Silver eyes met grey ones beneath the open sky.
Wind swept across the mountainous artificial terrain, carrying the chill of the elevated atmosphere through the uneven ridges and deep valleys. The battleground stretched for kilometres in every direction, a carefully constructed wilderness of steep inclines, exposed rock faces, narrow passes, and broad plateaus. There was no stadium surrounding the combatants, no convenient circular platform to keep them within sight of the audience.
This was an arena built on a different scale.
Nathaniel adjusted his gauntlets as he surveyed the landscape. His dark hair shifting in the wind, his bangs swaying across his face. He looked toward the enormous remote observer drones hovering at various altitudes.
Each machine was roughly the size of a car, equipped with high-resolution optical arrays, spatial sensors, and enough communication hardware to transmit the battle across the Empire. Their positions formed a loose network over the terrain, tracking the combatants without restricting their movements.
Far in the distance, a structure rose above the surrounding mountains.
The central observation tower.
Approximately fifteen kilometres away.
Nathaniel could just make out its silhouette through the atmospheric haze. The tower received the drones' feeds, processed the battlefield data, and relayed the resulting broadcast to the tournament's audience.
He watched one of the drones adjust its position, its mechanical stabilizers making minute corrections against the wind.
Fifteen kilometres.
The distance was considerable, even before accounting for the terrain between them.
A conventional arena would have been easier to manage, but it would also have imposed artificial limitations on the fight. Here, there were slopes to exploit, elevation differences to account for, and enough room for either combatant to disengage without immediately reaching the boundary.
More importantly, the environment itself could become a weapon.
A displaced boulder rolling down a mountainside could gain enough momentum to threaten anyone below. A compromised ridge might collapse under concentrated force. Even the air currents around the higher peaks could affect movement and the trajectory of certain attacks.
And Rayln Azeroth would have to account for all of it.
Nathaniel turned his attention back toward her.
The Empress's daughter stood several metres away, her long white hair flowing behind her in the wind. Her grey eyes remained fixed on him behind the lenses she wore, difficult to read beneath the strands that occasionally crossed her face.
She had not spoken since they arrived.
Neither had he.
There was little point in exchanging pleasantries now. Whatever resentment remained from their previous encounter, whatever conclusions either had drawn from the Grand Circuit, would matter less than what happened once the fighting began.
Nathaniel glanced briefly at the nearest observer drone.
Its lens adjusted with a faint mechanical whir.
He could practically imagine the analysts watching from the tower, already recording their opening positions and measuring their movements.
Wonderful. At least a few thousand people are about to discover how much I dislike being studied.
His gaze returned to Rayln.
This was not another skirmish in the Grand Circuit. There were no competing objectives to divide her attention, no other squads to interfere, and no chaotic battlefield to conceal his decisions.
The terrain was vast, the surveillance extensive, and the opponent standing before him was the daughter of the most powerful woman in the Empire.
Nathaniel exhaled slowly.
He would have to be careful.
Not because he doubted his ability to fight her, but because he had no intention of discovering the full extent of her capabilities by allowing her to demonstrate them on his body.
Rayln shifted her weight.
It was a small movement, barely noticeable beneath the flowing fabric of her combat attire.
Nathaniel noticed anyway.
His expression settled into quiet concentration.
Whatever happened next, he would need to earn every advantage.
Ryker Waithiera's voice carried through the observer drones, amplified and relayed across the mountainous terrain. The slight delay between the drones and the central broadcast system was barely noticeable, though Nathaniel suspected the technicians had spent considerable effort ensuring it remained that way.
Above them, another presence drew his attention.
A silhouette stood against the sun, suspended high over the mountain range.
Grandmaster Zenith.
Even at that distance, the man was difficult to mistake for anyone else. His dark skin, much like Nathaniel's own, caught the overhead sunlight, while the white Z emblazoned across his chest glinted against his armour. The Grandmaster stood eight feet tall, his frame extraordinarily muscular without sacrificing the proportions of an elite athlete. There was a functional quality to his build, the sort of physique associated with someone who could perform feats of strength while retaining the mobility and control of a highly trained calisthenics practitioner.
He was in his fifties, yet from the ground he looked scarcely thirty.
His hair had been cut into a neat taper, the medium-length white strands on top carrying darker accents that became visible when the wind shifted them. A full but carefully maintained light beard framed his jaw, accompanied by a faint moustache.
The armour only added to his presence.
Zenith wasn't merely observing from a distant platform. He was up there in the open sky, watching the battlefield directly.
Nathaniel followed his silhouette for a moment before returning his attention to Rayln.
Eight feet tall, built like that, and still flying around in full armour.
He adjusted his stance.
The Empire really does have some ridiculous people at the top.
The drone overhead rotated, bringing its primary lens to bear on him. Ryker's voice followed a moment later.
"OUR COMPETITORS ARE IN POSITION! THE TERRAIN HAS BEEN CLEARED, THE OBSERVATION NETWORK IS ACTIVE, AND THE GRANDMASTER HIMSELF HAS JOINED US ABOVE THE BATTLEFIELD!"
A distant cheer rose from the broadcast system, presumably relayed from the audience gathered around the central observation tower and the Empire's public viewing venues.
Nathaniel barely heard it.
His attention remained divided between Rayln and Zenith.
