Reivan didn't know what exactly happened. But he did have a vague idea why it did.

After eliminating Blue, Yellow threw an invisible something at him. Then he suddenly plummeted into the stone stage faster than his mind could process what had happened.

A deafening rumble followed afterward, filling his ears and echoing throughout the stadium as Reivan's body was forcefully slammed into the ground. Dust and debris hurtled through the air, the stage completely ruined by a Reivan-shaped meteor that remodeled the stage by placing a large crater right in the middle.

'That... fucking hurt...'

He may not have looked like he was wearing any meaningful armor besides his gambeson, but his [Soul Armament] had already surrounded him with an invisible layer of supernatural energy much better than enchanted wares. And yet, the damage resistance it provided wasn't enough to fully shield him from the crash.

The height wasn't a big problem but the speed and force behind his fall was immense. Rather than falling, it was like a giant yanked him downward, straight into the ground.

"Ugh...!" Reivan's mind spun, still reeling from the fall. His lungs greedily sucked in air as he tried and failed to get up. He struggled to push up from the crater he had produced, but could barely move a single inch. It was as if a house was sitting on his back — and as time passed, the house was getting heavier and heavier.

With clenched teeth and the veins on his neck threatening to pop from the strain, he resisted whatever technique the knight had used on him. It didn't take a genius to find out that it had something to do with gravity manipulation. And those kinds of aetherblade arts were notorious for being extremely tricky. All he had to do was move out of the area of effect and he would be free.

Probably.

'Wait. That's not right.... The clump of energy must have been some kind of link or activation condition. So this isn't an AoE technique, but a targeted one.'

In such a case, the solution was also simple — he just had to remove the link.

The problem was he didn't know where it was. His eyes could probably see it. But he lacked the freedom to move his hand at the moment, much less inspect his prone body. If that wasn't enough, the gravity technique seemed to have some strange ability to prevent him from using the energy within him — be it his qi, mana, or the combination of the two called essence.

Right after any energy left his body, it got sucked into the ground for a few dozens of meters before it became something "foreign" to him, reintegrating into the world around it. Even the essence within his body was starting to steadily gravitate toward the depths of the earth. The gaseous mist he'd produced to absorb his enemies' resources was affected as well.

To top it all off, his body might still have been intact and above ground, but his internal organs felt like they were getting dislodged from where they were supposed to be.

'I...'

All it would now take was for the golden-plumed knight to finish him off so the Sword Star could snatch him out.

'I think I lost...'

A bitter taste filled Reivan's mouth that had nothing to do with the blood. He hadn't thought that winning would be easy by any stretch of the imagination. And he certainly didn't think his chance of winning was a hundred percent.

But his preparations were deep. And he was so close to victory, that being denied his prize just before he got it felt worse than if he'd just gotten stomped in the first few seconds of the fight.

Perhaps from the eyes of the audience, his performance was already sufficient — satisfactory, even. He did, after all, defeat and eliminate two out of three knights.

His family would also have nothing but praise, probably. His father was tough on him sometimes, but he would likely be the same. They were nice like that. Right after this, they would fill his ears with soothing words, telling him not to focus on his loss and instead pay attention to what he'd accomplished despite the odds being stacked against him.

But that wasn't what he wanted out of all of this.

That wasn't why he worked so hard at all.

Reivan didn't spend twenty years in crippling loneliness so he could be consoled — told that he'd done good enough. He didn't do all that so he could lose.

His face was gradually colored with frustration as he remembered all his preparations. Wounds, severed limbs, and countless deaths while sparring with fictional sparring partners. The soul-crushing pain of literally exploding into a million pieces every time his chaos energy went out of control, just to obtain just one more trump card to use.

All of it. He had endured all of it because he wanted to win in the most amazing way possible.

To prove that he was special — that he deserved this second chance at a good life.

Reivan wanted to convince himself that even if he'd gained an arsenal of special abilities, that wasn't all he was. He was more than that. More than just a person who'd lucked out.

'Fuck...!'

His mind — previously filled with cold calculation, a desire for efficiency, countless aetherblade arts, and all sorts of tactics that wouldn't help him in his current predicament — rang with defiance. What remained of his qi and magic power ran rampant with the force of a tsunami as it circulated through his veins in resistance to the intense gravitational pull. It wasn't a lot in the grand scheme of things, but as chaos energy had proved, tremendous power could be obtained once order and control were lost.

