— "Ugh... Where the hell are you dragging me?!"
The wind howled brutally in Shin's ears before fading away into complete silence. Straining his body, he looked down through blood-red eyes: the distance from his position to the ground was so vast that entire continents had shrunk into faint curves.
The two of them had just ripped through the cloud layer, bursting clean through the planet's thick atmosphere.
Air friction at supersonic speeds set both Shin and Arthur's clothes ablaze, turning them into two burning rockets hurtling out into open space.
SWISH!
Arthur suddenly let go. Driven by inertia, Shin's body lurched and floated, coming to a standstill in the weightless void. His neck stiffened, and his chest squeezed tight as atmospheric pressure completely vanished.
— "Shin... ugh... You bastard... Hard... to breathe...!"
Blood in Shin's capillaries began to boil under the vacuum environment, his lungs burning as if every trace of air had been sucked dry. Floating a few meters away, Arthur crossed his arms, watching Shin struggle, then unconsciously clicked his tongue:
— "Circulate your Sophion, you idiot! Focus your Sophion and breathe steadily!"
Hearing that, Shin immediately closed his eyes, trying to hold onto his last thread of consciousness. He channeled the surging Sophion energy within his mind core, directing it along his energy pathways straight into his circulatory system and chest. Instead of drawing oxygen from the external environment, Shin used Sophion as a biofuel, forcing his internal metabolism to self-generate pure oxygen to sustain his brain while creating an internal pressure barrier balanced with the vacuum of space.
HAHHH…
Shin exhaled a puff of hot air, his chest heaving back to rhythm. He opened his eyes, breathing a sigh of relief as his body fully adapted to the void.
— "So this is outer space... Is space really this massive?"
Arthur jerked his chin toward the distance:
— "You still don't know how to fly? Concentrate deeply, channel Sophion down to your feet, and turn it into a launchpad to anchor your center of gravity!"
Shin listened and began experimenting. He concentrated Sophion energy at the soles of his feet, compressing it into an invisible fulcrum of friction. By adjusting the flow of energy at his heels and toes like micro-thrusters, Shin stabilized his body's center of mass in the zero-gravity environment. He flexed slightly, and the burst of Sophion under his feet propelled his body into a smooth glide through space.
— "Wow... I can fly!"
— "Good, at least you're not completely stupid!"
Arthur smirked, his voice turning ice-cold. "What do you see around you?"
Shin cast his gaze in the direction Arthur pointed.
— "Does it look like Earth's Solar System? Look at those distant planets over there—they all belong to the 10-Planet Federation! Every star system is required to have habitable planets. And you... look behind you!"
Shin turned his head. Appearing directly before his eyes was a massive natural satellite with a dull gray surface littered with ancient impact craters.
— "The Moon...?"
— "We fight there!"
Before Shin could utter another word, a blinding beam of light flashed in Arthur's eyes.
WHOOSH!
At near-light speed, Arthur lunged forward and grabbed Shin by the neck, tearing through space as he dragged him straight down toward the lunar surface! Shin tried to fight back, flailing his fists to knock Arthur's hands away, but the crushing pressure of extreme velocity rendered his every movement useless.
BOOMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!
A terrifying explosion rocked the surface of the Moon! Rocks and regolith dust sprayed out into the cosmos, creating a crater dozens of meters deep.
Arthur bounced back, floating in midair, his eyes narrowed as he looked down into the swirling dust inside the crater. From the broken rubble, a firm hand dripping with Sophion reached out, gripping tightly onto the crater's edge.
BOOM!
Shin shot upward like an anti-aircraft shell! With lightning-fast reflexes, he threw a direct straight punch planted squarely into Arthur's cheek!
CRACK!
The impact sent Arthur flying hundreds of meters back. However, he quickly recovered his balance in midair, kicking off the void to rocket straight back. Arthur delivered an air-tearing roundhouse kick, slamming Shin back down into the depths of the crater!
Without giving his opponent a single second to rest, Arthur spread both hands wide, activating a lethal strike:
PHOTONIC CASCADE: RAY TEMPEST!
Two brilliant light discs condensed over Arthur's palms. From their centers, thousands of high-temperature laser beams reaching tens of thousands of degrees Celsius poured down like a destructive downpour!
