Chapter 136: The Combat Event 5 [Bonus]
"Ladies and gentlemen, while our fighters redecorate the stage, let’s talk about what we’re ACTUALLY witnessing here today!"
Julie had finally clawed her way back to coherence, one hand pressed to her earpiece, her voice riding over the rolling thunder of the battle below.
"Because make NO mistake, this is not just a match! This is a message! Brazil came into this convention sitting fourth in the standings, and they have decided that this year, they are DONE being polite! First they reveal Raoi’s true ability, a secret they’ve protected for THREE YEARS, and take four hundred points off Germany in the opening match! And now, instead of protecting their lead, they throw their S-Rank ace at PHANTOM himself in match two!"
The screens behind her flashed Brazil’s crest.
"They’re not managing points, everyone. They’re hunting FEAR! Two matches in, and every nation in this colosseum has learned the same lesson: there is no safe matchup against Brazil! Not their storm! Not their saint of fists! They came to put the ENTIRE WORLD off its game. And looking at the faces in these alcoves right now... it’s working!"
The broadcast cut briefly across the competitor galleries. The Russians stood grim at their rail. The remaining Germans looked like men watching a storm approach a second time.
[Demiurge666: Brazil said "we’ll beat the fear into the seeding"]
[Will_1631: THREE YEARS we kept Raoi’s secret. THREE YEARS. Respect the campaign 🇧🇷]
[Marypaz13: julie’s right, look at Germany’s bench. those men have SEEN things]
[GodOfDegenerates: meanwhile the two on stage are ignoring all of this to commit property damage]
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Below the commentary platform, the property damage continued.
Nicholas slipped a straight punch by a finger’s width, and the pressure alone split his cheek. He rolled under the follow-up elbow, palmed the stage, and swept Hunter’s ankles. But Hunter simply wasn’t there anymore, already floating above the sweep, already falling, already driving a heel toward Nicholas’ spine.
Nicholas twisted away. The heel cratered the stone. He gave ground, one step, two.
’Now.’
His fingers curled. Vixen’s ability rose toward the surface of his mind, space beginning to fold around his body...
Hunter was in his face before the fold could finish.
A wrapped fist came down like a falling star. Nicholas aborted the technique, crossed his guard, and took the blow on both forearms. The impact fired him across the stage, boots plowing twin trenches through the rubble until he killed his momentum against a shattered pillar.
The pillar exploded. Hunter had arrived with him.
’Again.’
Nicholas ducked a hook that beheaded the pillar’s stump, jammed a knee, deflected a palm, retreated.
’He’s not letting me cast.’
Three times now. Three times he had reached for the abilities sleeping in his copy slots, the teleport and the gravity, and three times Hunter had closed the distance in the exact breath the technique needed to form, forcing his hands back into defense, drowning the half-second of focus under an ocean of fists.
It wasn’t coincidence.
In Hunter’s mind, there was no room for anything else.
’Don’t stop.’
He had watched the broadcast from Nigeria like everyone else. But unlike everyone else, he had watched it forty times, frame by frame, and what frightened him was never the erasure itself.
It was the speed of it. One moment. One gesture. One breath of space. That was all the Phantom had needed to unmake a god’s gift.
’A man like that doesn’t need an opening. He needs a second. Give him a second, and this match is already in the record books with my name under "defeated."’
So Hunter would give him nothing.
Not a second. Not half of one. He poured himself forward without pause, without rhythm, without the mercy of predictability, every strike flowing into the next, every landing already the launch of the following assault. His lungs burned. His knuckles wept through the wrappings. It didn’t matter.
’No breath. No distance. No time. Perfection means nothing against him unless it arrives without pause.’
He would win the way one survives a wildfire.
By never, ever standing still.
In the American alcove, Selena’s hands had gone white around the railing.
’He can’t cast.’
She’d seen it. The aborted gesture, the fold of space that died half-formed. Once could be chance. Three times was a cage.
’That monster is shutting down an ability user with nothing but pressure. No power. No tricks. Just fists arriving on time, every time, forever.’ Her throat felt dry. ’This is what an S-Rank looks like when they respect you. He’s fighting Nicholas like he’s fighting a natural disaster.’
Her nails bit into the rail.
’Come on, brat. You promised me you’d win this thing. Don’t you dare make me watch you...’
Then she saw it, and her thoughts stumbled.
The big screen had caught Nicholas’ face in close-up, half a heartbeat between deflections.
He was smiling.
Not the polite, empty curve he wore for cameras. A small, sharp, honest thing, tugging at the corner of his mouth while death fell on him from four angles at once.
’...He’s enjoying this?!’
Beside her, Dana let out a long, low whistle, her clipboard hanging forgotten at her side.
’Incredible,’ she thought, eyes darting to keep pace with the blurs below. ’Hunter’s read on him is flawless. Smother the caster, bury the trigger, never let the second exist. Any other ability user on this planet loses to that strategy. Any of them.’
The black streak below wove through a barrage that pulverized the stone behind it, gave a half-step, took it back, and answered with a counter that forced the brown streak to bend away for the first time in a full minute.
’But Nicholas isn’t losing ground. He’s banking it. Every exchange, he pays for information. Angles, timing, tells. Like a man feeding coins into a machine he intends to empty.’ A grin crept across her face against her will. ’Where in the world did the association find this man? And why does an ability user fight like his hands came first and the power came later?’
Her grin faded into something more thoughtful.
’...Actually. Why does he fight like that?’
Another entry for the folder marked Phantom.
’This is inconvenient,’ Nicholas thought, swaying out of a combination that carved three fresh scars across the stage.
It was also, he had to admit, the most honest fun he’d had in twenty years.
He had walked into this tournament expecting a procession. A queue of talented, pampered heroes, raised on rules and referees, to be dismantled politely on his way to the monk. An easy run, right up until the one fight that mattered.
Instead, the very first name out of the gate was this.
’A man with every martial art ever conceived, who understands that none of it matters unless I’m never given a second to think. He’s not fighting my power. He’s fighting my schedule.’
An elbow grazed his temple. The world rang like a struck bell. He answered with a knife-hand that opened a line across Hunter’s shoulder. First blood, thin and red through the brown gi.
’I could end this now.’
The thought passed through him, cold and factual, the way he might note a fire exit. One word. One activation. The Void would swallow that beautiful, terrible ability, and the "saint of fists" would become a very fit man in a bathrobe.
’And in three days, when I stand across from Tianzun, he’ll have watched it, timed it, and prepared for it. Just like this one did.’
The promise from last night settled back into place, heavy and immovable.
’The Void has one target. Everyone before him gets my hands.’
Hunter surged in again, and the stage screamed under a fresh apocalypse.
They were two grammars of violence arguing in the same language. Hunter moved like the conclusion of ten thousand years of martial study, every angle correct, every transition inevitable, technique so complete it bordered on natural law. Nicholas moved like the thing martial arts had been invented to defend against. No forms. No honor. No shape. Only a lifetime of endings compressed into the shortest path between a man and his death. Perfection met lethality. Scripture met sin. And the ruined stage between them was running out of stone to sacrifice.
Blood dripped from Nicholas’ split cheek. Red spread slowly through Hunter’s shoulder wrapping.
Sixty thousand people had forgotten to sit down.
’He won’t give me a second,’ Nicholas thought, rolling his wrist, feeling the fight’s rhythm settle into his bones like an old song. ’Fine.’
The smile sharpened.
’Then I’ll build one.’