Hakan followed Karan through the southernmost building of the facility. They entered a wide corridor that opened into an enormous, circular chamber—its walls smooth, metallic, and laced with glowing lines of energy.
"This is your combat room?" Hakan asked, glancing around the vast, empty space.
"Our top combat training arena," Karan replied. "This is where our best go all out."
Hakan raised an eyebrow. "Doesn't look like it. Place is still in one piece."
Karan smirked. "That's because the entire facility was built using ability-based architecture. It heals itself. And more importantly—there's this."
With a flick of his fingers, a deep hum filled the chamber. In seconds, a massive energy shield surged to life, forming a shimmering dome around the arena—leaving only the space above open for viewing platforms and monitoring.
"No damage leaves this space," Karan explained. "Energy from combat is absorbed and recycled to power the room. Everything you give… only makes the system stronger."
Hakan nodded, mildly impressed. "Clever design."
Then his eyes shifted upward—to the walkways and balconies now filling with personnel. Dozens, maybe hundreds, gathering. Watching. Waiting.
"You brought an audience," Hakan said with a smirk. "Nice of you to give them front-row seats to watch you get beat."
Karan only smiled.
"So… where's this Alpha Squad of yours?" Hakan asked, stretching his arms slightly.
Just then, a figure appeared behind Karan.
A woman. Blonde-haired, calm-eyed, with a quiet presence that didn't demand attention—but commanded it.
"This," Karan said, stepping aside slightly, "is Tavina Merisol Darran. The best healer in the entire Vanguard. She and I… we are Alpha Squad."
Hakan studied her briefly, then gave a small nod. "I've heard the name."
Karan turned back to him, adjusting the cuffs of his suit. "So… tell me when you're ready."
Hakan smirked. "Bring it on."
Two powerhouses stood at the center of the arena. One—a man capable of copying and evolving any power he faced. The other—adaptive, instinctual, forged by combat, shaped by war.
This wasn't just a battle.
It was a clash between reflection and resilience.
And it was about to begin.
With a blink, both men launched forward—no warning, no words. Just motion.
They clashed at the center of the arena, fists connecting with such force that the shockwave cratered the reinforced platform. Metal screamed. The floor split in a ripple of destruction—only to immediately start repairing itself, glowing seams pulling back together like living threads.
"You're strong," Hakan muttered, pushing off Karan with a burst of energy.
"But not strong enough."
He twisted mid-air and delivered a brutal kick, landing clean against Karan's side. Karan barely managed to block it, skidding backwards with sparks flying beneath his heels.
Karan grinned. "Oh, I'm just getting started."
Golden energy erupted around him like a detonation. He blurred—vanishing for a split-second—and reappeared behind Hakan with impossible speed.
Hakan's eyes narrowed. He barely had time to brace as a glowing fist slammed into his back, launching him into the barrier. He struck the containment shield hard, but the energy field absorbed and redirected the impact, slamming him back into the arena floor.
Hakan landed on his feet, crouched low.
"That's Luxarion's light, isn't it?" he asked, cracking his neck with a grin.
Karan's eyes flashed. "It is. And I've barely tapped into it."
He vanished again, light bending around his movement as he closed in for a follow-up.
But Hakan's voice echoed in the space between heartbeats—
"Photon Severance."
A pulse of silver-white light burst from Hakan's body. In that instant, his form fractured into a photonic stream—his body dematerializing into raw, searing light. The air hissed.
He moved faster than sight. Faster than thought.
CLANG.
He reformed mid-motion and slashed down, cutting straight through Karan's attack and severing the trail of golden energy in the air.
The shockwave from the counter split the entire platform in two. Cracks formed instantly—then sealed again, the arena's healing systems working overtime.
Karan staggered back.
Hakan stood tall, energy flaring around him. "You can copy Luxarion all you want. But that doesn't mean you understand what you're using."
They clashed again—at light-speed. The room filled with flashing streaks, trails of pure kinetic energy arcing in all directions.
Each strike was devastating. Each dodge left sonic booms in its wake.
Up in the observation deck, silence hung thick.
"He's… he's not just fast," Iqbal murmured.
"He's beyond fast," Tanaka added. "He's literally slicing through light."
"No wonder he beat luxarion ," Marshall whispered.
Below, the fight was escalating—raw power on one side, perfect mimicry on the other.
Karan was breathing heavier now, thoughts racing. What even is this guy? How is he keeping up—Whats his ability?
"If light won't work—" Karan muttered, a sinister grin spreading across his face, "—then try this."
A dark aura erupted from him, tendrils of void coiling around his frame. The temperature dropped. The sky dimmed.