In the basest of terms, he was throwing a tantrum.

Reivan grunted loudly in an almost unsightly manner as he tried to squirm his way out of his invisible chains. His messy and disheveled appearance was the last of his concerns, blood and drool dripping out of his mouth. He felt the veins on his neck and arms fit to burst at the strain of his effort, but he soldiered on as his internal organs constantly healed. With a furious bellow, Reivan somehow raised his body enough to plant both palms on the ground as he strained to complete the hardest push-up of his life.

But no matter how much he tried, the force weighing him down only seemed to intensify as if to match his opposition. After only a few moments, a strong pulse of gravitational force once again slammed into the ground with a mighty crash, the bones in his arms and legs almost snapping as a result.

A breath escaped Reivan's cracked and bloody lips as strength escaped him.

That was it.

That was everything he had.

The final bit of meaningful struggle he had left in him.

There wasn't really anything else he could do at this point except squirm pitifully like a worm under a titan's boot.

"I propose you surrender, Your Highness."

As if to serve as the last nail in the proverbial coffin, what he could only assume was the golden-plumed knight telepathically sent her thoughts into his mind through their dream crystals — though Reivan's was currently in Zouros' stomach. Thoughts were sent as just thoughts and not words — though the brain understood them as words — so he couldn't hear her actual voice, but Reivan could tell that there was no contempt or any intent to mock him in her suggestion.

She was simply stating the obvious.

Reivan had lost. And so he should just surrender with grace or something like that.

In response, Reivan sneered, more to himself than his opponent.

"What is your name, knight?" Reivan telepathically asked, even though he already knew the answer.

"My name is Gwendolyn, Your Highness. But most call me Gwen."

"I see. I don't know where you are right now since I can't even move my neck. But can you see the people up there?"

"Up there...?"

"Yes. Somewhere up there, in the only room above ground in this entire arena. My sisters are there. My brother too. And my mother. And last but not least, my father too. All of them are watching me. Do you understand that?"

Reivan spat out a mouthful of blood as he struggled to even breathe.

"I am not surrendering."

Of this, he was sure.

"Consider it the cry of a dying dog. But you can defeat me a hundred times, but will never make me surrender. The only outcome of this battle is my victory... or the Sword Star pulling me out to stop me from dying. Nothing else.

Reivan labored to take a deep breath before he sent back his final thoughts.

"So either end me right now. Or shut up."

Even after a few moments had passed, silence was the only answer as the weight pressing down on Reivan intensified.

But in a moment of clarity, he noticed it.

'Why hasn't she finished me off with a sword to the back of the head...?'

Reivan had already shown that he couldn't do anything against whatever crowd control technique she was using. The golden plumed-knight could also easily penetrate his damage resistance even when he was trying to resist her. With those two facts alone, it would be a simple matter of finishing him off while he literally couldn't move or muster up a single decent aetherblade art.

'Which means she can't finish me off at the moment.'

His mind spun as he did his best to sense her location somehow. Hearing, smelling, or even sensing her presence like some anime character... Reivan tried to rely on all of those. Sure, he couldn't move or use any energy outside his body, but surely gravity didn't work on sound.

None of his two most dependable senses seemed to work though. There was a tinnitus-like ringing in his ears and the constant sound of his flesh trying to dig deeper into the stone hindered his hearing. The gravity field around him seemed to work on gas too, so he couldn't even smell the blood in his nose.

Luckily, his intuition seemed to have kicked in at the opportune moment. Reivan could somehow tell that Yellow was standing stationary some distance away, outside of his field of vision — which wasn't so hard to accomplish, owing to the fact that he was at the bottom of a crater constructed by his own body.

'She's not moving to finish me off...'

There was a chance that the knight simply had a nasty personality and wanted to toy with her food, but Reivan thought that the chances of that were low. After all, he was still a prince. He wouldn't hold any grudges even if he got the shit beaten out of him since this whole debacle was born out of tradition, but intentionally humiliating him when he could have been finished off sooner was a different matter altogether.

Which meant that there was some other reason.

'It's not that she isn't moving to finish me off.'

The knight simply couldn't move to finish him off.

'I see. This must be a channeling technique.'