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The Moon's surface was continuously plowed over, molten magma spraying everywhere. Shin nimbly sprang up, driving Sophion into his legs to sprint in a zig-zag pattern across the terrain, dodging the torrential rain of light. Wherever Shin ran, Arthur shifted his hands to pursue, unleashing a chain of consecutive explosions sweeping across the stony ground.
Realizing that wide-area attacks couldn't take Shin down, Arthur instantly altered his state:
PRISM BLITZ: RELATIVISTIC SLASH!
SWISH!
Arthur lowered his stance and dove to the surface. Within an infinitesimally short span of 0.0001 seconds, he moved at light speed between thousands of celestial rock markers, producing a dense web of afterimages that encircled Shin.
Shin stood at the center, eyes darting continuously, but his pupils were utterly unable to keep up with this monstrous movement speed. At every stopping point, Arthur unleashed a devastating photonic palm strike aimed straight at the blind spot behind Shin's back!
BOOM!
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— "Ugh!"
Shin took the blow dead-center from behind, collapsing to his knees on the stone floor. Continuous light beams rained down, forcing him to cross his arms to guard, bracing himself against the relentless bombardment.
"He's using the flat ground as a leverage point to reflect his speed... I have to destroy his footholds!" Shin gritted his teeth, inferring the mechanism.
BOOM!!!!!
Shin funneled all his Sophion into his fist and drove it straight down into the ground beneath him! The horrific shockwave propagated outward, shattering the lunar surface into a gigantic cobweb of cracks. Boulders jutted upward, stripping Arthur of the flat footing needed to maintain light speed.
SIZZLE SIZZLE…
Deprived of his movement footholds so suddenly, Arthur's physical body materialized in midair, smoking profusely from unreleased thermal friction.
Shin seized the golden opportunity!
SOPHION GUARD PUNCH: ABSOLUTE PENETRATION!
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Shin's hands, wrapped densely in Sophion energy, turned into a blur of illusions, driving dozens of punches laced with extreme penetrative force directly into Arthur's chest and internal organs! Every single hit caused Arthur to cough up blood, his body jerking like a sandbag enduring a torrential rain of martial arts.
Shin roared as he pounded:
— "You're only good at speed, but once the opening is mine, I'll exploit it to the absolute end!"
Yet, just as Shin was about to deliver a finishing blow—
GRAB!
Both of Shin's wrists were abruptly caught in Arthur's vice-like hands, cold as forged steel!
Arthur raised his head, his face covered in fresh blood, but his eyes bloodshot with wild, unhinged insanity:
— "You really... pushed my rage to the peak!"
CRACK!
Without using energy, Arthur reared back and slammed his forehead directly into Shin's face with all his brute force!
— "Let's see if my head is hard enough for you!"
THUD! CRACK!
A brutal, savage succession of headbutts slammed straight into the bridge of Shin's nose and forehead. Blood spurted from Shin's nose, forming floating red droplets in the weightless environment.
— "You absolute savage! That hurts like hell!" Shin roared, driving force into both legs to kick hard into Arthur's stomach, hurling him away.
— "Shut your mouth, you idiot! That's my combat technique!" Arthur screamed back.
He charged forward and slammed into Shin, pinning him down onto the stone surface before throwing a straight punch into Shin's face. Shin swiftly caught the fist and answered with an uppercut that knocked Arthur's jaw off-center!
Arthur stumbled back, grabbing his jaw with a sharp CRACK to snap the joint back into place. The moment he raised his face, another full-powered fist from Shin smashed right into the center of his face, caving in his nasal bone!
Shin raised his hand high to deliver a decisive blow, but a flustered Arthur ducked to the side. His hand reached out, grabbing Shin's entire face in a firm grip!
Shin's pupils dilated to their limits. Through the gaps between Arthur's fingers, he saw a maniacal grin spread across the man's face, accompanied by a blinding light erupting right inside his palm—
BOOMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!
The photonic explosion right over his face felt as if space itself were being torn apart! Shin was sent spinning through the weightless void for dozens of rotations. The scorching impact knocked him into temporary unconsciousness; the skin across his face burned and blistered under the intense heat, oozing fresh blood that instantly froze in the vacuum.
In his dizzying trance, survival instinct surged fiercely. Shin snapped awake, driving his entire Sophion supply to convert into living cells for hyper-regeneration.
SIZZLE SIZZLE…
His charred skin let out sickening noises as shredded muscle fibers rapidly pulled new skin closed over the wounds. Right at that moment, Arthur's dark shadow slammed down from above! The Federation's Supreme Commander joined his hands together and smashed down from the air!
