Degritone slowed his time back to normal. "I thought you were dead. Why did you disappear for so long, making Melena cry like that? Also, how are you here?" So'Ejan asked.

"I'm here the same way you tried to kill me: By manipulating the System's teleportation function. Your provided coordinates didn't lead nowhere, they lead outside reality. I saw what you did, and your little victory speech, and so did Melena," Degritone said, materializing his condensed armor and weapons. "And I'm here to kill you so you don't get a second chance to make Melena that sad, Duels."

The Patron began laughing as Degritone accelerated time as much as he could. He prepared hundreds of movement constructs, a single thought from activating. Once the Patron closed his eyes from laughing too hard, Degritone launched himself forward, launching himself well over mach 200, and aiming to send an Empowered, Omen of War-enhanced slash to the Patron's throat.

In the slightly over 2 seconds of subjective time he had between launch and reaching the Patron, Degritone cast Omen of Famine and Open of Pestilence to apply Mark of Antipathy and applied Mark of the Loli Heretic, noting it only had 1 in it. Swordsman's Territory informed him he would hit the Patron, as planned, but that it wouldn't do any noticeable damage to their body.

Right as he was a second away from impact, the prediction changed as the Patron calmly moved his hand down from his face and caught the blade between his 2 thumbs and 3 non-thumb fingers. The space around them rippled before becoming a large black space with a white floor. A few tens of feet away was what looked like a gray cage, surrounding them.

"You really think you can beat me?" Duels asked. "I was th-"

Degritone created a fist-sized chunk of uranium-235 in the Patron's mouth before sending thousands of neutrons at the chunk, initiating an explosion. It blasted the two of them into opposite sides of the cage, which showed no signs of wear from the explosion or impacts.

The Patron spit out the large chunk of unexploded uranium and began running toward Degritone, significantly slower than Degritone launched himself, around mach 148. Degritone filled the entire arena with uranium-235 and tried again, this time the resulting explosion took almost all of his Health, and the Patron was flattened to the ground, the explosion having been primarily above him.

Duels stood up, looking almost no worse for wear, only bleeding from one knee. Degritone mentally discarded atomic weaponry and prepared to take an attack. Ten feet from Degritone, the Patron stopped and pulled swords out from two of his natural armor plates, one for each hand. He took a stance with both swords almost meeting right in front of his head, pointing right at Degritone.

Plan B, Degritone thought. "Very surprised you survived that, considering it almost took me to zero, and I have absurd DR."

"Of course," The Patron said, prompting Degritone to secretly conjure many small blades inside his armor and began rapidly stacking Adaptive Palisade's damage reduction against slashing damage, "as I was saying before you interrupted, I was the first person to reach one million Stats, I probably have more Endurance than you do total Stats. Even that maniac many years ago had less Stats than I do, not to mention my image - which is tier 3, might I add - being tailor made for fighting single opponents and my centuries of experience over you."

"That may be true, but I have an advantage over you that will inevitably lead to my win," Degritone said.

"And what would that be? What do you possibly believe could overcome every possible numerical advantage I can think of under the System?" Duels asked, beginning to cautiously move toward Degritone, ready to react at any time.

"A direct Order from Melena to win," Degritone said, dropping the blades out of his armor while replacing his body with that of the Immortal Troll and sending a jet of ectoplasm out of one hand, immediately followed by another once Swordsman's Territory adjusted to predict the Patron's dodge direction.

The second jet caught Duels in the left eye, applying Withering. Now all I have to do is survive the 10ish days of subjective time it'd take for his Health to deplete while preventing him from cleansing the effect and I win, he thought, though that's not plan B. Really hope this doesn't devolve to plan H, but it might. Better to start it now, to reduce the waiting time if it does.

The Patron exploded toward Degritone, who equipped a condensed sword in each hand to parry both of the blades aimed at him. He maximally accelerated time, over one thousand times faster than what was required to keep up with the Patron, and worked on manually accelerating his right sword to a good enough speed to even have a chance of hitting the Patron.

When the prediction said he would get blocked by the Patron's guard long before any additional acceleration would help, he very slightly adjusted his grip on the sword so it would fly out of his hand on impact without damaging him, and started accelerating his arm directly, preparing to grab the Patron by the throat.

As Degritone decelerated time by a few hundred times, the Patron began bringing his other sword back around into a horizontal slash across Degritone's stomach. Degritone's left arm was too far away to reasonably get it into position to block or parry in time. He went against his first impulse to trade blows in exchange for a guaranteed grab and also began accelerating his body back 3 inches.

His right sword clashed with the Patron's sword's guard and flew out of his grasp, but letting Degritone get a hole of his neck, while he dodged the attack from the other sword by less than half an inch. However, the two opposing forces made Degritone lose his footing and begin spinning as if to do a front-flip. He tightened his grip and reinforced it with movement constructs while he accelerated his spin.

So'Ejan's head was dragged along the ground and slammed into the cage behind Degritone, dragged across it, and slammed face-first into the ground under where he was standing mere moments ago. He tried to get his bearings, but he felt something stab into his stomach, Degritone's other sword. He slashed at Degritone's arm holding his throat and somehow overcoming his immense Strength, severing the arm at the elbow.

Before he could stand back up, he was slammed in the neck by, seemingly, the same hand. Is he laughing? So'Ejan rotated his body to grapple Degritone and, hopefully, get himself out of this pin he was in. It worked, but he suffered another stab to the stomach in the process, actually drawing blood.

While Degritone was pinned to the ground, So'Ejan managed to stab through Degritone's right shoulder, removing the entire arm attached to his throat. It instantly regenerated as a fist, punching him a few feet back and off Degritone. Just let me have a solid point, gosh dang it! How can this newbie keep up with someone with over a million Stats while having that level of regeneration!?