"You might've beaten Luxarion…" he said, voice dripping with challenge, "…but what about the power of his eternal rival—Dimitri Volkov?"
Hakan's eyes narrowed.
"This punk…" he thought, reading the shift in energy. "He has Dimitri's powers too?"
He wasn't angry. He smirked.
"His potential... it really is infinite."
Karan lifted a single hand toward the sky.
"Gravebind Legion."
A dome of black shadow pulsed outward, and the earth beneath them cracked open. From the ruptures came the dead—an army wrapped in chain-bound darkness, each one glowing with the corrupted echoes of warriors long gone.
"How many people's abilities has he copied…?" Hakan muttered, brows furrowed.
"Attack!!" Karan roared.
The undead charged forward like a wave of nightmares.
Hakan didn't move.
"Photon Severance," he whispered.
In a blink, he vanished—replaced by a trail of refracted light slashes. By the time Karan blinked, half the undead were already cleaved in frozen poses, shattered by the vacuum left behind.
"Particle Dreadmill."
The remaining corpses vibrated uncontrollably, their forms unraveling like unstable atoms—until they simply… ceased. Not broken. Not destroyed. Erased.
Karan's smirk vanished.
"What the hell was that?"
Hakan cracked his knuckles. His eyes burned with focus.
"Particle Dreadmill," he said calmly. "One of my techniques. It destabilizes matter at the subatomic level. Doesn't matter if it's enchanted armor, summoned constructs, or energy-based beings. They all crumble."
Karan stared at the battlefield—once filled with a legion, now just wind and dust.
For the first time in years... he had no words.
"What kind of power is that…?" he muttered.
A realization crawled into the back of his mind—unsettling, impossible, and yet, undeniable.
Hakan read it in his eyes and stepped forward.
"You're wondering why you can't copy my abilities, right?" he said with a grin. "It's simple."
Karan said nothing.
"Remember two years ago?" Hakan continued. "The man the world mocked—the only one who didn't receive any powers when the asteroid hit?"
Karan blinked.
"…Yeah. What about him?"
Hakan stepped into the light, the dust fading behind him. His presence was unshakable. Unmoving.
"He's standing in front of you."
Karan's face shifted. Total disbelief.
"That's impossible."
"You have no powers you are 7 star… and you beat Luxarion its impossible "
"Is it?" Hakan raised a brow. "You've copied countless abilities. But you can't mimic martial mastery. You can't replicate technique born from pain, sweat, failure, and will."
His stance dropped. Perfect form. A living weapon.
"This is probably the first time you've been outmatched by someone without powers, huh?"
Karan didn't answer. He couldn't. His silence said everything.
Hakan grinned.
"Welcome to reality, Karan. This fight won't be about who has more power. It's about who knows how to use what they have.
"As if I'd ever lose to a damn nobody like you!" Karan roared, his voice echoing through the dome.
"Get ready… this is my strongest technique!"
His aura exploded outward in a violent spiral of energy. Every color of power circled around him—red, gold, void-black—like reality was unraveling around his body.
Hakan didn't flinch. He smirked. "Bring it on."
From the control room, Elian's eyes went wide. "Everyone out—now!"
"Evacuate the outer sectors immediately!" Verrian barked.
Tavina moved for the first time, grabbing stunned staff by the arm and dragging them away.
"What's going on?!" Iqbal shouted as chaos erupted around him.
"It's about to all go down!" Verrian growled.
"Wait—what?!"
"Raise ten shields, now!"
Multiple impact domes—each capable of withstanding cataclysmic energy—snapped into place over the combat chamber as the last of the watchers evacuated.
Outside the barrier, silence fell.
Inside?
Inside, something else entirely.
Karan raised his hands—
And the world began to fold.
Hakan's instincts screamed. His body tensed. His pulse slowed.
And then—
"In this sovereign void, I am the axis.
Light, dark, thought, and earth—all kneel.
Throne of Oblivion: Eternal Dreadfall."
The sky cracked like broken glass.
The ground beneath them became a twisted lotus of obsidian petals, each one burning with black flame.
A dome of black-gold void collapsed silently over the battlefield—cutting them off from everything outside.
Inside, there was nothing.
No direction. No light. No time.
Only crushing pressure and sinking thought. Hakan's vision blurred. His mind slowed. His will… bent.
Lotus mines floated like whispers of death, each one glowing, chained to soul-devouring fire. They reacted to his breath, his movement—his intent.
And at the center stood Karan.
Unmoving. Absolute.
Sigils orbited him like celestial law.
Each step he took cracked the earth with seismic force.
"You're finished, Hakan," Karan said, lifting one hand.
