Chapter 134: The Combat Event 3
The scythe fell.
It was a perfect stroke. Textbook. Merciless. The culmination of an entire fight’s worth of herding, delivered with every ounce of momentum Stahlklaue had built across the ruined stage.
It carved into Raoi’s collar—
—and met nothing.
No resistance. No flesh. No bone. The blade passed through the man as though through morning mist, and the body of the "main" Raoi silently burst apart into a cloud of drifting golden motes.
For one frozen instant, Stahlklaue stared at the light scattering around his blade.
And then the motes swirled, condensed, and reformed three meters to his left — into Raoi, whole and untouched, that same relaxed grin on his face.
Behind him, the fire clone still burned.
The stone clone still stood.
The lightning still crackled, the ice still crept, none of them fading, none of them flickering, none of them showing even the slightest sign that their "core" had just been cut down.
The terrible truth landed on Stahlklaue all at once, cold as a blade between the ribs.
’There is no main body.’
They were not clones. They were not projections. They were not copies sustained by an original’s concentration, waiting to pop like soap bubbles the moment the caster fell.
Each one had been manifested directly into reality. Each one was flesh. Each one was him.
Seven bodies.
Seven originals.
He had spent the entire fight hunting a heart that did not exist.
"Ohhh, you should see your face right now," Raoi said, tapping his own temple with two fingers. "Everyone makes the same mistake. You all think I’m hiding behind my storm."
His grin stretched wide.
"I am the storm."
In the American alcove, Nicholas’ eyes sharpened.
’A manifestation ability. Not duplication — division. He doesn’t conjure fakes, he splits his existence into independent wholes.’ His gaze flicked to the "main" body, the one that had stood in the center all fight, arms folded, playing the treasure every hunter would dig for. ’And the finest part of it — the act.’
The fortress with one door.
The sweat on the temple. The vanishing grin. The clones "desperately" tightening around their precious core.
’Stahlklaue thought he was herding Raoi into a corner. Raoi was herding him — straight into a killzone, and he used his enemy’s own deduction as the leash.’
Nicholas felt the corner of his mouth twitch upward.
’The hunter never noticed the trap because the trap was shaped like his own cleverness. ...I’ve used that one before.’
Beside him, Selena exhaled slowly. "That’s a nasty ability."
"That’s a nasty man," Dana corrected, eyes gleaming. "Every analyst on the planet had Raoi’s file labeled ’protect-the-core type.’ He’s been throwing matches in domestic leagues for three years to sell that lie. He saved the truth for the one stage where it counts."
On the stage, the stun lasted less than a second.
Against anyone else, that would have been fine.
Against seven originals, it was a death sentence.
"NOW!" seven voices roared as one.
The stone clone moved first — no, not a clone. The stone Raoi moved first, hammering both fists into the stage. A pillar of rock erupted diagonally beneath Stahlklaue’s feet, forcing him airborne, stealing the ground that his entire fighting style was built upon.
The wind was waiting for him.
A compressed cyclone slammed into his back like a freight train, killing his aerial control, spinning him — and through the spin, through the blur, Stahlklaue’s green visor caught the flash of the true follow-up.
Lightning. Point-blank.
His scythes snapped up in a cross before his chest.
BOOM!!
The bolt detonated against the crossed blades with a sound like the sky cracking in half. The shockwave flattened the dust across the entire stage; the discharge crawled over his plating in white-hot veins, and the force hurled him backward across the stone, boots carving twin molten trenches as he fought for every inch of traction.
He blocked it.
Barely.
His arms trembled. Smoke curled off the alloy edges of his blades, their perfect silver now scorched black.
And the storm was only beginning.
Fire came in waves that turned the air itself into an oven. Ice answered from the opposite flank, so that every dodge carried him from furnace to freezer and back, his plating shrieking as the temperature swings tortured the metal. Water rose in coiling serpents that struck not to wound but to drag, hauling at his ankles, his wrists, his momentum. Stone reshaped the very stage beneath him, walls rising to cut his escape lanes, floors tilting to poison his footing.
He cut the water serpent — two more rose from its corpse.
He shattered a stone wall — the shards froze mid-air into ice shrapnel and came screaming back at him.
He dodged the lightning — and understood, far too late, that the bolt had never been aimed at him at all, but at the pool of water he had been steered into.
The current tore through him. His body seized. And still — still — he moved, slicing, weaving, enduring, a lone grey blade dancing in the heart of an apocalypse.
The crowd was no longer chanting. The crowd was simply screaming, one endless wall of sound without words.
[Marypaz13: HE’S STILL ALIVE?? HOW IS HE STILL ALIVE]
[Demiurge666: I take back everything. Germany doesn’t send verdicts. Brazil sends WEATHER]
[Boddlly: bro is getting jumped by the periodic table]
[Will_1631: O STORM CHEGOUUUUU 🇧🇷🇧🇷🇧🇷]
[GodOfDegenerates: julie say something. julie??]
