The world缩小ed to two figures.
Everything else—the fire, the ruins, the scattered combatants—faded to background noise. Because in the center of it all, two forces of nature were trying to unmake each other.
Derek and Prime 10 vanished.
One moment they were there. The next—nothing. Just the afterimage of their departure burned into retinas, and the deafening BOOM of their collision somewhere else entirely.
They reappeared fifty feet away, fists locked, the shockwave of their impact flattening everything in a perfect circle around them. The ground cratered. The fire died. For one frozen second, there was only silence and two figures suspended in impossible tension.
Then they vanished again.
BOOM. Another crater, another shockwave, this one rippling through the battlefield like a stone dropped in still water.
Everyone felt it.
Leo, slumped against a wall with Superior-3's blood on his hands, looked up and felt the pressure wave pass through him like a physical force. His eyes went wide.
Maya, halfway to the others, stumbled as the ground shook beneath her feet. The Omega stirred, whispering something she couldn't quite hear, but the tone was clear: Fear.
Wolfen, mid-swing against Superior-2, froze as the shockwave hit. His head snapped toward the source, his golden eyes narrowing. He felt it—the raw, impossible power radiating from that distant point. And he understood.
Derek was stronger than him. At this moment, in this battle, Derek had surpassed them all.
Eva felt it too. She stood across from Superior-1, their fight momentarily forgotten, her eyes fixed on the distant chaos. Her purple flames flickered, responding to something in the air—something vast, something immortal.
Superior-1 watched her watch the fight. He didn't attack. Didn't move. Just observed.
"Learn, Eva," he said quietly. "Learn from what you're seeing. Never be overconfident. It could get you killed."
Eva turned—and he was gone.
Just... gone. Vanished into the smoke and fire like he'd never been there at all.
---
The Arena of Gods
Derek and Prime 10 moved through a world that had become irrelevant.
Space meant nothing. Time meant nothing. There was only the next strike, the next block, the next explosion of force as two impossibly powerful beings tried to murder each other.
Prime 10 was lethal.
Every hit she landed was catastrophic. She tore through Derek's defenses like they were paper, her fists punching holes through his chest, her kicks shattering his legs, her elbows caving in his skull. She killed him a dozen times in the first minute.
It didn't matter.
Because Derek had pushed his body beyond every limit. The Pulse that flooded his veins wasn't just healing—it was pre-existence. He was healing before the wounds even finished forming. His cells regenerated faster than she could destroy them.
He started dancing.
That ridiculous, primal, celebratory movement—the Hakarai, though he didn't know its name—took over his body as the power surged through him. His hips swayed. His arms waved. His feet moved in patterns that made no tactical sense but felt absolutely right.
Prime 10 punched through his chest. He kept dancing.
She decapitated him. His head regrew mid-spin.
She reduced him to a cloud of blood and bone. The cloud reformed into Derek, still dancing, still grinning, still utterly, impossibly alive.
Twenty minutes and five seconds.
For that span of time, Derek was immortal. Not hard to kill. Not difficult to put down. Immortal. Nothing Prime 10 did could stop him. Nothing she tried could slow him down.
The battlefield watched in awe.
Wolfen, helping Leo to his feet, paused to stare at the distant dance of destruction. His golden eyes were wide, his expression unreadable, but something in his posture shifted. Respect, maybe. Or the particular wonder of watching a student surpass the teacher.
Leo leaned on him, too exhausted to speak, but his eyes said everything: Is that really Derek?
Maya reached them, her face pale, the Omega's whispers finally silent. She just stared, like the rest of them, at the impossible thing happening in the distance.
Eva stood apart, her eyes fixed on the fight. Superior-1's words echoed in her mind: Learn, Eva. She was learning. She was watching the absolute pinnacle of what their kind could become, and she was learning.
And then, in the space between one heartbeat and the next, Prime 10 vanished.
She didn't retreat. Didn't flee. Just... stopped. Stood still. And Derek, mid-punch, mid-dance, mid-immortality, found himself hitting nothing.
He stumbled, confused, his power still raging through him.
Superior-1 appeared beside Prime 10. Superior-2 and Superior-3 materialized from the smoke, battered but alive. Superior-4 stood apart, her mask fixed on Jordan, who had never moved from his position.
They were leaving.
Superior-2 started to protest—some words, some argument, lost in the chaos. Superior-1 didn't respond. Just watched Prime 10 with an expression that, behind his mask, might have been concern.
Superior-4's voice cut through: "You can't just—"
Superior-1 raised a hand. She fell silent.
He looked at Prime 10 for one long, measuring moment. Then he turned, and the grey masks followed, melting into the smoke and fire like ghosts retreating before dawn.
Prime 10 was the last to go. Her dark grey mask fixed on Derek for a single, lingering second. Something passed between them—an acknowledgment, a promise, a warning.
Then she was gone.
Derek stood alone in the crater, his body still thrumming with power, his dance finally slowing, his grin slowly fading.
The twenty minutes and five seconds were over.
But for that brief, glorious span, he had been a god. And everyone who saw it would remember for the rest of their lives.