Moyako…
With her sword held out in front of her, she looked down the length of the blade as the point was aimed at Orsted.
The man was shaven bald but had a small goatee and wore a cotton shawl that wrapped around his neck, his right arm, and hung past his waist. It was engraved with letters written in ancient Amaskian text. They were prayers made to Ordovis, The God of Shattered Earth.
He also wore loose pants tied together by a belt, shin guards, and sandals.
Well...he certainly looked the part of a battle monk at least.
As she waited for the announcer to call the start of the match, Orsted knelt down upon the ground and rested his hands above the dirt.
The marble floor of the arena spread out before them began to crack at his touch and it began to shift and turn to sand. The sand then swirled around his hands as he slowly rose up from the ground.
The crushed stone collected in his hands and started to solidify, taking the shape of two compressed stone swords.
From the look of them, it seemed that he had poured his spiritual energy into the crushed stone to change it into diamonds as he compressed it into a more solid state.
“Oh great Ordovis, lord of shattered earth and forefather of humanity. Lend me your strength so that I may enlighten the world to your splendor,” he said as he prayed to his god.
The words he spoke seemed to carry tangible weight to them as he poured his very soul into them, invoking Ordovis’s will onto himself.
Seemingly, the prayer was heard as golden light shone from from the gaps of the ever shifting stone around Orsted’s body.
As he gripped the handles tighter, the golden light wrapped around his swords and refined them, sharpened them even further than before.
“With your strength, I will strike down the antithesis of your very being, this follower of Nøkkra,” he said and as his body radiated with the power of his god, he finally looked Moyako in the eyes as he continued, “Champion of Nøkkra, of Fated Starlight, prepare yourself!”
Yet she was not intimidated. Her expression did not change and she stared him down with the same amused expression she had when he first stepped onto the arena floor.
With both contestants ready for the battle to begin, the battlefield unfolded all around them.
The spell that created a spatial bubble around them that reflected the strength of their souls expanded and she could sense its size.
The battlefield that they would share was easily the size of a planet three times larger than Erebus itself and even beyond that, the pocket of space expanded to contain the world that they were in.
Moyako looked up at the sky and could barely see the audience through the atmosphere that had been created around this world.
She had never participated in one of these contests so she was a little curious as to how they would be able to contain such destructive battles if their own rules stated that there were no limitations to what they were allowed to do in a fight.
She never would have expected that they would create a pocket dimension for each fight. It made her wonder who would have the knowledge and know-how to come up with something like that.
The only person that came to her mind was Ruvick but she doubted he would involve himself in the creation of a specially made arena just for something like this.
Although...he did ask for her specifically for this event so maybe this was another form of his meddling.
“Well then...if they would create an entire world for me to fight in, then it’d be a shame if I didn’t burn it to ashes,” she said and Orsted grinned in anticipation.
“Begin!”
Without even a moment’s hesitation, Orsted leaped forward into the air, pulling back both of his arms before swinging them simultaneously as if to cut her in two with one stroke.
The swing of his swords had so much weight behind them that the air was being dragged along with them.
At the climax of his swing, the force behind them reverberated throughout the area. Dust and sand was lifted off the ground and blown away in the shockwave.
However, before his swords could reach her, she cartwheeled backwards, and as his blades passed over her stomach harmlessly, she kicked him in the face.
It felt like she was kicking a boulder as even with her spiritual energy increasing her strength and speed, he barely stumbled backwards.
She back-flipped once again to gain some distance and as her feet were just about to hit the ground, she swung her sword through the air. She traced her fingers along the flat of the blade, imbuing it with her flames before she flicked her wrist and the slash of her sword passed through the wind.
Trailing after the ellipse of her sword swing, an arc of fire flew after Orsted, so fine and condensed that the air screamed in its wake.
When it slammed into his chest, it did not cut through him but rather exploded outwards as the stone and golden energy was too strong for such a halfhearted attack to cut through.
The flames rolled off of his body harmlessly as he planted his feet in the ground to stead himself before charging at her once again.