And once Reivan really thought about it, if everything really was in the palm of her hand, the knight wouldn't have even suggested a surrender. She would have just won the whole thing by stabbing him in the nuts — which, as proven in their earlier melee exchanges, was something she was open to attempting.

In his mind, all of this meant that victory hadn't been truly decided yet. Psychological warfare through conversation was one of the knight order's tactics, after all. The only reason they hadn't resorted to using it earlier was because they still believed they had the upper hand.

Gwen's use of that card just proved that he still had a chance.

Reivan was emboldened by this realization. It just meant that if he could last until the knight's essence reserves were depleted, he would win.

And this time, it would be an indisputable victory.

Gwen toiled to maintain << Gravity Anchor >>, struggling with its exorbitant cost.

Just like Villago's killing move — which quite literally destroyed space — her trump card also left her in an exhausted state if she used it for too long. She also couldn't move or do anything else while maintaining it, so all she could hope for was to either crush her opponents into mush on the pavement or deplete them of energy to the extent that she could finish them off in a melee afterward — which, because of her special gift, was her forte.

'This isn't working.'

She had hoped the initial impact would have been enough, but it turned out that the second prince was significantly sturdier than she initially expected. Perhaps he'd instinctively used a few defensive aetherblade arts before the impact with the ground too, Even after the crash, he could heal the constant internal damage with that medicinal effect reproduction ability he had.

'A battle of attrition truly isn't the right choice against him.'

Gwen decisively stopped channeling the art and resolved to end the match in a melee, using the last of her essence to transform into a streak of light and simultaneously burning off the frosty slush that had built around her skin and armor from the prince's domain technique.

She had all but depleted her store of magic power and the second prince was likely the same. Donovan hadn't told her about the domain-type absorption technique the prince had, but other than the obviously very costly technique that the prince likely couldn't use anymore, the prince apparently had to make contact to activate the absorption — and Gwen was very good at avoiding hits. So far, the prince hadn't been able to touch her shadow whenever their swords clashed.

Gwen couldn't help but note how cold her lungs were, likely a side effect of how she'd breathed in some of the icy black mist.

'Doesn't matter. The effects are minimal and already feel like they're wearing off.'

As her body rematerialized, her rapier stabbed into the ground where the prince's back was supposed to be.

However, the prince evaded as if he had expected the << Gravity Anchor >> to end at that moment. With surprising vigor, he rolled away and kicked the air to quickly stand up before charging at her with fists raised.

Gwen focused on the prince, ready to react to his future actions. But she was surprised to discover that he had no future.

'He figured it out.'

Her ability wasn't omniscient. This was a fact she'd discovered a long time ago when Donovan drilled her weakness into her mind.

'He's reacting to my own actions. There's no future to tell since the future hasn't been decided.'

If Gwen dodged right, he would hit right. He would then hit left if she dodged left. And if she didn't dodge, then obviously, he would just hit her that way.

'Did Sir Donovan perhaps tell him about me?'

It was highly unlikely, so Gwen quickly abandoned the thought and switched gears. She didn't have to rely on her gift. After all, she had cultivated years worth of fighting skills. To her, the gift she was endowed with was simply a bonus.

She was so much more than just her ability.

Gwen struck probingly with her rapier, she was once again surprised when the prince simply let the weapon's tip pierce into his stomach. But like a berserker, he rushed in and aimed a fist at her stomach. She immediately figured out what he was trying to do.

'Infighting, huh?'

Her somewhat long rapier wasn't the best at super close ranges like this, and both of them no longer had the essence to use another one of their mobility-based aetherblade arts. They only had their incredibly strong bodies to rely on, except Gwen was now at a severe disadvantage since the prince could heal his internal wounds.

'Then I just have to make all the wounds external.'

Gwen abandoned her rapier and replaced them with spiked knuckle dusters. She let the prince strike her in the stomach and then aimed for the royal's face.

His eyes widened for a moment before he abandoned his attack and dodged at the last minute.

But how could Gwen just let him? She wasn't relying on her special gift, but it wasn't as if she turned it off. Gwen rushed after him in pursuit. The prince also manifested his own spiked pair of knuckle dusters before they exchanged a few blows, punching and kicking with all they had.

Eventually, Gwen landed a solid punch to the prince's face. Blood gushed from his cheeks, but upon closer inspection, there were only three tiny dots of blood on his face. His damage resistance had likely mitigated the majority of the damage.

