie recovered magnificently. "Representing CHINA... the youngest S-Rank in their history! The man who paints the world as he pleases... DANQING!"
The young man reached the center of the ruined stage and bowed, first to the crowd, then to his opponent. He was slender, robed in white and ink-black, hair tied high with a single jade pin. He unslung the lacquered case, opened it, and drew out a calligraphy brush as long as a sword, its tip gleaming wet and black.
"And representing AUSTRALIA... the man who insists his ability is ’basically cheating’... the one, the only... REVERB!"
The Australian arrived chewing gum.
He was built like a lifeguard, sun-bleached hair, a grin full of easy confidence, his hero suit worn open at the collar in flagrant violation of at least two dress codes. He gave the crowd a lazy salute and blew a bubble.
"Gday," he said to Danqing, loud enough for the mics. "Love the pyjamas."
Danqing’s serene expression did not so much as ripple. "I will paint your defeat beautifully."
"Mate, you’re gonna paint it twice."
"FIGHT!!"
Danqing’s brush moved.
It was the most beautiful thing violence had ever looked like. The brush swept through empty air and the air held the ink, glistening black strokes hanging in space like the sky had become paper. Three strokes. Five. Eight. A shape assembled itself out of pure calligraphy, coiling, thickening, opening two molten golden eyes.
A dragon of living ink, forty meters of liquid midnight, roared into existence above the stage.
The crowd’s scream turned ragged.
"HIS INK MANIFESTS!" Julie shrieked. "WHATEVER DANQING PAINTS BECOMES REAL!"
The dragon fell on Reverb like a collapsing night sky.
Reverb didn’t dodge. He planted his feet, cocked his fist back, and met the dive head-on. The impact detonated across the stage, ink and shockwave blasting outward, and out of the eruption the Australian came skidding, coat shredded, grin intact.
"Beauty," he said. "Now do it again."
"I don’t intend to repeat mys..."
The air behind Danqing shimmered.
And the dragon’s dive happened again.
The same roar. The same collapsing arc. The same forty meters of midnight, falling out of empty air exactly where it had fallen before, except this time Danqing stood in its path, because Reverb had been walking a slow circle since the fight began, dragging their positions around the stage like a man rotating a chessboard.
Danqing’s brush slashed. A wall of hardened ink caught his own dragon’s echo, and the collision blew both apart into black rain.
Silence. Then the colosseum understood, all at once, and went insane.
"IT CAME BACK!" Julie was practically climbing the commentary desk. "THE ATTACK CAME BACK! REVERB’S ABILITY, EVERYONE! EVERY ATTACK LAUNCHED IN THIS ARENA REPLAYS ITSELF! SAME PLACE! SAME POWER! TEN SECONDS LATER!"
[Boddlly: HE MAKES THE FIGHT FIGHT ITSELF???]
[Kamzy_1234: so every attack you throw is also a landmine with a 10 second fuse. that’s DISGUSTING]
[Will_1631: bro really said "your history is my weapon"]
[IamTruck_kun: no wonder he just stands there grinning. TIME is his tag team partner]
In the American alcove, Dana’s pen was flying across her clipboard. "An echo field. Every action replayed on a fixed delay at the original coordinates. He doesn’t attack. He curates. He lets you fill the stage with your own violence and then walks you into it."
"And the stronger you are, the worse it gets," Selena murmured. "Throw a mountain at him, and ten seconds later there’s a second mountain. Free."
Nicholas said nothing. His eyes tracked the Australian’s lazy footwork, the gum, the grin, and underneath all of it, the pattern.
’He’s never stopped moving. Every step is bookkeeping. He’s holding a ten-second map of the entire battlefield in his head, every echo scheduled, every safe square memorized.’ A flicker of genuine appreciation crossed his mind. ’The surfer act is camouflage. That man is doing more math than anyone in this arena.’
The fight became a war of philosophies.
Danqing adapted with terrifying speed. If attacks became landmines, he would stop attacking and start building. His brush sang, and the stage transformed: ink pagodas rising as cover, chains of hardened calligraphy lashing across the ground, a rain of black spears freezing mid-air, unfired, held in reserve where no echo could be baited from them.
Then he began to write.
Not shapes. Characters. Glowing symbols that hung in the air and pressed their meaning onto reality itself. He wrote heavy, and the air above Reverb thickened like wet cement. He wrote bind, and ink surged up the Australian’s boots.
Reverb tore free, laughing, and slung a chunk of rubble through the heavy zone to schedule its echo like a man setting an alarm. "Mate, you can write whatever you want! Doesn’t change the maths!"
Ten seconds later, the rubble’s echo came screaming through the exact lane Danqing had retreated into, forcing the artist to burn a pagoda blocking it, and in the opening, Reverb finally attacked for real.
He crossed the stage in four strides and hit the pagoda’s ruins like a wrecking ball. His fists were nothing special, no element, no glow, just professional-grade violence. But every blow he landed was also a promise, and ten seconds behind him marched an invisible copy of himself, throwing every punch again into whatever Danqing had been herded toward.
Two Reverbs. One visible. One made of schedule.
Danqing fought them both, brush spinning, ink walls rising against fists that had already been thrown, the present and the recent past attacking him in shifts. Sweat rolled down the artist’s jaw. The serenity was cracking. The stage was drowning in black.
’This,’ Nicholas thought, leaning forward at the rail, ’is an excellent fight.’
His eyes moved between them. The artist who could manifest anything he could imagine. The grinning man who owned every second of history.
’Danqing’s ceiling is higher. But Reverb’s floor never stops rising. Every second this drags on, the field fills with more scheduled violence, and only one of them has the map.’
His fingers drummed once on the rail.
’If I face the artist, I take him before the brush finishes a third stroke. If I face the echo...’ The drumming stopped. ’I’d have to fight my own last ten seconds. Every exchange, twice.’
For the first time since Hunter, something in his chest ticked faster.
On the stage, Danqing suddenly stopped retreating.
He stood amid the wreckage of his pagodas, raised the great brush high overhead with both hands, and inhaled. Ink began to crawl backward across the stage toward him, every shattered wall, every dead dragon, every spent spear, an entire battle’s worth of black flowing home to its master like a tide called by the moon.
"Oh?" Reverb’s grin faltered for the first time. "...Oh, that’s not good."
The ink climbed the brush. The brush began to glow.
And in the air above the colosseum, stroke by titanic stroke, Danqing began to paint a single character the size of the stage itself.
Julie’s whisper carried to sixty thousand held breaths.
"What... is he writing?"