Each impact shook the arena; both the fighters had almost impossibly powerful bodies, although one was based on an image and only one had been honed through training. Their titanic collisions had enough momentum that a low-pressure system began to build above the fight. If not for Randidly’s gentle guidance for the fight, it might have started to rain across tournament island.

He couldn’t help but grin as he watched them matching each other first with physical contests. Perhaps I’ve had more of a distinct impact than I thought… At the very least, this amount of physical prowess will take the average soldier in the Nexus by surprise.

The collisions began to accelerate. Drake slashed with his massive sword and Charlotte nudged the weapon to the side with her knuckles. Even as the blade ruptured the surface of the arena, she drove her right knee into Drake’s side and unleashed a blast of blood-colored image energy that surged out from his skin.

Drake skidded backward and jittered sideways, his joints twisting at impossible angles to avoid a vicious follow-up swipe from Charlotte. Then everything popped back into place and he barreled forward on an offensive. His thrust was viciously fast and edged with a powerful thrill of hatred that had Randidly slightly envious.

Charlotte growled and batted the attack to the side, earning a small gash along her shoulder. As she pulled her arms back to punch, more brown leeches grew curled together behind her, so that her furry fists were backed by massive brown fists that crunched more of the arena surface. Randidly didn’t even know why he bothered empowering the arena when the competitors could turn it into swiss cheese.

Drake hopped backward to avoid the blows, his body again buzzing between stillness and a new position with no discernable time passing. Each movement spread a bit more of his purple mist, although Charlotte’s massive strikes dissipated it as they crashed against the stage.

Randidly could feel frustration building in her movements as she failed to catch his impossible image. She moved quickly forward, but Drake continued to somehow slip sideways at the last second, slipping under her blows and landing a few less damaging slashes of his own on the stage.

She gathered up both image projection fists into a wriggling mass and slammed it down against the stage, creating a massive canyon as stone cracked and rocks sprayed in every direction. Drake squirted sideways like a fish and swam toward Charlotte with looping slashes of his huge sword.

Howling, she whipped her massive image arms sideways and bulldozed the left side of the stage into an obedient pile of rubble. With remarkable grace, Drake hurdled the strike, but those tentacles lashed up and wrapped around his legs.

“I’ve got you-” Charlotte began to smile, but then Drake shifted midair in an impossible burst of momentum. He tumbled sideways in a cartwheel, landing on top of her image. Then he stomped his foot with enough force to rend open her image. Torn pieces of brown leech bounced off the remaining ground.

He feinted an aggressive charge toward Charlotte and she bit, exploding in a wave of brown leech tentacles in the area directly around her. Her image rose to a fever pitch, burning in the air like lit gasoline dancing atop oil. Yet Drake remained where he was, that hatred curdling the air around him as he prepared for a giant expression of his own image. He gathered himself all too quickly, compressing and folding his power.

The tense moment passed in silence; Drake couldn’t speak.

Yet on the heels of that moment, a much darker cloud of mauve spread out from Drake’s body, quickly covering the arena. Randidly frowned and leaned forward, intensifying the Nether barrier as the madness spread toward the stands. Quickly, he realized that wouldn’t be enough against the emotions mania; he activated the Stillborn Phoenix, which was only too happy to devour all the images that spread out around the arena.

Most of the crowd should be fine if they are exposed to Drake’s madness, Randidly rubbed his chin. But I just don’t think it would be a good sign if the finals of the first All Alpha Cosmos Tournament included a riot or shared hallucination.

Ignorant of Randidly’s countermeasures, Charlotte released a keening pulse of her own image to push back Drake’s madness. But unlike the lighter puffs of mist released from his body, this clung stubbornly to the edge of the stages, about knee-high drifts oozing across the broken stage. The darker clouds began to swirl closer around the two of them. Charlotte’s shoulders heaved as she watched Drake sprint toward her. “Fine then. Let’s stop playing around. Life’s Inevitable Route to Oblivion.”