'Troublesome.'

She had to finish this. Fast.

With the momentum of a giant bull, Gwen kicked off the floor and tried to tackle Reivan to the ground. He quickly evaded by taking a step to the side, but that was just what she was hoping for. As she flew right past him, she swiftly turned around and jumped on his back, clamping down on his torso with her legs. Her arms then snaked their way around his neck, locking the prince's head in place.

A grunt escaped her lips as Gwen tried to snap the prince's spine.

In response, the prince bent forward and repeatedly stabbed her leg with something sharp to force her off, the veins on his neck bulging at the strain of resisting her. She also felt her stamina drain from her body as they were in constant contact, but that didn't matter. Even the mind-numbing pain of having a knife twisting around inside her barely forced her expression to change.

Reivan tried to fight back as best as he could by mutilating whatever part of Gwen he could reach, but she just endured. She was a knight with the earth attribute. Sturdiness was one of her strong suits, even though her speed usually took the spotlight.

Eventually, Gwen realized that snapping the prince's neck wasn't possible, so she only used her left arm to lock his head in place and hinder his supply of oxygen — after all, they were both still mortals, so breathing was still a necessity. A dagger appeared in her other hand, which she tried to stab into the prince's skull.

But in a show of craftiness, he caught the blade with his teeth.

She wrenched it out and tried again from other angles but he did it again and again. Gwen gave up on the dagger and switched it for the spiked knuckle dusters instead. Her right fist drove into his head repeatedly, concussive blow after concussive blow pummeled into the prince's head.

Each hit would have been enough to turn an ordinary mortal into a splot on the ground, but he just shrugged it off. He continued maiming Gwen's legs and arms while using the back of his head as a weapon to smash her face in.

Both of them were no longer using any of Aizen's refined techniques. The exhibition match had devolved into a childish brawl where both just ignored the damage in favor of attacking the other as much as possible.

Their struggle continued for what seemed like an eternity and Gwen was no longer sure whether her leg was still intact. But her struggles bore fruit.

The prince's legs trembled before he fell, knees crashing into the ground.

'Mission... accomplished.'

Gwen didn't let her guard down, of course. Even as the seemingly unconscious prince grew unable to support her weight, both of them falling to the ruined stage's floor, she continued her assault on his head while tightening her hold on his throat. Once she was finally sure that he was knocked out, relief washed over her.

The fight was far too close for comfort, and her stamina was barely holding her together. Adrenaline was the only thing moving her at the moment. Gwen finally let go, simultaneously releasing the breath she'd been holding and spitting out a glob of blood mixed with a few of her pearly whites.

'My legs...'

Even if she looked at her lower body, she wouldn't be able to see her legs since the armor instantly repaired itself. But she could feel that the flesh underneath was maimed beyond measure. She could still heal herself with her light attribute, but that was far too slow.

It was a good thing the Saintess had sent a few senior priests. She just hoped they could do something about regrowing her teeth.

'This was more difficult than it had any right to be...'

Gwen had still won though.

A lot of her moves — like turning invisible or confusing her enemies with illusions — were unavailable to her because the prince would see right through them with little effort, and she couldn't even use her lightning attribute because he was almost immune to it too, but she had still faced far more resistance than she'd expected.

'Fifteen years old, huh? Amazing.'

It was a good thing.

'Or maybe not...'

The royal family would be easier to protect if they were weak and stayed cooped up in the palace. But since the second prince was so strong, and would likely become even stronger, he would probably involved in greater danger.

Gwen sighed and struggled to sit up. She tried to stand, but it was impossible, so she elected to wait for the healers to arrive. That was when she noticed that a sudden hush had fallen over the entire arena as if all its occupants decided to simultaneously stay quiet.

'No. It's not just quiet...'

Looking up, she realized that there literally wasn't anyone there.

No audience.

No foreign dignitaries.

No royal family.

'What...'

Gwen looked to where the vanquished prince was supposed to be and was horrified to discover that he wasn't there anymore. Even the blood on the ground caused by their vicious brawl was gone, and the stage that had been absolutely destroyed throughout the fight was as good as new.

'What is happening...'

"Wake up."

As a chilling voice whispered loudly into her ears, Gwen's world faded to black.