— "You're going to taste my wrath!"
THUD!!!!!
Shin was battered hard against the lunar stone surface, carving out a deep impact crater. Giving his opponent no room to breathe, Arthur streaked down from above like an arrow tearing through the wind, aiming his accelerated, reinforced knee straight down to pulverize Shin's head!
BOOM!
Shattered rock bulged upward in massive slabs, ancient magma deep underground blown to dust by Arthur's knee strike. But in that life-or-death millisecond, Shin managed to push off and roll to the side, dodging the brutal execution strike.
Both slowly stood up amid the dull gray atmosphere shrouded in cosmic silence.
Shin gritted his teeth as a dark-red aura surged violently from deep within his mind, enveloping his entire body in a blazing energy storm.
CRIMSON-BLACK OVERDRIVE!
— "Fight... to the death!" Shin roared, his eyes turning into two blood-red embers brimmed with murderous intent.
Arthur curled his lip into the cruel smile of a superior being:
— "I like that line of yours!"
RUMBLEEE!
Arthur lowered his center of gravity, bringing his wrists together in a cannon-charging stance. Countless free photon particles throughout outer space were forcibly drawn in by his violent gravitational pull, tightly compressed into a single needle-point at the center of his palms.
HYPERION BEAM: CORE MELTDOWN!
WHOOSH... BOOMMMMM!!!!!
A beam of pure white, infinitely compressed radiation erupted! Wherever the blinding light traveled, the rock on the lunar surface was incinerated into liquid glass. The swath of photonic energy ripped through space, hurtling toward Shin's position at an undodgeable speed.
Yet Shin remained rooted in place. His wild gaze gradually turned resolute and deep as a bottomless abyss.
Just as the destructive beam was a mere inch away from the tip of his nose—
BLACK-RED BATTLE DOMAIN: ENERGY UNWEAVING!
SHATTER!!!!!
A crisp sound like breaking glass echoed through both of their minds. From the foothold beneath Shin's feet, a dark-red spatial hypercube expanded at light speed, engulfing the entire area for hundreds of meters around, completely isolating the battleground from external reality.
Within this black-red space, time and velocity seemed to stall into a crawl. Arthur's colossal photonic cannon beam froze midway upon crossing the boundary of the Domain!
Shin casually walked through the swath of light, his voice quiet and calm:
— "Your energy is powerful... but its structure is far too clumsy!"
Energy Deconstruction & Nullification!
In this Domain, Shin held absolute command over the energy knot network. Countless tiny, dark-red Sophion threads automatically infiltrated Arthur's photonic flow. They operated like a microscopic dismantling engine, unweaving every single energy knot. Upon touching the threads, Arthur's proud Hyperion Beam instantly dismantled into harmless photon particles, dissipating into the air like snuffed-out fireflies!
Arthur's eyes widened, his pupils contracting in unprecedented horror:
— "How... how can this be?! What did you do to my energy?!"
He frantically gathered power, attempting to accumulate photonic energy for his next technique, but everything hit a dead end. In this Domain, Arthur was no different from an ordinary human stripped of all energy control. Every attack was unwoven and dissolved before it could even take form!
Shin stepped closer, his voice ice-cold without a flicker of emotion:
— "I'm just unweaving your energy... Arthur!"
Realizing his absolute helplessness, Arthur trembled as he backed away step by step, his usual arrogant demeanor replaced by utter terror:
— "You... you... bastard...!"
— "Arthur Pendleton, you're done for!"
Giving his opponent no time to think, Shin lunged forward and unleashed a brutal melee barrage! Dark-red punches rained down on Arthur's face, chest, and ribs. The sickening crunch of shattering bone echoed out as his internal organs were completely shredded by the shockwaves. Arthur collapsed, kneeling at Shin's feet, repeatedly coughing up mouthfuls of dark blood.
Just as Shin raised his fist high to deliver a skull-shattering final blow, an unbelievable sight unfolded before his eyes.
Arthur—who had arrogantly and ruthlessly tortured Shin's comrades—now raised his blood-soaked hands together in prayer. Tears and sweat mingled on his pathetic face as he begged frantically:
— "Please... spare... me! I know I was wrong! Don't... don't kill me!! I'll do anything you want, just spare my life! You can even make me your servant... Please!"
Shin froze his fist in midair, disgust flashing in his eyes. But before he could speak—
COUGH!
