“Let the battle commence!”

A projection of qi flickered to life mid-air, high above the arena. It had their faces, their names, and even two big red health bars. It must be synced to the life-treasures they wore.

Eudora’s health bar was nearly twice as long as Dorian’s own. He rolled his eyes. Of course it is.

The Princess in question stood idly, a lazy smile on her face—like a cat toying with a mouse.

I mean… she’s got a point. I’d think I was screwed too!

Dorian frowned, chewing on the thought. Actually, do I have a real shot? Skill was a power multiplier, after all. If an elite Earth-Realm fighter of this plane could efficiently use, say, 60% of their powers, Dorian could easily draw out 90% of his own.

The trouble was, Dorian wasn’t sure what his newfangled powers really amounted to. He hadn’t had a chance to test them against true competition. His estimates could be way off! Would they be enough to bridge that daunting one-and-a-half realm gap between him and the Princess?

Who knows? He licked his lips. I guess we’ll see, won’t we?

A battle plan dashed through his mind.

What was her archetype? Two strangling sashes, no sharp edges, drifting out from where they were tied neatly about her waist. Almost certainly she was a control-type fighter. She would try to latch onto him and squeeze the life out of him. He, on the other hand, was a glass cannon, an assassin-type. He’d skirt in and out of range, striking hard and fast, and flit away before she could grab ahold of him. Her weakpoints sprang to mind: the throat, the heart, the stomach, the tendons of the lower legs, the nerve-ridden ridges of the spine…. it was a tough plan to hold to, and a dangerous one. He’d need to walk a tightrope. But it was the only plan he had, so he simply grinned. Here goes nothing!

Eudora saw his gaze and smirked at him, her gemlike eyes glimmering cruelly. She must’ve thought the fight was as good as over. She made a big show of her not being in a rush at all.

“Io, Io, Io. Our so-called Hero. So young, and already on such a big stage—with all the Oasis’ eyes on your delicate little shoulders!” she purred.

Dorian blinked. Who knew? The true Io was but a jumble of ghostly memories now, shoved in some dusty drawer of the mind.

She seemed to take his silence for weakness. “What’s the matter?” She laughed, a trilling, airy sound. “Don’t tell me. Have you grown shy under such bright lights? Oh, I think I’ll take my sweet time with you, pretty little Io.”

She flicked out her hands and her two great sashes spread out to either side of her like an angel’s wings unfurling. She giggled. “You can’t know how many men would die to hear me say that. You should count yourself lucky! Only, I don’t mean it in the way you might wish, I fear…”

Wait. Is she trying to intimidate me? A corner of his lips quirked up. How adorable! Hey, I’m not complaining. Let her ramble on! ll take all the extra time I can get.

He glanced at those billowing, floating sashes. May as well glean a few more clues before the dirty work begins…

Then he squinted. And sucked in a sharp breath.

A thought had struck him like a club over the head. It was so blindingly obvious—so stupidly blunt—that there had to be something wrong with it. ….Right? He frowned. He couldn’t think of anything wrong. He frowned harder. Wait. So why, exactly, can’t I just…?

Eudora saw the look on his face and snorted with laughter. “We’ve not even begun and you’re already this shaken? Oh, dear…”

But he hardly heard her. He was too busy reeling. In an instant a plan spun into being in his head—a plan ten thousand times better than the first! How could I possibly have missed this, all along?!

His problem all this time was that he had no shadows to travel to. Sure, he could cast his own shadows—his Spirit Weapon came with an aura of gloom, soaking the space about him in ample shade. But he had nowhere to send it to; no shadows to exit. So it was useless.

Except—

Those two sashes were billowing sheets of silk, shifting through air, tied around her waist…

That one small detail, that one aspect of her Spirit Weapon changed everything. And somehow, he hadn’t clocked it until she literally waved it in front of his eyes!

Holy shit.

