Elsewhere, chaos reigned.

  Kaelan’s cheek was ground into the dirt beneath the boot of a towering figure—thirteen feet of sinewy muscle and slick, glistening skin.

  A Fishal.

  His flesh was a pale, sickly green, his bald head gleaming in the dim light. Rows of serrated shark-like teeth gleamed when he grinned, and his bulbous fish eyes fixed on Kaelan with predatory malice. His webbed fingers and toes flexed lazily, as though crushing his opponent required no effort at all.

  The earth around them was pockmarked with massive craters, the corpses of challengers littering the ground. A damp, suffocating mist hung in the air—the surrounding terrain wet, smelling faintly of salt and blood.

  Over the Fishal’s head hovered three pulsing lights—one red, one green, one yellow. His voice was as cold as the deep.

  “You should have handed them over when I asked nicely,” he said, pressing his boot harder against Kaelan’s skull. “You Aurellians are weak in every department.”

  Kaelan’s fingers dug into the man’s ankle, straining to shove him off.

  “Ah-ah-aaah…” the Fishal chuckled, leaning more weight onto him until the dirt cracked beneath their feet. He laughed, the sound guttural and cruel—

  —and then a blade of light the size of a warship screamed down from the heavens.

  The strike split the Fishal clean in two from shoulder to hip. His upper half hit the ground with a wet thud, his lower body still upright for a heartbeat before collapsing.

  Kaelan coughed blood and pushed himself upright, blinking against the sudden light. Standing a short distance away were Eliana and Maloi, each with three lights hovering above their heads.

  Eliana gave him a small, smug smile. “You’re welcome.”

  Before he could answer, she and Maloi shot into the sky with blinding speed, their bodies encased in shimmering flight magic. They ascended several kilometres, far above the chaos, the moonlight catching the trailing wake of their mana.

  Suspended high above the battlefield, away from the grasp of the other challengers, Eliana smirked. “Floating upward was a great idea, Maloi. We just have to keep this up for a few more hours.”

  Time bled away. The sun dipped beyond the jagged horizon, and night swallowed the field.

  Balling’s voice rang out across the battlefield, rolling and bouncing like he was announcing a royal party.

  “Hellooo, my little fighters! You have exactly… ten minutes remaining, yes-yes!”

  Across the battlefield, Valerius rose from where he’d been resting, stretching his arms as if he’d simply been waiting for this moment.

  “It’s about time. How are you guys holding up?”

  “A sufficient quotient of my mana has been restored,” Eryndor stated, his tone unwavering and perfectly composed.

  “Me too,” Ziraiah added.

  “Good,” Valerius replied, already crouching. “Ziraiah’s got three relics, Eryndor has none, and I’ve got two. I’m holding the spatial bag, so I’ll get the relics for Eryndor. You two stay here.”

  He leaned forward, a predatory gleam in his eye. “I’ll be back soon.”

  He launched forward—vanishing in a blur.

  The battlefield was a slaughterhouse. Hundreds of challengers had already fallen. The rules were simple: there were one hundred relics of each type. Only one hundred people could pass this phase. However the challengers didn't know that.

  One of them was the Orkan—the same Orken who had driven his hand through Isabela’s stomach.

  And Valerius was heading straight for him.

  He descended from the air with a flying kick, the impact slamming into the Vorrkai’s crossed forearms. The ground buckled. Seven kilometres of earth cracked and cratered from the force.

  “I told you I’d beat the crap out of you,” Valerius growled.

  The Orken slid backward for kilometres, his feet carving deep trenches before halting. His forearms were red from his fortis.

  Valerius surged forward again, but this time the Orken met him head-on—his kick slamming into Valerius’s side and sending him hurtling hundreds of kilometres.

  The giant leapt high into the air, descending with the full weight of his body aimed at Valerius like a falling mountain.

  Valerius caught the strike on his crossed arms.

  The result was cataclysmic—a crater one hundred and ten kilometres wide tore into the land.

  With a roar, Valerius seized the Orken’s foot and smashed him into the ground again and again. Each impact sent shockwaves ripping outward, flattening what little remained of the battlefield around them.

  The Orken lashed back, his massive leg whipping into Valerius’s skull and flinging him tens of kilometres.

  Valerius twisted mid-flight, landed in a crouch, and exploded forward again. His arms shifted to a vivid green, the metallic sheen ringing with a sharp, resonant clang. His fist collided with the Orken’s face in a thunderous blow.

  Another metallic crack. The Orken’s head whipped sideways, his face flushing red with fortis. He dropped to one knee, the impact carving a crater one hundred and twenty kilometres across.