The Aether in the air shivered as she uttered those words. Her Primal Force leaned back on its heels and raised its arms above its head in a worshipful stance. Space seemed to tighten around the shattered remnants of the stage, a lung exhaling and contracting. In a much less sophisticated manner, Charlotte’s image bent space in the same way Randidly’s Philosopher’s Passport did.

All the surroundings narrowed to a single path forward. And upon that road waited death.

Drake didn’t even seem to notice the changes going on in the surroundings. His body grew slightly ethereal, flitting about in the murky darkness of his mauve smog. Both competitors seemed confident in their images. Drake’s emotional affect sharpened itself in a horrifying cycle of madness and blame the curled in his chest.

Charlotte brought her hands together and smacked her palms in a ringing thwap. And then her image began to squeeze, tightening his focus to just the area around Drake’s body. That one road loomed closer. On her back, the monstrous appendages she had grown from the influence of Helen began to split and stretch out into the surrounding space. They criss-crossed and covered, barring all other exits. Branching and gnarled bit by bit, she created a roof over her and her opponent.

Again, the purple mist of Drake just shrugged off the extra pressure that Charlotte applied. In addition, the speed of his body’s jittering approached a near-constant level. He accelerated toward Charlotte, but her half-finished wing-roof bulged and generated a sudden spike directly at his position. His head stuttered sideways and he continued forward under the auspices of her Skill.

The rain of jagged attacks was constant. Charlotte’s image morphed and stabbed. Just slightly, Randidly could see the familiar suddenness and ferocity of Helen’s thrust in each of them. His estimation of Charlotte increased quite a bit if she could manage to capture a bit of Helen’s thrust in her casual attacks.

She must have studied Helen for a long time, Randidly’s expression grew solemn. In a way, I was aware of the fixation Charlotte possessed. But this-

Despite his quick movements, the attacks began to cluster together to the point that they were impossible to avoid. Helen seemed to be grinning with each vicious strike. Drake earned additional gashes on his shoulders and neck as he continued to weave forward, despite the density of attacks.

He moved mindlessly, almost on instinct; this was not the method to overcome the Primal Force, especially now that Charlotte had activated her Skill.

Randidly sighed inwardly the moment he felt Drake move too close to Charlotte; her Skill took a long time to set up, but it was assisted a lot by his thoughtless aggression in his mad state. So just as he clenched his fists and prepared to begin launching attacks, the whole of that almost wicker extension from her back tightened in a flash.

Drake’s body exploded with a new and impressive variety of swiftness, but Charlotte’s preparations had continued to tighten the space with an impressive choke-hold. He could jitter around the remaining space all he wanted- her assault would blanket the entire area.

Those jagged thorn growths she had used to rip open some of his skin (producing small whistling sources of more purple gas) didn’t vanish once Drake moved closer to her. So when her trap sprung and wrapped up his body, those thorns squeezed together and dug deep into his body.

The purple mist around him darkened into an almost midnight black as it responded to the pressure of Charlotte’s image. The mist tightened around his body, twitching within the shrinking latticework of brown leech. Those thorns bit like teeth. He continued to make no noise, but his body vibrated as it sought a version of contorting itself where it wasn’t trapped in Charlotte’s agonizing grip. His limbs folded in themselves and unfolded. His body twisted and bent.

However, what he was up against now was the impeccable Willpower of Charlotte Wick. Randidly couldn’t help but show his teeth as he watched her expression. Despite the fact she had been quite distant to the Commandant who supported her family, he could see his shadow now, in the intensity of her eyes as she glared at Drake.

That intensity was exactly the same. Emotions swirled in Randidly’s chest, remnants of all the pain Wick had caused him. Remnants of the wound that Helen had left in both Randidly’s and Charlotte’s hearts.

The buzzing became almost a whine as Charlotte continued to tighten, her image encompassing and squeezing Drake’s.

