Chapter 48: Chapter Fourty Eight
"If you hurt sobody or get hurt by sobody, you just might be experiencing a real fight." — Shanks
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The voice wasn’t Zero’s.
’Fool, he’s using magic.’
Zeke registered it mid-stance, attention splitting between the approaching storm of shadow and crackling dark lightning and the unfamiliar presence threading through his mind.
Anton.
’What do you an, he’s using magic?’ Zeke replied.
’He’s converting ability circuits into mana circuits — more versatility. A boon of Gluttony and his demonic nature. They’re hell’s favorite for a reason. Quite talented, magically.’
’I follow. But how are you talking to
telepathically?’
’Magic. Telepathy, technically — a martial art skill that skilled magicians eventually replicated’ Anton answered, his ntal tone carrying the particular smugness of soone who knows exactly how impressive they’re being.
Then, a beat of silence.
’Wait. How are you able to do it?’ Anton asked, catching up to the strangeness of his own question.
{Likely your Grand Archmage trait,} Zero offered, {combined with a side effect of always talking to . I’ve had so influence.} He sounded, sohow, pleased with himself.
’That’s what I do’ Zeke replied, matching Anton’s smugness beat for beat. He turned his attention back to the demon.
The demon had not been idle. More projectiles took shape around him — spears of pure shadow, spears wrapped in black fla, spears laced with dark lightning, all of them aid and waiting.
’Good opportunity to copy magic. Get a glimpse into it’ Zeke said to Zero.
{Is that the plan?}
’Nah.’
’Change of plans. I’m not going ability-for-ability. We’ll do magic-for-fist. Ability-coated fist, but you catch my drift.’
BOOM.
Giant’s Dominion ignited — a corona of gold that made the air itself hum. His physical stats surged 80%, and Pride stacked a further 50% across everything, the trait recognizing a superior opponent and responding accordingly.
Strength: 1984 (SSS Rank)
Agility: 2462 (SSS Rank)
Endurance: 1890 (SSS Rank)
Perception: 1125 (S Rank)
Magic Power: 2685 (SSS Rank)
...
The dark spears hung in the air, a corona of annihilation aid at his chest. The world seed to hold its breath.
Then Zeke stepped into them.
The ground where he’d been standing imploded — dust and crystal fragnts erupting in a violent plu. But he was already inside the barrage, moving through it, and the spears detonated against empty space behind him.
The demon’s athyst eyes narrowed by a fraction. Sothing recalculated behind them.
Zeke’s first punch was simple. No wind-up, no flourish — a straight line carrying the compressed weight of a mountain, delivered at the speed of a reflex. The demon crossed his forearms and braced with a grunt that resonated with dark energy. The impact landed as a deep, resonant
THOOM.
A pressure wave flattened the dust cloud. Hairline fractures spread like spiderwebs across the basin floor.
The demon skidded back, legs carving twin smoking trenches in the earth. Before he could reset, Zeke was already on him.
They beca motion — a golden storm against a violet shadow. Each exchange detonated on contact, the sounds rolling outward like distant, stacked thunder.
A punch. The demon’s jaw snapped sideways with a wet crunch. A counter: a dark-encrusted fist hamred into Zeke’s ribs with the resonance of a struck bell. Bones cracked. They knitted back in the space between heartbeats with a soft, damp click.
The demon was clever. While they grappled, his free hand moved independently — fingers tracing swift arcane patterns, symbols burning briefly into the air between them.
Ignis Corruptus.
A sphere of black fla, no larger than a walnut, blood against Zeke’s chest at point-blank range. No roar. No explosion. Just a terrible, quiet consumption — the golden aura dimming at the point of contact, skin blackening and splitting, the sharp sll of ozone and scorched flesh cutting through the dust.
Zeke snarled — annoyance more than pain — and drove his forehead forward. Cartilage crunched. Dark blood, sulfur and copper, scattered into the air between them.
He shoved the demon back. As he did, the charred skin across his chest sloughed away like ash, fresh pink surging up beneath it. His trench coat did not share the benefit. The smoldering hole remained.
