BOOM!
Adrian's fist struck the side of Orveth's head before the Sect Leader could bring an arm between them. Translucent black flesh split beneath the impact, and several dark-gold channels burst across his temple as his entire body was hurled through the void. He passed through the drifting remains of the broken asteroid, scattering enormous fragments into dust before his divine essence finally gathered strongly enough to arrest his movement.
Orveth straightened several thousand kilometers from where he had been standing. The damaged side of his head throbbed, and the golden lines beneath his neck flickered unevenly as he forced his circulation back into order. The stranger was already approaching, crossing the distance so quickly that Orveth had to gather his full attention just to follow the movement.
Anger flared within him. He had considered his sect's losses, the danger of an unknown background, and the consequences of allowing this dispute to become a greater battle. Three elders were dead, his personal disciple had nearly joined them, and he had still offered other holdings or resources to settle an injury many sovereigns would have answered with blood.
But this man had rejected all of it because Orveth would not surrender the particular empire he demanded, and had struck him before the negotiation could proceed any further.
"INSOLENCE!"
Whatever power might stand behind this stranger, Orveth could no longer allow that possibility to govern every response he made. Orveth's four hands opened as the anger he had repeatedly suppressed passed into his willforce.
Dark-gold essence spread from his palms, reaching around the empty region between them. Space folded along its passage, and the distant stars stretched into thin lines before disappearing behind one another. Layer after layer closed around the two sovereigns, leaving Nerath and every vessel outside as the gathered void opened into a far larger expanse within.
Adrian felt the spatial enclosure forming and allowed it to close. He recognized the purpose immediately. During the Andromeda war, a formation token had created the separate battlefield where the sect leaders fought; Orveth was accomplishing the same separation through his own divine concept. This structure possessed far denser supporting layers, and fresh essence continued entering its outer folds even after the connection to the surrounding system disappeared.
The last trace of Nerath vanished behind the sealed boundary. Adrian's approach accelerated again, but dark-gold radiance erupted from Orveth before he could cross the remaining distance.
The Sect Leader's domain spread through the micro-dimension, filling the emptiness with pressure that made the surrounding space resist movement. His Astral divine concept, Ebon Crucible, had emerged from the fusion of two Rule Stage divine concepts, combining spatial enclosure with compression and structural reinforcement. Within its dark-gold domain, an empty region could be closed, strengthened, and crushed inward until whatever occupied it yielded beneath the accumulated force.
Adrian's own domain expanded against it. Dark violet swept through the gold, threaded with golden lines and subdued traces of silver-blue and emerald. The unnamed concept preserved the connection between a living existence and its movement through Space, Void, and Time, holding every part of the traveler together through the transition. Its full ninety percent authority pressed against Orveth's equal claim, and the overlapping domains settled into forty-five percent each, leaving the remaining ten percent beneath reality's own governance.
Neither could claim the enclosed battlefield without resistance. Orveth drew a long black sword from his spatial ring, its metallic blade brightening as dark-gold essence entered the artifact, while Adrian condensed his own divine essence into a sword and continued forward beneath the fivefold acceleration of Temporal Continuum.
Orveth moved his lower hands inward, and a vast region surrounding Adrian began to contract. Dark-gold lines closed through the space above and below him, drawing the distant boundaries toward one another while reinforcing the volume caught between them. The pressure reached well beyond his present position, cutting off the routes a straightforward increase in speed would have allowed him to take.
The arrangement of Orveth's authority technique, Crucible Closure, unfolded before Adrian's Source Eyes as clearly as the sword in Orveth's hand. He saw the regions being strengthened and the connections drawing them together, but his attention remained upon the advancing sovereign. Branching Moment spread the immediate possibilities across his perception, and he invoked his own authority technique, Continuity Amendment, before the narrowing paths could disappear.
His authority technique forced those possible continuations to remain coherent farther ahead, drawing sharply upon his mana and willforce. Several paths ended beneath the closing pressure, while another carried him past its upper edge before the spatial connections fully tightened. Adrian took it, his body turning through the opening at five times its ordinary pace as his sword swept toward Orveth's solitary eye.
BOOM!
The artifact met his essence blade with a crash that sent both domains surging outward. Orveth caught the hilt with a second hand and turned the strike aside, while one of his lower arms drove toward Adrian's chest beneath the crossed weapons. Adrian twisted past the palm, withdrew his prediction amendment, and fixed a new destination beyond the region Orveth was actively compressing.
Continuity Step carried him there, but Orveth's sword was already descending. The blade remained thousands of kilometers away when the space along its edge folded, shortening the connection between the strike and Adrian's position. Orveth's Folded Cleave reached him before the dark-gold trail of the physical swing had finished forming.
Adrian raised his sword and turned his shoulder. The two edges collided, yet a narrow portion of the attack passed beneath his guard and opened his upper arm. Blood scattered from the wound as he completed another Step into a region still held stable by his own domain. The torn muscle rejoined during the transition, and the successful combination sent a rush of excitement through him as he returned to close range, driving his sword upward beneath Orveth's guard.
Orveth withdrew, but the violet edge caught his lower forearm. Black flesh opened around a broken line of gold, forcing that hand away from Adrian's throat. His upper arms brought the artifact down between them, and their next collision tore a widening fracture through the space at their feet. Its edges raced into the distance before the micro-dimension's reinforced folds arrested the disturbance.
Adrian followed him through the recoil, changing positions in rapid succession, which created many afterimages of him. One cut came from below, another from the side, and a third passed over Orveth's descending weapon. As he moved, Adrian imposed his authority upon the Rule of Spatial Vacancy, delaying the moment when reality acknowledged that each previous position had become empty.