He had a real godsdamned chance after all. If he timed it just right… if he struck at just the right spot… his eyes flashed. The ghost of a fascinating idea shimmered in his mind, taking form…

Eudora, meanwhile, was still busy peacocking. She hadn’t registered his lips curling into a grin. “You’ve never fought in a formal duel before, have you?” She tutted. “Then you may consider this your first lesson! In a duel, seizing the initiative is paramount.”

Her eyes narrowed and her body language shifted in an instant, coiling up, tensing like a taught bow. Dorian braced for impact. “Rule number one: always strike first!”

And she lunged.

She came on so shockingly fast he nearly didn’t have the time to react—even though he’d been ready for it. He hardly had time to blink! All he saw was a blur, a flicker of violent motion; by the time he got mustered a response she’d halved the space between them. The sheer burst speed was absurd, even for an Earth Realm fighter. It was abnormal eve for a Sky Realm fighter! Saints! Around them the crowd let out a scattering of sharp gasps.

His instincts reacted before he did. He barely leapt out the way before her sashes lay waste to the sands. The ground quaked with the impact, sending shockwaves rippling up Dorian’s legs, chattering his teeth. Geysers of sand shot up, splashing back down in vast, dusty waves.

The grin vanished from Dorian’s face. In its place was a dawning horror. The girl liked her cringey smack talk, sure, but she had good reason—she was a godsdamned physical freak of nature! What the hells has the Governor’s palace been feeding this girl?! She must’ve been munching top-tier physique treasures since she was out of the womb!

Dorian dashed off, keen to put some distance between them.

Then he saw a shadow in the dust and the air seemed to flee before it, shrieking, desperate to get out of the way as something monstrously fast whipped through it, a sonic boom flaring in its wake. Dorian kicked off hard as he could, dodging left, his heart sinking. Fuck.

He had made a horrible miscalculation, one that might prove fatal. He felt all of his assumptions, all of his plans, all his brilliant, well-laid strategies crashing down around his ears like a sand castle swept up in a cresting wave.

She was a tank, a grappler—that much was true. But she was also faster than him! Her speciality was not qi Techniques at all. Looking at her tall, supple yet well-muscled form, he’d made a best-guess assumption. He’d bet on his speed as his sole advantage. Now he had literally nothing.

As she drew closer to him, moving so fast it was like he was standing still, there was nothing he could do but laugh at his own misfortune. She’s a fucking body cultivator. Just my damned luck! Body Cultivators were a rare but deadly class of fighter who focused heavily on their bodies over their Techniques. Rather than a Spirit Sea they made Spirit Veins: dispersed through their bodies, so that their qi fed their muscles directly.

Which meant that physically, the gap between Profound and Earth was a gap between Heaven and Earth!

Come on. Are you serious?! Dorian saw it now. This was stupid. He demanded a godsdamend refund. This whole setup was rigged—he was screwed from the start! It was like trying to fight water with fire. No, more than that—it was like trying to fight an ocean with a candle!

He had no hope of hitting her with a Technique or Spirit Weapon. She was way too fast for that. He had no hope of running. She was too fast for that too. He had no hope at hand-to-hand combat. If he had to guess, she was tiers stronger than him too! And there was no terrain to hide behind. His entire gameplay was flipped on his head in an instant. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!

In short, Body Cultivators were the single worst class of fighter to have a cultivation deficit against. If it was a gap of qi he had a chance. But no amount of skill could overcome one-and-a-half realms of dumb brute power!

He knew this. He tried anyway. The Javelin scythed through the air, a stream of fierce shadows so fast he only saw its after-image. It was fast as all hells—faster than any Profound Realm-powered weapon had any right to be. At such close range most Earth Realm fighters would’ve been skewered on the spot!

It was his shitty luck that he was not fighting most Earth Realm fighters.

This was how Eudora Azcan dodged: she was there one moment. And then it was like she had simply stopped existing. The Javelin went through the space where she was. Then she flickered back into place. Dorian was frankly disgusted. That’s fucking unfair!

Nine-hundred and ninety-nine times of a thousand, pampered Young Masters and Mistresses who boasted like she did were rubes fluffing up themselves up. They might have some power, sure, but their overinflated egos vastly dwarfed their true abilities.

