Fighting against Zaridan was like being an amateur trying to trade punches with the strongest fighter in the world — while the amateur had his hands tied and his eyes blindfolded.
The truth, raw and undisguised, was that from the very first advance that was a fight I shouldn't be capable of winning. I knew it. Zaridan knew it. Anyone objective enough knew it. I had advantages — few, fragile, conquered with sweat and planning — but they were advantages built on the sand of someone trying to deceive their own reality.
The first advantage was that it was the first time I activated Blood Trail and Affinity with Magic against him. Months since the fight against Dioscuros, nearly ten levels above what I was that day, and Vo'ruun's powers responded with an intensity I hadn't had before. I was faster. Stronger. Each movement carried a precision that, months ago, I simply didn't have control over — and that now, after so long, I had understood the dynamic and could control with a certain mastery.
But even that didn't seem enough. Zaridan operated on an incalculable level. My advantages, however great they were compared to what I was before, remained small compared to what he always was.
The second advantage was the chains.
They tethered him to a specific point of the Temple — a generous radius of action, wide enough for him to move with freedom inside that space, but with a limit. An invisible circle that, if I retreated beyond it, Zaridan couldn't follow. It was the only thing that allowed me to control the fight's rhythm: advance, trade a few blows, retreat outside the reach, rest, recover mana, and advance again.
I had never actively used that in our exchanges. It would be cheating. It would be dishonor. It would be the kind of thing that would poison the respect I had taken five hundred and seventy-six defeats to build.
But what was at stake was too great to think about that.
And looking at Zaridan, the way the blindfolded eyes followed me without judgment while I retreated for the third time in the first hour — he didn't seem to mind.
✦ ✦ ✦
Three hours.
Three hours of fighting and I had already lost count of how many times my body had touched that Temple's floor. But I had also lost count of how many times I had stood up — and that was the only statistic that mattered.
Fighting with glaives was different from any other fight I had ever had. The blade was curved — a long, continuous curvature that changed everything. There were no straight thrusts. No direct strikes. Each attack was born as an arc, the entire body spinning to follow the blade's trajectory, and the result was something that looked less like a fight and more like a dance — a dance where each spin could take someone's head.
I spun like a top.
It was the only way. The glaives demanded constant rotation — the body became the axis and the blades became extensions of the arms, sweeping everything around in arcs that covered flank, front, and back in a single continuous movement. That was why that weapon was, in my opinion, the best I had ever seen for multiple combat: a single warrior with two glaives could face enemies coming from all directions without ever needing to stop spinning. The curvature did the work. Inertia did the rest.
And in single combat, the advantage depended on distance. The moment you closed on the enemy — truly closed, removing the space between bodies — the fight was won. The blade's curvature allowed cuts at a proximity where straight swords were useless. The opponent's body became an obstacle to himself. And you, spinning, cut whatever was in reach with the naturalness of breathing.
That was what I had learned in five hundred and seventy-six defeats.
The problem was that Zaridan also knew all of that. Better than I did. Much better. He was the master of that weapon — he understood every limitation, exploited every advantage, used the curvature with an economy of movement that made my spins look like waste. And he learned fast. Not fast like someone who improves with time — fast like something that processes information in real time and discards what it's already seen.
Each blow I landed worked exactly once.
On the second attempt, he already knew. By the third, he already had the counterattack ready. It was like fighting against someone who read the future — except he didn't read it. He simply learned so fast it seemed like prediction.
It was frustrating.
And it was gratifying — because it forced me to invent. Each exchange needed something new. Each advance needed an approach he had never seen. I was being forced to fight with creativity, not just with technique, and some part of me — the part that wasn't bleeding and gasping — found that incredible.
It wasn't just once that my skin was cut. His blows passed close and left marks — red furrows that stung for an instant before my healing magic, amplified by Affinity with Magic, closed the damage in seconds. The pain vanished. The cut vanished. And I advanced again.
My fight was one of trading damage. Accept the cut to get the opening. Bleed to gain position. The body as currency — spending health to buy opportunity.
Ironically, I couldn't trade. I almost always ended up with the damage while Zaridan, somehow, always dodged. Always. As though he knew where each of my blades would be before I decided to place it there.
✦ ✦ ✦
Six hours.
We were no longer alone.