The afterimages retained his mass, momentum, and divine essence, becoming real for a split moment. Several violet swords completed their attacks together, forcing Orveth to meet more than the weapon held by Adrian's current body.
"Negate," Orveth issued a direct command as the additional blades passed inside his guard. He committed his authority against the alteration, and reality stripped the imposed persistence from the vacated positions before the attacks could reach his flesh. The direct command drew a heavy surge of mana and willforce through him, but his artifact remained in motion, catching Adrian's real sword as the vanished afterimages left them facing one another.
Adrian felt the full weight of Orveth's forty-five percent opposing his own. Neither had surplus authority for another modification while the contest continued, so he drove his shoulder forward beneath the locked blades, relying on his accelerated body to press the attack. Orveth braced with a lower arm and struck back hard enough to send both of them sliding through the colliding radiance.
The contest broke when Adrian released his modification. Orveth immediately crossed the intervening space in a succession of sharp movements, leaving his own afterimages along the path. Three dark-gold blades began descending from different directions, their retained momentum turning an ordinary sequence of cuts into a simultaneous assault.
Adrian recognized the familiar alteration and answered it directly. His authority restored the normal rate at which the vacated positions became empty, meeting Orveth's modification at the rule itself instead of asking reality to find a solution. Mana and willforce flowed into the counter as two sword-bearing echoes broke apart, leaving the real strike descending toward his neck.
He caught it and moved beneath the crossed blades. Orveth abandoned the failed afterimages, and Adrian immediately released his negation. The Sect Leader turned his upper body and directed another compression across their position, but Adrian escaped along the edge of the gathering pressure, leaving the region to collapse into a dark-gold knot behind him.
The constricted space burst against its own reinforcement. A vast circular distortion swept across the micro-dimension, striking its distant layers hard enough to make their dark-gold seams flare. Adrian crossed above the disturbance and saw Orveth coming through its opposite side, the artifact sword held low and the willforce around his consciousness gathering into a dense, narrow striking structure.
The mental attack descended before their weapons met. Distance offered no protection against it, and Adrian's accelerated movement did not carry his consciousness out of its reach. His Willforce Wall closed around the threatened region, its overlapping layers receiving the concentrated impact while he continued turning his sword into the path of Orveth's cut.
Pain pressed through the outer edges of his awareness, but the weave held. Adrian answered with the needle formation he had learned from Navira, sending hundreds of finely structured points against the opposing consciousness while his physical blade forced Orveth's artifact upward. A willforce wall rose to meet them, and the needles struck its layers in rapid succession as the two sovereigns continued fighting at arm's length.
Orveth's free hands became difficult to avoid within that distance. One caught Adrian's sword wrist behind a thick layer of divine essence, forcing him to spend strength breaking the grip while the artifact came around from the other side. Branching Moment showed the narrowing continuation toward his throat, and Adrian brought his left forearm across the descending edge as he twisted his neck away.
The sword severed his left hand at the wrist. Adrian's own blade entered Orveth's side before the Sect Leader could complete the withdrawal, opening the translucent flesh beneath his lower arms and cutting through several dark-gold channels. Orveth's grip loosened, and Adrian tore his right wrist free as the two weapons dragged apart through blood and scattered essence.
Another concentrated willforce strike hit his wall. Adrian tightened its damaged outer layers, maintained the needle assault, and used Continuity Step to leave the immediate reach of Orveth's sword. The transition closed the bleeding at his wrist but could not replace what had already been severed. He invoked Unbroken Renewal as soon as he arrived, anchoring the surviving living pattern while the restoration began beneath his torn sleeve.
Orveth pursued before the hand could reform. Adrian met him with his remaining sword hand, shifting through accelerated bodily movement whenever the opposing spatial pressure denied a safe arrival. Bone extended from the closed wrist while their blades collided, followed by the slower reconstruction of flesh and mana pathways. He kept the healing sequence active through the next exchange, using his willforce needles to occupy Orveth's mental defense while his sword turned aside the repeated cuts.
Several breaths passed before his fingers fully formed. Across from him, the split in Orveth's side remained visible beneath a dense covering of dark-gold essence, and his injured lower arm remained closer to his body as he fought. His next cut nevertheless drove Adrian's weapon toward his own chest, forcing him to close his restored hand around the hilt and turn the blade aside with both arms.
Adrian pushed the artifact away, meeting the renewed mental strike with his wall and driving a fresh needle barrage against the opposing defense. He swept his sword back toward Orveth's head, and the Sect Leader met it with enough force to send both sovereigns apart. Dark violet and gold spread between them in a widening mass, rolling against the reinforced boundary until its distant layers shuddered and held.
Adrian flexed his restored hand around the lower portion of his sword's hilt. Rebuilding it had consumed far more mana than the earlier repairs, and a dull ache remained behind his eyes from the repeated impacts against his willforce defense. Across from him, Orveth steadied his artifact without yielding any of his authority. Adrian's excitement only grew as he watched him. Throughout the entire exchange, he had moved, countered, attacked, defended his consciousness, and restored severe injuries without once needing to stop and decipher an unfamiliar technique before he could find a way to fight back.
Orveth had revealed divine spells, authority techniques, direct negation, spatial rule modifications, and willforce attacks, yet Adrian already possessed developed answers of his own.
For the first time, he was not surviving long enough to learn how to fight his opponent.
He was simply fighting him.
Adrian gathered another needle formation but held it ready, intending to strike the moment Orveth committed his sword to the next cut. Across the intervening void, the Sect Leader's four arms settled around his weapon and the gathering pressure of his next technique. Adrian lowered his shoulders and drove forward beneath Temporal Continuum. Dark-gold radiance advanced to meet him as both sovereigns crossed the ruined space between them, their swords rising for another collision.