The Grandmaster's presence was an additional reminder of the stakes. This wasn't some informal sparring match arranged between promising young fighters. The Empress's daughter was about to fight in front of the Empire, under the direct observation of one of its most formidable figures.
Nathaniel flexed his fingers inside his gauntlets.
He had no intention of underestimating her.
Nor did he intend to let the spectacle surrounding them dictate how he fought.
Across the rocky ground, Rayln adjusted her glasses. Her white hair swept over one shoulder as she lifted her chin, grey eyes settling on him with renewed focus.
The distance between them remained unchanged.
For now, neither moved.
From the comfort of her private viewing room, the Empress watched the enormous omnidirectional screen, its surface divided into overlapping feeds from the observer drones. The mountainous terrain occupied most of the display, with smaller panels tracking the combatants and monitoring the environmental readings across the battlefield.
Her eyes narrowed slightly.
"Zenith," she said, touching the communication device beside her. "What do you make of them?"
The Grandmaster's silhouette remained visible on one of the upper feeds, suspended against the open sky.
"We'll find out soon enough," came his reply through the comms.
The Empress said nothing more. Her attention returned to the central display, where Nathaniel and Rayln stood separated by several metres of exposed rock.
Elsewhere, Ryker Waithiera raised his voice.
The eyes of the tournament coordinator glowed red as his augment engaged, his attention splitting across the battlefield's active surveillance network.
"START!"
The command thundered through the drones.
Nathaniel moved on the first decibel.
His silver eyes ignited a vibrant orange.
The ground beneath his feet shuddered.
It wasn't the gradual tremor of an approaching collapse. The vibration struck hard and fast, concentrated beneath his position before spreading outward through the rock. Cracks raced across the surface, branching through the stone as the terrain within a forty-metre radius began to give way.
Then the ground fell.
Chunks of rock dropped into the newly opened depression, breaking apart as the supporting layers beneath them fractured. Dust burst upward in a dense ring, briefly obscuring Nathaniel's lower body as the surrounding surface buckled and sank.
The opening exchange had begun.
Nathaniel was already airborne when the ground finished collapsing beneath him.
Dust and fractured stone churned below as he steadied himself, his orange-lit eyes tracking Rayln through the haze.
She came at him almost immediately.
Her expression had twisted into a snarl, white hair streaming behind her as she launched herself across the broken terrain. The turquoise cores embedded in her combat gear glowed brighter, feeding Uratsu into her movements as she closed the distance.
Nathaniel barely had time to turn.
Rayln's strike met his raised forearm with enough force to send a sharp shock through his gauntlet. He caught the blow, adjusted his footing in mid air, and smirked.
There she was.
He drove his other arm back, drawing his fist close to his body. Uratsu flooded his muscles, reinforcing the contraction as Kinetic Muscle amplified the physical output. He didn't need a complicated technique for this. Just timing, leverage, and a frankly unreasonable amount of force.
His fist connected.
The impact sent Rayln hurtling backwards.
She crossed the distance in a blur, travelling nearly a hundred metres before she could recover her orientation. The observer drones shifted to follow her, their lenses struggling to keep both fighters in frame as she flew past a jagged outcrop.
Then something thin and almost invisible cut through the dust behind her.
A slash of compressed air.
Rayln reacted on instinct. She twisted her arm across her body, bringing her gauntlet into the path of the incoming attack. The blade of air skimmed past her guard, but not cleanly enough to miss everything.
A sharp line appeared across one of the royal blue storage crystals mounted on her gear.
For a fraction of a second, neither the cut nor its significance was obvious.
Then the nearest drone zoomed in.
A fresh gash marred the crystal's surface.
Nathaniel's eyes burned brighter.
The air around him began to stir.
It started with a faint distortion, the space around his outstretched hand wavering as Uratsu flowed outward and agitated the molecules themselves. The movement intensified, currents folding over one another as he manipulated the air with increasing precision.
Then he released them.
A storm of air slashes tore across the distance between them.
Rayln's eyes widened.
The first cuts struck her defensive field before she had fully established it. Invisible edges scraped against the telekinetic barrier, each impact producing a sharp distortion in the air around her. More followed, converging from slightly different angles, forcing her to expand her influence and reinforce the field before any of them could reach her body.
Then the temperature changed.
The air blades began to glow faintly as they approached, their edges shimmering with heat. Nathaniel's manipulation had gone beyond simply compressing and accelerating the atmosphere. He was agitating the molecules within the moving currents, transferring energy into the slashes until they carried a rising thermal bite alongside their cutting force.
Rayln stared at the approaching barrage, shock briefly breaking through her anger.
He's heating the air itself?
She thrust both hands forward.
Her influence expanded around her, forming a defensive field of telekinetic force. The incoming slashes struck it in rapid succession, each collision shuddering through the invisible barrier. Heated air dispersed across its surface, while the concentrated cutting edges strained against her control.
Rayln gritted her teeth.
She could withstand the onslaught, but maintaining the field demanded constant adjustment. Each slash arrived at a slightly different angle, with different force and temperature. A defence strong enough to stop one attack wasn't necessarily positioned to handle the next.
The damaged crystal on her gear caught the light.
She felt its presence at the edge of her awareness and resisted the urge to glance down. Whatever Nathaniel had done to it, she couldn't afford to lose concentration now.
