The sixteenth time Adama leapt into the Colosseum, he started to feel that something was off.

  The location functioned the same way as always. The monsters weren’t any different. But something in the air had shifted. Adama couldn’t quite put his finger on in initially, yet as his battles continued, he started to figure it out. It was like someone, or something, was suddenly watching him, though the feeling was coming from every angle. Like the walls themselves had eyes. The feeling nagged dimly in the back of his mind, and Adama was considering dropping his current fight to search for the observer when the world shifted around him.

  Without warning, the monsters began dying. One by one, they keeled over then shriveled up, eventually turning into piles of dark ash that quickly littered the ground all around the swordsman. Before he could really react, the ground shook with the force of a Category 8 earthquake. Debris hurtled down from the ceiling, kicking up huge clouds of dust as it fell perfectly on the thresholds of all four exits to the room. The rocks blocked off every avenue of escape, and Adama’s eyes narrowed as he held his sword at the ready, wary of attack from every possible angle. He quickly equipped his good, dragon skin robes, eager for any extra protection he could get.

  The rumbling eventually stopped, leaving Adama in darkness, which he sat in for a few seconds before four purple torches ignited on the wall high above him. They cast the room in an eerie glow, and Adama abruptly sensed a strange presence within the chamber directly above him. His eyes snapped upward as Adama jumped back, sword glinting in the amethyst torchlight as he watched a small figure fall from the ceiling and into the direct center of the room. The swordsman’s eyes widened as he felt the creature’s aura wash over him, the air around him now tasting of death and sorrow as he took in this new foe.

  It was little different from a normal looking Spartoi, though this skeleton warrior was a dark black rather than bleached white. Within the hollowed socket of its eyes floated twin wisps of purple flame, and it carried dual obsidian swords whose backs blazed with fire of the same color. Its head turned at an unnatural angle to lock onto Adama.

  Without further hesitation, both fighters launched their opening attacks.

  Adama threw out a Rippling Sword, though he was shocked when he watched the monster mirror his vertical strike and fire off a blade-shaped projectile of violet fire in response. The spells collided in a blinding explosion, and when the dust settled, the monster’s attack continued on towards Adama, diminished yet still dangerous. It forced him to dive hastily to the right. As he came up from his dive, the skeleton stepped forward in a floor-cracking jump, its blades consumed in a raging inferno as it moved to annihilate the beleaguered swordsman.

  Sparks flew and rock shattered as the warriors were surrounded in a flurry of strikes, the monster swinging both blades in a frenzy of vicious blows as Adama deftly defended. It outclassed him in nearly every way. Speed, strength, and even magic. He tried to use the Endless Sword to deflect some of its attacks, only to have the magic get dispersed by that ethereal fire. Merely blocking the attacks was enough to cause damage, the violet inferno enough to tax the limits of even his fire-retardant robes. Only his preternatural skill kept him alive through the first few exchanges, and Adama hurried to activate the Flowing Sword to turn the tide of their stat differences. His arms trembled less and less as the sword’s silver glow waxed in power, their rapid-fire exchange of blows enough to make the world itself tremble with its ever-increasing force. Adama’s eyes searched hungrily for advantage, but the monster had its own cards to play.

  The swordsman’s only prewarning was the tickle of danger-sense that ran down the back of his neck, and he didn’t hesitate to leap backwards as the skeleton unhinged its jaw and let out an uncanny scream. Its body was quickly engulfed in a tremendous, expanding column of fire that licked at the hems of Adama’s sleeves as he flew back. The heat alone was enough to make him wince, the skin on his face and hands swiftly blistering, and the Flowing Sword dropped as the chain attack was broken.

  As Adama landed, the creature forged swords of brilliant amethyst fire in the air above itself, then sent them shooting straight after him in streaks of magical light. Adama dipped, ducked, and cartwheeled his way through the barrage, yet he was still knocked off balance as the projectiles made contact with the wall behind him and exploded into air-rending spheres of power. He didn’t have time to gather himself before the monster was on him again, and fire from one of its swords scorched his left eye bad enough that he largely lost the use of it.

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  Adama was pushed on the backfoot again, but he managed to use his supernatural battle senses to make up for his reduced vision. He managed to forge a Hidden Sword behind the skeleton and fire off an Endless Sword, taking a few chips of black bone off the beast’s neck and shoulders. It wasn’t much, yet it proved the monster could be wounded, and the Apex Spartoi howled in anger at the realization that Adama had exploited its blind spot. The swordsman dodged his way through another sequence of fire-column + flame-sword barrage + flaming-strike frenzy, mind slowly taking in the monster’s habits even as its flames scorched his body.