Something occurred to Randidly. Hum, without the presence of Wick in the Nexus, or in his… new weakened form, Charlotte’s Family will likely experience difficulties. I should ask her if there is anyone worth bringing into the Alpha Cosmos.

On the stage, Charlotte’s aura began to change. The road had been created and now the whispering shadow took center stage. The body of the Primal Force behind her began to sag slightly, falling down onto its hands and knees. Its thick and robust muscles began to shrink and wither. Meanwhile, the brown, wriggling extensions of body stretching out from its back and squeezing Drake began to pulse with an ominous image of death.

Charlotte sniffed as she looked at the restrained individual in front of her. “At this point, my image has begun corroding your body. In terms of power… in terms of combat ability… in terms of physical prowess, I’m superior to you on every attribute. So it is time for you to cease your childish escape mechanisms and lose.”

Charlotte looked at Drake’s twitching-until-blurred profile for several seconds, waiting for a response. Even though he was at a severe disadvantage, she didn’t let down her guard. Sometimes it was possible for a brief moment to see his eyes, white with madness and near rabid with instinctual struggle. However, those moments were intermittent, separated by jerking movements that made him look more like an impressionist painting than a human.

Still, Drake hadn’t exactly been idle. His emotions bounced back in forth his body, gathering more and more momentum. Closely observing his body, Randidly almost believed that his own power was inflicting more damage on his body than Charlotte’s squeeze.

However, that would soon change.

She clicked her tongue. The aura of death hanging above the arena sharpened and stretched upward into a vicious specter with long fingers. It seemed to have infinite arms, reaching out toward even the audience with arms that fluttered like ribbons, ending in those monstrously long fingers. Randidly intensified the rotation of Nether around the arena to make sure Charlotte’s image wouldn’t cause anyone to froth at the mouth and become unconscious.

“Yield,” Charlotte’s eyes were bright. She squeezed with her deadly image. Blood spurted out of the haphazard and shifting wounds across Drake’s body. The air around him rippled, their images destabilizing the space with the intensity of their conflict. He tried to avoid but there was no longer any space to which he could escape.

Even while the physical body of the Primal Force continued to wither, tossed aside while Death rode freely across the arena, the shadowy fingers of Charlotte’s image wormed their way forward. They were brown and ugly, but they manifested as specters around the bound Drake, jabbing into him again and again to worsen his wounds. Shadowy figures held them as spears, drilling them into his sides. The faint impression of Helen was present in those strikes, leering and targeting weakness.

The frequency of Drake’s struggles rose. His image squirmed like a fish. But the net was tight and strong.

Charlotte grinned. In a way, she enjoyed her dominance. “Yield.”

Randidly could feel the unease of the crowd. Although Drake displayed his strange madness, he was a much-preferred winner to Charlotte, a bear woman who walked with the specter of death hanging over her. The feelings of the Expirans especially were tinged with fear, likely influenced by the aura of her image. Especially after watching Drake essentially dodge and endure, unable to inflict any serious wounds on this foe.

They could feel what sort of foe Charlotte could be. Finally, they sensed why the Nexus was such an ominous place.

Nether began to surge toward the middle of the arena as the climax approached. Drake’s head twisted around like the victim in an exorcism, looking for any escape. Charlotte’s image didn’t flinch before his hyper-sonic struggles. She just continued to squeeze.

Nether spun together in a new pattern. Briefly, Randidly stopped paying attention to the actual figures, looking in wonder at the subtle beauty of the Nether. He rubbed his jaw. This is why I’m sometimes wrong about predictions. I’m not seeing the result of the match, I’m seeing a possible version of their significance. Even though it might not occur, the possibility presses against the time-

Congratulations! Your Skill Nether Sensation (L) has grown to Level 952!

Drake’s body broke down first, despite his obvious overwhelming emotion. He cracked open like an egg.

And the image hinted at by the Nether stepped out onto the stage, honed and birthed by Drake’s overwhelming emotional power.