"Magic." Zeke grinned through the soot on his face. "Annoying. Don’t you respect the dignity of a simple fistfight?"
The demon dragged the back of his hand across his split lip, athyst eyes burning cold. "I never planned to indulge your gimmick. A battlefield doesn’t need your jokes."
His form lost solidity — becoming a streak of living shadow that coiled around Zeke’s next punch entirely. As he passed, his hand shot out, fingers tracing a sigil that crystallized in the air.
Frigus Daemonium.
The heat was simply gone — stolen from the space around Zeke’s right arm in an instant. Ri detonated across his skin and sleeve, void-cold that burned with the quality of absolute zero. The golden aura around the limb guttered and died. The arm stiffened, locked, dead weight.
Zeke swung it like a club.
The demon, anticipating a falter, took the frozen fist square in the sternum. The sound was a glacier calving — a deep, fracturing
CRUNCH.
He staggered. The arm shattered on impact, shards of frozen flesh and ice scattering like thrown knives.
Before the fragnts reached the ground, the arm was already regrowing — steam curling from the new limb in thin, wispy threads.
"You talk too much," Zeke said, the lilt in his voice almost fond. "Win first. Then mock my fighting style."
The demon’s patience broke. An inhuman roar tore from his throat — low and vibrating, resonating in the chests of everyone watching from the edge of the field. Dark mana erupted off him in a warping, visible haze, bending the light around his form. He abandoned subtlety entirely.
Every movent beca spellcraft. A kick aid at Zeke’s knee carried gravitational force, trying to pin him to the earth. A glancing backfist left trails of corrosive acid hanging in the air, sizzling against the atmosphere. When Zeke seized his wrist, the demon’s skin erupted with barbed shadows — writhing, wriggling, trying to burrow.
Zeke t it without pause.
He took the gravity kick — leg buckling a single beat before the bones healed — and used the demon’s own leverage to arc him over his shoulder and slam him into the ground. He let the acid mist eat into his face, regenerated his eyes in ti to duck a shadow-claw swipe that whistled past his throat. He let the barbed hooks sink into his arm, yanked the demon close by the embedded grip, and headbutted him again. Harder.
The terrain around them told the story plainly. Acid burns pockmarked the crystal floor. Strange frost glittered in scattered patches. Kinetic craters overlapped one another in every direction. Dark demon blood slicked the ground, and the occasional drop of Zeke’s — already evaporating — joined it.
The demon layered his craft seamlessly — debuffs, direct damage, physical augntation, all braided together in a continuous, intelligent assault. Zeke simply did not stop. For every clever spell, a fist. For every debilitating curse, a regenerating limb. He was less a fighter than a condition the demon could not resolve.
The demon finally manufactured distance — a violent pulse of repulsive dark energy that shoved Zeke back a single step. He was breathing hard now, chest rising and falling with the toll of sustained fury and expended magic. His form was bruised, his fine attire torn at the shoulder and chest.
Zeke stood across from him, trench coat hanging in scorched tatters, golden aura burning as steadily as it had at the start. Sothing bright and genuinely pleased lived in his tallic grey eyes.
He watched the demon’s gaze flick — just once — toward the gathered hunters at the field’s edge. The intent was legible: recharge, redistribute, bleed off so of the pressure.
"Hehe." Zeke’s smile went cold at the edges. "Is that your only path forward? You mock , and yet." He raised one hand and pointed a single finger toward the ground. "Reality Anchor."
WHAM.
A spatial do sealed shut around them — invisible but imdiately palpable, the air inside going still and heavy and silent in the sa instant. The demon’s expression shifted. He tested the boundary once, instinctively.
It didn’t move.
"Don’t run," Zeke said, his voice dropping to sothing low and unhurried. "Don’t trip."
SLASH.
An unseen edge passed through the air. Both of the demon’s arms separated cleanly from his body and fell to the ground with dull, wet impacts. Dark blood pooled imdiately, spreading across the fractured crystal.
"Ti to switch gears." Zeke settled his weight, the air around him sharpening.
Sunder SSS-Rank.
He’d been patient with it long enough.
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