Layla…
As much as she had been looking forward to fight, to the day she could expose the reckless destruction that bastard Marcus caused, she was terrified to fight him.
Even if the claim that he fought Malthael’s dragon form was false, she saw what he did to Cole Mohr and how effortlessly he defeated him. He had done so without even trying to. In fact, it was as if he didn’t want to fight him in the first place, yet still he parried every attack that came his way with his bare hands.
What could she hope to accomplish…?
As she sat in the waiting room for the announcer to call her name, she grit her teeth in anger and thought to herself, No! That is how losers think. Even if I can’t beat him, the people need to know of the horrors that were caused because of him.
Due to the delay of the competition, it gave her time to think and reflect on herself. It served to calm her nerves and strengthen her resolve in the face of that man.
As she took in a deep breath, she heard her name being called, and made her way to the arena floor. She was greeted to a resounding cheer from the audience with her appearance, which filled her with a sense of confidence. However, she knew they were only cheering because it meant that the closing act to today’s fights had arrived and the delay had ended.
Yet, despite her appearance, she was surprised to find that Marcus Wright had not appeared yet.
She stood there waiting for him to arrive and as it dawned on the audience that they might have another no-show, they began to voice their complaints.
The announcer himself began to say, “If the contestant Marcus Wright does not appear in the next two minutes, he will be-”
As if on cue, he appeared in the center of the arena with a clap of thunder as he said, “Excuse my tardiness, I had some business to take care of.”
Her eyes narrowed in an impatient glare but she said nothing.
The announcer cleared his throat as he said, “Well now, since the contestant has managed to appear for today’s match, we can now proceed with-”
“HOLD UP!” Marcus shouted as he held up his hand as he faced the direction of the announcer and continued, “There’s something I need to do before the match can start, if you would be so patient?”
The announcer said nothing which gave him all the answer he needed.
He then called out, “SELENE! I NEED A FAVOR FROM YOU!”
After waiting a few seconds, a woman with red and white hair appeared next to him in a burst of flames and complained, “I hope you have a good reason for doing this because this is ridiculous. You’re making yourself look like a fool.”
Layla had to agree with her. What he was doing was foolish to call her down here. What was he planning?
“Yes, I know, but I have a good reason for doing this,” he said before he started unfastening his sword belt and a holster that hung around his waist and handed them to her.
“Can you take these for me and hold onto them for the whole match?” he asked, to which she tilted her head in confusion.
He then had a look on his face as if he had an idea as he took off his jacket and his shirt underneath that, which caused Selene to blush at the sight of him.
“Sorry, but can you hold onto all of this?” he asked and she nodded as she looked away from him before teleporting away. The moment she disappeared, he started doing some arm stretches to loosen up and popped his neck.
The audience was silent as they stared at him. Layla herself was confused and annoyed by his antics as she asked, “What was the point of all of that?”
He looked her in the eyes and said, “I did all of that to show everyone here that I was disarming myself completely. I won’t be using any of my weapons to fight you.”
“Do your clothes serve as weapons too?” she asked mockingly.
He frowned as he said, “No, that would be ridiculous. I gave her my jacket and shirt because only my shoes and pants are woven with fire proofing runes. I have to keep them on to maintain some manner of decency.”
She glared at him, annoyed and suspicious that this was all part of something bigger. He was planning something.
“Oh! I forgot to mention this but I’ll be fighting you without using magic. I’ll be relying on nothing but my bare hands,” he said, which caused widespread gasps from the audience as they couldn’t believe what they were hearing.
Layla laughed as she said, “No magic at all? If you fight me that way then you will die!”
His eyes narrowed on her as he said, “I will wholly and completely defeat you with nothing but the strength of my body and not a drop of magic. When your body is lying broken and beaten on the ground, only then will I show you my magic.”
With such a bold declaration, the crowd became rowdy as their cheers filled the arena.
He then turned to face the announcer and said, “I am ready now. Call for the match to start!”
Grumbling could be heard from the announcer as he said, “Hmm...Very well. Let the final match of the second bracket begin!”
In just a moment, the vast spatial battlefield expanded all around them.
As it did, true to his word, she felt no spiritual energy being emitted from him.
Deciding to take advantage of his foolishness, she created a massive concentrated fireball in her hands.
“Your theatrics will be the end of you!” she shouted as she hurled the ball of fire at him and watched with satisfaction as it slammed into his chest. The impact of the fireball caused dirt to blanket the area in a dust cloud, but she was certain to have struck him anyways.
As the flames engulfed his entire body, and the sound of the explosion reached her ears, she smiled and shook her head dismissively.
“What a fool…,” she muttered as she folded her arms.