Outside the Temple, lined up at the entrance like an audience nobody invited, were Morgana, Livina, Arachne, and Pegasus. The four stared fixedly inside, eyes glazed, fascinated by what they saw. To them, Zaridan and I must have been little more than blurs — my active abilities made everything around me slow, but in truth it was I who was so fast that my mind ended up perceiving the world in slow motion. From outside, the fight must have looked like two bolts of lightning crashing inside a box of stone.
Arachne wept with rage. Her eight legs trembled, her entire body contracting as though she fought against herself not to invade the Temple without my permission. Each time I fell, she let out a shrill sound that made the ground vibrate — and each time I stood up, the sound stopped. She wanted to protect me. Wanted to tear that creature away from me with everything she had. And she was destroying herself inside because I wouldn't let her.
Pegasus was different. He screamed, yes — but there was something more calculated in it. Colder. As though he were watching to decide something, not to cheer. In his culture, maybe that was nothing more than a fight for territory: two males disputing dominion, and the winner earned the right to command. Pegasus was waiting for the result. And if the winner were someone he didn't respect — I had the feeling he would have something to say about it.
Morgana and Livina shouted. Morgana with precise words of encouragement. Livina with words I wouldn't repeat in public.
"Don't give up, Lord. You can do it."
"That's it, my Lord! Kick that son of a bitch's ass!"
Neither of the two dared enter the Temple. They knew that fight, however insane it seemed, had a reason. They didn't yet know what it was — and they would be horrified when they discovered what I had wagered. But they were there. For hours. In the same place. Cheering for me.
And if it weren't for Zaridan on the other side, that would have made me smile.
"I see you have many who care about you." Zaridan spoke with his arms crossed, the glaives deactivated for an instant. "Pathetic."
The word held no venom. It was almost… envy? No. Curiosity. The recognition of someone who never had that, observing someone who did.
"How long do you intend to rest there in the corner?" He continued while I gasped, leaning outside his radius of reach, feeling every muscle in my body beg me to stop. "I must admit that power you hid is very interesting. But I think even you will eventually tire." His head tilted to the side. "How about you just set me free already?"
However much I was irritated by his words, I wasn't an idiot to dismiss them. Zaridan was right. My tactic of retreating to recover mana gave me control over the rhythm, but it was useless if all my cards were exposed one by one, exchange after exchange, until none remained. The longer we fought, the more I realized victory was pulling away. Each thing I showed became information, and information in Zaridan's hands became immunity.
If his body glistened with sweat, it was only sweat — thin, clinging to the grayish skin like varnish. My case was different. My entire body dripped. I had taken off the helmet hours ago because I could barely breathe with it. The cut on my left ear — the last one the healing had closed — still throbbed as a reminder that each time I entered his reach, I paid.
"At least I feel you're making an effort…" I said between heavy breaths, reaching for the provocation I knew he hated. "Patience is a virtue."
Zaridan's face contracted in amused irritation — the kind that comes when someone knows they're being provoked and is irritated with themselves for caring. He understood this wasn't a fight of honor. In the Oasis, honor was a luxury the dead couldn't spend. I would use every advantage I had, and he forgave me for it.
In truth, he even seemed to enjoy it. He let me retreat. He waited. He watched me using the weapon he himself had taught me with something on his face I couldn't name. Maybe he liked seeing his technique returned against him. Maybe it was pride. Maybe it was the silent pleasure of a master seeing the student finally use what he learned — even if the student was trying to use it to bring him down.
✦ ✦ ✦
Every time I had summoned Zaetar it was to help me subvert the enemy through numbers, but against Zaridan things seemed far more complicated.
I had already summoned Zaetar twice during the fight. Both times, the creature advanced with everything — a force clearly superior to what it had months ago — and both times, Zaridan dealt with him the way one swats a particularly stubborn insect. Zaetar couldn't cause damage. Couldn't hold. Couldn't even slow Zaridan for more than an instant.
But one instant was all I needed.
I summoned Zaetar for the third time. This time behind Zaridan's back.
The creature materialized in the air — and before Zaridan could turn completely, Zaetar's arms closed around his torso. Not as an attack. As a lock. Holding, squeezing, gripping with everything he had in an embrace that wasn't meant to hurt — it was meant to last.
One second. That was all I needed. Maybe less.
