'I can't fight like this…' This same thought was in the minds of both Alerya and Ashikunz. Both of them were clashing their blades against each other; while Ashikunz moved his spear to block the blades around Alerya, Alerya herself tried to move Ashikunz's spear with a blade in her hand.
'It hurts again… again…' For Alerya, it felt like this spell was an eternal crushing wall that pulverized her mind with every single millisecond that passed.
As the blades kept rotating around her, Alerya found herself at the epicenter of the blades. She could move normally—she could go to the left, to the right—but even with this much freedom, it was like she was stuck inside a cage she had just created, and inside this prison, she couldn't do anything but feel constant pain.
'My skin… it hurts so much…' Every millimeter of her skin, even the parts covered by her armor, was screaming, because the barrier around her instantly dissolved the nitrogen and the carbon dioxide, allowing only pure oxygen to enter; it was like a vacuum was slowly draining her skin away.
The superficial blood vessels in her eyes and across her face ruptured continuously from the sheer barotrauma, regenerating a fraction of a second later only to be torn apart once more. It was an endless, agonizing loop of flesh shredding and rebuilding at hyper-cellular speed.
'My vision becomes blurry, a millisecond later everything becomes black… and it returns to normal… everything keeps going in this non-stop loop of constant pain…' Alerya could feel the pain; in fact, this power didn't let her prevent any of the pain, it just helped her regenerate from every single injury that appeared on her body. If her leg were cut off, Alerya would feel the pain while the missing part grew back.
'I can't even breathe… everything is so dry…' One of the worst parts of it was the fact that every molecule of water vapor suspended in the air was instantly cleaved by the blades. Stripped of all humidity, her corneas became as arid as a desert wasteland; every time she blinked, her nociceptors fired the agonizing sensation of broken glass grinding beneath her eyelids. When she forced herself to inhale, the pure, unmitigated oxygen torched her lungs with a toxic chemical fire, completely lacking the buffering, cooling presence of regular air.
'I can't die… but I can't live either…' These words inside Alerya's mind were the perfect example of what was happening inside her body; her consciousness was locked inside a horrific biological paradox. Her nerves were transmitting the signals of imminent death and instantaneous healing at the exact same time. Her body no longer felt like her own; it had become a thermodynamic battlefield caught between the freezing void of the displaced atmosphere and the scorching kinetic heat of severed atoms bouncing off her skin.
'It hurts again… again…' Just like Alerya, who would have died were it not for her power, the same thing was happening to Ashikunz.
'Fighting in the desert is so hard…' For Ashikunz, it was the same. As he was moving his spear at an incredible speed to keep up with Alerya's blades, the Krukin was trapped inside a prison of living metal and raw nerve endings.
'I feel like my skin could crack at any moment…' Ashikunz had started to sweat profusely; the desert air around him, for the Krukins, felt like a liquid furnace. Without his biological armor, the extreme heat would have already reduced his skin to a web of dry cracks, shattering his body into ash within a matter of breaths. But this armor was no mere external shell—it had become his new skin. When he first donned it, his original epidermis had literally ruptured, fusing with the metallic plates in an atrocious, permanent graft. The armor kept him physically whole against the desert's destructive environment, but it did absolutely nothing to dull the pain.
'I don't have skin under my armor anymore… so why does it feel like it is still there?' With every passing millisecond, Ashikunz felt the ghosts of his old nerve receptors screaming beneath the plating. He could vividly feel the sensation of his phantom skin stretching to its absolute limit, on the verge of splintering and exploding under the oppressive heat, locked in an eternal second right before vaporization.
'And these explosions… they are consuming my stamina so fast…' As all of this was happening, as the spear and the blades crashed against each other, the devastating aftermath of the parries added to the pain all over Ashikunz's body. Every time the flank of his spear slammed against Alerya's rotating blades at hypersonic speeds, the atomic severing of molecular bonds triggered a chain reaction of quantum micro-explosions. These were not explosions visible to the naked eye, but subatomic shockwaves that rippled up the shaft of the spear like a high-voltage electrical surge. This raw kinetic energy discharged directly into his new armor-skin: the biological metal vibrated at destructive frequencies, transmitting the sensation of millions of white-hot needles piercing his nerves from the inside out, shaking his very bones to the marrow.
