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Every strike between Arthur and H'El shattered the air, rippling shockwaves that sent tidal walls spiraling into the horizon. Arthur blocked a blow that would've leveled a mountain, shadows erupting from his forearm like liquid armor. His other hand caught H'El's wrist mid-swing and twisted, throwing the Kryptonian backward through a column of vaporized water. Arthur's eyes gleamed violet in the sky's electric blue haze.
'I could use the Gold Kryptonite that I took from Batman…' he thought, his mind sharp even as his body moved with instinct, blocking, weaving, striking. '…and strip this guy of his powers. But I'm afraid that it wouldn't work at all just like green kryptonite or he'll just end up a regular depowered Kryptonian as a shadow soldier..'
H'El roared, burning through the water vapor with his aura, energy crackling across his body. Arthur ducked a swing that would've split the clouds and countered with a blow to H'El's gut, the impact sending the alien staggering.
Arthur smirked to himself, brushing his knuckles. "No," he muttered, half to the wind, half to the voice in his head. "I'll leave that as a last option."
H'El snarled, surging forward like a comet, every punch a burst of crimson fury. "What are you blabbering about, insect?" he barked, his strikes raining down so fast they blurred into light.
Arthur blocked one with his knee, another with the back of his forearm, then tilted his head just enough to dodge a third. "What I should have for dinner after this," he replied flatly, sarcasm cutting through the thunder of their battle.
That made H'El hesitate only for a second before his expression twisted into fury. "How about I have the blood of your kin?"
Arthur's grin widened, a flicker of humor and menace crossing his face. "Are you trying to be edgy?" he said, drifting backward midair as his aura pulsed. "Earth's rubbing off on you."
But then, mid-smirk, something clicked in his mind 'Blood.'
His eyes narrowed slightly, the words echoing in his head as if whispered by the System itself.
He snapped his fingers, and a thought surfaced like a ghost rising from deep memory.
'Wait a minute… Blood.'
He remembered something an item buried in his inventory, something he'd picked up from one of his first hunts.
'Anti-Kryptonian Blood Vial.'
Arthur's lips curved into a grin that could've belonged to a predator.
'I don't know what the actual use of that thing is,' he thought, opening the System menu mentally as he sidestepped another telekinetic blast that shattered the sea below. 'But for some reason… it feels appropriate for this situation.'
He shot backward through the air, distance growing between them. H'El floated there, aura thrumming red and furious, watching him with suspicion.
Arthur raised a hand and a small crystalline vial appeared between his fingers, glowing faintly crimson. The liquid inside glowed unnaturally.
"What is this?" H'El demanded, voice echoing with venom.
Arthur didn't answer. In his other hand, shadows coalesced and hardened, shaping into the elegant curve of his twinblade, etched with violet light.
He smirked. "Here goes nothing."
He uncorked the vial and poured the liquid over the blade. The sound it made wasn't natural it hissed like burning flesh, like reality itself resisted the union. The blood ran down the weapon's edge, glowing red-hot as it fused with the weapon.
H'El's expression twisted with disgust. "Disgusting."
Arthur chuckled darkly, the glow of the twinblade reflecting in his eyes. "I know," he said, his tone low and dangerous. "Especially since this also happens to be something I collected from Doomsday long ago…"
The red deepened the blade now pulsed, its aura a mixture of black, violet, and molten crimson.
Then the System voice echoed in his head:
[Anti-Kryptonian Blood Vial have been used.]
Arthur raised his gaze from the weapon, eyes alight with purpose. "Now…" he said softly, the air crackling around him. "Let's try this."
The sky seemed to tense. H'El instinctively formed a force field, a bright sphere of energy that warped the air around him.
Arthur vanished in a flicker reappearing above, blade swinging in a downward arc that split the storm clouds in two.
When the twinblade met the barrier, the world screamed.
Energy burst in all directions black and red fire spiraling across the ocean. Waves rose miles high and collapsed. Arthur pushed harder, the blood-forged blade eating into H'El's defense, light cracking through the shield like a spiderweb.
And for the first time… H'El's face showed something that looked a lot like fear.
Arthur moved precise, brutal, elegant in the way predators are elegant. H'El answered with the raw, terrible power of a thing that had been made to survive everything.
Arthur struck, blade flashing red now in the sunlight. The twinblade bit into H'El's side with a sound like ice breaking. H'El staggered, surprise and pain folding his features. The wound didn't close. Heat flared from the cut; the air above it shimmered as if someone had set the flesh alight. For the first time in the fight, H'El's face lost its arrogance and found bewilderment.