"Now, Zaetar! Hold him!"
I advanced.
And Zaridan did something he hadn't done in six hours of fighting.
The chain moved.
Not like before — not the lazy dragging of links that swayed around him like decoration. The thick chain rose from the floor like a serpent waking, gained speed in a brutal arc, and came in my direction like a whip made of steel. The thickness of those links, combined with the force Zaridan put behind it, created a wall of metal spinning between the two of us — and I had no choice.
I stopped.
The chain passed centimeters from my face. Its wind pushed me backward.
And in the instant of hesitation — my lost instant, the instant that was the difference between victory and one more defeat — Zaridan spun inside Zaetar's embrace and ran the glaive through the creature.
Zaetar came undone.
"Hey! You're going to use the chain now?!"
I shouted, irritated. Victory had been there. At the tips of my fingers. A second away — and the chain had taken that second from me.
"Well…" Zaridan answered, his voice carrying that presumptuous smile I already knew by heart. "If memory doesn't fail me, you've been saving yourself for hours by staying outside the reach of my chain." The glaives shrank slowly in his hands. "What did you think I was going to do? Accept everything you're doing without also using what I have in my favor?"
He was right.
I hated when he was right.
But the truth was that I had used the chain as an advantage from the very first minute — retreating beyond its reach, treating its limit as my shield. Asking him not to do the same was hypocrisy. Zaridan was already giving me more advantage than any Mythic creature would ever give a human. Expecting more than that was expecting him to let me win — and he would never do that.
"You know we can stay here for the next few months, but you're hardly going to beat me."
There was no arrogance in his voice. It was only what he saw. The only time I had cornered him, he used a trick to escape — and that said everything about his will to win. Zaridan wanted freedom with every fiber of that immense body. And however much I felt, somewhere deep, that he would prefer to stay — he wouldn't lose on purpose. That wasn't who he was.
If I wanted to come out victorious, I needed something completely different.
The question was what.
And then something came to my mind. An idea. Risky. Stupid. The kind of thing nobody with more than two options would consider.
I only had one.
And looking at it properly — it was a hell of an idea.
✦ ✦ ✦
"Very well. Let's finish this."
"Hmm…" Zaridan's head tilted to the side. "Seems someone has an idea."
After months trading blows, I could no longer hide my intentions from that giant. He read my body the way I read a battlefield — every shift of weight, every adjustment of posture, every breath out of pattern was information he processed before I finished thinking.
I didn't care.
Knowing I had an idea didn't invalidate it. It only left him prepared for everything he already knew. And that was exactly where my advantage lay — against what I was planning, nothing he knew was going to make a difference.
I advanced running.
And in the middle of the advance, I deactivated the glaives.
The blades dissolved in my hands. The mark reabsorbed the metal, and I was left with empty hands. Open. No weapon. Running toward the most dangerous creature in my kingdom with bare fists.
Zaridan found it strange. I felt it on his face — the minimal tilt of the head, the tattoos decelerating for a fraction of a second, the body recalibrating for something it didn't expect. But the strangeness didn't make him hesitate. He attacked heavy, exactly as always. The speed was absurd — and even after six hours of fighting, he still hit as hard as in the first exchange.
"What are you thinking, human?"
The glaive descended toward my face at a speed that transformed the air into sound — from top to bottom, like a rocket cutting the world in half. Every instinct screamed for me to dodge. Get out. Roll. Do anything that wasn't standing in the trajectory of that blade.
I didn't get out.
Part of the idea depended on that blow coming as close as possible.
I let my body go.
The glaive passed. Even being fast, I felt the heat on my cheek — the air displaced by the blade arriving before the cut, and then the cut itself, opening the skin in a hot furrow that descended from the cheekbone to the jaw. Blood ran immediately, hot, down the side of my face.
I didn't care.
Because the glaive hit the floor.
And that was exactly the moment I wanted.
Zaridan always deactivated the weapon at the instant of impact with the floor — a reflex of someone who didn't want to cause damage to himself. It was automatic. It was predictable. It was the only predictable thing that creature did. And in the instant the glaive dissolved, I was already underneath him.
Our faces centimeters apart.
I felt the hot breath on my face — heavy, animal, with a metallic undertone that resembled old blood. The blindfolded eyes pointed directly at mine. Surprise registering in his body before reaching his mind — muscles contracting, arms beginning to react, the second glaive still in the other hand preparing for the counterstrike.