'It hurts… I can barely resist anymore…' Each of these explosions created small burns over his new skin, and as time passed, these burns were healed directly by Ashikunz's absurd regeneration, but with the regeneration applied to his body, and the countless hits he had to deliver to the blades, his stamina had drastically dropped.
All his strength was being drained by the suffocating heat, the sheer weight of the armor, and the neurological shock of the continuous micro-explosions. A desperate part of his mind screamed at him to give up, to collapse onto the burning sand, to forfeit, and just let the end come.
Alerya was looking at Ashikunz with a serious expression, and the same was true for the Krukin. Alerya kept her bloodshot eyes wide open, glassy with tears that evaporated before they could even moisten her cheeks. The agony was so intensely overwhelming that it had burned away all superficial thoughts, leaving behind nothing but a raw, razor-sharp, and merciless instinct to survive.
And as Ashikunz looked at Alerya through the blinding storm of subatomic sparks, he saw that same desperate, merciless stare. Neither of them could stop. Neither of them would grant the other the luxury of surrender. Forcing his trembling legs past the point of collapse, he tightened his grip on the vibrating shaft of his spear, ready to endure the next agonizing millisecond.
'I'm in pain…' thought Alerya as her eyes met Ashikunz's.
'I'm in pain…' thought Ashikunz. While his spear was moving faster than his eyes could normally perceive, he locked eyes with Alerya, too.
"I… I'm not going to give up," whispered Alerya in pain.
"Me neither…" said Ashikunz as the micro-explosions kept happening.
"It's so hard to remain on the ground!!" shouted Liro as he felt his body about to be pushed away because of these countless explosions happening each time Ashikunz swung his weapon.
"Kael, are you sure you can keep the bodies safe??" asked Orechin, worried for both Catripple's and Martheel's unconscious bodies.
"I can… I'm just worried for Alerya!" shouted Kael. "I have never seen anyone who has been able to keep up like this against her!"
"Hey Kael… it's Alerya we're talking about, right? She fought against two black defenders and countless other Krukins all by herself… she can't die this easily, right?" yelled Vane as he remembered all the times he had seen the princess use her power.
"I hope so… but if Ashikunz is really moving at that speed…" said Darian as he tried to hold his ground; with Snowy held close in his arms, the force of the explosions was slowly pulling him away.
"It feels like he has never taken us seriously…" whispered Tyel. "And we've done so much… have we really never been able to push him to his full strength?"
"Liro, can't you place some illusions among the countless blades rotating around Alerya? You could definitely try to trick Ashikunz with one of them!" shouted Lily, but Liro shook his head.
"Impossible… they're going too fast… it will be obvious that it's an illusion…" With that, Liro was able to look directly at Alerya's face. "We just have to hope that she wins…"
'How long is this going to last? I don't have infinite stamina!!!' thought Ashikunz as he finally felt scared; the longer this fight lasted, the less stamina he would end up with.
'It has already been forty-five seconds… I've only got fifteen seconds left!' Alerya was now feeling the same as Ashikunz—she was scared, too. 'No one has ever resisted this long against my ultimate spell… just… how strong is he?!'
'It has been around forty-five seconds… just how long will this attack last? It can't be infinite… maybe this attack drains her blood? And once the blood inside her skin is finished, it stops?' thought Ashikunz, but he immediately discarded this hypothesis. 'It's impossible… there isn't any injury on her body from which blood can flow out… then what determines the duration of the attack?'
With that, Ashikunz was able to jump away. "I WON'T LET YOU RUN AWAY!!!" shouted Alerya as she jumped, too, and the blades were about to pierce Ashikunz's armor.
