The bell didn't ring.
Albert was very cautious about this fight. There was someone off about the monk.
He burst backward in a sudden dash, creating distance so abruptly the front rows leaned forward in confusion.
Olfasten did not follow. He didn't even shift his stance. He stood as he was like a statue that had decided motion was optional.
Nothing happened.
The audience murmured, unsure whether they had missed something.
Albert inhaled once, then vanished.
Stone cracked underfoot as he crossed the stage in a blink, wind broke behind him.
He reappeared at Olfasten's back, arm coiling, knuckles aligned for a decisive strike aimed between spine and shoulder.
Olfasten was still without any expression like he had divorced last night.
His movement was minimal. But the timing was flawless. His fist drove forward in distance, compact and precise.
Albert barely dodged in time, the blow's force grazed past his ribs and detonated the wall behind him.
Stone exploded outward in a violent bloom. Dust, debris and fractured masonry burst into the underground corridor beyond, leaving a jagged crater where solid structure had been.
The shockwave rippled through the arena, lamps swinging, spectators recoiling as screams mixed with awe.
Albert skidded back, boots carving shallow trenches into the stage before he caught himself. He straightened slowly.
"So that's your baseline." he murmured. "Grateful one."
Olfasten lowered his fist. He hadn't advanced an inch. His face remained serene and quietly thrilled.
"Move before deciding." the monk said. "Speed without clarity lefts traces."
Albert rolled his shoulder once, testing it.
"Funny." he replied. "You punch like you are ending an argument with reality."
"I am." Olfasten answered.
The crowd roared now, fully awake.
Albert exhaled then stepped forward and the air warped.
He accelerated in short bursts, directly not engaging in combat. His body split into brief distortions. Afterimages snapping into existence and dissolving in nature after a moment.
The stage shuddered under rapid directional shifts, pressure waves snapping like cloth in wind.
Left. Right. High. Low.
False angles. Unexpected combos.
Albert wasn't trying to hit him.
He was trying to make Olfasten choose.
Olfasten's eyes tracked relaxing his body, weight balanced.
He turned just enough each time, defending without striking, allowing the illusions to pass through empty space.
His excitement deepened, subtle and internal like a scholar watching a clever proof unfold.
"Go and seek the gap." Olfasten said evenly. "But gaps appear only when one desires outcome."
Albert's voice drifted from three directions at once. "Then desire this."
He collapsed the distortions inward, compressing speed into a tight, silent loop waiting and hunting for the instant Olfasten would commit.
Albert surged in, battle of pure intent. His fist ignited the air with compressed force, the stage fracturing beneath the exchange as Olfasten met him head-on.
Blow after blow collided, shockwaves rolling outward in brutal waves. The audience became a distant blur of noise and motion.
Olfasten's strikes were clean, almost gentle in form, yet every impact carried crushing inevitability. Albert answered with speed and violence, chaining movements so fast they bent perception— short-range bursts of force that tore grooves into the floor.
Their bodies crossed and recrossed the stage in blinding arcs, collisions sounding like thunder trapped underground.
For a moment, it looked even.
Then Olfasten stopped his physical movements. Standing in his place like a statue.
His foot settled flat against the stone. His shoulders relaxed. His breath exhaled fully.
And the world slowed.
Albert felt it first—not visually, but internally. His muscles roared commands that arrived late. His next strike unraveled halfway through execution, momentum peeling apart like a thought interrupted mid-sentence.
The air thickened viscously, resistant, as if space itself had decided to observe rather than obey. His body was fully frozen as Olfasten moved his palms together. Which left afterimages behind.
Olfasten moved once with a single step.
His palm touched Albert's chest, respectfully.
The first impact landed silently.
Albert flew backward anyway.
The second impact detonated inside him.
Pain bloomed not as fire, but as depth. As pressure folding inward. His vision fractured. His bones cracked.
The delayed force tore through him like an voice catching up to its origin, slamming him into the far edge of the stage with enough power to crater stone and snap breath from lungs.
Albert collapsed to one knee, coughing, hands shaking not from fear but from awe. His body screamed damage reports, nerves lagging behind reality. He laughed once, breathless and raw.
"So that's it." he rasped. "You don't strike fast…. you strike inevitably."
Olfasten stood where he had finished the step, eyes bright now alive with restrained wonder. "Motion creates resistance." he said softly.
"Stillness allows consequence to arrive intact."
Albert forced himself upright, wiping blood from his lip. His smile was genuine this time. Reverent.
"Beautiful." he said. "Terrifying…. but beautiful."
Olfasten's technique had no silhouette. It didn't even had any accurate trajectory.
That was what terrified masters. There was nothing to read. Until the instant of impact, it did not exist.
Even now, as Albert—no, Tom forced himself back into motion, he understood why veterans spoke of it in half-sentences and unfinished metaphors.