"...what's going on with my body?" he rasped, breath ragged from the pressure and effort of keeping himself together.
Arthur didn't answer right away. He was already going for another attack, a blur of shadow and intent and the next strike opened another line. When H'El tried to turn the assault into a counter, Arthur's blade found his abdomen cleanly. Blood leaked from the corner of H'El's mouth; it wasn't the slow, indifferent trickle of an immortal shrugging off damage. It was hot. It smoked.
Arthur drew the twinblade free with a movement that sounded too casual for what it accomplished. He let the weapon hang, black and red and humming with the grafted blood, and looked at H'El with a patient, terrible calm.
"It's working," Arthur said, voice low enough for only the wind and the waves to carry. "Perfectly. Which means you'll be dying very shortly."
H'El's reply was a roar fury and denial braided together. He threw everything at Arthur: heat vision in jagged, searing arcs, fists that hit like artillery. There was an island below them now, strained beneath the shockwaves as the two of them collided a literal mountain of force sent careening, water and vapour raining outward in a wide, curving wall.
They slammed down onto land with the force of falling meteors. Trees detonated outward, debris spinning, and then a new sound cut through: human screams, feet pounding. People were running, small figures scattering from beaches and roads as the two titans carved a path across the island.
Arthur blinked, disoriented for only a breath as the landscape reasserted itself palm trees, volcanic rock, the blue Pacific close enough to taste. He looked at the coastline, saw the flag and recognized the place right away.
"Hawaii," he said flatly, half to himself. "So we were basically fighting in the Pacific."
H'El lay on his back in the scorched sand, chest heaving. Veins around the wounds pulsed with a fierce, unnatural light; they looked wrong as if the energy within him were boiling and burning at once. He reached up with shaking fingers like a man trying to hold onto a dream slipping away.
"What the hell is this…" he kept saying, the words unraveling into a strangled whisper.
Arthur walked to him slowly, the ocean wind tugged at his dark cloak. Close enough now to see the fine tremor in H'El's hands, he stopped a few paces away and let the silence sit there between them for a moment.
"I already said I don't know," Arthur replied quietly. "Only that blood is… anti-your kind."
H'El's laugh came out thin, disbelief becoming a broken cadence. "You used what?" He coughed; a spatter of darkened blood flecked his lips. "You...what are you?"
Arthur's gaze flicked for a second to the twinblade, the red-dark gloss along its edge catching the sun. In the back of his mind, looking at the shape of H'El's wounds, after using the Anti-Kryptonian Blood vial something bothered him.
'It might transform him into Doomsday, or something worse,' he muttered inwardly, a cold calculation beneath the exhaustion. 'I'm not taking that chance.'
He raised the twinblade with a motion slow enough to be ceremonial. H'El, even wounded and bewildered, found the last of his fight and threw a weak barrier up a trembling force field that wavered like heat above black sand. It buckled under the pressure; energy spidered across it, but it did not hold.
Arthur did not speak. He drove the blade down.
The impact was not theatrical. It was simple, final, the ending of a fight that had been running too long. H'El's hand spasmed on the sand; his chest shuddered. For a moment his face cleared into something like recognition. Then the light in his veins dimmed, the unnatural pulsing slowed, and the last of the heat from his wounds cooled into a still, smoking line.
Arthur withdrew the blade. H'El's breath left him on a soft, unintelligible sound. The island around them was silent except for the receding crash of the ocean and the distant, frightened calls of people starting to collect themselves.
Arthur kneeled then not graceful, not theatrical, simply because he had no more balance to keep standing; head bowed for a moment. Fatigue rode his bones. H'El had proven to be exactly what everyone feared: fast to adapt, stronger than any single comparison, a thing that had learned and improvised and fought with terrifying intelligence.
He looked up after a long breath, eyes still glowing faint violet.
"He fought like a monster," Arthur admitted to no one. He tasted salt and soot and iron on his tongue. "Not like Doomsday. He was smarter and, in some sense, worse."
Arthur closed his eyes, letting the noise of the world creep back in around him.
"Now, it's time to collect the trophy."
/-\
If you Like this story! Check out my other stories! Solo leveling in Westeros.
&
If you wish to read more or simply support me than check out my patreon at
"https://www.patreon.com/FrenzyAren"
You can Get Access to 3 More Chapters OR 7 More Chapters if you want