'Based on her reaction… maybe she doesn't have much time left? Maybe she just wants to end this fast?' Ashikunz, now mid-air, began to clash against Alerya's blades.
'My stamina is only at twelve percent… I can't allow myself to waste any more of it!' Ashikunz knew that once his stamina was completely drained, all of his resistance would completely disappear, and even the slightest attack would be able to destroy his skin and create a huge hole.
"AHHH!!!" shouted both of them together. Each of them had been fighting this non-stop pain since the start of the duel, and now that both of them realized it was finally coming to an end, neither of them could relax; they had to fight and resist for the sole purpose of claiming victory.
The two of them had become even faster; they were no longer standing still and fighting in a single place like before, they were moving all around the desert. 'I have to pull back… if she really is about to end this spell… I can't take any more risks!'
On the other hand, while Ashikunz was trying to get away, Alerya was the one pursuing him. 'My power is at its limit… there are only five seconds left!'
'If it really is one minute… it will end in five seconds!' With that, the two of them kept exchanging powerful hits.
'Five seconds left…' thought Alerya as she kept rushing towards Ashikunz.
'It's only four seconds now… my stamina has dropped to eight percent…' Ashikunz kept slashing his spear towards Alerya's blades, parrying them just like every other time.
'Three seconds… it can't end like this!' Alerya was able to remain calm, and she was slowly getting closer. Ashikunz, who could barely resist, was slowly losing ground; his spear had started to crack under the hits of the blades.
'Two seconds… my spear can barely hold together! I'm losing concentration… I won't be able to resist much longer!' Ashikunz tried to pull the spear out from between the blades, but he had grown slower; a part of it was brutally destroyed by the blades.
'One second!!!' thought both of them, as they both rushed in for one last attack. Ashikunz thrust what remained of his spear towards Alerya's legs, and the princess used the other blade in her hands to try to block that final blow.
"AHHH!!!" shouted both of them. As the group, understanding that the end had arrived, watched the fight intensely, all the sand on the ground rose, creating a wall impossible to see through.
The sand was blasted at extreme speed in all directions.
"Cough, cough…" coughed Darian as he covered both his and Snowy's eyes from the sand. "What happened?"
"Gravitational field!" Thanks to his power, Kael was able to clear away all the sand near them, and the whole group remained with their mouths agape.
Ashikunz and Alerya were no longer facing each other; Alerya was on one side and Ashikunz on the other, both turning their backs to one another, standing completely still.
"Shit." These were the only words able to escape Ashikunz's mouth before a massive slash appeared across his chest and he fell to the ground, with blood dripping profusely all over his skin.
"HAS SHE WON?!!" shouted Tyel, who couldn't believe his eyes.
The moment Tyel finished speaking, Alerya's body turned transparent and she fell to the ground, but the group noticed something that made their hearts beat extremely fast, and an horrified expression appeared on Kael's face.
Her body had fallen to the ground, but a single part remained behind on the sand, her leg.
"AHH!!" shouted Alerya in pain the moment she realized that her left leg had been severed. It lay still on the ground while the rest of the group rushed to help Alerya, except for Orechin and Tyel, who remained near the unconscious Martheel and Catripple.
"I've never had a fight like this…" whispered Ashikunz as he remained on the ground, just as the sand absorbed Alerya, who was still alive but had fallen unconscious.
"Do you really think it's over? My stamina hasn't been completely drained yet…" Though in pain, Ashikunz began to rise from the ground.
"No… Alerya lost?" shouted Darian, who couldn't believe his eyes. Ashikunz had risen from the ground with a massive slash across his chest. Around his armor, countless burns caused by the explosions were healing, just like the slash, from which blood was still dripping.
"Alerya, wake up!!" shouted Lily, terrified. Lara, who had just reached them, moving slower as she hadn't fully rested after using her power, touched Alerya's neck and shook her head.
"She's alive… but she'll soon die from blood loss!" shouted she, and with that, Ashikunz fell to his knees.
"One percent…" As he said these words, everyone else gasped in surprise. "This was… what you brought me to!"