Ephraim's ribs screamed with each breath.
The gate hadn't even closed behind him yet and his legs already felt like lead. Sweat soaked through his jumpsuit, cold against his skin despite the residual heat from Torch's kiln still radiating off the scorched concrete.
He flexed his hands. The chains clinked. His knuckles were split, bleeding sluggishly.
Thirty percent essence left. Maybe less.
The crowd pressed against the bars above, a wall of bodies and noise. Money changed hands. Cigarettes glowed in the darkness beyond the fluorescent lights. Someone was taking bets—odds heavily against him now.
Smart money.
Across the pit, Echo stretched like he'd just woken from a nap.
Casual. Unbothered. His jumpsuit was stained with those dark smears—oil mixed with ash, or something worse. The stains seemed to shift when Ephraim wasn't looking directly at them.
Echo caught him staring and smiled. Not threatening. Just tired.
"First time seeing Momentum magic?" he asked conversationally.
Ephraim didn't answer. He was watching Echo's feet.
Every time Echo shifted his weight, a faint after-image lingered. Not long—maybe half a second—but there. A ghost of movement that hung in the air like smoke before fading.
"Yeah," Echo said, following his gaze. "It's weird at first. You'll get used to it."
He took one step forward.
The after-image of that step remained.
Translucent. Rippling like heat distortion. But solid.
The ghost-Echo continued moving—completing the step, weight shifting, foot planting—while the real Echo took another step forward.
Now there were two.
The guard raised his hand, cigarette dangling from his lips.
"FIGHT!"
Echo moved.
Not fast.
Persistent.
He walked forward at a steady pace—five steps, six—and each step left behind an echo that continued the motion. By the time he'd crossed ten feet, there were twelve translucent versions of him moving through space, all walking forward, all occupying different points along the same path.
Like watching someone move through stop-motion photography, except all the frames existed simultaneously.
Ephraim circled right, putting distance between himself and the approaching swarm.
The echoes didn't follow.
They just kept walking straight, following the momentum Echo had already committed. After a few seconds, they faded—oldest first, dissolving like mist.
But new ones kept forming with every movement Echo made.
"See?" Echo said, now jogging lightly in place. His legs blurred as after-images compounded—twenty translucent versions of him jogging, layered on top of each other like shuffled cards. "Momentum doesn't disappear. It just... stays. Builds up. Gets stored."
He stopped jogging.
The echoes didn't.
They kept going—twenty translucent Echos all jogging in place, knees pumping, feet pounding concrete that didn't quite exist for them.
Echo grinned.
"And when I want it back—"
He pulled.
The twenty jogging echoes collapsed inward—not disappearing, but condensing. Momentum from twenty movements compressed into one body.
Echo blurred forward.
Fast.
Not superhuman speed. Just physics—twenty jogging motions worth of momentum released simultaneously, catapulting him across the pit like a slingshot.
Ephraim barely reacted in time.
He pushed off magnetically, launching himself sideways. Echo's fist screamed past his face close enough to feel the air pressure.
But Echo didn't stop.
His momentum carried him forward, and that momentum split—five translucent after-images peeling off from the original punch, each one continuing the motion, each one still real.
Ephraim dodged the first echo-fist.
The second clipped his shoulder—solid impact that spun him.
The third caught him in the ribs.
THUD.
Pain spiked through his chest. Old bruises from Homicide screamed. He stumbled, raising his guard instinctively.
The fourth and fifth echo-fists came together, hammering into his forearms with enough force to rattle teeth.
The crowd roared approval.
Echo landed in a crouch, already moving again. He threw a combination—jab, cross, hook—and each punch spawned after-images that continued throwing themselves, creating a stream of translucent fists that filled the air between them.
Ephraim backpedaled, chains rattling. His mind raced.
He's not just fast. He's layering movements. Every punch becomes multiple punches. Every step becomes a swarm.
Echo advanced steadily, building momentum with every motion. He wasn't rushing. Didn't need to.
Time was on his side.
Ephraim pulled himself backward magnetically—using the iron bars overhead as anchor points. His body slid across concrete, chains streaming behind him.
But Echo just smiled and kept walking.
With every step, more echoes formed. Ten. Fifteen. Twenty.
All walking forward at slightly different speeds, approaching from different angles as their paths diverged.
It was like fighting a man and his entire history simultaneously.
"You're thinking too hard," Echo called out. "That's the problem with you essence users. Always trying to be clever."
He broke into a sprint.
The echoes cascaded—each one running slightly faster than the last, velocity compounding. What started as a jog became a charge became a blur of translucent bodies all occupying the same general space.
They hit Ephraim like a stampede.
The first Echo slammed into his chest. Solid. Heavy.
The second compounded the impact. Harder.
The third felt like being hit by a car.
Ephraim crashed backward, skidding across concrete. His head bounced. Stars exploded across his vision.
Pain everywhere.
He forced himself upright, spitting blood. His essence reserves dipped—twenty percent now, maybe less.
Can't keep taking hits. Can't outlast him. Need to think.
Echo wasn't even breathing hard. He shadowboxed casually, each punch leaving translucent after-images that continued the motion. The air around him was crowded with stored momentum—dozens of movements layered on top of each other, waiting to be released.
"You're tough," Echo admitted. "But momentum always wins. It's physics."
He stepped forward—and this time, he threw the step.