Above the fractured terrain, Nathaniel watched her hold the line.
His smirk remained, but his eyes were focused.
He wasn't simply trying to overwhelm her defence.
He was making her work for every second she kept it intact.
Rayln's steel-grey eyes began to glow.
The colour shifted gradually, grey giving way to a vivid royal blue that reflected the light of the heated air around her. One of the eight storage cores mounted across her gear flared in response.
Then it went dark.
The crystal's stored Uratsu emptied into her augment in a single, deliberate expenditure.
Rayln snarled.
The telekinetic field around her didn't simply strengthen. It expanded, her influence spreading far beyond its usual limits as the consumed core forced her Esper augment past its normal operating range. The air around her rippled under the sudden pressure.
Nathaniel's smirk vanished.
She had sacrificed one of her reserves for a temporary enhancement. Judging by the intensity of the energy flooding her system, she had bought herself three minutes.
And she intended to use every second.
Rayln disappeared from his immediate field of view.
The first punch caught him across the ribs.
The second drove into his abdomen.
The third struck his jaw before he could turn his head fully enough to mitigate the impact.
Then came the rest.
Seventeen blows landed in rapid succession, each delivered through telekinetically reinforced movement and guided with the unnerving precision of an augment whose effective range had just multiplied. Nathaniel tried to bring his arms into position, but the angles kept changing. Every time he adjusted to one strike, another found an opening.
His body was hurled backwards.
He crashed through the exposed face of a rocky outcrop, stone bursting around him as his momentum carried him into the rock. The mountainside groaned under the impact. Fragments cascaded down the slope, trailing a thick cloud of dust.
For a moment, there was only the sound of settling debris.
Nathaniel dragged himself out of the fractured rock, his body aching from the concentrated punishment. Blood filled his mouth. He spat it onto the stone and wiped his lips with the back of his gauntlet.
"Shit."
His eyes remained orange, but his expression had changed. The amusement was gone, replaced by a sharper, more deliberate focus.
Seventeen strikes. Three minutes of enhanced range. One core consumed.
He had enough information to understand the immediate problem.
Not enough to solve it.
Nathaniel let Authority's influence rise around him.
The air seemed to tighten as his field spread, his control reaching out to establish a grip on the space between himself and Rayln. He caught her next advance at the point where she committed her weight, seized control of her leg, and pulled.
Her forward momentum betrayed her.
Nathaniel twisted his arm and wrenched her off balance, redirecting her descent with a violent downward motion.
Rayln struck the ground.
The impact sent a tremor through the mountainside. Stone fractured beneath her, and the terrain lurched hard enough to send loose boulders tumbling down the surrounding slopes.
Nathaniel didn't give her time to recover.
He planted both hands against the broken earth.
Uratsu poured through his arms as he drove heat into the rock beneath them. The temperature rose with brutal speed. Stone darkened, cracked, and began to soften as the minerals within it melted under the concentrated thermal assault.
A dull orange glow spread beneath the fractured surface.
Then the ground opened into a molten pool.
Lava welled up around the combatants, bubbling through the broken rock as Nathaniel continued to force heat into the earth. The surface sagged and collapsed at the edges, turning the depression into an unstable basin of incandescent stone.
The heat struck his face.
He could feel the strain of maintaining the temperature through his hands, but he held his focus on Rayln as the molten ground crept closer.
This was no longer a simple exchange of blows.
She had spent one of her eight cores to overwhelm him, and he had answered by turning their immediate surroundings into a hazard neither of them could casually ignore.
Across the battlefield, the observer drones adjusted their positions, tracking the growing pool of lava as the sensors registered a sudden and alarming spike in ground temperature.
"Let's see you deal with this."
Nathaniel smiled across the shimmering heat.
"This is what you could have done if you'd actually trained the base aspect of your power."
He didn't wait for her response.
Nathaniel spun sharply and dove straight into the lava.
The nearest observer drone veered sideways, its optics struggling to maintain a clear image through the rising thermal distortion. For an instant, his silhouette vanished beneath the incandescent surface.
Then the lava moved.
A translucent field surrounded Nathaniel's body, Authority's influence holding the molten material away from him as he descended. The heat pressed against his defences, the orange glow reflecting across his gauntlets and illuminated face. He reached into the viscous mass and seized control of its movement, Uratsu feeding into his influence until the lava itself began to respond to his direction.
He wasn't merely heating it anymore.
He was shaping it.
Nathaniel twisted his body and drove upward, spinning out of the molten pool as the material followed his movements. Long strands of superheated lava stretched behind him, drawn into narrow, twisting filaments by the forces he imposed upon them.
His smile widened.
Then he released them.
The strands snapped forward.
They crossed the intervening distance with startling speed, their trajectories bending and changing as Nathaniel altered the forces acting upon them. One moment, a filament travelled like a whip. The next, its path kinked sharply, the molten material accelerating along a new vector without the usual delay of a physical projectile.
Rayln's eyes widened.
Her enhanced Esper field responded instinctively, expanding to intercept the incoming mass. Telekinetic force caught the first strands, arresting their advance before they could strike her.
But the lava did not behave like an ordinary projectile.
