The days passed in a flash as Damien and Katherine continued gaining points. It was already the last day of the event, so not many participants were still active. Due to this, it was much harder to find opponents and gain points.
Both Damien and Katherine had already made their way up to the top of the leaderboard through their efforts, gaining massive amounts of bracelets from the stronger foes they defeated, but neither had run into another supreme genius in this time.
This was confusing. There were a total of 50 of them, so logically they should have more encounters, but this spoke to the immensity of the small realm they were in.
There were 5 regions of varying climates and most people would choose the one that aligned closest with their affinity. Even while the realm shrunk, a piece of each of these environments would still be present. And perhaps many of the supreme geniuses had already fallen.
However, everything would change today. As the day began, the rate of shrinking within the realm increased by a large margin, crowding everyone towards the flatlands in the center.
Damien stood at the edge of this flatland and covertly watched as more and more people arrived. He’d already been in this position for a few hours and a few hundred people were strewn along the area warily eyeing each other.
As more and more people crowded in, the announcer’s voice fell on their ears. “Listen up participants! There are currently 1,506 of you remaining, congratulations! However, this number is a bit too much for us. Being smart people, I’m sure you all know what I mean…”
Damien swore he could hear the announcer grin through his words.
“A Battle Royale! Until only 1,050 of you remain, duke it out and see who comes out on top! Leaving the flatland area means disqualification! Now, begin!”
Nobody moved. They all watched the people next to them vigilantly as they planned their next course of action. It would be embarrassing to fall here due to carelessness. Since nobody else wanted to make the first move, Damien decided to take it upon himself.
A faint black hue emanated from his body for a split second before lightning erupted in his surroundings. The thick black snakes traveled through the air and ground in all directions, attempting to sunder everything in their path.
Two of the participants nearby Damien were immediately paralyzed and knocked out while the third managed to narrowly dodge. He quickly moved to collect their bracelets before looking up.
The entire arena was quiet, staring at him before all mayhem broke loose. It seemed that his move had been a horn to begin. Damien grinned. He would only use lightning in this free for all unless he was forced to teleport.
Running a constant stream of electricity through his internal body, Damien increased his speed fivefold as he dashed into the battlefield.
Chaos was everywhere. Various elemental attacks were flying randomly through the air without target. The ground rumbled and quaked in some areas while massive water spouts and pillars of fire sprouted up in others.
The crowd was stunned. This was a true free for all between 1500 people, so it was naturally insane to watch.
Damien maneuvered through the battlefield like a fox as he found opponents and rapidly took them out, gaining points. But this wasn’t his main goal. He was looking for a supreme genius to fight.
On the other side of the battlefield, Katherine was also having a great time. Just like Damien, she had put away her illusions and was solely relying on wind to take care of her enemies. Tornados picked up and threw participants into chaos before they were finished off by blades and bullets of wind.
She rushed through the masses of people while accumulating points even faster than Damien. Wind was usually used as a supportive element, but her training had always been focused on making it destructive.
Her last fight with Evan had been a small portion of what she’d learned in the 6 months Damien was creating his mana circuits. Her teacher, one of the two Grand elders of the academy, was extremely adept at illusions to the point of slightly affecting reality.
She could create constructs with true physical weight and power that she could then use in battle, even changing the environment to something completely different for short periods.
When Katherine saw this, she was made aware of how much potential she was wasting in her illusions. She wanted to reach a level where she could make someone doubt whether their whole life was illusion or reality. She wanted reality to become her illusion.
Due to her intense focus on this, she had fallen behind on her wind affinity, but she made up for this by combining the two. Her small success in illusions allowed her to maintain smaller constructs as she pleased, so she used it to enhance her wind.
She used illusions to create the tornados and used wind to power them, causing her to need much less focus to keep them active. She had also gotten the idea of compressing wind from Zara, who showed her how she used ice.
Katherine took this slight inspiration and expanded on it, creating blades that could rip through the atmosphere. She was extremely impressed by Damien’s spatial affinity and worked to be able to manipulate space using air as a medium in the future.
While Katherine used her newly improved abilities to eliminate her competitors, Damien finally ran into his first supreme genius. It was a man with a robust body that contrasted his wolf ears and tail.
The screens on the outside quickly zoomed into this confrontation. The rest of the supreme geniuses were avoiding each other. Seemingly saving their strength for later rounds of the event.
