Fissures fractured the walls and floor of the cave, a brutal portrait of the battle unfolding. Master-level fights tended to redraw the environment in which they occurred, and this particular clash promised to reshape an entire section of the forest.
Were it not for the precise control of those involved, the surroundings would have been destroyed long ago. Waves of thorny vines, bathed in intense green fons, erupted from the walls and floor, attempting to envelop Khaled in a cocoon to restrain him.
But capturing the Master of Space was proving to be a nearly impossible feat, due to his ability to move unimpeded across the battlefield. With every step, Khaled seemed to materialize in a different spot within the chaotic scenery, frustrating any attempt to bind or wound him.
The efforts of Masters Mokuzai and Mizu were notable; anyone else fighting them would have fallen long ago. But Khaled was no ordinary opponent, having once been recognized as a genius in the domain of spatial abilities, even receiving invitations from various cultivator mansions to join their ranks.
His speed was awe-inspiring. Yet, while the masters of water and wood grew increasingly impressed with Khaled, the same could be said of him.
Khaled observed with growing wonder as Master Mizu moved with a speed that should not be possible for someone manipulating the water element. His jets and projectiles sliced and pierced through everything in their path, leaving no doubt as to how lethal this seemingly simple element could be in his hands.
Dodging another pressurized jet, Khaled noticed that Master Mizu was drawing closer and closer to Mokuzai; this made him alert, and he decided to keep them separated. While evading the attacks, the Master of Space initiated a sequence of finger signs, which intrigued his opponents to the point where they redoubled their efforts to stop him, but without success.
The fifth sign had barely been made when Master Mizu decided to strike hard and cease his probing attacks. He materialized a wave capable of covering the entire cave. It was the perfect pincer attack: in front, a tsunami surged with extreme velocity; behind, vines, stakes, and stalactites stood ready to impale Khaled.
Just when it seemed to be the end for the Master of Space, with a swift movement, the final sign of the sequence was completed. The attack never reached Khaled; instantly, the space around him stretched for kilometers, a level of spatial distortion that left both masters stunned.
"How is this possible?! Without a personal rune, or even a legendary scroll?! This..." Master Mizu went rigid before his opponent's demonstration of power. Losing his rhythm, he stood paralyzed, mouth agape.
As he stammered, looking at the now-distant Master of Space, the spatial distortion dissolved, placing Khaled face-to-face with his prey in a matter of heartbeats. Except the prey was now him—a fact he realized with a shiver down his spine as a spatial blade materialized in Khaled's right hand.
The wind from the spatial blade made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. His death was almost certain... almost, for his paralysis was interrupted by an explosion of fons from a personal rune hanging around his neck. A water element shield, rotating at high pressure, materialized around Mizu, forming a sphere that parried Khaled's attack, hurlind Mizu—shield and all—to the other side of the cave.
Seizing the exchange, Mokuzai abandoned his complex control over the wood element and adjusted his fons affinity to the primary earth element. Producing a stalactite over a meter wide, he launched it at extreme speed toward Khaled. With no time to dodge, Khaled turned to face the blow, conjuring a rune in his left hand with a single thought. The rune, etched into space, transformed into a portal that swallowed Mokuzai's strike and allowed Khaled to use his movement technique to materialize beside him.
The fons expenditure and the effort were excessive, but it was worth it. His reward came when a spatial blade, conjured on pure instinct and improvisation, severed Mokuzai's right hand—the one holding his personal rune. The scream was blood-curdling, and in a desperate move, the Master of Wood used the legendary scroll in his left hand to activate a supreme technique.
In milliseconds, trees and vines twisted out of the scroll, threatening to suffocate the entire cave with their mass.
Losing no time, Khaled conjured and inverted a spatial rune, sucking himself and his enemy's severed hand into his minor dimension.
Gasping, Khaled trembled on his knees in the lifeless, empty space around him. The sky was a heavy, overcast gray; clouds of spatial particles predominated above his head. A floor made of ether—specifically, an eighty-square-meter ether rock—drifted in the gray void.
In front of Khaled, Mokuzai's personal rune glowed within the severed hand. Its shape resembled a stone, if not for the emerald brilliance that illuminated the entire somber minor dimension.