This time, he pulled back his right arm and aimed to cut her head off in one stroke.
She met his sword with her own and as the two clashed, she could feel the true weight of his attack.
She brought her sword up to block his strike and even placed the flat of her hand on the blunt side of the blade for extra support as it slammed into her.
Upon contact, a gust of air exploded outwards when their swords hit one another.
However…she could not help but feel disappointed in how weak it was.
Her eyes glazed in dissatisfaction as she switched from using two hands to defend to only using one.
She hopped backwards a few feet and positioned her sword in front of her, held with only one hand. Her flames surged along the edge of the katana as she waited patiently for him to chase after her.
“The strength of your body is impressive enough to bear the heat of even my most meager flames but the speed and strength of each of your strikes is pitiful to say the least,” she said, which infuriated him.
His face twisted in anger as he shouted, “I am emboldened by the power of Ordovis himself! You dare to call his power weak?!”
Moyako grinned and looked down at him as she said, “Your god is weak, for he is dead, and yet you still pray to him.”
He snarled as he responded, “Ordovis lives through us all! I will make you see the truth through your ignorance!”
In response to his anger and his raging will, Moyako could feel the spiritual energy within Orsted rise even further.
It became stronger, denser, and even more destructive than before.
As he swung his swords at her, every clash it made against her sword caused the ground to tremble and shift beneath their feet.
With every swing of his sword, she met his strike and parried each attack with little effort.
The resulting force of their blades clashing and being deflected caused the ground to shatter around them.
With a backhanded swing of his right sword, he clashed against her katana.
When she parried it aside, the force traveled through the area and reduced a hillside to dust before being burned by the flames that followed after her sword.
He then spun his entire body around in an attempt to catch her off guard but he was still not fast enough to surprise her as she parried both swords that flew at her from the same direction.
She let loose a sliver more strength than she had intended to use as she deflected his swords away and reduced an area of land that would have fit two small towns inside of it to ashes.
Orsted had to stab both of his swords into the ground to anchor himself to the ground to avoid being sent flying while steam rolled off of him.
The crushed stone that covered his body, acting as a second skin or armor, was colored charcoal black.
Orsted coughed as he accidentally breathed in the smoke coming off of his body.
He then slammed the hilt of his swords into his chest and the layer of crushed rock and sand fell off of his body while new sand was pulled from the ground to replace it.
“Heh! No matter how many times you burn me with those flames, the very ground you stand on will be used to protect me. I have an unlimited resource at my disposal to fight you with. What do you have?” he asked her.
She was not amused.
She appeared in front of him in a flash. One moment, she was over ten feet away from him, but in just a split second later, she was standing right over him as he knelt on the ground to recover.
As she raised her hand over him, a spark shone in the palm of her hand until seconds later, a powerful jet of flames burst forth and washed over Orsted.
He held up both of his swords to defend himself against her and at the same time, walls of stone rose up from the ground to form a wall. However they crumbled immediately as she broke through them and blasted him with her flames.
He was knocked back several feet as she sauntered towards him while saying, “You fool. This is a life or death battle. I will not allow you any time to recover even for a moment. Now either show me the power of your dead god or yield to me now!”
Orsted…
Slowly getting back to his feet, he was huffing in exhaustion. His skin was red and covered with burns as his armor could only do so much to defend from her.
The stone armor could withstand the force behind her strikes but the heat of her magic was another thing entirely.
There was no feasible way that he could hope to best her when it comes to swordplay. If he wanted to defeat her, he would have to try something else.
Orsted then gripped the handles of his swords until they both shattered and used his magic to envelop his hands with the remnants of the diamond swords until he had diamond gauntlets.
He then took one step forward with his left foot before raising his right high above the ground, and then slammed it into the dirt.
He fed the spiritual energy given to him by his lord Ordovis into the crust of the planet and he could feel the tectonic plates shifting beneath the ground. He could feel the rotation of the planet’s core even further beneath all of that and the kinetic energy that caused the planet itself to spin.
