Chapter 174: The Dance of Rivals
The ceremonial silence shattered. With a sonic boom that echoed through the arena, Thomas became a blur of motion, charging forward with every ounce of his formidable speed. It was a classic, overwhelming opening, designed to crush an opponent's spirit before the fight even began.
But Sam Lee was not a typical opponent. He was a rock in the river of Thomas's assault. As Thomas closed the distance, Sam didn't retreat. Instead, he dropped his center of gravity, bending his front knee and planting his foot firmly. In a move of breathtaking simplicity and timing, his hands shot out, not to block a punch, but to grab the long, flowing coat Thomas wore. He yanked it downward with brutal, precise force.
Thomas, his momentum violently disrupted, was sent cartwheeling over the garment, his own speed used as a weapon against him. He landed with a heavy, jarring thud on the arena floor, a cloud of dust pluming around him.
A wide, almost manic grin split Sam's face. It was the expression of a predator who had just turned the tables.
From the ground, Thomas didn't waste a second. Using the momentum of his fall, he pivoted on his shoulder, his legs scissoring through the air in a powerful spin. His heel connected with a sickening crack against Sam's jaw, whipping his head to the side and sending him stumbling back.
"Didn't expect such stupidity from you, Sam?" Thomas grunted, pushing himself to his feet, his voice a mix of admonishment and respect.
Sam spat a glob of blood onto the dust, the grin never leaving his face. If anything, it widened, becoming something feral. And then he moved. He didn't run; he teleported, becoming a blur that closed the gap in an instant. Before Thomas could fully reset his stance, Sam was in his face, driving a piston-like jab straight into his mouth.
The impact was colossal. Thomas was thrown backward, skidding across the ground before coming to a stop near the arena's edge.
"Same, Thomas," Sam retorted, his voice a low growl, the grin still firmly in place.
Thomas rose from the dust, a grimace of pain and exhilaration on his face. Two rivulets of crimson blood now streamed from a cut on his temple, painting twin trails down his cheek. He wiped his bloody lip with the back of his hand, his eyes burning with fierce joy.
"It feels so good to fight with you again like this," Thomas admitted, the words raw and honest.
As if sharing a single thought, they charged simultaneously. No more feints, no more tricks. This was a direct test of will. They met in the center of the arena, their forearms smashing together in a brutal block. The sound was like two slabs of granite colliding. A sharp, searing pain shot through both their arms, a clear warning that the bones beneath were being tested to their absolute limit.
And then, the real dance began.
What followed was a breathtaking symphony of violence. A punch was met with a parry, a kick was countered with a low sweep, a grapple was broken with an explosive shove. They moved with a terrifying, preternatural understanding of each other's rhythms, their movements a fluid, deadly exchange honed over a lifetime of rivalry.
Thomas saw an opening and landed a devastating hook to Sam's ribs. The force lifted Sam off his feet, but as he flew backward, Thomas stomped the ground. The arena floor ruptured, and from the darkness within, a massive, shadow-constructed hand erupted, its fingers closing like a vice to catch Sam mid-air.
But Sam was already reacting. Twisting his body with impossible flexibility, he brought his own elbows down on the constricting fingers of darkness, shattering them into dissipating black mist before he even hit the ground. He landed in a crouch and immediately launched himself forward again, a bullet aimed directly at Thomas's heart.
He never made it. The ground beneath him came alive. Not one, but a dozen serpent-like tentacles of solidified shadow burst forth, whipping through the air, forcing Sam to abort his attack. He had to contort his body, leaping and flipping backward at the last possible moment to avoid being ensnared, his path to Thomas now completely cut off by a writhing, dark forest of his rival's making. The stalemate was broken, and the battle entered a new, more dangerous phase.
The air itself seemed to recoil as Sam Lee's bloodline transformation erupted. A whitish-pink, viscous liquid seeped from his pores, rapidly congealing around him to form a hulking, muscular humanoid exoskeleton. It was a monstrous visage of raw power: a single, massive eye blazing with crimson light in the center of its head, a fanged maw stretched in a silent roar, and a mane of long, rigid, porcupine-like quills that vibrated with pent-up energy. Thick, purple nerve-like cords pulsed across its surface, bulging with every movement. This was not finesse; this was a biological engine of destruction.
In response, Thomas Grey did not swell in size. Instead, he seemed to collapse into himself, his form dissolving into a living piece of the void. His body became a man-shaped hole in reality, a darkness so absolute it hurt to look at. Only his eyes remained visible, their pupils now twin stars of cold, white fury burning in the endless night.
With their ultimate forms unveiled, the last vestiges of technique vanished. This was no longer a martial arts duel; it was a primal, unadulterated collision of opposing forces.
Sam, a fury of flesh and nerve, charged. He didn't throw a punch; he simply swung a limb that was more battering ram than arm. Thomas met him not with a block, but with absorption. The void of his body swallowed the impact, the force dissipating into nothingness with a sound like tearing fabric. He retaliated by lashing out with a tendril of solidified shadow that whipped across the pink muscle of Sam's chest, scoring a deep, sizzling gash.
