The field was a grave of light and dust. Guy, Milim, Velzard, Velgrynd, Diablo, Testarossa, Ultima, and Carrera lay scattered in broken craters—breathing, alive, but out. Only two stood: the Wise King of Storms and the Celestial Juggernaut.
Vorathis tilted his head, black-silver hair floating in the dead air. "Wise King… shall we begin?"
He vanished.
Veldora's eyes narrowed once—then his body blurred, meeting Vorathis mid-dash with a palm that shattered the air.
KRAK—!
Pressure exploded around them. They traded ten strikes in the time a raindrop would fall: elbow, forearm, knee, heel, shoulder—parry, slip, shoulder roll, backstep, cut-step in, rising knee.
"Your speed is… adequate," Vorathis murmured, voice echoing from three places at once.
Veldora's reply was calm, royal, and sharp. "Compliments are distractions."
He slid inside a hook and slammed an uppercut that rode a column of compressed wind. THOOM! Vorathis skidded back, boots carving long wounds in the stone.
Above them, invisible and perfectly relaxed, Saiki scooped more coffee jelly. "Yare yare. Okay, I'll admit—this is cool."
Vorathis reappeared at Veldora's flank—Transversal Rift Step—fist already cocked. Veldora twisted his hips and caught it on his forearm, the Cyclone Parry, redirecting force with a spiral of wind. He answered with a two-beat combo:
Gale Edge Jab—a short, snapping blow that carried a razor-thin wind blade;
into Thunderclap Elbow—a bone-deep shock that rang like a bell.
Vorathis grinned, eyes lighting up. "Better."
He slammed his heel down. Gravity Shear. The ground screamed and dropped six feet. Veldora stayed standing, ankles buried, then pulsed a ring of pressure—Isobar Shift—that popped the earth back up and launched him forward. They collided again, this time shoulders locked, torsos turning like gears.
"Where is your crown, King?" Vorathis hissed, forehead to forehead.
"In the storm," Veldora said, pushing him off. "And the storm answers me."
Their auras spiked. Spells erupted without hand signs, faster than breath.
Vorathis—Eventide Burial. Space darkened around his hands; black dusk poured out in a crushing wave.
Veldora—Tempest Axiom: Typhon Mandala. Twelve rings of wind spun counter to each other, eating the dusk and spitting it back as white pressure.
The two magics chewed each other in midair, screaming like metal on metal. Shards of night and shards of wind rained down as cutting rain.
Vorathis snapped two fingers. Void Lance. A needle of nothing streaked for Veldora's heart.
Veldora opened his palm. Vortex Guard. The lance bent midflight and circled him like a stunned hornet before he flicked it away.
"Predictable."
"Then try this," Vorathis said, appearing overhead with a spinning axe-kick cloaked in dimensional static. Heavenrend Lariat.
Veldora stepped into it, raised his forearm, and turned his body with the hit—Apex Martial: Dragon Tempest Kata—Monsoon Step. The kick peeled past his guard, missed his neck by inches, and smashed a mountain behind him to glass.
Saiki watched the mountain melt into a glossy crater. He poked another jelly cube. "Note to self: do not get kicked."
Veldora spread his fingers. The sky clenched.
"Royal Edict of Tempest—Beaufort XII."
Wind didn't blow; it arrived—a wall of moving air that turned pebbles into bullets. Vorathis walked through it like rain, but the micro-eddies around his legs betrayed effort.
"Respect," he said. "Now hold still."
He clapped his hands and dragged two points in space together. Singularity Net. Gravity webbing whipped toward Veldora from every angle.
Veldora stomped. The ground surged up in hexagonal plates: Gaia's Vitrum—earth turned to green glass shields—tilting and stacking like a blooming flower. The gravity lines bent and skittered off the slick surfaces. As they slid by, he flicked his wrists; each plate shattered into guided shrapnel and shot at Vorathis like a hail of mirror knives.
