Chapter 246: Deadliest Predator
Blood kept spraying nonstop with every insane exchange of blows.
Blades of wind cut through the air like invisible guillotines, shredding flesh and rock. Explosions of fire burst one after another, turning the underground arena into a true hell.
*BANG! BANG!*
Fists charged with pure vital energy collided head-on, generating shockwaves that made the underground arena vibrate. Gigantic rocks fell from above, being ground into dust before they could even touch the floor.
At the same time the place was collapsing, a strange power regenerated everything. Soon, there was no risk of the whole place caving in.
Priam accumulated horrifying injuries.
Deep cuts exposed his muscles, third-degree burns covered his arms, and the sound of his own cracked ribs echoed in his ears.
But he ignored the pain. He fought with pure fury.
He knew he couldn’t let himself die there. To survive, his only option was to exterminate the replica in front of him.
Inside the inner space, Mirra watched everything, petrified.
Since the doppelgänger used the regeneration of the Pristine Primordial Core to instantly recover from every injury, Mirra also channeled all her energy into healing Priam whenever he suffered an incapacitating blow.
But she couldn’t heal everything, or she would run out of energy quickly, which was why Priam had to fight at the limit of pain.
She patched up the tissues and stopped the bleeding in the middle of that meat grinder.
After some time.
Suddenly, something changed in Priam’s eyes.
Without realizing it, he sank into a state of absolute emptiness.
The excruciating pain disappeared. The sound of the explosions became a distant noise. His mind shut itself off from every unnecessary thought.
There was no past, future, victory, or defeat. There was only the next move.
*SWOOSH!*
Every punch Priam threw became slightly more refined than the previous one.
Every fraction of Ether spent on a dodge or attack became more efficient and less costly in the next execution.
He was polishing himself in the fire of combat. His body moved purely by reflex, adapting and evolving with every millisecond.
Slowly, Priam no longer knew who he was or what he was doing.
However, the battle wasn’t eternal.
Mirra’s Ether reserve ran completely dry.
The little girl panicked. Priam wasn’t channeling his own Ether into the Pristine Primordial Core, so that she could have enough nature energy to heal him.
He had completely abandoned defense and regeneration, focusing 100% of his energy on crushing the copy. He was letting his own body be destroyed.
Mirra trembled, but said nothing.
Feeling that Priam—consumed by absolute seriousness and focus—was like this, the fear in her heart gave way to blind and unwavering trust.
He would win.
---
Time lost all meaning. Minutes and seconds melted together into a bloody blur.
*KBOOOOOOM!*
A cataclysmic explosion sealed the final confrontation.
A horrifying hole opened in Priam’s chest, tearing straight through his flesh from one side to the other. The upper half of his torso was almost completely destroyed.
White bones were visible in his shoulder and both thighs. It was a horrifying sight, a biological miracle that he was still conscious.
Smoke and blood vapor rose from his mangled body.
But in front of him...
*THUD!*
The doppelgänger’s body collapsed heavily onto the cratered ground.
The copy was covered in holes and lethal wounds. The glow in its eyes had completely faded, and it never got back up.
The dust slowly settled throughout the ruined chamber.
Priam staggered on his feet, his pierced lungs struggling to pull in air, but he remained standing.
A bloody smile appeared on his face.
"I won."
The doppelgänger’s body began to disintegrate into a whirlwind of glowing runes.
Within seconds, the symbols condensed into a single beam of light that shot toward the back wall of the cave. Ancient geometric patterns lit up across the rock, opening a passage.
The challenge was officially complete.
The moment the threat disappeared, the support keeping Priam’s body upright gave out. He collapsed onto the floor, his consciousness wavering on the edge of darkness. The absolute exhaustion was taking its toll; he was a millisecond away from passing out.
’Pry!’
Mirra’s voice echoed desperately in his mind.
Right afterward, a warm and pure torrent of soul energy flowed through their contract bond, directly nourishing Priam’s dying consciousness.
Priam violently sucked in air, his eyes widening slightly. That was one of the techniques from the Ancestral Art. Using their contract connection, she could transfer a fraction of her own core energy to help him.
However, because she wasn’t an Elemental Spirit, performing this process carried a terrible risk to her soul. That was exactly why Priam had strictly forbidden her from using this resource.
But before he could even mentally scold her, the flow stopped.
Mirra knew exactly what she was doing. She had sent only the minimum amount necessary to keep his mind awake, stopping the process before causing any major damage to herself.
Priam understood what she had done. With superhuman effort, he moved his trembling fingers, accessed his spatial ring, and took out a handful of pills. He tossed them into his mouth and swallowed them all at once.
At his current stage of power, ordinary Ether recovery pills were almost insignificant. However, he didn’t need a full reservoir; he only needed a spark of Ether.
Letting himself pass out there, with both of them completely defenseless and out of energy, would be insane. Mirra understood that and helped him perfectly. Although young and immature, she was genuinely intelligent.
As soon as the first drop of Ether formed in his meridians, transmuting into the power of nature, Mirra took over.
With surgical precision, she closed the most severe wounds, stopping the deadly bleeding in his chest. If Priam had to do that himself, he would have spent ten times more energy to achieve half the result. His partner was a true prodigy at this.
---
After a few minutes, Priam’s condition finally stabilized.
A soft light flashed beside him, and Mirra emerged from the internal space. Without hesitation, the little girl threw herself against his chest, hugging him tightly.
Priam let out a long sigh, allowing the accumulated tension to drain away. An ironic smile spread across his bloodied lips.
"I really am an idiot..." he murmured softly. "I had to compete against myself to learn the lesson. But... it was worth every second."
The common theory stated that an ordinary person could only access 80% of their own potential because the body maintained safety locks to preserve itself. In extreme life-or-death situations, adrenaline allowed them to reach 100%.
However, Priam now knew for certain: through sheer willpower, those locks could be destroyed, allowing someone to surpass 100% of their theoretical limit.
He raised his trembling hand and gently stroked Mirra’s soft hair.
If he had retreated before his double or relied on the System’s shortcuts, the impact on his determination would have been devastating. In the future, his confidence would have been stained by doubt, and his arrogance would have been nothing more than a fragile illusion.
So, even knowing it was insane to flirt with death, Priam had chosen that brutal method to test his absolute limits.
What would have been the point of winning by using the System? He wouldn’t have learned anything. He wouldn’t have evolved even a single inch.
He still had secret weapons for emergencies. But winning while depending on the System for everything would mean building a cage for his own future.
And the result spoke for itself.
By massacring a version of himself that was superior in every numerical aspect, his base strength, reflexes, and understanding had all undergone an explosive leap.
Priam hadn’t merely survived the storm; he had emerged from it as an infinitely deadlier predator.