Nathaniel kept changing the forces acting upon it. The strands stretched, divided, and swept around the edges of her defence, their movement shifting faster than a conventional attack should have been able to manage. The heat pouring from them added another problem. Even where her field prevented direct contact, the thermal load threatened to overwhelm the space around her.
Rayln clenched her teeth and reinforced her barrier.
A filament curved sharply toward her left flank.
She redirected it.
Two more altered course in response.
For the first time since consuming her core, she looked genuinely uncertain.
Her expanded range had given her more room to exert her influence, but Nathaniel was making the attack's behaviour itself a moving target. She could intercept the lava, redirect it, or reinforce the field against its heat. Doing all three while tracking every shifting strand was another matter entirely.
Above the battlefield, the drones continued to follow the exchange.
Nathaniel hovered over the molten basin, his own field shimmering around him as the remaining lava twisted through the air under his control.
He watched Rayln's defence, still smiling.
He had given her a demonstration of what precision could accomplish.
Now he wanted to see what she had learned from it.
"Quit talking!"
Rayln's voice cut through the roar of the molten basin.
"I need no lectures from someone beneath me!"
She spread her fingers.
The force wave struck the environment in every direction, an expanding pulse of telekinetic pressure that caught the suspended lava and scattered it. Molten strands broke apart into hundreds of glowing droplets, flung outward across the battlefield. Some splattered against the exposed rock, burning through its surface. Others cooled rapidly as they travelled, leaving trails of smoke and incandescent fragments in their wake.
Rayln lowered her hands, her royal-blue eyes fixed on Nathaniel.
He was still smiling.
That irritated her more than the lecture had.
Then she noticed his hands.
The air around his gauntlets was behaving strangely. It compressed inward, layer upon layer, an immense volume of atmosphere forced into a rapidly tightening space. The distortion became visible as the surrounding light bent subtly around his fingers.
Nathaniel's orange eyes narrowed.
The air began to ionise.
A faint electrical crackle emerged from the compressed mass, growing into sharp blue-white discharges that crawled across his gauntlets. The surrounding atmosphere responded with a rising hiss as the accumulating charge intensified.
Rayln shifted her stance.
She had no time to determine what he was preparing.
Nathaniel moved.
He crossed beneath her relative position in a sudden burst, slipping through the space her expanded field was currently prioritising elsewhere. Her eyes widened as she registered his movement, but his hands were already opening.
The compressed, ionised air discharged.
Lightning came down.
Blue-white bolts forked through the sky, converging on Rayln's position with a violence that turned the surrounding rock into a field of stark shadows. The electrical discharge branched through the turbulent atmosphere, its paths shifting as the ionised channels provided routes for the current.
Rayln's defensive field snapped into place.
The first bolt struck it with a blinding flash.
The impact forced her barrier inward, the telekinetic field distorting under the sudden electrical assault. Additional branches followed, hammering the same area and spreading across the outer edges of her defence. The air cracked with successive reports, and the smell of ozone swept across the battlefield.
For one brief moment, Rayln was lost behind the glare.
Nathaniel watched from below, his gauntlets still crackling with residual charge.
"Liked that?" he called, his grin returning. "Learned it from George."
The lightning illuminated his face.
"He's a pretty good teacher."
In his private viewing room, Ethan cringed as the lightning engulfed his sister.
The display tracked the electrical discharge from several angles, capturing the moment Rayln's defensive field buckled beneath the successive strikes. He leaned forward, eyes narrowed behind his glasses, watching for signs of how much of the attack had actually reached her.
He knew Rayln was tough. He also knew she had a habit of responding to humiliation by doubling down on whatever approach had failed her.
What bothered him was Nathaniel.
The bastard looked like he was having fun.
Ethan replayed the preceding moments in his head. The heated air slashes, the manipulation of molten rock, and now the lightning. Nathaniel hadn't necessarily demonstrated a collection of unrelated abilities. Much of what he was doing appeared to involve changing the behaviour of the materials and forces around him, applying his power in ways that were not immediately obvious.
He was messing around with the particles themselves, finding different applications for the same underlying principle.
And he was doing it against someone who had spent a core to increase her range.
Ethan grimaced.
"Rayln, what the hell are you doing?"
He wasn't sure whether he was asking her to fight smarter or simply begging her not to give Nathaniel another opportunity to embarrass her.
From her private viewing room, the Empress watched the same exchange on her enormous omnidirectional screen.
Her expression remained composed, but her eyes had narrowed.
There was something unusual about Nathaniel's combat style. He moved between applications with an ease that suggested experience far beyond the limited set of abilities listed in his public records. The way he manipulated air, transferred heat, and now produced an electrical discharge suggested a fighter who understood how to push an augment beyond its most obvious application.
She couldn't yet determine whether he possessed several compatible abilities or had found a way to make one power serve many purposes.
Either possibility deserved attention.
Her gaze shifted briefly to Rayln's feed.
The girl had potential. The Empress had never doubted that. Rayln's Esper augment was not weak in any meaningful sense. Its limited natural range and modest raw output had simply convinced her daughter that it was inadequate beside the more spectacular abilities of her peers.
That conviction had shaped her training.
Rayln had idolised Alexis Boulevard, and somewhere along the way, she had adopted the belief that a supposedly weak augment could be compensated for by overwhelming physical output. The external Uratsu storage cores had become the answer: artificial reserves that could reinforce her body, increase the force she exerted, and temporarily push her augment beyond its ordinary limits.