Up in the commentary platform, Julie’s knuckles were white around the microphone, her professional vocabulary long since abandoned.
"He— the— THE WATER WAS A CONDUCTOR— I— LADIES AND GENTLEMEN I AM WATCHING SEVEN NATURAL DISASTERS COMMIT A CRIME TOGETHER—"
On the stage, Stahlklaue’s world had shrunk to instinct and edge.
He did not slow — but the storm was faster.
He did not yield — but the storm did not care.
He cut, and cut, and cut — and for every element that fell, the sky, the ground and the air itself rose again in its place.
There were limits to what one blade could carve through.
There were no limits to the storm.
The end, when it came, was almost gentle in its inevitability. A wave of fire forced his guard high. A lash of water swept his footing low. And in the half-second between the two, while his scythes were up and his balance was gone, the earth behind him rose in perfect silence.
A block of stone the size of a delivery truck.
It did not strike like a technique. It struck like a decision — a single, colossal blow that caught the German ace flush across his raised guard and erased him from the stage.
Stahlklaue’s body sailed clean over the boundary line, over the trench, and crashed into the barrier wall on the far side with an impact that spider-cracked the reinforced stone. He slid down into the trench netting and did not rise.
Silence.
Then the horn.
BWOOOOOM.
"RING OUT!!" Julie’s scream nearly blew the speakers. "STAHLKLAUE IS OUT OF BOUNDS — THE REAPER OF BERLIN HAS FALLEN!! THE FIRST MATCH OF THE COMBAT EVENT GOES TO... BRAZIIIIIL!!"
The western stands did not cheer. They erupted — a green-and-gold volcano of drums, tears, and sixty different songs sung at once. On the stage, the seven Raois raised their fists in unison, then six of them dissolved into golden light, flowing back into the one grinning man at the center, who blew a kiss to the sky.
The giant screens flashed.
{VICTORY: RAOI — BRAZIL}
{POINT TRANSFER IN PROGRESS...}
{STAHLKLAUE: 400 PTS → RAOI}
The colosseum gasped as one.
"FOUR HUNDRED?!" Julie’s jaw dropped. "Germany loaded FOUR HUNDRED of their six hundred points onto Stahlklaue! Their ace was carrying two-thirds of their entire nation — and ALL of it just changed hands in the opening match! Brazil hasn’t just won the first fight, everyone — they’ve struck GOLD!"
[Don_Radjin: 400 points GONE in match one. Germany is in shambles]
[Zorgus: so that’s why he fought like his life depended on it. it did]
[IamTruck_kun: Raoi is now a walking bank vault and every country just heard the alarm]
[Kamzy_1234: whoever fights Raoi next gets a chance at a JACKPOT]
In the German alcove, no one spoke. Their two remaining fighters stood at the rail like mourners at a funeral, a hundred points each to their names and their kingmaker lying in the trench netting below.
In the Brazilian alcove, Veloce was screaming himself hoarse, hanging halfway over the divider.
And in the American alcove, Selena’s voice was low.
"He’s a target now. Raoi’s carrying at minimum four hundred, plus whatever Brazil gave him. Every nation in this arena just started sharpening their knives for him."
"Mm," Dana hummed, her smile unreadable. "Terrifying, isn’t it? All those points, gathered on one man, just waiting for someone to take them."
Nicholas said nothing.
He was watching Raoi soak in the crowd’s adoration, mapping the golden motes, the reformation delay, the half-second where seven bodies had roared with one voice.
’Seven originals. One will.’
His fingers curled slowly against the rail.
’Then somewhere in that storm... there’s still a single string holding it all together.’
"AND NOW!" Julie’s voice dragged every eye back to the screens as the national flags reappeared, spinning into their great circle once more. "The board resets! The blood is warm! The selection system will now decide our SECOND MATCH of the Combat Event!"
The flags spun.
The samba drums faltered.
The colosseum, still shaking from one earthquake, braced itself for the next.
’Statistically,’ Nicholas thought idly, watching the wheel blur, ’we won’t be called for another—’
Two flags slammed into the center of the screen.
The sound that followed was not a cheer. It was sixty thousand people forgetting how to breathe at the same time.
Julie’s voice came out almost reverent.
"AMERICA... VERSUS... BRAZIL!"
Every head in the colosseum turned toward the American alcove.
And the chant began.
"PHAN-TOM! PHAN-TOM! PHAN-TOM!"
{Ding!}
{The world demands you!}
{+200 Charm points}
Nicholas let out a slow breath through his nose, pushed off the rail, and rolled his neck once.
’...So much for statistics.’