  Valerius’s hand shot down, seizing the Orken’s bag—the one holding his relics.

  The Orken snarled and gripped the strap.

  They pulled.

  Leather stretched.

  And with a vicious rip, the bag tore apart.

  Before gravity could claim the three relics, the Orken’s massive hand shot out, seizing two in his colossal grip. Valerius snatched the third and, without hesitation, slipped it into his spatial bag.

  The Orken shifted the Blood Chalice into the same hand as the Wailing Crown. His other arm blurred—then slammed into Valerius’s gut.

  The impact was cataclysmic.

  Valerius’s breath left him in a spray of blood as he was launched upward—no, hurled—into the sky, vanishing from sight in the blink of an eye.

  He didn’t stop until he had torn through ten thousand kilometres of empty air, his momentum bled off by layers of Cushion that flared and collapsed in rapid succession. Hanging for an instant in the thermosphere, he crouched mid-air, then kicked downward.

  Mach 3000.

  The atmosphere screamed around him, the world blurring into streaks of fire and lightning. This guy’s stronger than I thought… alright then—let’s kick it up a notch.

  Valerius dropped like a comet, every metre accelerating him further, his right arm cocking back. The flesh trembled violently, the very air around it fracturing into hairline cracks as Bravo energy flooded his bones and muscles, forcing them to vibrate at impossible frequencies.

  Below, the Orken mirrored the movement, his own arm drawing back—his biceps knotting, skin flushing dark red as the same lethal vibration took hold.

  And then—

  They punched.

  Their fists never met. They couldn’t.

  The instant their Bravo energies collided, the world between them began to die. Air molecules, dust, even the stray motes of vitalis—every atom caught in that narrow space—was dragged inward, crushed into a singularity no wider than a coin. Light itself seemed to bend and vanish into it, as though the night sky had grown an impossible, black wound.

  The air warped, shimmering like molten glass, the horizon bending at impossible angles. Pebbles lifted from the ground, orbiting the point for a heartbeat before vanishing into nothing.

  A hundred kilometres of ground beneath the Orken ceased to exist—flattened, glassed, erased—yet he remained suspended, braced on nothing, feet planted on the invisible force of Thunder Stride and Cushion. Across from him, Valerius mirrored the stance, legs driving against the air itself.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  They pushed harder.

  The singularity trembled. The ringing began—thin, glassy, and rising in pitch until it sliced through the skull.

  Far away, in the shadowed chamber, the man in white turned toward his masked subordinate. Calm. Almost amused.

  “Giveluek. Go.”

  The eleven-foot man vanished—not blurred, not bolted—vanished. The air clapped shut where he had been, the chamber walls rippling like disturbed water.

  The singularity ruptured.

  A flash erupted—searing white, so bright it turned shadows inside-out. For an instant, the entire battlefield was carved into black silhouettes against the light. The heat was not heat—it was pressure, shoving at the skin, clawing at the lungs, making bones hum.

  Then came the sound. A deep, layered concussion that seemed to come from inside the skull rather than the ears.

  Matter unspooled into raw energy—stone vaporising into incandescent plasma, metal flashing to ash, every living thing within obliterated before nerves could send a signal. The blast front raced outward, hungry, endless—

  —but Giveluek was already in the sky.

  Thunder Stride carried him higher in a streak of blinding blue-white. His arms snapped forward, palms open—

  —and from them burst an invisible, soundless wave.

  Cushion.

  It slammed outward in an instant, locking around the detonation in a perfect sphere, eight hundred kilometres across. The barrier sealed with a heavy, resonant thunk.

  The explosion smashed against it like a furious god, light clawing for escape—slivers of it bending and scattering across the barrier’s inner wall—before the glow was swallowed whole.

  No sound. No shockwave. No escape.

  Inside the sphere, the world was erased. Outside, the night was untouched. The blast would have erased the island if not for Giveluek.

  Across the shattered expanse of the island, every remaining challenger froze where they stood.

  It began with the light.

  For an instant, night ceased to exist—the sky erupted into blinding white, painting every tree, ruin, and jagged cliff in stark silhouette. Even those dozens of kilometres away staggered back, arms raised to shield their eyes.

  A perfect sphere hung on the horizon, impossibly vast, its smooth surface shimmering like molten glass. Colours rippled beneath it—gold, crimson, and silver—before vanishing into that same unbearable white.

  “What… is that?” someone whispered, voice trembling.

  The glow’s reflection crawled across rivers, mountain faces, and the ruins of dead cities. Every shadow stretched long and thin, pointing away from the sphere.

  And then—nothing.

  No wind.

  No sound.

  No tremor beneath their feet.