It was an effective approach.
It was also a narrow one.
Rayln had invested so much effort into making her power hit harder that she had neglected the possibilities offered by precision, efficiency, and control. The very qualities that made Esper unusual had been pushed aside in favour of raw strength.
The Empress watched Nathaniel's latest attack fade from the screen, her attention returning to the young man beneath the drifting electrical haze.
What would Rayln have become if she had trained her augment instead of trying to overcome it?
She didn't allow the thought to settle into regret.
Her daughter was still fighting, and the duel was far from over.
But for the first time that evening, the Empress was no longer watching simply to judge who would win.
She was watching to understand what Nathaniel Alderman had seen in her daughter that Rayln herself refused to recognise.
"Do you know why I'm purposefully moving like this?"
Nathaniel's laughter carried across the fractured mountainside.
Rayln steadied herself, her defensive field still flickering from the lightning strikes. She didn't answer. Her steel-grey eyes, now glowing royal blue, followed his movements as he brought his palms together.
Uratsu gathered between them.
At first, it resembled a dense knot of energy, its surface rippling as Nathaniel forced more of his reserves into an increasingly compact space. Then the energy itself ignited.
Flame erupted around his hands.
It wasn't an ordinary fire. The Uratsu burned with a plasma-like intensity, its light shifting between orange and deep crimson as Nathaniel compressed it further. The turbulent shell contracted, drawing inward until the mass began to resemble a miniature stellar core.
Rayln's expression changed.
She recognised the shape.
She had seen something similar during the Core Capture exercise, when Nathaniel had used a technique against Kagami that had ended their exchange in a devastating explosion.
That attack.
The centre of the forming sphere darkened, developing a dense, almost black glow that seemed to swallow the light around it. Orange and crimson plasma twisted along its surface, held in place by forces that made the surrounding air behave strangely.
The temperature around Nathaniel became difficult to reconcile.
The space immediately surrounding the sphere grew cold, while a concentrated pocket of superheated air persisted closer to its surface. Heat and cold occupied opposing layers around the attack, the result of Nathaniel forcing energy and molecular motion into sharply controlled regions rather than allowing the heat to disperse naturally.
Condensation formed briefly in the cooler air before evaporating near the sphere's outer boundary.
Loose grit trembled across the rock beneath his feet.
Nathaniel kept feeding the core.
He had spent the opening of the duel demonstrating different applications of his control. Air, heat, molten stone, electrical discharge. Each attack had forced Rayln to respond to something new, making her divide her attention between defence, observation, and the need to keep him from dictating the pace.
Now he was done demonstrating.
He lifted his gaze to meet hers.
"Let's go," he said, the grin on his face widening as the dark centre of the sphere pulsed between his palms. "I'm busting that defence of yours with this."
The plasma around the core tightened.
"Pseudo Hellcore."
For the first time since consuming her storage core, Rayln stopped advancing.
The attack was familiar enough for her to recognise the danger, but not familiar enough to know exactly how to stop it.
And Nathaniel had made certain she had spent the entire fight learning that the way he used his power was never quite what it first appeared to be.
Nathaniel moved.
One instant, he stood beyond Rayln's defensive field, the Pseudo Hellcore burning between his palms. The next, he had crossed the distance and appeared directly in front of her.
Barely a metre separated them.
Rayln's eyes widened behind her glasses.
The orb began to destabilise.
The dark centre pulsed unevenly as the plasma surrounding it tightened, then buckled under the pressure Nathaniel had forced into its core. The air around his hand warped. His fingers shifted, his wrist turning until his palm faced directly toward her.
She understood what he was doing a fraction too late.
Nathaniel thrust his hand forward.
The Pseudo Hellcore burst.
It didn't detonate outward in every direction. Nathaniel's influence forced the expanding energy into a concentrated cone, unleashing a violent torrent of superheated plasma and compressed force directly into Rayln's defensive field.
The barrier took the impact.
For a split second, the telekinetic surface held, its invisible boundary bowing inward under the pressure. Then the concentrated discharge began stripping it away, layer after layer, the effect resembling a sandblaster tearing through a wall. The field fractured wherever the attack concentrated, its carefully maintained structure unable to distribute the incoming force quickly enough.
Rayln thrust both hands forward.
Her Esper augment strained to compensate, pouring the remaining energy from her consumed crystal into the defensive field. The royal-blue glow in her eyes intensified as she tried to reinforce the failing barrier, shifting her influence toward the points where Nathaniel's attack was doing the most damage.
It wasn't enough.
The first crystal had already been spent to extend her range. Now the reserve sustaining that enhancement was being consumed to keep her defence intact, and the distinction between maintaining the field and preventing it from collapsing had all but disappeared.
A sharp crack split the air.
The outer layer of her barrier gave way.
The discharge continued, hammering into the remaining defence until the entire field shuddered and dissolved beneath the sustained assault. The last of the enhanced energy drained away as her first crystal's expenditure reached its limit.
Rayln's eyes returned toward their natural steel-grey.
Nathaniel remained directly in front of her, his palm extended as the final remnants of the Pseudo Hellcore dispersed into the air.