The beast empress smiled as she watched them. ‘The boy has evolved through many beasts, but the wolf still takes the forefront in his instinct. It’s only natural that those two will feel rivalry immediately upon meeting.’
Truthfully, she was also a wolf-type beast. This wasn’t a fact known to many, and her strength was too high for it to be pinpointed from her aura. This was also why she was interested in Zara. It wasn’t that she wanted to consume Zara for her evolution, rather she was interested in taking her as a disciple.
She also had the ice element after all, and she could sense the icy aura emanating from Zara, making her believe it might be fate for the two to meet.
Noticing that Damien was an evolved human only made her want to take Zara as a disciple even more. Her invitation for Damien to come to the beast domain was so he could train with her husband while she took care of Zara. She felt a connection to the young wolf that felt almost familial, making her curious about the wolf’s origins.
Meanwhile, within the arena things were progressing as the beast empress expected. When Damien and the demihuman locked eyes, their instincts flared. The person in front of them would give them an amazing fight. They both grinned at each other while ignoring everything around them.
“I’m Ethan Wolfang. You?” The demihuman said.
“Damien Void. I seem to have a lot of fate with wolves.” Damien replied with a grin.
The two didn’t need any more words. They already understood each other’s intent. Pure physical strength, no affinities. This was how they would compete.
Damien stretched a bit. It had been a long time since he fought in such a primitive way, and he couldn’t say he wasn’t excited.
The two men charged at each other. Punching forward, their fists connected, causing a shockwave that threw away anyone who was in their vicinity.
“We’re equal.” They both thought before they continued their exchange.
Fists connected with flesh and kicks pushed them back. The ground around them cracked from the many impacts it was forced to sustain. Neither of them blocked and neither backed down.
Their fight grew in intensity until they were rushing all through the battlefield, acting like a tornado that would shred anything in its path.
Boom!
Their fists connected once more, but it seemed to carry some sort of resonance effect as the shockwave was amplified. Three unlucky individuals in their surroundings were caught off guard and directly knocked out.
“Hahahaha!” Damien roared with laughter. “This is it! I haven’t had a fight like this in ages!”
Ethan was similarly jubilant. He was always known for his monstrous physical strength, making him undefeated by most people within his class range, but he’d finally met his match.
Once again, the two punched forward, directly connecting with each other’s faces. Blood splashed and teeth were knocked out, but neither cared. In fact, Damien was suppressing his regeneration to the same level as Ethan’s to allow the fight to continue.
Boom! Boom!
Everywhere they went they left havoc in their wake. Damien connected another kick to Ethan’s ribs while the latter landed an uppercut to Damien’s chin. It didn’t seem like their fight would end anytime soon.
They continued like this for almost an hour. At some point, the announcer’s voice had resounded, telling the participants to stop fighting. There were only 1,051 people left in the tournament. Whoever lost the current bout would be the last person eliminated.
Knowing this, the rest of the competitors backed away from the vicinity of the fight. They didn’t want to be the next ones to be accidentally caught in the crossfire.
Abruptly, the two fighters separated. Looking at the fire in each other’s eyes, they knew what they wanted. One final clash to decide it all.
Black lightning crackled around Damien’s body, making him look like a devil, while fire erupted from Ethan’s. But neither made any big moves. Instead, they focused their elemental mana in their fists and rushed towards each other.
“HAAA!”
With a loud cry, Damien shot his fist forward to connect with Ethan’s. An even bigger explosion came forth. The mix of fire and lightning was extremely destructive, charring the ground and creating a small crater beneath their feet.
But neither of them moved. They kept pushing their fists together as if they didn’t want the other to get even a single bit of leeway. Finally, they once again jumped back.
While everyone was confused about what just happened, Damien spoke up. “In the final 12?”
Ethan nodded with a grin. “In the final 12.”
They both sat down and healed their injuries as Damien looked around him. Spotting a random competitor, Damien teleported over and stole his bracelet without anyone noticing.
It was only when the announcer’s voice rang out that people realized what happened.
“A participant has been disqualified! The first round of our Nexus Event has finally concluded! Stay tuned for the next round, folks! It looks like we have plenty of blood-boiling action ahead of us!”
The crowd let out a wave of cheers. Even though it was only the first event, it had already brought them so much excitement.
They couldn’t wait for the next round to start.