Bang! Bang! Bang!
The battle continued for minutes on end, becoming a constant exchange between Damien and Bianca as the former tried to break the latter's barrier and the latter tried to limit the former's movements.
Xiu!
Damien's body shot through the air, zooming in random patterns to avoid the hail of stone shards rapidly bursting towards him.
Every time they impacted the arena barrier, they caused frightening cracks to form. Even the audience could no longer cheer due to fear.
"Elders, now!"
A voice came from outside the arena. Without anyone realizing it, a group of enforcement elders had arrived on the scene. They galvanized their mana, sending it into the barrier to strengthen it with all their power.
The cracks soon healed and the barrier strengthened.
The foremost elder watched the ongoing battle with a look of trepidation. They'd only just arrived yet the two geniuses within forced them to use all their power to contain the battle. If this continued…
"Call for reinforcements immediately! We need the High Elders to support us if we don't want the entire coliseum to shatter!"
The elders hurriedly moved to contain the destruction. Meanwhile, within the arena, the battle was only becoming more heated.
Flames and lightning billowed from Damien's body and clouded the atmosphere, destroying any projectiles coming his way.
He landed on the ground and glared at his opponent.
[Storm]
Crackle!
Furious lightning clouds formed in the sky. Silver Heavenly Lightning surged within, booming as it impacted the ground around Bianca.
Still, the strange crystalline shield she'd erected was incredibly powerful. Even as the third strongest lightning in the universe impacted it, it remained unharmed.
Bianca raised her arm from within the safety of the barrier and commanded the world. Her mana raged around her and sunk into the earth.
'Arise, my legion!'
The earth trembled fiercely as cracks spread through its surface. The ground below seemed to mold itself and take shape, rising into the air and turning into a row of soldiers that separated Bianca from Damien.
'Attack!'
The rock army charged. They acted as if they had independent consciousnesses of their own, circling around Damien and blocking his escape routes. Once their formation was complete, they attacked.
'Tch!' Damien scoffed as he battled them back. Mirage swung through the air and parried the close-ranged attacks that got near him while he wielded Freya in his other hand to rapidly diffuse any projected attacks flying at him from afar.
'I knew it wasn't going to be easy, but I didn't think it would be this bad!' Damien thought to himself. From the moment space was sealed near the start of the battle, he'd been placed at a disadvantage.
After all, this sealing wasn't something rudimentary that Damien could break easily. He would need to dedicate a portion of his focus to the barrier and a portion of his mana to his All-Seeing Eyes to find a weakness, and even with this, it'd take a few minutes to do so.
Bianca, however, didn't give him the opportunity to divide his attention. Each of the rock soldiers she summoned had the power of an early 4th class, and while they were individually weak enough for Damien to handle them easily, their combined power wasn't a joke.
Boom!
Damien's sword clashed against the rock sword of a nearby soldier. While he attempted to parry, a spear shot towards his abdomen!
'Dammit! Freeze!'
Time slowed to a crawl. Damien watched as the spear moved through space, but he knew it was already too late to dodge completely. In a last-ditch effort to preserve as much strength as he could, he slightly moved his body to the left to avoid the brunt of the spear's tip.
Spurt!
Time resumed thereafter. The spear cut a gash in Damien's side but failed to pierce him. Damien parried the sword and spun around, sending a mana-infused kick into the spear-wielding soldier's head with immense force.
Bang!
The soldier's head burst. While it was dazed by the damage, Damien retreated dozens of steps and maneuvered his way out of the encirclement.
'I can't continue like this. She knows my mana capacity is great so she's trying to wear me down. The Storm trait is forcing her to stay within her barrier, but looking at the way her mana is flowing, she doesn't have to actively provide it to these soldiers for them to move. Compared to the mana it takes her to maintain her barrier and the spatial locking artifact, I'm in a much worse position if I keep wasting time on these soldiers…''
Damien's eyes hardened. He wiped the blood off his lips and took his sword stance.
'Void Sword Art Third Form: Dance of the Void'
His body became a haze. While Dance of the Void's usage was severely limited when Damien couldn't travel through space, that didn't mean he couldn't use it.
He just had to use time as a substitute.
Rather than flickering in and out of existence, he was simply moving fast enough to emulate the same effect.
And through this…
Xiu! Xiu! Xiu!
The slashes Mirage made through the air were like zipping bees. With every movement he made, another head went flying into the air.
The group of soldiers originally had over twenty members, but in an instant, that number had been reduced to below ten.
Still, the soldiers weren't the main priority.
'Shackles of Earth! Tsunami!'
Bianca stomped into the ground, causing the rock below to fluctuate like waves of the sea. The ground rose and rose and rose until it formed a towering wall almost as high as the coliseum's peak.
The rolling rock wave then pulsated and pushed forward, sweeping away everything in its path!
At the same time, the rock soldiers around Damien shattered and merged, turning into thick spikes that jutted out of the earth and stabbed into Damien's body. The change was so quick that he didn't even have time to react!
Two spikes impaled his calves while ten more jutted into various parts of his back. Damien gritted his teeth and shattered the spikes, scattering dust and debris in all directions.
He winced in pain soon after. With pieces of rock trapped in his muscles, Transcendent Regeneration couldn't properly heal him. And while he could expel these rock fragments with just an instant of time…
The earthen tsunami was already upon him. Its towering appearance blocked his vision of everything else. An overwhelmingly powerful mana fluctuation wrapped around his body as his face turned dignified.
"Hoo…" Damien exhaled a slow breath.
His mind raced, everything in the surroundings seemingly slowing down as his processing speed surpassed the rate at which they moved.
He closed his eyes.
Mirage raised above his head.
A strange current of mana covered its blade. Spacetime essence gathered and empowered the sword.
And then…
Damien swung it with all his might. He didn't aim at the tsunami and he didn't aim at Bianca who was hidden behind it. He slammed Mirage directly towards the ground with every last ounce of his power!
He'd been training every facet of his being in recent months. Whether it was his elemental abilities, his physical body, or even his mind, they'd all seen an increase in fortification.
He'd been wondering to himself for a long time what it would be like to destroy a world.
And when he realized he had the power to do so already, inspiration struck him like lightning.
The result…
'Void Sword Art Sixth Form: Worldbreaker'
Mirage struck the ground. The essence trapped within combined with the sword's aura and submerged into the ground.
Crack!
Cracks began to spread through the earth.
Crack! Crack! Crack!
The cracks widened and widened, creating a web thousands of feet across. The web of cracks raced to the base of the earthen tsunami and spread behind Damien to cover the entirety of the arena that he could access at the moment.
And finally, when the cracks finished spreading…
BOOOOOOOOOM!
The body of Death Emperor Star itself exploded.