Then there was a one-in-a-thousand who was the real deal.

He tried to kick away. He knew it was in vain. She was already upon him.

Her sash snatched his left arm before he even registered its presence. He tried tugging it free, but it was impossible: it was not his arm anymore. It felt like it’d been cast in hardened steel.

The other sash curled tight around his right leg.

And just like that the chase was done. Dorian felt dizzy, like he’d gotten whiplash. It was honestly sort of anti-climactic. It all happened too fast. He hadn’t even gotten a chance to test out his new Techniques!

Well—not yet, at least…

That one idea, that one fascinating, obvious idea, still simmered at the back of his mind.

It was the one thing that might save him now.

“I would say it was a good effort,” mused Eudora, slowly stalking up to him. Her smile was cold and thin as a crack in a glacier. “But it wasn’t really, was it? I would end it here… but for you?”

Dorian heard the muffled jeers of the crowd leak in from outside.

The crack grew wider. “I’ll take my time.”

The sashes tightened around his limbs, and Dorian hissed. All bloodflow—even qi flow— was cut off. He couldn’t feel his fingers, nor his toes.

Then the sashes started to pull. And pull. And pull, with agonizing slowness, the way a psychopath child yanks the wings off of a mayfly. Dorian could literally feel his tendons and sinews and muscles crying out, powerless to resist, torn up, straining and stretched beyond their limits with each passing inch. Soon he had to bite down his tongue to force back the howl rising in his throat—the force on either side was monstrous. He clenched his teeth. It could’ve torn plate metal in half!

Above, his health bar dwindled with heart-quickening speed. The life-saving treasure on Dorian’s arm worked furiously to shore up the damage to his life-force but still the stress poured in, the sashes tightening about him, clamped onto him like a vise—

A little more. Just a little more…

And Dorian started to laugh. Eyes veined with red and bulging with pain, his body literally falling apart at the seams, he started to laugh Unbridled. Hysterical. He was shaking all over with it.

“What?” Eudora looked unimpressed. “Broken already? Aww. I really did hope you’d—“

Then, with all his willpower, he tugged. Now!

The Javelin lanced at her from straight behind. He’d never recalled it. Silently he’d let it sit there in the back as she tied herself to him, latching her sashes to him, locking him in place, sure—

But also locking her two most powerful tools to his body. And cutting off her movement, too, in one fell swoop!

The Javelin slashed straight into her. Through her. Clean, like she was made of air.

No—not through her. Through her after-image. For she’d dodged as though she had eyes in the back of her head! The Javelin careened on through, swerving around in a wide arc. Miss.

Awed cries sprang up from the crowd.

Eudora’s face was ever more bored. “Really?” She snorted. “Silly boy. You truly thought that’d work?”

And Dorian grinned. Nope.

But this might.

It dove at her again from the front, a massive burst of vicious shadow and light. One clean hit from this thing would prove deadly to nearly anyone in the Oasis.

The problem was, of course, landing that one clean hit. It blistered the air as it bolted at her.

Eudora stared at it with naked contempt. “You never learn, do y—“

Her words caught in her throat. Because his Javelin wasn’t aimed at her.

It was aimed at the shadow.

The shadow made by the two sashes which clamped tight to Dorian’s arms. It dove straight into the darkness at Dorian’s feet—now!

There was a sharp tearing sensation in Dorian’s gut as a glut of qi was fed to the Technique. What happened next went very fast.

The Javelin’s head emerged at the other end of the shadow, seething with speed, not two arm-lengths from Eudora’s unguarded heart.

Her face was a mask of naked shock. He drank it in with glee. The best part? She was caught so off-guard that she had no time to react!

Or rather, she should’ve had no time to react. But to his horror, she somehow did.

In that shard of a second, by some miracle of mind-bending reflexes, she managed to twist her waist, leaping back, contorting her body to its limits, a horrifyingly good try at a dodge.

For all its athleticism, it was still not enough.

She managed to shift herself a foot off-center. Then the Javelin speared her clean in the liver, sheared through her silken armor with ease and carving deep into the flesh beyond.