The rock beneath them had been scoured into a shallow trench. Heat shimmered above the gouged stone, and fragments of incandescent material cooled along its edges.
For the first time in the duel, Rayln had no defensive field between herself and Nathaniel.
And he was close enough that she couldn't afford to waste the opening he had just created.
Rayln's hand darted toward another storage core.
Nothing happened.
Her fingers trembled against the mounting, and for a moment, she couldn't understand why. She had reserves left. She still had cores capable of supplying her with the Uratsu she needed to restore her advantage.
But the cold had caught up with her.
The Pseudo Hellcore had done more than tear apart her defensive field. Its violent compression and discharge had left the surrounding environment stripped of heat, creating a pocket of bitter cold around the shattered ground. The temperature difference was so abrupt that the warmth she had taken for granted moments earlier was gone.
Rayln shuddered.
Her breath came out in a pale cloud. The fingers she had intended to use to activate another core felt stiff, and her thoughts struggled to keep pace with what had just happened.
She had been ready to overpower him.
Instead, her defence had been dismantled, her temporary enhancement had ended, and she was standing in the aftermath of an attack whose full mechanics she still didn't understand.
Nathaniel began walking toward her.
His smile grew with every step.
Thermobaric effects...
His attention drifted briefly to the scorched trench between them, then to the strange thermal gradient surrounding the impact site.
If I can control the distribution properly, could I induce a thermobaric explosion?
His mind was already racing ahead, cataloguing possibilities.
And if I ever get precise enough with the energy itself... controlled fission might be possible.
He filed the thought away. Interesting, certainly. Not something to experiment with in the middle of a televised duel.
Rayln finally managed to move her hand toward the next crystal.
Nathaniel reached her first.
He caught her right gauntlet before she could activate it.
"What are you..."
She barely finished the question before his fingers closed around the mounting. A sharp twist loosened the assembly, and he pulled three of the remaining storage cores free in one efficient motion.
Rayln stared at him.
He released the now lighter gauntlet, keeping the three crystals in his hand.
The count was simple. Of her original eight cores, one had been consumed to extend her augment's range, one had been damaged by his earlier air slash, and three now rested in Nathaniel's possession. Three untouched cores remained mounted on her gear.
He had not destroyed them.
He had simply removed them from her reach.
Nathaniel glanced down at the crystals, then back at Rayln. His smile was almost apologetic, though there was nothing particularly apologetic about the way he held her stolen reserves.
"See, that's the problem with relying on external batteries," he said. "Someone can take them away."
Rayln's face tightened, shock giving way to humiliation and anger.
Nathaniel took a measured step back, still holding the three cores.
He had made his point.
Whether she was willing to learn from it was another matter entirely.
"I've only used a tenth of my reserves," Nathaniel said.
He continued walking toward her, turning one of the stolen crystals between his fingers before closing his fist around it.
"Don't look down on what you consider weak."
Rayln's expression hardened.
For a moment, she remained perfectly still. Then her eyes dropped to the three untouched cores still mounted on her gear.
Nathaniel recognised the change in her posture.
"Oh?"
The cores ignited simultaneously.
Royal blue light flooded their housings as Rayln drew out every remaining measure of stored Uratsu she could access. The crystals dimmed almost immediately, their reserves pouring into her body and augment in a single desperate surge.
She wasn't saving anything.
Nathaniel's smile faded slightly.
Rayln launched herself at him.
She crossed the gap before he could properly reposition, wrapping her arms around his torso and locking them around his neck. Her legs closed around his waist, anchoring her body against his as her entire remaining output concentrated into one objective.
Crush him.
The force hit Nathaniel from every direction.
His boots ground into the fractured stone. The air around them buckled as Rayln's telekinetic influence compressed inward, her control abandoning finesse in favour of overwhelming pressure. She was no longer trying to outmanoeuvre him or dismantle his defences piece by piece.
She intended to make the entire difference between them irrelevant.
Rock beneath Nathaniel's feet shattered.
The fracture raced outward, splitting the mountain's exposed surface into enormous plates. Then the plates began to disintegrate, crushed by the escalating pressure radiating through the structure. Boulders broke apart before they could fall. Dust erupted in expanding clouds as the mountainside started collapsing beneath the pair.
The observer drones scattered, their stabilisers fighting the violent disturbance while their sensors struggled to track two figures inside the expanding cloud of pulverised stone.
Nathaniel felt the pressure climb.
His gauntlets creaked. The muscles across his shoulders and back tightened as he braced against the force squeezing his body. Rayln had committed everything she had left, turning her augment into a crushing field centred on the two of them.
A final gambit.
She wasn't trying to win a prolonged exchange anymore. She was betting that her maximum output could break him before his control, technique, or remaining reserves could find an answer.
Nathaniel looked down at her.
Her face was clenched with effort, her white hair whipping through the dust. She held on with everything she had, even as the mountain beneath them vanished into a collapsing mass of pulverised rock.
For the first time in the fight, he didn't smile.
Not because he had run out of options.
Because Rayln had finally stopped trying to imitate the kind of fighter she thought she needed to be.
She was using her own power, in her own way, with everything she had left.
And Nathaniel would have to answer it.
Nathaniel felt his bones creak.
