But even Xal'zereth knew no answer was coming.
His array of abyssal-black eyes narrowed sharply, and his hand snapped forward in a blur of motion, fingers splayed.
A radiant mana shield burst to life between him and Atticus, shaped by complex geometric layering, reinforced with encoded glyphs, one of the most advanced defensive matrices the Zorvans had ever developed.
They waited for the collision. Yet, it never came.
Another impossibility slammed into Xal'zereth.
His mind lurched as Atticus's descending blade suddenly took on a subtle blue hue, matching the shield's mana signature perfectly, and then… phased through it.
No clash. No resistance. No impact.
Xal'zereth's eyes trembled, as his brain was flooded with contradictory data, trying to calculate something that made no sense.
He had mimicked the shield's mana signature?
Too late.
Mana suddenly enveloped his form, swallowing him as he teleported last second.
The attack missed, but not without a trace.
The air where he had stood ruptured, a vertical column of violent force ripping downward through the sky.
Xal'zereth reappeared in the distance, floating high above in the air, still, motionless.
But this time, his face wasn't unreadable.
It wasn't a subtle twitch or narrowed glance.
It was unreal shock. His eyes were wide, trembling, his breath came in fast, and his posture tense.
His mind spun, calculating, parsing, dissecting, and failing.
Then, softly, almost in disbelief, he said:
"…He copied the mana signature… of the shield?"
The words echoed hollowly in the silence that followed, a whisper of horror.
It was like the world collapsed around him.
It wasn't a feeling of superiority. He wasn't disdained by the idea that a mere human had pushed him this way. No.
To Xal'zereth, everything he was witnessing didn't make sense. He had seen it with his eyes, and yet, it didn't make sense.
Zorvans were overlords of mana.
They didn't just wield it, they existed within it, shaped by it, evolved around it. Their entire combat philosophy, their techniques, their very biology were bound to pure mana manipulation.
In a world where mana signatures could be mimicked, they had long ago devised measures to ensure their supremacy could never be subverted.
It was akin to encryption.
Just as sensitive files in a high-level system are locked behind layers of digital protection, so too did the Zorvans encode their mana signatures, layering them with complex, shifting sequences, self-replicating distortions, and quantum-phase scramblers designed to make them impossible to copy or replicate.
But what Atticus had just done…
Was the equivalent of hacking into a government's most secure facility, bypassing centuries of encryption, and doing it in less than a second.
Suddenly, Atticus turned. His intense purple eyes collided with Xal'zereth's abyssal black and then…
'He's coming!'
A warning tore through the minds of everyone watching.
The sky ruptured.
A deafening vacuum exploded into existence, collapsing air inward in a violent spiral as Atticus vanished from his position, appearing right in front of Xal'zereth, his body trailing a vortex of dark crimson energy.
His katana moved.
It flashed, descended, ascended, slashed sideways, twisted in arcs, stabbed forward, and cut back all at once.
Motion layered over motion, a dance of death so fast it looked like time itself fractured around him, trails of afterimages folding into one another.
Xal'zereth's mind spun, flickering through thousands of defense protocols in the span of a second. But he was Zorvan, he adapted.
His hand clenched sharply, and in a burst of power, spirals of condensed mana exploded across his arms, spinning with such violent force it sounded like a localized hurricane screaming against the laws of nature.
But that wasn't all. Dozens of translucent arms erupted around him, limbs made entirely from mana, spiraling with energy, some reaching from beneath his arms, others from his back, shoulders, and midair, forming a web of motion around him.
Each one glowed with different mana signatures, rapidly shifting, morphing every second.
It was an evolving wall of complexity designed to counter Atticus's signature mimicry.
But Atticus's eyes didn't change.
They clashed.
Katana met mana-made arm.
A world-ending sound erupted before a thunderous blast exploded outward, a shockwave so violent it shattered the skies above them, rippling outward in chaotic rings of pressure.
Everyone was sent flying.
Even the strongest, Zenon, his cloak snapping behind him, raised his hand and conjured a wide, reinforced shield to protect the others: Zoey, Kael, Aurora, the Apexes. But even then, they were hurled back, their eyes wide with disbelief as their ears rang from the impact.
The sky had cracked.
A visible rupture spiraled from the point of impact, jagged fractures cutting through the clouds like glass.
But that wasn't the end.
More shockwaves came. Not one. Not two. Dozens. Hundreds.
They came in rapid succession, each explosive, deep, and thunderous, like the constant pounding of a celestial war drum, echoing through the world like a chorus of violence.
Boom. Boom. BOOM. BOOMBOOMBOOM—
Each impact launched another blast of force, scattering wind, splitting clouds, tearing into the earth below. Onlookers tumbled again and again, shielding themselves, staggering, choking on the air, barely able to stabilize between each wave.
They watched with eyes filled with nothing but disbelief.
And above it all, Atticus and Xal'zereth remained locked in that storm, two titanic forces tearing the sky apart with every heartbeat.
They clashed again.
And again.
And again.
Blades and mana.
Xal'zereth moved like a machine. Minimalist. Efficient. Calculated.
A step, perfectly placed. A blink, precisely timed. A punch, sharper than steel, faster than thought.
Nothing wasted. Nothing left to chance.
His mana arms erupted in a storm, bursting from every angle, some slamming down from above, others striking sideways like piercing spears.
The spiraling mana coiled around each limb, condensed and volatile, moving with such ferocity that tornadoes formed around him, shredding the air with howling violence.
But it did nothing. Nothing at all.
Nothing to the force of nature standing before him.
Atticus moved like the elements.
Explosive like fire. Fluid like water. Free like air. Heavy like earth.
Each movement was a fusion of all, a strike born of flame, a pivot like flowing current, a dodge with wind's grace, and a counter as unyielding as stone.
There was no pattern. No rhythm to predict. He didn't fight, he surged.
Every time Xal'zereth's arms drilled forward, Atticus met them head-on, his katana flashing in arcs that twisted through the chaos, deflecting, severing, overpowering.
Clang. Whirl. Crash. Slash. BOOM.