Vorathis raised a wrist, aura coiling. Aegis of Event Horizon. The knives vanished on contact, erased clean.
"Erase mine," Veldora said—and thrust both palms.
Null Veda: Void Sutra—Chapter Three. A thin, hungry circle of nothingness spun out, low and silent.
Vorathis didn't sidestep; he dove through it, shoulder first, letting the edge cut the air over his back. He came out inside Veldora's guard with a knee aimed for the liver.
Veldora snapped an elbow down to block, took the sting, and hammered a storm-fueled hook across Vorathis' jaw. The sound was wet thunder. Vorathis staggered—then laughed.
"Finally bleeding?" Veldora asked.
Vorathis wiped his mouth and looked at the red on his thumb, delighted. "Finally fun."
They vanished again—**ziip—shnk—voom—**a thousand feet up, then under the earth, then at the edge of the horizon, then back, each reentry marked by a collapse of air and a flash of heat.
Veldora chained strikes like a metronome set to impossible: jab, cross, knee, back-fist, sweep. Vorathis read them all, answered with clean counters: shoulder check, shin parry, knuckle stop, palm whip, hip toss.
The toss came—Veldora went airborne—Vorathis pursued, heel dropping for the spine.
"Denied," Veldora said.
Eye of the Storm. His aura folded into a tiny sphere just big enough to hold him. Vorathis' heel hit that still point and stopped, all momentum stolen. Veldora spun out of the sphere and planted both feet into Vorathis' chest—Twin Tempest Kick—blasting him backward like a cannon shot.
Vorathis hit the ground sliding, carving a valley, then sprang to a knee, hands already weaving.
"Cataclysmic Array: Red Winter, Black Noon!"
Half the sky became blizzard; the other half became burning midnight. The border cut through Veldora's shoulders, ice on one side, fire on the other, trying to tear him in two temperatures at once.
Veldora rolled his neck. "Cute."
He inhaled. The storm obeyed.
"Sovereign Barometer."
Temperatures snapped toward his will; the split sky fused into a violent overcast that fed his lungs. Veldora exhaled and fired the pressure back as a focused line: Isobar Lance. It punched through the Cataclysmic Array and chased Vorathis like a straight, invisible spear.
Vorathis snapped into a teleport—pah—appearing a breath to the left. The lance grazed his ribs and carved a trench to the horizon.
Saiki's spoon hung in midair. "That would one-shot a planet in a different show."
Their feet touched ground at the same time. They didn't move for two heartbeats.
"You carry a nation in your stance," Vorathis said softly. "That's new to me."
"A storm teaches weight," Veldora answered. "You either learn it or die."
"You won't die today," Vorathis promised. "But you will kneel."
Veldora smiled with his eyes. "Try."
They crashed again.
Vorathis flowed into Heavenrend Lariat—faint—then switched to a palm heel feint, then the true strike: Rive of the Boundless, a slicing hook that tears intention as well as flesh.
Veldora read the rhythm, stepped inside the tear, and hugged the turbulence, turning with it instead of against. His counter was almost gentle: Barometric Throw—using pressure differentials to sling Vorathis over his hip and spike him headfirst into the ground. BA-WHAM.
Vorathis' hands dug furrows; he flipped to his feet mid-rebound, eyes alight. "Yes."
They stopped talking.
Vorathis: Phantom Hexa-Step, striking from six angles in one breath.
Veldora: Typhoon Mirror, one body becoming eight afterimages that guard the real one.
Vorathis: Ruin Spiral, a drill of compressed void.
Veldora: Cyclone Cage, a lattice of crossing winds that choke and disperse drills.
Vorathis: Celestial Lock, time-skip feint, micro-stunning muscles for 0.02s.
Veldora: Isotherm Pop, micro-burst heat shock to reset his nervous rhythm.
Knuckles split. Blood hissed in the wind. Every connection sounded like distant artillery. Every miss uprooted hills.
Saiki finished the last bite and flicked the empty cup away; it dissolved in his barrier. "This is easily top-ten coolest fights I've ever watched while pretending not to exist."