Kinetic Muscle responded almost immediately, accumulating the force pressing against his body and converting a portion of the punishment into stored output. It wasn't enough to relieve the pressure. Not yet. Rayln's influence continued to intensify, crushing the remaining mountain beneath them into a widening crater.
"JUST DIE!" Rayln screamed. "YOU ANNOYING COMMONER!"
Her voice broke halfway through the words.
The force multiplied.
Tenfold.
Nathaniel's body lurched as the increased pressure threatened to fold him in on himself. Orange light began crackling across his skin, tracing the contours of his muscles and spilling through the gaps in his combat gear. His gauntlets groaned beneath the strain.
Rayln was crying.
Tears streaked down her face as she clung to him, pouring everything she had into the crushing field. Her expression was a mess of fury, desperation, and humiliation. She had spent her reserves, sacrificed her defence, and abandoned every measured approach she might have taken.
Now she was determined to make certain he couldn't walk away from her.
Nathaniel yelled as blood burst from the places where her grip constricted him. The friction of their struggling bodies abraded his skin beneath her relentless pressure. His vision flickered, and for one brief instant, the orange glow in his eyes sparked red.
Inside him, Arc watched.
He recognised the moment for what it was: the point where Nathaniel's available options had narrowed to a handful of increasingly unpleasant choices.
The vestige smiled.
There you are.
Nathaniel's expression twisted.
Authority surged.
He committed another forty percent of his remaining reserves, forcing his influence outward against Rayln's crushing field. His hair rose under the accumulating energy, individual strands standing on end as orange light crawled across his body. Veins bulged along his neck and forearms, and the pressure around him distorted as his influence contested hers.
His bones still creaked.
His body still threatened to give way.
But the orange glow in his eyes stabilised, becoming a solid, unwavering light.
Nathaniel moved.
Not against Rayln's strength directly, but against the way she was applying it.
He could feel the distribution of her influence across his body, the directional pressure that made her grip so devastating. Rather than attempting to overpower every point at once, he redirected the force acting around his centre of mass and generated lift beneath himself.
The crater fell away.
Two thousand metres of pulverised mountain stretched beneath him as Nathaniel rose through the dust, carrying Rayln with him. The observer drones scrambled to reacquire their positions, tracking the pair as they emerged from the immense depression her attack had carved into the landscape.
Rayln's grip remained locked around him.
Nathaniel looked down at the three storage cores clenched in his palm.
His blood had seeped from his neck and run across his hand, coating the crystals he had taken from her. As it made contact with their surfaces, the royal-blue cores began changing colour.
Orange spread through them.
Nathaniel noticed.
Even now, some part of his mind continued cataloguing the anomaly, registering the alteration without allowing curiosity to interrupt the immediate problem.
I'll examine that later.
He turned his attention back to Rayln's grip.
Her augment was applying force through several points around his torso and neck, reinforcing the hold with telekinetic pressure. He could feel where the force converged, how it distributed itself across his body, and where the mechanical advantage of her position was strongest.
He didn't need to break her grip everywhere.
He needed to break it once.
Authority shifted the forces acting around his torso, creating a brief opening in the crushing arrangement. Kinetic Muscle supplied the accumulated output. Nathaniel drove that force through his body, twisted against the hold, and pushed himself free of the worst of her constriction.
Rayln's eyes widened.
He had escaped.
Before she could re-establish her grip, Nathaniel struck.
The first blow landed across her guard.
The second followed before she could recover.
Then the sequence accelerated.
Seventeen strikes.
The same number she had landed on him earlier, delivered with the same ruthless efficiency, each blow timed to disrupt her balance and prevent her from rebuilding the crushing field. His fist, elbow, and reinforced forearm moved through the openings created by each preceding impact. There was no wasted motion, no pause for a taunt.
Rayln's strength was still formidable, but her reserves were exhausted, her control disrupted, and her body had reached its limit.
The final blow knocked her unconscious.
The air shifted.
Grandmaster Zenith descended from the sky, his enormous frame dropping toward the shattered battlefield. Neon-green light burned in his eyes as he surveyed the crater, the pulverised mountainside, and the young man standing at its edge with the unconscious princess in his arms.
Then Zenith landed.
Not a pebble moved.
No dust rose around his boots. No impact sounded against the stone, and Nathaniel couldn't detect even the faintest disturbance in the surrounding air that might have betrayed the force behind the landing.
The eight-foot-tall Grandmaster simply stood there, armour catching the sunlight, as though gravity had made a private exception for him.
His neon-green eyes travelled over Nathaniel's battered body before settling on Rayln.
A smile spread across his face.
"Impressive."
He sounded genuinely pleased.
In the central broadcast booth, Ryker Waithiera had completely abandoned whatever remained of his prepared commentary.
"WHAT DID WE JUST WITNESS?!"
His eyes blazed red as his attention split between the incoming drone feeds. The other presenters were no better. Voices overlapped, hands flew across consoles, and the main display replayed the final exchange from multiple angles.
The audience feeds were erupting.
Some were still trying to comprehend the crater. Others were arguing over the seventeen-strike sequence, the lightning, or the strange transformation of Rayln's storage cores. The analysts had already begun requesting footage of Nathaniel's final counter, while the commentators struggled to explain how a duel between two young knights had ended with an entire mountain reduced to pulverised rock.
Ryker slapped a hand against his console.
