Everywhere descended in silence after seeing how easy Adrian stopped the force.
the announcer’s voice finally crackled, a high-pitched squeak of pure disbelief.
But the standstill didn’t last. The Vortex Counter spun to life in Adrian’s palm, absorbing and neutralizing the cataclysmic impact, the force of the blow sending cracks through the tal floor around him, but not touching him.
Grok tried to pull his maul back. He couldn’t. Adrian’s grip was like a steel vise.
The entire arena, which had been a deafening wall of sound, fell into a state of absolute, stunned silence.
"My turn," Adrian’s voice, amplified by the suit’s external speakers, cut through the quiet.
He yanked Grok forward, using the Grak’s own imnse weight to pull him off balance. Phantom Steps. He was inside Grok’s guard.
This was the real fight. Adrian beca a phantom, a blur of blue and black. His [Omnisense] was now fully calibrated. The gravity was compensated for by the suit’s thrusters.
He was no longer just a 7-Star Transcendent; he was a 7-Star Transcendent Magi-Tech Sovereign, his body perfectly fused with the Tech Core, now encased in a suit that amplified his every intent.
Grok swung wildly, his four arms a chaotic flurry of panic. He was too slow. His sloppy, four-arm combos, which had overwheld Adrian before, were now laughably easy to read.
Adrian didn’t just dodge. He dismantled.
He struck. A single, precise Resonant Fist to the Grak’s right knee joint (Weakness 3).
Grok roared as his leg buckled, the vibrational pulse shattering the joint from the inside.
He swung with his upper arms. Adrian ducked under the swing, his fist slamming into the exposed right flank (Weakness 2). Grok stumbled, his stone-like hide cracking, his side caving in.
He tried a desperate, two-arm jab with his lower arms. Adrian used Vortex Counter on the left arm, redirecting its force into the right arm, making the Grak punch himself in the ribs with a sickening ~CRUNCH!~.
The crowd, which had been booing him monts before, was now watching with a mixture of horror and srized awe. This wasn’t a fight. It was a systematic, surgical, and utterly humiliating dissection.
the announcer’s voice was a shocked squeak.
Grok was desperate. He was being humiliated. He roared, playing his last card, the move that had shattered Karl. He spun his maul in a low, 360-degree sweeping arc, a massive kinetic wave designed to clear the entire ring.
Adrian didn’t dodge. He t it.
He dropped to one knee and, with a move of pure, calculated genius, punched the ground.
~BOOOOM!~
A perfectly tid Resonant Fist struck the sand-covered tal floor. The vibrational shockwave he unleashed was not a tool of destruction; it was a tool of creation. It buckled the floor plating, creating a small, angled ramp of warped tal directly in the maul’s path.
Grok’s ultimate move hit the ramp. Its trajectory was sent harmlessly into the air, the maul spinning over Adrian’s head and clattering uselessly on the far side of the arena.
The Grak champion was left wide open. Disard. His strongest move a complete and total failure.
Adrian launched from the ramp he had just created. He was a blue cot. His suit’s thrusters fired, adding to his speed. He pulled his fist back, the gauntlet glowing with the white-hot, contained energy of his final, perfect blow. He drove it forward, a full-powered Resonant Fist, and slamd it directly into Grok’s shattered, exposed breastplate.
The impact was absolute. The Grak’s internal armor gave way. His four eyes went wide in shock as his entire body was blasted off its feet. He flew across the arena, slamd into the shimring plasma barrier, and hung there for a mont, suspended by the energy, before slumping to the floor, unconscious.
The arena was completely, profoundly silent. A million-to-one upset. The reigning champion, Grok the Crusher, had been flawlessly dismantled by a complete unknown.
The silence was finally broken by the announcer’s voice, now trembling with an almost hysterical excitent.
As the holographic crowd erupted into a new, deafening roar, Adrian saw a notification on his PAD.
A new holographic tir appeared in his vision:
Looking around, he noticed a soft white light already enveloping Grok’s massive, unconscious form, pulling him out of the arena, presumably for dical attention.
The holographic audience, their purpose served, was already beginning to fade. The majority of them looked mad, their faces twisted in anger—likely the ones who had bet their savings on the Grok to win. But there were still others who were cheering, fans of a good fight.
Having nothing else to do, Adrian willed himself to leave as well.
He reappeared in the noisy, chaotic Silver Fighters Lobby. This ti, however, he was not an anonymous rookie.
The mont he materialized, a crowd of aliens crowded around him, all shouting questions, their eyes wide with awe. But Adrian evaded them all and finally found a quiet corner to wait.
’Grok must be receiving dical treatnt,’ he muttered to himself. ’I might as well wait for him before we return. We still have a deal to uphold.’
He might be leaving the lobby, but he knew he was not yet done with this place. The Info Book he had assimilated earlier had revealed so much about the Galactic Clash.
It wasn’t just a sport; it was a path. It was a way to earn money and to gain status and he had to include all the Sparkborns.
But what made this all the more exciting was that... this might just be the key to finally leaving the Slums.
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