Vorathis' aura swelled again, a black aurora licking the scorched sky. He raised one hand; reality bent toward it like metal to a magnet.
"Juggernaut Theorem—Axiom of Collapse."
The world around Veldora wanted to fold into a single point.
Veldora exhaled once. "Then I will answer as a king."
He spread his arms, fingers cutting lines through the air. The wind sang.
"Tempest Axiom—Aeon Gale: Royal Measure."
A crown-shaped halo of storm circled his head—subtle, silver-white. The pressure field around him set itself to a perfect constant. The Axiom of Collapse pressed—and slid off, like rain on oiled glass.
Vorathis blinked. Then he smiled. "So you have been holding back."
"I hold back until my people are safe." Veldora's voice deepened, the command in it like a sovereign edict. "Now watch closely."
He stepped—and vanished inside his own pressure.
Royal Step. He reappeared point-blank, shoulder to chest, and let go:
Monsoon Breaker—a short cross that doubled as a localized hurricane;
Eye-Pin—two fingers to the sternum, setting a still point inside Vorathis' body;
Thunder Seal—a palm that detonated the still point with soundless lightning.
KOOOOOM—! Vorathis flew, carving a luminous gouge across the earth, then flipped into a crouch. He was smiling like a madman, blood painting his teeth.
"Magnificent."
He flashed forward—faster than before—hands blade-flat for a throat cut.
Veldora met him with a rising knee, then dropped an axe-heel that cratered the ground. Vorathis rolled, leg scything out to take Veldora's footing; Veldora hopped the sweep, spun, and hammered a back-fist that cracked Vorathis' cheekbone.
They separated, chests heaving.
"Admit it," Vorathis said, eyes wild. "You're enjoying this as much as I am."
Veldora's grin was small, kingly. "A storm does not enjoy. It fulfills."
The next sixty seconds were a blur of too much:
Veldora layered Void Sutra: Chapter Four under Typhon Mandala, turning wind into a hungry spiral that ate magic as fuel.
Vorathis overclocked his body with Celestial Pulse, bones chiming like bells as he surpassed his own speed limit.
He appeared inside Veldora's guard—no flash, no cue—and drove a liver shot that would kill a lesser god. Veldora's abdomen tightened, Storm Weave distributing the force; he took the hit, pivoted on his lead foot, and returned a short hook with pressure stacked behind it like a freight train.
Vorathis' head snapped; he laughed through blood and answered with a headbutt that sounded like granite splitting. Veldora bled for the first time—thin line over his brow.
From the crater's edge, a faint voice—Milim, barely conscious—whispered, "So… cool…"
They squared again. The wind died in a ring around them, scared to move.
Vorathis rolled his shoulders. "One more exchange… full force."
Veldora nodded once. "As you wish."
Both auras rose—black sun, white storm—twisting into a double-helix that punched a hole through the clouds.
Saiki floated higher for a better view, expression flat but eyes locked. "Final clash incoming. Title card moment."
"JUGGERNAUT AXIOM—TERMINAL VECTOR!" Vorathis roared, charging with a spear of condensed collapse that turned air to glass.
"STORM DECREE—KING'S ABSOLUTE!"
Veldora answered, stepping into the path with a mantle of perfect pressure, every molecule under his command.
They met in the center.
B O O O O O M.
Light ate the horizon. Sound became a wall. The ground flipped, then remembered gravity and slammed back down.
When the blast peeled away, two silhouettes stood in the drifting ash—both on their feet, both bleeding, both smiling like warriors who had finally found someone worthy.
Veldora lifted his chin, eyes bright. "Round two?"
Vorathis wiped his mouth and chuckled, low and dangerous. "Until one of us cannot stand."
The wind returned, slow and respectful, circling the ring where a king and a juggernaut set their stances again.
And above them, unseen, Saiki opened a new cup of coffee jelly. "Yare yare… don't end it before dessert."