"AND HE'S STILL STANDING! NATHANIEL ALDERMAN HAS DEFEATED THE EMPRESS'S DAUGHTER!"
Nathaniel paid none of it much attention.
He looked down at Rayln, then carefully lowered her into a more secure position before setting her on the surviving rock. He kept one hand behind her shoulders until he was certain she wouldn't slump awkwardly onto the ground.
His own body protested the movement.
He ignored it.
Zenith watched in silence, the faint smile still present.
Nathaniel glanced at the unconscious girl, his expression settling into something between irritation and disappointment.
"Don't be a bitch about it," he muttered, loud enough for the nearby Grandmaster and the closest observer drone to pick up. "Learn to use your abilities holistically, entitled royal."
He straightened, though the movement cost him more effort than he wanted to admit.
"You're better than the way you fight."
For a moment, the noise from the broadcast booth seemed very far away.
Nathaniel looked at the damaged battlefield, then at the remaining cores in his palm, their surfaces still stained with his blood and glowing an unfamiliar orange.
He had questions.
A great many of them.
But first, someone needed to get Rayln to the medical team.
And preferably someone else could explain to the tournament organisers why their carefully constructed mountainous arena now had a two-kilometre-deep crater in it.
Nathaniel was met by the sound of Squad Four cheering before he had even made it halfway back from the ruined battlefield.
George was the first to reach him, grinning broadly as he slapped Nathaniel across the back with enough force to make the already battered young man reconsider his definition of friendly encouragement.
"THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT!" George bellowed. "You actually turned the damn mountain into gravel!"
"Thank you for the insightful commentary," Nathaniel replied dryly.
Ria appeared beside them and tossed him several small vials filled with jade-green light. He caught them without looking, the glass clinking softly together in his palm.
"Recovery supplements," she explained. "Use them before you collapse and embarrass us."
"How thoughtful."
"You're welcome."
Nathaniel turned one of the vials between his fingers, watching the green radiance swirl inside. His lips curled into a faint smirk.
He had no intention of wasting them just yet. Once he had some privacy, he could activate Max-Regen and restore himself properly. The supplements would be useful to keep, especially with the remaining duel looming over him. There was little point in spending resources he could preserve for later.
Still, he accepted them without argument. Refusing would only invite questions he had no interest in answering.
His gaze drifted toward the distant observation tower, where the enormous screens continued broadcasting the aftermath of his fight.
One Azeroth down.
One remained.
And Ethan Azeroth was hardly an opponent he could afford to underestimate.
Rayln had possessed a dangerous augment, an impressive collection of energy reserves, and enough raw force to pulverise an entire mountainside when pushed into desperation. Her biggest weakness had been the narrow way she approached combat. Once Nathaniel understood how her Esper worked, he could begin dismantling her advantages.
Ethan would be different.
The crowned heir had the reputation, the experience, and the strength to justify his position at the top of their generation. Nathaniel had already seen enough to know that the prince wasn't simply coasting on his royal bloodline.
A fight against Ethan would demand considerably more than finding an opening in an opponent's technique.
Nathaniel rolled his shoulders, feeling the lingering strain settle deep in his muscles. His expression remained relaxed, but his thoughts had already begun sorting through the possibilities.
How bad would it be to fight the crowned heir at full strength?
The question was almost amusing.
Almost.
He glanced at his teammates. George was still riding the excitement of the victory, while Ria watched Nathaniel with the scrutinising expression of someone trying to determine just how much damage he had sustained. The others were celebrating too, their enthusiasm carrying across the staging area.
They had earned it.
Squad Four had already secured the base competition, guaranteeing themselves a substantial reward in the form of opportunities and resources. The victory over Rayln was another matter entirely. A win against Ethan could elevate their standing even further, giving the squad leverage that might otherwise take years to acquire.
Nathaniel had no intention of wasting that possibility.
He tucked the vials away and looked toward the arena's distant screens, where the crowned heir's name remained displayed beside his own.
One more win.
If he could pull it off, Squad Four would leave the Azeran Circuit with more than the rewards they had already secured. They would have the attention of the empire, better access to its resources, and a reputation that would make future opportunities considerably easier to pursue.
Not a bad return for a few days of fighting.
Nathaniel's smirk widened slightly.
Now he only had to defeat the strongest member of the imperial generation to get it.
Nathaniel caught her before she could fall.
For a moment, he remained suspended above the devastated terrain, holding her against his chest. The orange light across his body flickered unevenly before gradually dimming. His breathing was ragged, and the muscles in his arms trembled from the strain of sustaining Authority while enduring her enhanced crushing force.
Then he began his descent.
He landed on a surviving stretch of rocky ground at the edge of the crater, one knee bending to absorb the impact. His boots scraped across the stone before he managed to steady himself.
Rayln lay unconscious in his arms.
Nathaniel adjusted his hold, carrying her in a bridal carry to keep her from striking the ground.
He was exhausted.
Not defeated, not even close, but exhausted enough that the difference mattered.
His gaze dropped briefly to the orange-tinted cores in his palm. Blood still marked their surfaces.
Another question for later.
For now, he looked toward the nearest observer drone, its lens fixed on the two of them.
"Someone should probably get a medic," he muttered.
His arms tightened around Rayln as his knees threatened to buckle.
Then he took one unsteady breath and remained standing.