He landed upright and took a stance with his front left knee bent more than normal, lowering his front left corner, and keeping his left sword almost on the ground while covering high with his right sword. As Degritone charged in, So'Ejan kicked his leg straight and turned his left sword upward for a thrust through Degritone's throat while catching both his swords with his right sword.

The protege of his love seemed to have predicted this, as he let go of one of his swords a second time this match to grab the stabbing blade, but didn't see the kick following immediately afterward, letting the Patron get an Empowered kick off. It turned most of Degritone's right side to mist, and he immediately pulled his foot back before the regeneration negated this point, too.

The gray cage flashed blue for a second of subjective time, letting him know he got his first solid point this whole match.

Degritone clicked his tongue. Still not time for plan C, but looks like plan B might also be a wash. Shouldn't have expected to be able to out-duel the Patron of Duels, Degritone thought. If I can get 9 more clean hits before he does, it'll be great, but I doubt it. We'll see.

Degritone kicked, assisted by hundreds of movement constructs, and caught the Patron in the throat. When he tried to retaliate, Degritone brought the full force of his mind into creating as many movement constructs as possible to try and make his swing miss low. He partially succeeded, not getting the point for a clean hit due to the sword still catching his thigh.

He then stomped down on the sword before encasing his entire leg in condensed armor, trapping the sword with his leg. He snapped the sword on the ground using his Stavch-enhanced strength before the Patron could react and released the armor, then sent his knee forward, into the Patron's forehead. As the Patron's other blade came to counter hit, Degritone cut himself in half using movement constructs and rotated his upper half so his regenerating body wouldn't undo the work being split in half did.

Once the blade was past Degritone, the cage flashed red, signifying a full point for himself. Swordsman's Territory warned him of a punch aimed for his face from the empty left hand of the Patron. Suddenly and without warning, the fist was upon him, a full minute of subjective time before the blow was projected to land. The surprise of this made Degritone get hit a second time.

The cage flashed blue once and Degritone made to counter hit before the timer ran out for the second hit's retaliation, but the Patron moved too far away to chase or reach, and the cage flashed blue a second time. Would be so nice if the Omens could actually count for points, but noooo, it has to not count ranged attacks, Degritone thought, annoyed.

Well, he has the lead in points, time for plan C. Degritone erected a wall of condensed soul material that wrapped around the cage and went deep underground for support, with a small slit every 3 feet, just enough to see through to the other side.

"That won't work," the Patron said, slashing the wall once, soon followed by a blue flash.

Degritone immediately dropped the wall. Well, we thought that'd happen, but it's the first time anyone's had enough soul material to try that. Sad it didn't work, he thought. Plan H is looking more likely. Plan D time. Degritone lifted off the ground with Stavch and began pelting the Patron with Empowered Omens of Famine. Given the Mana taken by Empower, Degritone projected it'd take around 10000-20000 Omens to kill the Patron.

He had that many Omens in him, but, even at 10 per subjective second, that would give the Patron multiple seconds to act, even if their time acceleration was only as good as he was fast, which appeared to be the case.

Seeing Degritone take to the air and begin firing ranged Skills, the Patron sprinted up the cage. Moving at over 100 times the speed of sound was outside Degritone's ability given the time he had and his inability to use the ground and his muscles to help, and he got hit by a glowing purple sword while he was half way through ripping himself in half.

He did manage to counter hit with the pommel of his sword, but only barely, as he was sent flying to the ground. When he went to cast more Omens, they failed. Should have thought that through more, we knew about the silence. We should have accounted for him being faster than we thought possible, he thought as he slammed into the ground.

"This should have been over after our first exchange. How are you able to keep up with me?" Duels asked.

"I cheat. I should ask the same question, how are you able to keep up with your speed?" Please monologue more. Every second we don't fight is a second toward plan H.

"I have two compatible perception Skills. Did Melena not inform you of this?"

"I doubt she knew, or she'd have said something," Degritone said, keeping his eyes still, but looking for how he could possibly enact plan E, given the Patron's speed.

"Guess I never got around to telling her," Duels said, taking another stance.

"Or you never intended to, keeping it a secret, like you did with your obsession with her and your attempted murder of me," Degritone said, preparing for more.

As Duels accelerated to hit Degritone, Degritone accelerated himself right and down while stretching his hands out like he was going to wrap his arms around the Patron's left arm. Instead, he condensed a chain with a ratcheting gear mechanism attached to a loop of said chain, the loop already around the Patron's left arm.

Looking at this chain brought back annoying memories for Degritone while he yanked the chain in opposite directions so it dug into the Patron's arm, snapping an armor plate and causing a small amount of blood to spurt out. Condensed soul material is indestructible and inflexible, making a normal zip-tie-like ratcheting mechanism impossible, Instead, this one has over a half circle of gravity ratchets attached to the bulky gear mechanism.

Using movement constructs, Degritone tried to wrap the very long ends of the chain around Duels's other limbs, one around his right arm and one around his left leg. He speared the end aiming for his arm with his right sword while rotating his left arm so the blade would hit Degritone and lifting his left leg out of the way.

Degritone used yet more movement constructs to push the Patron back down and rip himself apart to not get hit, but keeping so many things in separate parts of space made Degritone lose focus on the movement constructs for the chain.

Some black flecks began to slowly worm their way out between Duels's armor plates as Degritone yanked the chains free of the ground and the Patron's foot and sent them flying toward the cage. Once they were outside the cage, he condensed a double ratcheting mechanism to permanently tie the Patron in place and began yanking the ends of the chain with movement Stavch while getting away from the Patron.