I grabbed his arm.
Not his face. The arm. With both hands, with all the strength that Blood Trail and Affinity with Magic gave me, with the strength of five hundred and seventy-six defeats and six hours of fighting and months of training and everything I was and everything I had and everything I still wanted to be.
To him, that must have been madness. The second glaive was still in his other hand — he could cut me in half before I finished what I had started. Any rational creature would release the arm and retreat.
I wasn't rational. I was desperate. And desperate, in the Oasis, beats rational every time.
The movement was simple.
I had seen it on television. In a life that seemed to belong to another person, sitting on a sofa in a world that had no monsters nor glaives nor Mythic creatures chained in temples. A judoka, heavyweight, using the opponent's strength against him. Grab the arm. Turn the hip. Pull down while the leg sweeps the support.
In theory, it was simple.
In practice, against a creature with bull legs that weighed ten times more than me, it was the most insane thing I had ever attempted.
But Zaridan wasn't human. And that was exactly the point.
The advance of his arm — the counterattack any fighter would make — shifted his body weight forward. The support leg was exposed. Centimeters from mine. And before the second glaive completed the arc, I advanced with my leg and swept his support.
He staggered.
He didn't fall — the other bull leg compensated, his entire body recalibrating with a speed that would have saved anyone else. The hoof found the floor, the base stabilized, and for an instant I saw on his shoulders the certainty that he had recovered.
He was still anchored.
The chain.
The same chain he had used as a whip against me, that swayed like paper around him, that had held him to that Temple for months — was also what kept him on his feet. As long as it existed, he would always have an anchor. Always have a fixed point to stabilize. I could sweep his legs a hundred times and he would recover a hundred times, because the chain wouldn't let him fall.
Unless the chain didn't exist.
"Zeus." The word came out between clenched teeth, squeezed between effort and urgency, with his arm still trapped in my hands and the second glaive descending into my field of vision like a sentence. "Free Zaridan."
[ Understood. Releasing bindings. ]
The chains released.
All of them. At once. The links that shone with extinguished light pulsed one last time and opened like jaws giving up — crashing to the floor with a thunder that shook the Temple, hundreds of kilos of metal striking stone like a storm of iron.
And Zaridan, for the first time since he existed in my kingdom, was without an anchor.
The surprise was faster than his reaction. The body that had just stabilized itself using the chain as counterweight lost the balance it didn't know it depended on. The blindfolded eyes widened behind the cloth — I didn't see it, but I felt it, in the way his entire body faltered for a fraction of a second that shouldn't have existed.
A fraction of a second was all I needed.
I pulled the arm. Turned the hip. Placed his body onto my back with a roar that came from a place deeper than the lungs — and threw.
Zaridan flew.
The Mythic creature, the monster I couldn't knock down in five hundred and seventy-six attempts, crossed the entire Temple in the air. The body hit the back wall with a force that cracked the stone in webs — and kept going. It went through the wall. Came out the other side. And fell on the ground outside, rolling through the sand, kicking up a cloud of dust that rose slowly in the still air.
Silence.
Morgana stopped screaming.
Livina stopped cursing.
Arachne stopped crying.
Pegasus stopped watching.
Zaridan stood up.
Fast. As though nothing had happened. No visible damage, no apparent pain, no sign that the impact that cracked a stone wall had made any difference to his body. He shook the dust from his shoulders with the same tranquility with which he did everything. Straightened his spine. Tilted his head in my direction.
But he had fallen.
And that was written all over his face.
While my face slowly healed from the deep cut on the cheek — the blood still descending down my chin, the healing working slower now that my mana was almost at zero — I held the gaze. Even through the blindfold. Even with my entire body trembling from exhaustion. Even knowing that if he wanted, he could bring me down now with a breath.
I had knocked him down.
And he knew it.
"So I won."
The sentence came out low. Hoarse. Almost out of air — the voice of someone who had spent everything they had and found, at the bottom of nothing, exactly enough for one last sentence.
The Temple fell silent.
Zaridan's tattoos moved slowly. The mouth opened. And what came out wasn't rage. Wasn't frustration. Wasn't the roar of a Mythic creature wounded in its pride.
It was a smile.