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Chapter 54: Duel
🕑 Added 2025-06-13 15:51:46 +0000 UTCThe moment the referee’s cry faded, Ethan’s hand slapped the face of his watch.
“Heatblast!”
In a flash of brilliant green light, he transformed. On the other side of the stage, Iris Thorne was already channeling her power, a vortex of frigid Aura swirling at her feet. A sheet of slick, white ice spread rapidly outward, seeking to claim the entire stage.
Trying to create a terrain advantage, Ethan sneered internally. He wasn’t about to let that happen. He drew back a rocky fist and slammed it into the ground before him.
“Hah!”
A rolling wave of fire erupted from the point of impact, a fiery dragon that roared across the stage. It met the spreading frost in a violent, hissing collision. Instantly, the entire ring was shrouded in a thick, billowing cloud of steam, obscuring both fighters from view.
Through the mist, however, Iris’s confident smile was unwavering. She clapped her hands together, and the air around her crackled with coalescing power. Dozens of sharp, crystalline thorns materialized from the ambient Aura, each one gleaming with a cold, unforgiving light. With a flick of her wrists, she sent them flying, a deadly rain of ice aimed straight at Ethan’s silhouette. It was her signature Rank One skill: Ice Thorn.
“This move…” Heatblast’s voice crackled like a bonfire. “I’ve seen it before.” He spread his massive, rocky arms wide, as if to embrace the world, then clapped them together with tremendous force. A concussive wave of scorching heat blasted forward, morphing into a colossal torrent of flame that devoured the ice thorns, turning them to nothing more than superheated vapor.
Unfazed, Iris changed tactics. A cold, blue light flashed in her hands. In the blink of an eye, two sharp, beautifully crafted blades of solid ice appeared, a chilling aura spreading out from her. Her innate talent, “Solid Ice,” increased the durability of her creations by forty percent, making her blades harder than steel. She was closing the distance.
Ethan met the challenge without hesitation, transforming his own rocky hands into two blazing fire-blades. The moment they appeared, the air grew thick and heavy, the conflicting energies of fire and ice creating an oppressive pressure that made the nearby audience gasp for breath.
They charged.
Ice met fire in the center of the stage with a deafening, ringing clang. Gorgeous, deadly arcs of orange and blue light filled the air as sparks of flame and shards of ice flew in every direction. The spectacle was breathtaking.
After a stalemate of barely ten seconds, Ethan called upon his raw physical strength. With a forceful, downward slash, he broke the bind, sending Iris staggering backward. She recovered with practiced grace, executing an agile backflip to create distance. Despite her Rank Two power, she was a “mage” type; her physical conditioning was no match for Heatblast, a being of living rock and fire. In a contest of pure strength, she was at a clear disadvantage.
Ethan gave her no time to breathe. He opened his mouth and unleashed a continuous stream of fire, a move he mentally dubbed Scorching Breath.
Iris’s right hand shimmered. The ground before her surged upward, forming a thick, translucent ice wall that intercepted the flames. Ethan wasn’t surprised; a defensive skill of this caliber was expected. Wasting his energy trying to brute-force his way through it would be foolish.
Inspiration struck. He channeled his fire downward, directing it toward his feet. A condensed ball of flame erupted beneath him, launching him into the air like a rocket. He soared over the ice wall, then angled his descent, shooting straight down toward Iris.
He landed with the force of a meteor, triggering a circular shockwave of fire that surged outward in all directions. Iris’s reaction was astonishing. She instantly slicked the ground beneath her with a layer of frictionless ice and began to slide, dodging with incredible speed. She was agile, but not agile enough to completely escape the blast radius. The edge of the firestorm caught her, sending her tumbling across the stage.
She was back on her feet in an instant, but a lock of her pristine hair was now singed and blackened. For the first time, a trace of genuine anger entered her voice. “Don’t you know a girl’s hair is precious?”
“You can just cut it off,” Ethan said nonchalantly. The flame on his left hand morphed into a pair of fiery scissors, which he snipped in the air with a sharp snip-snip sound. “Need a hand?”
“You—!”
He didn’t give her time to finish, launching two fireballs that sped toward her. Iris dodged, but the fireballs seemed to have grown eyes, swerving in mid-air to follow her. As she evaded, Ethan unleashed another volley, and another, until she was surrounded by a swarm of countless, homing fireballs, trapped in a desperate situation.
“Hmph!” Iris snorted, her patience finally exhausted. A violent vortex of ice-elemental Aura began to condense rapidly around her, its sheer cold extinguishing any fireballs that drew too close. This was no mere defense. She raised her hands above her head, and a massive amount of ice element gathered there, gradually coalescing into a giant, crystalline lance. This was her new power, a skill awakened only after breaking through to Rank Two: the Ice Lance, an attack designed for devastating, single-target annihilation.
Ethan unleashed a continuous ray of fire from his hands, trying to disrupt her casting, but the intense cold surrounding her snuffed it out before it could even get close. The Ice Lance was fully formed. With a powerful, two-handed shove, she sent it flying toward Ethan at an impossible speed. There was no time to dodge.
“Then let’s go all out!” Ethan roared.
He unleashed his own ultimate attack. While a torrent of fire erupted from his mouth, his hands simultaneously released two more fierce, concentrated beams of flame. The three powerful fire rays intertwined, merging into a single, giant, cohesive pillar of pure energy that crashed directly against the incoming Ice Lance.
On one side, the frigid, crystalline blue of absolute zero. On the other, the scorching, brilliant orange-red of a star’s core.
A true song of ice and fire was being performed on the fighting stage.