Orsted fed off of that energy as he allowed it to flow through him.
Golden light radiated from his body even more intensely than before. Rocks formed on his skin and sand fell off of his body as if he had become a source of the earth itself.
As he looked into Moyako’s eyes, she did not seem frightened or intimidated in the slightest, however a hint of respect shone from her as she seemed to take him more seriously now.
“Come, Moyako!” he shouted as he charged forward.
Moyako…
The energy coming off of him was the real deal. He had become one with the planet itself.
She felt that he could cause earthquakes and shatter entire mountain ranges with just a mere flick of his hand if he wanted to.
She would decide not to belittle him any further and put a little more effort into this.
“Release Chasmic Seal numbers 1, 2, and 3,” she said and as Orsted heard her, he seemed confused but decided to ignore it as he continued chasing after her.
He bore down on her as he jumped into the air with both hands pressed flatly together and slammed them on the ground.
She sidestepped away from him and watched as the earth split in two.
For miles, as far as her eyes would let her see, he had reshaped the entire landscape effortlessly.
He turned to face her once again but this time he brought his right arm forward with the palm facing himself and punched into it with his left hand.
As he did this, a spire of rock erupted from the ground to run her through.
She jumped into the air, soaring many dozens of feet to gain some distance between it and herself. In only moments, it came within a few feet of her and she pulled her arm back to run it through.
The moment the tip of her sword touched the spire of rock, the heat traveling through it caused it to melt into molten lava.
Orsted himself was using the spire of rock to run up to her but jumped off of it to avoid being burnt and spread his arms out wide.
He then clapped them together as hard as he possibly could and a gust of wind slammed into her, knocking her out of the air and sending her falling back down to the earth.
With all that strength running through his body, that’s all he was able to do with it? Something doesn’t seem right, she thought to herself.
But once her feet touched the ground, she could feel the tremors coming from below. The earth was shaking because of something that he did.
As he fell to the ground, he held his left palm below his waist and slammed his right fist into it but no shockwave came. No gust of wind or burst of force.
No, what really happened was the entire tectonic plates shifted and crumbled beneath their feet as he caused the entire land mass that they stood upon to collapse and fall to a lower sea level than before. She could even feel the ground shifting to lower itself even further.
But if a giant mass of land dropping in sea level is what resulted from him slamming his fist down into his palm then what was the result of him clapping his hands together…?
Wait...if this battlefield had oceans of its own, then how close were they to a large body of water?
Sure enough, as the thought crossed her mind, a colossal wave of water, high enough to block out the sun shining down on them, soared even higher than the clouds as it came towards them.
“So...not only do you hope to defeat me with sand and pebbles but you also want to get my armor damp with a bit of sea spray?” she said mockingly but he did not seem deterred.
“If you are so confident that you can burn an entire ocean to vapor, then be my guest!” he shouted back.
If that is your wish, then I will see it through…
She could see the coming ocean wave fast approaching and yet she did not move from where she stood, nor did she change her footing.
She stood there, standing across from Orsted who looked terribly exhausted from moving tectonic plates and shifting entire land masses around just for a stunt like this.
She stared him down as she raised her sword, held it in front of her, and waited.
“Have you ever heard of the game ‘Chicken’?” she asked him.
“What? What are you talking about?” he asked nervously as he eyed the incoming wave. He did not dare move from his spot either since she wasn’t.
He was clearly too exhausted to fight and withstand the force of the tidal wave that he had created. He would have the strength to run away from the tidal wave in the hopes that it would crush her underneath the pressure while he formed a new land mass that was higher than the wave could reach but yet he stood his ground.
“’Chicken’. Its a game where people stay in a spot that would be dangerous for either of them until on or the other is too scared to remain and they move to safety. The first one to move loses, but if both stay where they are, both sides win. Do you want to play this game with me while we wait for our approaching death?” she said to him with a poisonous smile and sickly sweet tone in her voice.