Just as she was about to ask the announcer to call for the end of the match, a shadow started to fall around her. She looked up just in time to see Marcus falling from the sky with his arm pulled back to punch her.
He’s still alive?! Even after I hit him with that ball of fire?! How?!
She dodged moments before his fist struck the ground where she was standing and threw another fireball at him.
It slammed into him just as the first one did and the flames washed over him, yet as she watched closely, his skin did not burn.
His head then turned to stare at her as he lunged at her and swung his right leg high as he aimed to strike her head.
Gritting her teeth in frustration, she raised her left arm to block his strike only for an explosion of fire to surround her left side and cancel out his attack.
Her eyes widened in shock and fear at the fact that her auto defense runes had activated from such a simple attack.
How could my automatic defense respond to a mere kick? Its only supposed to react in the event that an attack would be considered fatal. Would I really have died from just that?!
He then threw a punch towards her chest with all his strength only for her auto defense to react to that as well as an explosion canceled out his attack. Yet despite the flames exploding from her body to knock him back, he seemed completely unbothered by them.
He continued to throw a series of punches at her, all of which activated her auto defense and barely managed to knock him back. In between his attacks, she threw fireballs at him to try and slow him down but he endured them all.
He then had a curious look on his face as he lunged towards her and his fist came flying towards her.
She had expected her auto defense to activated the moment his fist came close enough, but pulled his punch at the last second and opened his fist as he placed his fingers on her chest right above her heart.
She was frozen in place in shock at his strange behavior, and for a moment, thought he was about to try and grope her.
“Ah…, I see what’s going on now,” he said as an amused expression flashed across his face.
In the very next moment, his arm moved faster than her eyes could process as she felt her ribs shatter and her heart burst from within her chest.
Flames still exploded from her body in an attempt to cancel out the force of his punch, which kept it from being immediately lethal, but she was still sent flying from the impact and started choking on her own blood.
Even before her body fell to the ground, her magic worked to quickly repair the damage done to her, but she writhed in agony as it was the first time she had ever felt so much pain.
In fact, it was the first time in her life that anyone had ever come close to landing a killing blow.
As her ribs and heart mended themselves, she coughed up blood as she struggled to regain her ability to breath.
Rather than continue to pursue after her and finish her off, Marcus stood by and waited for her to recover.
“You have a rune formula that automatically responds to attacks that would be considered lethal with an explosion to knock back whatever comes your way, is that right?” he asked, already knowing the answer.
“Yeah, what of it?” she replied as she spat blood from her mouth.
He frowned and looked down upon her as he said, “Not only is it cowardly, but the way you applied it is stupid. If someone managed to get close enough to reach your body without landing an instant killing blow, all they would need to do is wrap their hands around your throat and strangle you to death. As far as a defensive magic is concerned, yours is pathetic.”
As she struggled to get to her feet, she huffed from exhaustion from using so much energy to repair her body.
She then asked, “What of you then? You swore you would defeat me without using a scrap of magic, yet your body is unharmed by my flames. Explain that! Why are you not a charred corpse right now?”
He simply shrugged and said, “My body is completely immune to heat. Because of that, it means that your magic is completely and utterly useless against me. Compared to Selene’s flames, yours are…pitiful.”
My flames are...pitiful?
Is he…calling me pitiful?
I…
I...cannot accept this.
I will not fall to this man!
A boiling anger filled her chest as she let out a roar and reached into the furthest depths of her soul.
She pulled back her right arm and focused her flames to a single concentrated point. She compressed it further and further until she could no longer bear the weight of it growing further.
Marcus simply stared back at her, with a smirk on his face, and raised his hand to her, beckoning her to attack him with everything she had.
In that moment, something inside of her snapped as she let her anger take control of her, and she let loose an enormous torrent of unceasing flames from her hands.
Those flames of hers became so hot that the ground beneath her feet became molten lava, the sand turned to glass, and roar of the flames became so loud that it threatened to burst her eardrums. She did not care even as blood leaked from her ears. To her, it was like music to see her flames cause so much devastation as she hit Marcus with everything she had.
Yet as she continued with her assault, the blue shine of his eyes looked back at her from within the flames as he marched through them. Under the weight of all that firepower slamming into him, he approached her, completely undaunted.
Then, when he was standing only a few feet away from her, he reached for her throat with his left hand carving its way through the flames.
Being immune to my flames doesn’t explain this level of strength! What kind of abomination is he?
She decided to try and find that out for herself as she peered into him, to attempt to understand the very nature of his soul.
It didn’t take much to understand a person just by staring deep into their souls, for doing so could allow one to learn the strengths and weaknesses of her enemies and how to exploit them.
Hopefully, by staring into Marcus’s soul, she could understand-
Yet as she tried to peer into his soul, her instincts screamed at her not to. They screamed at her with everything they, telling her to avoid looking at his soul at all costs, but she fought through it.