  The creature’s attack patterns with its magic were obviously very simple. Summon the inferno when it felt threatened, then strike out with a ‘Rippling Sword’ or a fire-sword barrage when Adama was further away. Its aim was slightly getting better, though it definitely preferred to get in close to try and crush him physically. Its sword technique was rough but ferocious, executing more sophisticated combos than any of the normal Spartoi at incredible speeds. Adama fought tooth and nail to contend with the monster, deflecting and parrying everything he could rather than block its strikes directly. They jumped and cut their way around the room in a thin film of kicked-up dust and flying debris, the whole chamber perpetually trembling from the shockwaves of the titanic battle.

  More complex or otherwise, Adama was steadily getting a better feel for the duelist’s attack patterns. His battle trance took over, and he slipped through and around the monster’s devastating swings more easily than ever before. Duck, twist, step back, quick parry, step left, lean right to dodge one blade while casually deflecting the other. He leaned backward to allow a horizontal swing to pass narrowly overhead, his one good eye glimmering in the firelight as it impassively watched the blade pass by harmlessly above him. Adama then activated his Flowing Sword again, trying to assert more dominance as he pushed forward on the offensive. He managed to draw a few more hairline cracks in the monster’s body before it created another explosion to send him scurrying away.

  Even though he’d been foiled again, Adama wasn’t concerned. He was well on his way to fully comprehending the monster’s movements. Once he’d done that, it was only a matter of time before he created an opening and closed in for the kill. Nothing could disrupt his mental tranquility as he slid to the left, allowing a slice of flame to go whizzing past his body as he retaliated with a Rippling Sword of his own. The monster screamed as it shattered the attack, then sent several more magic slices right after at him from different angles in rapt succession, trying to catch Adama in a misstep.

  No such error was forthcoming as the swordsman floated his way through the storm of fire, shooting back with his own Rippling Swords to keep the monster distracted if nothing else. He sneakily created another Hidden Blade inside a crack near the creature’s right foot and detonated another Endless Sword, scoring another set of tiny wounds on the monster’s body. Adama gave a sardonic half-smile as the monster let out an unnatural-sounding grumble, then raced to close the distance again. The more hits he scored, the greater the chance that something critical would fail eventually. His own body was battered and burned, but Adama couldn’t really feel it as he engaged with the duelist again, Hearthblade blazing to life with the Flowing Sword as he prepared to go for the kill. Deflect, parry, sidestep, lean right, lean left, parry…

  Block?

  The monster surprised Adama as it pulled out a move he’d never seen so far, whipping its body around in a vicious roundhouse kick. He got the flat of his blade up in time to block, but the force sent him rocketing backward at the speed of sound. Adama crashed into the wall behind him in a cloud of crushed rock, coughing up blood from sudden internal injuries. He rolled hurriedly to the right as the monster’s swords plunged into the wall, the Spartoi dashing after him with all the tenacity of the hounds of hell. Adama was suddenly aware of the poor condition his body was in as he exchanged another sequence of blows with the fiery foe, his remaining good eye narrowed in thought.

  The monster was clearly learning. It wasn’t as clever as Adama himself, but it was smart enough that it could keep him on his toes as it varied its combos with all the speed and brutality of a monster with Level 6 stats. It pressed him further, forcing him to spit out more blood, and Adama slowly recognized he was losing this fight. Trance or otherwise, the enemy’s power was simply too overwhelming. His body simply couldn’t keep up with the rhythm of the battle. His mind searched carefully for a solution, crossing off several options in rapid succession. He couldn’t outlast the enemy, and any desperate gambles were likely to fail. The monster never gave him any breathing room to either, so using an Elixir wasn’t an option either.

  Adama fought and fought until his overtaxed mind suddenly plucked a solution out of mid-air with all the force of revelation. He started the chant for a full-powered Endless Sword, his eye glinting with cunning as his relentless enemy sought to destroy him with another barrage of powerful magic. Adama danced around it all, holding his composure as he finally came to the end of his chant:

  “Endless Sword!”

  The swordman triumphantly thrust Hearthblade into a key crack in the ground as the monster’s swords flared to block his attack. But he wasn’t aiming for the monster. He was aiming for the battlefield.

  With a final rumble, the magic detonated underground, cracks spiderwebbing all throughout the floor. Then, man and monster were cast into free fall.