His leg blurred. The kicking motion split into a dozen translucent copies, all at different heights, all converging on Ephraim from slightly different angles.
Ephraim pushed off the ground magnetically, launching himself up—ten feet, twelve—sailing over the cascade of kicks.
Mid-air, his mind clicked.
Momentum is stored. Kinetic energy given form.
Energy has frequency. Frequency has polarity.
He reached out with his essence—not at Echo himself, but at the echoes. The translucent after-images were made of pure kinetic energy—movement crystallized into temporary existence.
And everything, even energy, could be magnetized.
Ephraim focused on one after-image—a translucent fist mid-punch—and charged it. Magnetic polarity bloomed across its surface. North pole.
Then he charged another echo nearby. South pole.
The two after-images snapped together violently, kinetic energy colliding with kinetic energy. They didn't bounce off each other—they merged, momentum canceling momentum in a flash of distorted air.
Both echoes dissolved.
Echo's eyes widened. "What the—"
Ephraim landed in a crouch and immediately went to work.
He magnetized three more after-images in rapid succession—alternating polarities. North. South. North.
The echoes lurched toward each other like magnets finding iron, trajectories bending unnaturally. When they collided, they annihilated—stored momentum meeting stored momentum, both ceasing to exist.
"That's not possible!" Echo shouted. "They're not physical! They're just—"
"Energy," Ephraim finished, standing slowly. Blood dripped from his chin. "And energy can be polarized."
He spread his arms wide and pushed.
Every after-image in the pit—dozens of them, all storing momentum, all made of crystallized kinetic energy—became magnetized simultaneously. Ephraim alternated the charges in a checkerboard pattern across the entire arena.
North. South. North. South.
The effect was immediate.
Echo's carefully built library of momentum collapsed inward. After-images snapped together in pairs, threes, entire clusters—all drawn by magnetic attraction. Where they met, they destroyed each other, kinetic energy neutralizing kinetic energy in rapid succession.
Within seconds, the pit was empty.
Every stored movement—gone.
Echo stared, mouth open. "I spent the whole fight building those..."
"I know," Ephraim said.
He magnetized the concrete beneath Echo's feet—one polarity—and his own chains with the opposite.
Then… "ESSENCE TECHNIQUE— BULLSEYE!!".
The magnetic attraction launched Ephraim forward like a railgun slug—chains first, screaming across the ground.
Echo tried to dodge—but without his momentum library, without his reserves, he was just a man. Exhausted. Drained.
Slow.
Ephraim's chained fists caught him across the jaw.
CRACK.
Echo spun, crashed face-first into concrete.
Ephraim slid to a stop, breathing hard. His Spirit reserves were low now—fifteen percent, if that. His body shook. Vision tunneled at the edges.
Echo groaned, tried to push himself up. His movements were sluggish now. Clumsy.
The stored momentum was gone.
He'd been building it up throughout the fight, layering movement on top of movement. Now he had to start from scratch—and his physical reserves were spent.
Magic always burned you out eventually.
Echo collapsed.
The guard raised his hand. "Winner—Ephraim Boichi!"
The crowd exploded.
Not just excitement.
Shock.
"HE BENT HIS MOMENTUM!"
"REDIRECTED THE WHOLE SWARM!"
"THAT SHOULDN'T BE POSSIBLE!"
"PAY UP! PAY UP!"
Guards leaned forward, faces serious now. This wasn't just entertainment anymore.
This was evaluation.
Two prisoners hauled Echo away. He was semi-conscious, head lolling, still trying to figure out what had happened.
Ephraim limped toward the gate, every step agony. His essence reserves were dangerously low. His body was failing. Bruises on bruises. Blood in his mouth.
Two more fights.
Homicide waited at the gate, and the mask's smile seemed to glow with delight.
"GOKU!" he shrieked, bouncing on his toes like an excited child.
"I can barely stand," Ephraim muttered.
"Irrelevant!" Homicide spun away, humming. "You've got essence! That spiritual juice! You'll be fine! Probably! Maybe!" He giggled. "Honestly, you might die if it hits zero. That would be sad. I'd have to kill everyone here if you died."
"Comforting."
"I know, right?" Homicide patted his shoulder. "Two more fights, Goku! Two more, then we meet the boss, then I can finally—"
He stopped mid-sentence.
The crowd's noise shifted.
Dropped.
That nervous silence again.
Ephraim looked up.
A gate opened on the far side of the pit.
Someone stepped through.
The prisoner was enormous—seven feet of muscle wrapped in scars that looked like they'd been carved deliberately. His head had long ragged hair. No tattoos. But a brand. Burned into flesh.
His eyes glowed faint yellow.
And when he moved, the ground cracked beneath his feet.
"Oh," Homicide said quietly. "Oh no."
"What?"
"That's Samson."
The massive prisoner rolled his shoulders. Concrete dust shook loose from his jumpsuit.
"Magic user?" Ephraim asked.
Homicide giggled—but it sounded wrong.
"Worse," he said. "Primal Essence. And his bucket—" He gestured vaguely. "—his bucket is HUGE. And his tap?" He made an explosion gesture with his hands. "Big enough to crush this whole pit into a pancake."
Samson looked directly at Ephraim.
And smiled.
The guard raised his hand.
Ephraim's legs shook.
Fifteen percent essence left.
This is going to hurt.
To be continued