"With one command, your existence ends."
He inhaled.
"FA—"
"QUARKFALL EXECUTION!!!"
Hakan's voice shattered the silence.
A black hole ripped itself into existence—violent, pure, and absolute. Anti-entropy energy screamed into the void.
It collided directly with the core of Throne of Oblivion.
Two black holes. Two cosmic executions.
One born of domination.
One born of obliteration.
And then—
BOOOOOOM.
The dome ruptured.
Nine of the ten external shields fractured at once—cracks spreading like spiderwebs through supposedly invincible constructs.
A titanic explosion of black-gold energy blasted through the sky, shaking the entire facility. The ground trembled. The sea around the island roared.
Inside the epicenter—nothing could be seen.
The tenth and final shield barely held.
Outside, no one knew what had happened.
No feed. No sound. No visual.
Only one truth remained:
Something had just tried to erase reality.
The dust had finally settled.
The last barrier—scarred and flickering—somehow held. But within its dome, the battlefield had become something unrecognizable. A space of absolute void. Silence. No light. No sound. Just the aftermath of two world-ending powers clashing.
"What... what on earth was that?" Iqbal whispered, barely able to speak. His body was bruised head to toe, his hands trembling from the shock. Tanaka and Marshall were both unconscious beside him, and the dozens—hundreds—of Vanguard soldiers lay scattered, knocked out cold.
"I can't believe... humans can hold that kind of power..." Verrian muttered, kneeling, breathless. He had barely managed to shield his team from the final impact.
Inside the dome, the void began to unravel. The advanced auto-repair system—encoded into the barrier's very fabric—was restoring reality, reconstructing the ground, rewinding entropy itself.
Two large rocks floated in the center, hovering above the healing terrain.
As the ground regenerated beneath them, both rocks fell with thunderous weight.
On one lay Hakan—on his knees, face bloodied, his entire right arm torn and gushing. He could barely move.
On the other was Karan, completely unconscious. His body was laced with streaks of black, brown, and gold—a kaleidoscope of elemental residue, burned into his skin by the magnitude of what he'd unleashed.
Hakan coughed violently, blood dripping from his mouth.
"Damn that punk…" he rasped.
"He took the strongest abilities of four monsters—Ren… Dimitri… Soren… Kaelen—and forged a single, reality-shattering technique…"
His head throbbed. His limbs felt shattered.
"Quarkfall Execution… huh?" he muttered, looking at his trembling, bleeding hand.
"I countered that... perfectly. Martial will versus absolute erasure."
He laughed bitterly, breath shaking.
"One millisecond late… and I wouldn't exist right now."
He looked up, eyes half-glazed.
"Lucky for me… Karan couldn't fully control it. That one-second opening was all I needed…"
His legs trembled beneath him.
"But still… I guess I won."
He looked at Karan, unconscious.
"You really might become the strongest one day…"
"Hakan!!!" Iqbal's voice cut through the quiet as he ran toward him—his arm broken, his face cut—but still moving.
"Karan!!!" Tavina screamed as she dropped beside her partner. She tried to heal him, pouring every bit of her power into him—but nothing was working.
"Rest of the healers, move—now!" Verrian commanded. They rushed toward Hakan, forming a circle and starting immediate restoration.
Verrian looked between them, his voice trembling.
"You two… you're monsters."
He stared at Karan, then at Hakan.
"That man… Karan… he has the potential to become the most powerful being on this planet. That final technique... it was too much."
Hakan, now partially stabilized, stood—barely.
"Too strong… too unstable."
He turned and slowly walked toward Tavina, who was still trying desperately to stop the surge of golden light and darkness consuming Karan's body.
"Get back, woman." Hakan said, raising a blood-soaked hand.
"Why?! I have to heal him! He'll die if I stop!" she cried out, thinking Hakan wanted to finish him off.
But Hakan didn't flinch.
"Particle Dreadmill."
The technique hit reality like a silent scream. A distortion wave pulsed outward—ripping the golden aura and dark energy away from Karan's body, erasing them completely. The air calmed. The pressure lifted.
"You can heal him now," Hakan said, his voice cold, tired. "But he needs rest. A lot of it."
Then he turned to Verrian and Iqbal.
"I need a room. To rest."
"You'll have one," Verrian nodded quickly. "I'll see to it myself."
"That's... good to hear…" Hakan mumbled.
His legs buckled.
And then he collapsed.
"Hakan!! HAKAN!" Iqbal yelled, diving to catch him before he hit the ground. He held his brother-in-arms, shouting his name over and over, voice breaking as the battlefield finally—finally—went silent.