She forced her mind to look past his flesh, look past his mind, look past the world around him and stare into his soul.
What she found was…
She…she couldn’t describe it.
She didn’t understand it.
Its shape, its form, its nature was…unfathomable.
Try as she might, her mind could not grasp its nature, nor could it process the scale of it.
Whenever she usually looked into a person’s soul, she would see a mass of energy in the shape of that person and the information regarding their nature could be grasped in an instant, as easily as one would grasp the smell of the air or the feel of water dripping down a person’s skin.
A simple look and it would all flow into her mind.
Yet when she tried to look at his soul, it was like staring into one’s reflection in the mirror with another mirror behind it and the copied reflection would go on for infinity. Yet it was so much more than that.
Her mind threatened to fracture if she tried to stare at it any further from the overwhelming intake of information flooding in.
In the very next instant, just as she was pulling away from staring at his soul, as if it knew she was looking, it stared back at her.
She cried out as her right eye ignited in its socket, a bright yellow flame of madness that burned her body and mind alike.
She fell to the ground and clawed at her face to try and smother the yellow flame in her eye that burned unceasingly.
As she flailed on the ground in pain, Marcus stood over her and asked, “Do you yield?”
At the mere mention that she would yield to him, the pain in her eye became absent to her as she shouted at him, “I refuse!”
The expression on his face became cold and unforgiving as he replied, “Good. It’d be a shame if you gave up so soon.”
He then pressed his knee against her chest, pinning her down, and began throwing punches one after the other.
With her automatic defense releasing constant explosions to mitigate the damage, it started to drain on her reserves.
As he continued with his assault and took the brunt of each blast, it seemed apparent that his goal was to drain her energy until their was nothing left.
With the weight of his body pinning her down, all she could do was look up in horror as he did falter with every swing of his fists.
It continued until she felt like she was going to pass out from the lack of spiritual energy in her body. Only then did his fists come to a halt.
Without speaking a word, he stood up off of her and looked down at her broken and beaten body.
Breathing heavily, and with great effort, she tried to say, “I…Yei-”
But her voice was cut short as Marcus put his index finger up to his lips as if to tell her to be silent. She then noticed electricity sparking from his eyes as he had forced her to be quiet.
Try as she might, she could not speak. Her mouth and lips were moving, but no sound was coming out.
What is he going to do now?!
He then began to speak with a heavy tone, with words that caused her soul to quake with fear.
Marcus…
“When you approached me in the hall, you did so with the intent to get revenge on me because you saw my struggle and effort to fight against Malthael as reckless. For all your pride, for all your bluster, you think yourself superior to me. Yet you crumpled into this pathetic mess from the raw strength of my flesh alone. After seeing my strength, can you still claim to have done better at fighting against Malthael? Have you even seen him? Sure, if you had visited Lunaas, maybe you would begin to grasp the sheer terror of what it would be like to fight such a monster, but its not the same as having him bearing down on you in his entirety,” he said as he looked down at her.
The yellow flame burning in her right eye did little to distract her as she listened to his words, albeit with furious anger lit within them.
No…that won’t do at all. Her eyes are still filled with prideful rage.
I need to shatter it completely.
He got down on one knee and leaned forward, getting into her face and asked, “Would you like to know first hand what its like to face such a beast?”
With those words, the anger started to fade away and was slowly being replaced by fear, but it was not enough.
He then stood up and addressed the Archdragon living within his soul.
Malthael...put the fear of God into her.
He then released the full strength of his soul and his magic and let Malthael manifest in his entirety within the battlefield.
His body, made of Dragon Glass and lightning, quickly grew beyond the height of the tallest mountains and reached high into the clouds.
His gargantuan head descended as he looked down at them, making them to be little more than insects compared to his might.
He then opened his jaws, pulled back his head, and released an air splitting roar that, alone, would have killed Layla in an instant if Marcus were not shielding her with his body. He continuously repaired her ears so the sound of his roar would be etched into her mind.
But not just hers either.
This display of might was not only for her eyes, it was for the eyes and ears of everyone in the audience to witness, so that none would dare question his strength.
Least of all, Julian.
When Malthael ceased his show of might, only then did Marcus allow Layla to speak again as he asked, “Do you yield to me?”
With her eyes completely shell shocked, the only response she could muster up was, “W-What kind of monster are you?”
For a brief moment, those words gave him pause to think of a response.
He still did not know what he was really, so he didn’t have an accurate answer for her.
He took in a deep breath before he gave her his answer.
With a snap of his fingers, Light Taker appeared in his hands as he said, “I’m The Enderman.”
Then his sword fell upon her.