Alex took a single step forward, ash drifting from his shoulders as his enhanced body cooled. "Is that all you've got?" he asked, breath steady but eyes sharp. He was battered, but still standing still ready.
Victoria's heart pounded. Her strongest blast… and he withstood it. Her flames sputtered around her like dying embers, her mana nearly drained. But she refused to fall here.
She inhaled, slow and shaky.
'One more spell… one more… even if it breaks me.' She thought back to summoning the salamander or even… the Scarlet Dragon.
'My life… it's not worth giving my life… but I won't show weakness here. I can't Fail!'
Alex surged toward her, the ground cracking beneath each step. "It's over, Victoria!"
"No," she whispered.
Then she screamed, "NOT YET!"
Her aura ignited—wild, unstable, but blazing with raw willpower.
Life Essence.
Flames erupted around her in spiraling arcs, turning the battlefield into a furnace. She thrust both hands forward, not forming a blast this time, but pulling the fire inward into herself and compressing it past all safe limits.
'Human is this what you want… I'll offer you a taste of my hidden power. Just don't die on me.' Ku whispered into her mind softly fading away.
Alex's eyes widened. "Victoria, STOP—your body can't—"
She vanished.
A burst of superheated air exploded outward, and in the next instant she reappeared right in front of him as a flicker of living flame with her fist glowing a deep dark sapphire blue.
"THOSE FLAMES this girl! Those are flames of a Kitsune! Quick stop the match one of them might die!" Headmaster Zephyr said as all the professors dashed to the middle of the battlefield.
To late. They wouldn't make it in time.
Alex tried to brace, but he was a fraction too slow.
Her punch landed square against his chest.
Not brute force — detonation.
A silent flash swallowed them both before a shockwave roared across the arena, sending the professors flying backward into the walls as the headmaster casted wind barriers around them all to protect them from the flying stone and blue flames.
When the smoke finally thinned, Alex lay on his back, unconscious, steam rising from his skin. His hardened body had saved him from lethal damage, but not from the technique he couldn't predict. His internal damages unknown.
Victoria stood over him, wobbling, her knees shaking violently. The flames around her extinguished all at once, and she collapsed beside him, panting, barely conscious.
She'd won.
Just barely.
And at a cost she would feel for days.
But as the crowd stared in stunned silence, one truth was undeniable.
Against all odds, Victoria's fire had outlasted even Alex's unbreakable body.