  The silence was absolute, pressing in on the lungs, making every heartbeat sound too loud in the ear. The sphere sat there like an unblinking eye, staring down at the island.

  From high above, Balling’s voice finally rang out over the island’s comms—smooth, nasal, and full of misplaced cheer, like a king addressing a festival.

  “Oooh-ho-ho-ho… well, would you look at that, my delicious little contestants! Such spectacle, such oomph! I do not know what you are doing down there, but it is… how do we say… very much making me concerned for your continued aliveness, yes?”

  He paused, clicking his tongue.

  “Mm-hmm, I can already smell the drama. Carry on, carry on!”

  As his voice faded, the light within the sphere began to dim, folding inward until darkness swallowed it whole. The air seemed to breathe again, but no one spoke.

  Because every single one of them understood—

  Whatever had happened inside that light… was not meant for anyone else to survive.

  ---

  Where Eryndor and Ziraiah waited, the air split with a boom. Valerius slammed into the ground, knees bending to catch himself, but he still staggered—one arm limp at his side, his clothes torn and scorched, steam rising from his skin.

  Ziraiah’s eyes widened.

  “Oh my god, Val! What happened?” She was already running to him before he could answer.

  “I…” He coughed, spitting a bit of blood, “…got carried away in a fight. Give me your potion thing—quick.”

  Eryndor advanced a measured step, his voice calm yet laced with keen curiosity.

  “What, pray tell, could have reduced you to such a condition?”

  They were nearly seventeen hundred kilometres from where Valerius and the Orken had fought, yet the shock of it still seemed to hang in the air. Two crystal vials appeared on Eryndor’s palm, faint light swirling inside them.

  “You are lacerated in numerous places,” he observed, passing the vials to Valerius.

  “It will prove more efficacious if you ingest them. The restoration may take longer… but it will reach all places.”

  Valerius downed them both. The ache in his body ebbed within minutes; torn skin reknit, bruises faded. But his right arm… remained untouched.

  Ziraiah frowned. “What happened? Why isn’t his arm healing?”

  Eryndor’s response was succinct.

  “What, precisely, is the inherent limitation of my elixirs?”

  Ziraiah blinked. “…They can’t heal broken bones.” She turned back to Valerius, apologetic. “Sorry, Val.”

  “It’s fine,” he said, rolling his shoulder with a wince. “I was fighting the guy who hurt your friend.”

  Her expression darkened. “He did this to you? He was that strong?”

  Valerius exhaled slowly. “Yes and no. The strength wasn’t the problem. The problem was me being stupid enough to let our fists collide like that.”

  Eryndor’s brow furrowed. “What transpired?”

  Valerius glanced at him. “Bravo is a dangerous energy, Eryndor. Every time you use it, you’re gambling with your own body. If it slips out of control, it doesn’t just… lash out—it explodes. Violently. This isn’t my first time dealing with it.”

  His gaze drifted, and the memory pulled him under.

  ---

  Over a year ago

  High in the mountains, hundreds of kilometres from the Giant Village, Valerius sat cross-legged on a stone outcrop. He was nearly eight feet tall. Both his arms glowed an otherworldly green, vibrating with pent-up power. He clenched his fists and thrust them toward each other with all his might—

  —but they could not meet.

  The opposing Bravo forces crashed together, space between them warping, before erupting in a blinding blast.

  Esky’s voice cut through the roar.

  “Damn it—!”

  In less than a heartbeat, Esky had fortified Valerius and conjured a perfect sphere of Cushion around them, no more than four metres wide. The explosion slammed into it, pressing inward with terrifying force—contained, perfectly.

  When it was over, Esky’s glare could have cut stone.

  “Never. Ever do that again. Do you understand me? If I’m not here next time, you’ll die. I’ve told you before—Bravo is not a toy. How many times must I repeat myself before it sinks in?”

  ---

  Present

  Eryndor’s magic shimmered, replacing Valerius’s ruined clothes with a fresh set—loose, elegant robes clearly tailored for someone taller.

  Valerius tugged at the sleeve. “These yours? They’re huge.”

  Eryndor snapped his fingers. The fabric tightened, shrinking until it fit Valerius perfectly.

  “Better?”

  “Much.” Valerius rose, rolling his good arm. “I’ve got to get those relics for you.”

  As he turned to leave, Eryndor’s voice called after him. “Valerius.”

  He turned back. Five bottles of shimmering elixer floated toward him.

  Valerius caught them, slipping them into his bag. “Thanks, man.”

  He was already walking away when Ziraiah muttered, “Just try not to blow yourself up again.”

  ---

  To Be Continued...