Formless intent. Tom did not chase it. He built around it.
He moved in a widening arc, feet scraped the fractured stone, deliberately exposing openings. His speed stuttered, not from weakness but design.The crowd mistook it for recovery. Olfasten did not.
Two distortions bloomed at once—one high, one low. His body splitting into mirrored momentum. A pincer hit, closing from both angles, space compressing between them.
Olfasten planned something through the narrowing gap, body folding with impossible economy.
Tom's strikes grazed cloth and air, missing by centimeters that felt intentional. A counter came immediately. Tom vanished.
He inhaled and did not stop.
His chest expanded unnaturally, ribs locking wide as air poured in without release. Veins surfaced along his neck and arms. His heartbeat slowed, then deepened.
Fatigue screamed at the edges of his awareness but something else rose to replace it. Clarity sharpened by strain.
His body moved faster than it should have.
He slipped past the unseen blow as it arrived just in time.
The delayed second impact tore through empty space behind him, cracking stone and air alike.
Tom exhaled nothing. He kept inhaling.
Pain crept in immediately. Muscles burned. Vision tunneled. But the world… the world spoke.
Each of Olfasten's movements left a resonance, a light toll in the air. Tom listened. Not with ears. With the pressure building inside his chest.
"There." he muttered.
He dodged before Olfasten moved.
The monk struck inevitably, formless but Tom was already elsewhere, following the patterns rather than the act.
He ducked beneath a palm that erased stone where it landed.
Olfasten's excitement sharpened into focus.
"You hear it now? Interesting it is." the monk said.
Tom's legs trembled. Blood trickled from his nose. He grinned anyway, eyes blazing.
"Yeah." he answered between endless breaths.
Olfasten's foot slid back half a step in curiosity.
"Who taught you Reverse Breathing?" he asked, voice carrying through the fractured arena. "That discipline is not written. It is stolen or survived."
Albert kept inhaling, chest still expanded, shoulders trembling under the strain. His eyes stayed on Olfasten.
"Nobody taught me." he said. "Had a pinky hair friend once. A Significant weird Assassin guy."
Olfasten listened. Genuinely.
"He liked poetry." Albert went on, lips curling faintly. "Sang off-key. Always sang like he was drowning on purpose. I watched him whenever he went to do hourly exercises at night. I just copied the way his ribs moved. Back then, thought it was stupid."
For a brief moment, Olfasten pressed his palms together in some respect. "To befriend an assassin." he said, "and learn without instruction…. that is rare."
His eyes sharpened. "Reverse Breathing is extremely effective in physical combat. But it devours the body. Fatigue. Organ stress. If the vessel is weak, they might collapse."
His gaze traced Albert's posture, his stance, the controlled violence in his balance. "You seems to be pretty healthy." Olfasten concluded. "You may use it longer than most."
Albert exhaled for a moment thinking he got a relief but Olfasten didn't miss the opening
His palm slammed into the floor.
The stage fractured outward in a circular shock. Stones heaved up like liquid as blocks tore free from the ground—jagged slabs rising at odd angles, spinning midair as if caught in an unseen current.
With a pack of sharp kicks, Olfasten sent them flying.
Albert hurrily inhaled and his world slowed, unnaturally.
Every fragment hung suspended, edges trembled, dust motes glowing in the arena light. He moved through the storm with rough precision, shoulder-checking one slab, shattering another with his forearm, dashing through gaps that only ghosts could pass.
Stone exploded around him.
He landed. His boots grinded the debris into powder and Olfasten was already gone from his spot. Albert's pupils shrank.
A strange bell rang out of nowhere which only he heard.... from Above.
He looked up just as a shadow swallowed the lights around him.
Olfasten descended from the air, body inverted. Palm glowed with dense, compressed force.
Violet psychic energy folded inward around his hand, warping space, bending perception. The audience intensed as the strike came down—not fast or slow but as the final blow.
"Reverse Breathing is not for you," Olfasten said calmly, voice carrying through the distortion, "if you cannot react soon enough."
Albert tried to move. His muscles responded a fraction too late. The large energy made palm after Olfasten slammed the arena.
The arena detonated in violent violet light.
Psychic force ripped outward in a blinding wave, shredding stone, blasting debris into the stands, cracking pillars like brittle bone.
The shockwave swallowed sound.
Albert was hurled into the wreckage. His senses drowned in pressure and light. His Reverse Breathing finally broke. Oxygen tore from his lungs in a ragged gasp as pain reflected back all at once.
At the center of the devastation, Olfasten stood, palm lowered, robes fluttering in the aftermath. His expression remained calm but his eyes burned with exhilaration.
Albert lay half-knelt amid the rubble, coughing, laughing weakly through blood and dust.
"Yeah." he rasped. "Figures."
He pushed a hand against the stone.
"And here I thought I was getting good at this."