"That was close... too close. I have to end this. Fortunately, everything is prepared, and with this rune, I can accelerate the process. Let's see how they deal with this..." While thinking of his next move—the one that would decide the fight once and for all—Khaled took the wood element rune in his hand. Channeling its energy into his body, he felt his exhaustion drain away at a frantic pace.
"This is truly incredible! Even the muscular stress I've accumulated over the last few weeks, fighting and fleeing, is being exhausted... even the rumors don't do justice to how useful a personal rune is. Pity it won't last much longer. I can feel its material is already weakened, and it has no further use for me, as I have no affinity with wood fons to recharge it... at least it will serve its purpose well." With a sense of regret, Khaled accepted the loss of the personal rune.
What mattered most was the next step. Time was not on his side, given that minor dimensions were inherently volatile and usually expelled any mass of fons or matter that did not carry their signature.
Revitalizing quickly, Khaled began condensing a spatial rune through a series of hand seals, vibrating with an immense amount of fons. A funnel of spatial particles formed from the sky of the minor dimension toward the rune, accelerating its formation and giving it a silvery-gray color.
Keeping the now-completed rune floating before him, Khaled made a series of signs with his fingers, molding more elemental fons into a rune that rotated misshapenly, creating spatial blades sharper than his basic ability. This was his space-time severance technique pushed to the limit.
Once both techniques were ready, with a movement of joining his hands, Khaled fused the two runes, causing a shockwave that rippled violently through the entire minor dimension. As an unformed mass, the runes remodeled themselves to create an orb that compressed, making the space of the minor dimension tremble.
The spatial fabric of the real world was stronger, but Khaled had ensured it was momentarily weakened with his earlier distortion technique—which had almost cost him his life. This would guarantee that his next technique would succeed where before it might have failed. With a cold smile, the Master of Space prepared to leave his minor dimension minutes before the dimension itself would expel him.
While Khaled was replenishing his energy and preparing his final attack, Masters Mokuzai and Mizu were not idle. They knew that sooner or later, Khaled would return; everyone was aware of the volatility of minor dimensions.
"We have to prepare a trap for him. We can't give him room to move with his spatial techniques again," Master Mokuzai declared, panting. The loss of his hand had taken its toll. He had used a healing technique to scar the wound, sealing it with a wooden orb.
"Yes. The only way now is to use my supreme technique, since you already used Forest Rebirth to corner him. We must take advantage of your reshaping of the environment to catch him off guard, and with my Submerged World, knock him out quickly. If we give him a chance to breathe, we'll lose the next exchange."
With a nod, Mokuzai agreed. His lips trembled with intense rage; Khaled had maimed him, and what made it worse was that he hadn't even underestimated his opponent. This Master of Space was fearsome on his own merit.
Both hid behind trees at the edge of the forest environment that now dominated the cave. Even in the dark, they could see perfectly thanks to the elemental fons enhancement of their senses. Their eyes were fixed on the point in the cave where Khaled had vanished.
The minutes-long wait was not in vain. With a violent ripple, the Master of Space appeared at the exact spot they were watching. Trembling with excitement, both prepared for the frantic ambush; the sequence had to be at a speed that left Khaled no room to breathe.
When the Master of Space landed on a thick branch snaking across the ground, the cold smile returned to his face. With a sudden movement, he propelled himself toward the cave exit. The space beneath his feet was shortened by his spatial distortion ability; it wasn't at the level of a full technique, but the speed advantage was obvious.
"He's saving fons, or the cost of entering the minor dimension was higher than expected!" This analytical thought flashed through both masters' minds. Driven by the opportunity for a brutal counter-attack, Mokuzai and Mizu simultaneously activated their movement and attack techniques. The plan was simple: Mokuzai would delay Khaled so that Mizu could deliver the fatal blow with his supreme technique.
Facing the speed of his enemies, Khaled still tried, unsuccessfully, to run or dodge. But the barrage of earth element attacks carried twice the brutality of the first clash. Mokuzai held nothing back, forcing Khaled into close-quarters combat with a hastily conjured spatial blade.