They became a whirlwind of violence. Sam grabbed a chunk of the arena floor and hurled it, but the rubble passed straight through Thomas's incorporeal form. Thomas, in turn, phase-shifted his arm inside Sam's guard and rematerialized it for a point-blank blast of concussive dark energy that made the single eye of Sam's form flicker.
Through it all, Thomas maintained an eerie silence, a predator focused solely on the hunt. But within the monstrous shell, Sam's joy was palpable. His wide, fanged maw was stretched in a clear, ecstatic grin. Every brutal impact, every searing wound, was a note in a symphony he had waited his entire life to hear. He was loving this.
Yet, the tactical reality was grim. For every blow Sam landed, Thomas returned two. The pink muscular tissue began to recede in patches across Sam's body, flickering to reveal glimpses of his human skin beneath before the transformation desperately covered it again. He was being worn down, his regenerative power struggling to keep pace with the sheer, annihilating force of the void.
Seeing his rival falter, Thomas unleashed his final gambit. The ground behind Sam erupted not with a dozen, but with a thousand shadowy hands. They were everywhere, a forest of grasping, crushing darkness. They seized his limbs, his torso, his quilled mane, holding him fast. Dozens more formed, their palms glowing with volatile energy, and pressed against his body from all sides.
Sam strained, his monstrous form roaring in defiance, but he was utterly pinned. The glowing palms flared brighter—and then detonated in a synchronized, deafening series of explosions that consumed him completely, blasting chunks of his pink armor away and shaking the very foundations of the arena. The chain of explosions was relentless, a brutal, final punctuation to an epic struggle. Sam Lee was lost in the blinding, concussive fury.
In the safehouse, the broadcast was met with stunned silence. Moon and Kai were frozen, their minds reeling. For Moon, the shock was deeply personal. Memories of his own sparring sessions with Sam Lee flashed through his mind—the controlled power, the effortless counters. He had always known Sam was holding back, but witnessing this cataclysmic display made him realize the true, terrifying chasm that existed between them. Sam had been fighting with one hand tied behind his back the entire time.
In the arena, the spectacle reached its apparent conclusion. Thomas Grey, a figure of absolute darkness, coalesced the power of a thousand shadowy fists into one singular, definitive blow. The impact was not loud, but profound—a deep, resonant thump that seemed to suck the sound from the world. The protective pink muscle encasing Sam shattered like porcelain, exploding outwards in a cloud of dissipating, bio-luminescent mist.
Sam was sent crashing to the arena floor, his transformation utterly broken. He lay amidst the rubble, his body a canvas of defeat. His clothes were in tatters, and his skin was a horrifying landscape of raw, red burns and lacerations, sizzling with residual essence energy. The collective gasp from the audience was followed by a wave of triumphant cheers for Thomas. It was over. The Grey heir had prevailed.
The referee moved to raise Thomas's hand, but Thomas himself stood still, his void-form flickering as his glowing white pupils remained fixed on his fallen rival. He knew Sam too well.
Then, a voice, ragged but clear, cut through the cheers, silencing them instantly.
"I knew."
All eyes snapped to Sam. He pushed himself up onto his elbows, his body trembling with the effort, a grimace of pain etched on his face. But his eyes burned with an unnerving, lucid fire.
"I knew," he repeated, his voice gaining strength, echoing in the sudden hush. "I knew that I would never be able to win against a Grey who possessed talent equal to my own. Not because of skill. Not because of will. But because of this." He gestured weakly at his own broken body, then at Thomas's majestic, terrifying dark-form. "The raw, inherent power of your bloodline transformation... it is a ceiling I could never break through with mine alone."
He slowly, agonizingly, rose to his feet, his stance unsteady but his resolve ironclad.
"So, I asked myself a question," Sam continued, a dark, proud smile twisting his bloody lips. "If my bloodline was not enough... what if I made it more? What if I refused to be bound by the limits of my own genetics?"
He looked directly at Thomas, and for the first time, there was no joy in his eyes, only the grim satisfaction of a secret long kept. "This was all for you, Thomas. Just for you. To shatter the ceiling you were born under."
He slammed a fist against his own chest, and a terrifying, multi-hued aura erupted from him—a chaotic symphony of different, potent energies. "I journeyed into the forbidden depths of the universe. I hunted, and I conquered. I literally tore the very essence from fifteen different Saint-level creatures and forced their power to merge with my own bloodline!"
He threw his head back and let out a roar that was no longer entirely human. It was a composite scream of a dozen different apex predators, a sound of撕裂 (shredding) reality itself.
"RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"
The dissipating pink mist was violently sucked back into his body. But it did not return to its previous form. The energy concentrated, refined, and evolved. The bulky, monstrous physique streamlined into a lean, hyper-efficient, and densely muscular frame. The pink color shifted, hardening into a brilliant, gleaming platinum. The porcupine-like quills on his back merged and flowed, elongating into a powerful, prehensile tail that swayed behind him like that of the legendary demon, Majin Boo.
He was no longer just Sam Lee. He was a perfect, terrifying synthesis of sixteen ultimate lifeforms. The air around him crackled with unstable, overwhelming power.
To be continued…