He did not respond to her as he eyed the incoming wave.
It was fast approaching as it got closer and closer...and closer and closer.
He looked back at it once again before he formed two fists, knelt on the ground, and slammed them both onto his chest in an X shape as a dome of earth surrounded him.
“Heh...I guess you lose then,” she said as the wave of water was only a mere few feet away from slamming into her before she swung her sword into the water and released her flames.
A tidal wave of fire, many times higher than tidal wave of water, slammed into it and completely vaporized it.
Her wave of flames continued to rise higher and higher above the clouds and escape past the atmosphere as it burned everything in its path.
She then returned her attention to Orsted’s little shell that he had created to protect himself from the tidal wave of water and she charged towards it.
With a swipe of her leg, she broke through the shell and slammed her foot into his chest, breaking him out of it.
He stumbled backwards in a panic as he got to his feet and looked at his surroundings.
The moment he turned his head to his left, his mouth hung open in horror as he watched her tidal wave of flames as it continued to rage on and scorch the very earth itself to ashes and cinder.
“I believe it is now time to end this,” she said a she raised her sword high above her head and a bright and terrifying glow shined from it. It shined and continued to grow brighter and brighter as she fed her magic into it. She mustered up everything that she could at the level that she was able to use and compressed it all into her sword.
“No, stop!” Orsted shouted in fear as he ran towards her, hoping to prevent her from doing what she intended to.
He probably thought, If she launches that attack against me, there will be nothing left of my body to bring back! I’ll be atomized completely!
Funnily enough, he was right.
If she hit him with this next attack, nothing would be enough to bring him back to life after she was through with him.
She doubted that even Ruvick could save him.
However, he was not his intended target.
As Orsted was only a few feet away from reaching her, pulling back his fist to strike her and hopefully stop her in the process, she slammed the point of her sword into the ground.
At the same time as her sword made contact with the earth, she smacked his fist away and grabbed him by the collar of his shawl.
He tried to pull away only to find that his footing had fallen out from under him.
In fact, the entire planet started to fall out from under him as Moyako had started burning the entire planet into ashes.
“Don’t struggle too much now. If you do, I might lose my grip on your shawl and you’ll fall into the vacuum of space and die in seconds,” she said to him in his mind. It wouldn’t be long until he could no longer hear what she said with sound alone.
He would only be kept alive by her magic as she maintained a flow of magic around their bodies.
He turned his head to look down at the planet that seemed to collapse in on itself as it burned away completely.
Even the core of the planet itself became exposed but was soon blown completely away as the force behind her strike overwhelmed the gravitational pull of the planet’s core.
He screamed in horror but they would not be heard in the vacuum of space as soon, the light of the planet burning beneath them died and the two of them were left floating in the empty void.
She would not kill the man. She would not even knock him out or allow him to yield.
She would make it so there would be absolutely nothing he could possibly do to fight against her and be too traumatized by what he saw to muster up a response.
The two of them would simply float there as he clung onto her for dear life, hoping she didn’t let go of him out of spite.
They waited until the announcer called to end the match as it was already decided.
In moments, the spatial battlefield that had been created all around them collapsed and the two of them stood on the marble arena floor once again.
“The winner, is Moyako, the Immortal Phoenix!” The announcers voice said but no one cheered for her. No one cheered after witnessing her strength and witnessing her destroy an entire planet just to humiliate one man.
But it was not her goal to humiliate Orsted, merely to use him as an example for another man to witness.
She turned to face that man as she pointed her sword towards him and shouted, “Marcus Wright! This is what it means to fight against me, and yet this is still just a small fraction of what I can do! This is my declaration of war against you! Do you still intend to defeat me, or will you yield to me now!”
Everyone in the arena knew where Marcus was sitting and turned their heads to face him as if waiting for his response.
However, Marcus simply stared at her, impressed, but not afraid. In fact, he said nothing back to her but simply smiled.
She too, did not wait for his response as she put away her sword, and turned her back on him as she left the arena.