"He's avoiding using his spatial blade technique as well as his movement techniques—he's limiting himself to basic abilities!" With a wide grin, Mokuzai closed the distance, deciding to go for hand-to-hand combat; he needed to maim Khaled in retaliation for the loss of his dominant hand.
Master Mizu thought little of the shift in events; for all intents and purposes, Khaled seemed exhausted, lacking his extravagant and lethal techniques. It was a miracle someone without a personal rune had lasted this long in such an intense fight with high fons consumption.
Abandoning the idea of compromising his fons reserves on a supreme technique that might kill the target, Mizu delivered high-pressure strikes aimed at wearing Khaled down. Victory was within reach; savage smiles broke across the faces of the water and wood masters. Every second, Khaled seemed more exhausted, hanging on by a thread.
The intense exchange soon bore fruit. Khaled's left arm was pierced at the height of the biceps. With the enemy's reaction compromised, Mokuzai summoned vines that clung fiercely to Khaled's limbs, while Khaled dodged Mizu's high-pressure projectiles as best he could.
Before long, the Master of Space was trapped by vines and riddled with holes in his arms and legs.
"We finally caught you, huh? Haha. I'll be happy to return the favor for what you did to me," Mokuzai said with a crazed look, relishing the pain he was about to inflict on his mutilator.
But the panting Master Mizu did not share this sentiment. Furrowing his brow, he disagreed:
"Mokuzai, control yourself! We are here to take him to Migdal; he will be judged by the Grand Masters."
Narrowing his eyes, Mokuzai, who had long since discarded his patient demeanor, would not be swayed.
"I will have my revenge. He doesn't need his upper or lower limbs to testify. So, how about you stay out of my way?"
The tension between the out-of-control Mokuzai and the now-serene Mizu grew by the second. Staring each other down in silence, both were determined to make their point. Mizu held the indisputable advantage, as he still possessed his personal rune.
A muffled laugh broke the silence and the tension. Both stared at Khaled, who was now laughing louder, almost to the point of convulsing. It seemed the Master of Space had mentally collapsed under his defeat.
"It would be wise of you not to provoke my colleague who insists on tearing you apart, Master Khaled," Mizu advised, arching his eyebrows to avoid worsening the situation.
"You guys really are funny. Well, at least this was the best fight I've had since I reached the Master level. Let's do it again... of course, if you survive."
A cold smile followed Khaled's words. Something was wrong, but Mizu felt nothing—not even the slightest ripple of fons.
Mokuzai broke into a sneer before the defeated enemy who thought he still held an advantage.
"You know, I might actually start feeling sorry for you... has your mind collapsed? Or do you really believe you're something special? You're nothing—"
Mokuzai couldn't finish his sentence. A compact sphere of fons, rotating at high speed, appeared in front of Khaled. A rune made of interlocking geometric patterns drew attention to the center of the sphere.
"Dimensional... Labyrinth..." Uttering those two words, while maintaining his icy smile, Khaled activated his supreme technique.
What followed was a succession of events that could not be stopped. Taking advantage of the fact that he could still enter his minor dimension for a few minutes, Khaled activated the portal and allowed himself to be sucked into it, which cost him his final fons reserves.
Mokuzai and Mizu didn't even worry about Khaled's sudden disappearance; the sphere held so much condensed fons that it could not be a good omen. Both tried to run, but it was already too late.
The sphere expanded, sucking in everything in its path. Trees, vines, even chunks of the cave were drawn in. The previously distorted space was torn apart, accelerating the orb's swelling even further. Even running with all their might, the two masters were swallowed by the technique.
After seconds of suction, the sphere silently rotated, returning almost to its initial volume. Remaining still and floating, it stood in stark contrast to the surrounding environment of annihilation. It seemed as though everything within a 70-meter radius had been obliterated.
Moments after the attack stopped, Khaled was ejected from the minor dimension. Falling prone, he sobbed in pain. His luck was Mokuzai's personal rune, which still contained enough energy to heal his wounds.
"Good fight, colleagues... we'll have to do it again sometime."
As the wood fons healed his fragile body, Khaled smiled at the floating sphere. Without lingering, he returned through the cave entrance; the chance of more pursuers appearing was real, and his journey was far from over.