A mouthful of fresh blood gushed from Shin's mouth! Simultaneously maintaining both his Overdrive state and the high-tier Deconstruction Domain had drained and exhausted the Sophion energy in his body at a breakneck rate.
SHATTER! CRACK!
The dark-red spatial hypercube cracked into thousands of fragments, dissolving into the air and forcibly returning both of them to the reality of space.
Seeing Shin cough up blood and his Domain dissolve, the fear on Arthur's face vanished in an instant, replaced by the sharp, venomous eyes of a cornered beast!
— "Stupid bastard! Then this is my chance!"
Arthur shrieked.
He immediately channeled energy to activate cell regeneration. However—
BEEP!
The energy pathways in Arthur's body remained locked tight due to lingering side effects from Shin's earlier energy unweaving! He was completely unable to regenerate right away!
Right before Arthur's panic-stricken eyes, Shin forcibly dragged himself up. Even with blood smeared on the corners of his mouth, his eyes burned with an unyielding battle spirit. Shin stepped forward, driving every remaining drop of strength into a straight barrage directed right at Arthur's mangled face:
— "Moron! You think I'm that easy to beat?!"
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Shin's Sophion-compressed punches continued to rain down on Arthur's face like a downpour. But just as he prepared to put everything into a final finishing blow, a violent, golden-yellow photonic aura erupted maniacally from every pore on Arthur's body!
BOOM!
The shockwave from the released energy violently blasted Shin dozens of meters away. Shin tumbled several times in midair, landing on the cracked rock surface and wiping the blood from his mouth.
Arthur crawled up, his entire body flickering with distorted streaks of light due to his damaged Sophion pathways. His eyes held none of his earlier terror, but rather the ultimate madness of someone determined to drag everyone down to hell with him.
— "I can't regenerate... So I'll let you witness this ultimate power!" Arthur threw his head back, laughing hysterically in a broken voice. "Even if I lose, I might as well drag you down with me—at least I won't be lonely down there!"
RUMBLEEE!
Arthur bent low, pressing himself against the Moon's surface. He plunged both hands deep into the ancient rock, driving every last drop of his extreme thermal photonic energy and his very life force to execute his last-ditch ultimate move:
LIGHT-SPEED OBLIVION: LUNAR SUPERNOVA!
CRACK... CRACK... CRACK!
From Arthur's palms, millions of blinding white light channels spread at light speed, piercing through thousands of kilometers of rock and pumping a tens-of-thousands-of-degrees heat flow straight into the heart of the Moon's core!
Recognizing the destructive shift in the entire geological structure below, Shin's pupils contracted. A spine-chilling sensation warned him of impending death!
— "He wants to destroy the whole Moon!" Shin gritted his teeth, immediately exploding what little energy he had left in his feet, spinning around to rocket out into deep space in a desperate escape.
But it was too late! The combination of hyper-compressed photon energy and an internal nuclear explosion exceeded the structural limits of the celestial crust.
HISS... BOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!
In the quiet void of space, a blinding ring of light erupted like a dying star! The gray surface of the Moon fractured completely. The massive celestial body exploded into a miniature supernova, shattering into billions of burning meteor fragments dripping with molten lava that blasted across space!
Shin looked back. Even though he had pushed himself thousands of meters away, the residual heat wave and impact force of the explosion still swept over his body!
BOOM!
The horrific heat incinerated his outer clothes entirely, inflicting severe burns across his entire body. The shockwave from the lunar explosion blew past Shin's defenses completely, blasting him backward at terrifying speed toward the atmosphere of the Federation planet below!
WHOOSH... BOOMMM!
Shin's body was pulled down by the planet's massive gravitational field. He shot through the dense atmosphere like a living, blazing meteor, trailing a dark-red fiery tail that tore through the night sky.
His energy was entirely depleted. Agonizing pain from his horrific burns blurred Shin's vision. Amid the deafening roar of the wind and the friction fire raging around his free-falling body, Shin's consciousness wavered…
He looked up at the night sky illuminated by thousands of falling lunar fragments, then slowly closed his eyes. A final thought drifted through his mind as it sank into darkness:
"I'm... falling... Am I... going to... die...?"
SIZZLE... WHOOSH…
Shin's flame-wreathed body continued its violent plunge toward the surface of the Federation planet, leaving a tragic streak of light across the sky.
(To be continued)