Shadows in the arena twisted and converged, forming a massive bell. A lightless appendage struck it with force, and a deep gong echoed through the air, reverberating in Serpentine's bones.
A loud gong echoed through the arena, reverberating in his bones, marking the start of the fight.
'What–'
As if on queue, alarm bells started to ring in Serpentine's head, and he acted on pure instincts, tilting his head, pulling in his belly, and stepping to the side.
He dodged six needles, leaving a yellow streak behind as they drilled into the wall of the arena, leaving an imperceptibly miniature puncture behind.
'Holy hell, he's got Light Manipulation, Needles, and the Throwing Enchant at the same time!?'
His eyes immediately latched onto the serpentine kobold, who gripped eight more needles between his fingers, his predatory eyes shining with an emerald glow. A yellowish-white flare emulsified them, and they shot towards the demon.
But Serpentine was no slouch either, his eyes fixating on the kobold's clavicle, his peripheral vision studying his microexpressions and twitches.
Cold reading. Physiognomy. Kinesics. Oculesics. And neurolinguistic programming.
Before Surend even shot his needles, before the kobold even knew his own actions, Serpentine had long since read him with picture perfect accuracy, voiding every needle with ease.
If he could not react once they were fired, he simply dodged before the kobold shot them.
Surend halted his barrage, eyes narrowing as he realized the futility of his attack. But the kobold wasn't alone. Serpentine ducked beneath a spiked flail whistling past his head and vaulted over the second with fluid ease.
Adam's twin flails danced in perfect synchrony as he spun midair air to conserve the rotational force of the spiked spheres, and pulled them back to strike Serpentine. The demon hopped back, sidestepped, and ducked with relative ease, his arms crossed behind his back as the ground beneath his feet was smashed to mere debris.
Two more needles shot at the back of his head, but Serpentine had already sensed them with his unfair spatial awareness, voiding them with minimal moment.
For a full minute, it wasn't a fight – it was a dance. Serpentine weaved through every strike with effortless grace, his movements minimal, the only casualty being the arena crumbling around him.
"He'ssss dodging... before I move. How?" Surend hissed, his forked tongue flickering.
"Stay focused." Adam commanded, eyes narrowing, "It isn't reflex. It's calculation."
Slowly, the two assailants slowed their attacks to a halt. A moment of silence passed, before Serpentine teased, "Will that be all, my good sir? Or is the main dish yet to come?"
Surend hissed, his forked tongue flickering out to accentuate his nod. "Yessss, we needed to asssscertain... that you wouldn't dieeee... from our full capasssscity."
Adam did not speak, though he did nod in agreement, retracting his combat posture for a quick and respectful bow, before he resumed his stance.
'And now the fight begins.' Serpentine grinned.
He had noticed that neither used their Enchantments, and barely used their powers, so he could tell they were testing him.
Black lightning crackled between his fingers as he curled them into a fist, mobilising the void energy.
Void Zone.
An ability that could restrain, suppress, or simply erase any concept within the zone, as long as you had sufficient understanding of the concept.
Though he had never used this power before, relevant knowledge and muscle memory had already been imprinted, digested, and integrated into his body, and now he was ready to test it out.
"Let's go!" He shouted, dashing towards Surend as he left Adam in the dust, or at least tried to.
'!?'
He felt his body being pulled away from the ground, blood rushing to his head as he suspended midair, before being yanked into the flail's trajectory, four needles aiming for his heart.
'Gravity Control!?'
Unfurling his two pairs of wings just in time, he barely managed to dodge them both, still fighting against the force of attracting that pulled him towards the spiked balls, feeling the heat from the needles rising as a layer of sweat coagulated on his sideburn.
'I may be starting to regret my decisions.'
Or so he thought, his danger sense screaming as he sensed the needles make a shape curve in their trajectory, returning to puncture his throat. As if that weren't enough, three more needles shot at him, one for his throat, heart, and brain respectively.
'I– is he manipulating them to home in on me!?'
The only saving grace was that they seemed to lose their light speed once they forcibly changed their trajectory, but even then, this meant that he had to dance and dodge both the flails and an ever increasing count of needles.
'Don't panic. Find the pattern. Exploit the fla– screw it, I'm going all in.'
Taking a gamble, the demon broke through the gravitational field of both the spiked balls, trying to land a powerful punch on the human's jaw. However, gravity seemed to be against him – it did not push against his blow, but redirected enough for it to miss the man's face.
And then, Adam's jaw unhinged, clamping down on Serpentine's arm with the crushing force of intensified gravity. At the same moment, needles struck the demon's back, searing his flesh.
Serpentine screamed, a chunk of his flesh being bit off from the sheer force of the bite, a throbbing warm sensation invading his back, burning him with a stabbing agony as he started to lose sensation in the parts of his wings that were stabbed.
'The needles, they are laced with necrotic poison!' The demon realised, but it was too late.
However, he was not one to let an opportunity slide, as he overwhelmed the flesh with void energy, which exploded in his mouth like a bio-bomb, temporarily shutting his neural network, his gravitational prowess as his flails missed their target, and eliciting shocks both neurogenic and cardiogenic.
Pivoting midair, Serpentine slammed the back of his intact arm against Adam's shoulder blade, dodging yet another needle in the process. Two more shot at him, but this time, he grabbed the stunned human by his Adam's apple, crushing it as he used the man as a meat shield against the needles.
'Shi–'
But the needles simply shot through Adam, and pierced straight into Serpentine's abdomen, the infection ruining his blood flow as his cells started to die.
'How the hell–'
As if that wasn't enough, the human – his neural network shut down, his Adam's apple crushed, his lungs afflicted with necrosis– woke up, and did not even acknowledge his pain as Serpentine felt a crushing grip of gravity directly constrict his heart, crushing it.
"You– you– you animal!" Serpentine screamed out, bloody foam spurting from his mouth, spilling onto Adam's face as his eyes widened, muscles stiffening.
"You bit me!"
A powerful kick rattled his ribcage, pushing him away from the demon.
'Alright Serpentine, focus.'
As if on instinct, his arm shot like a bullet, a black aura emulsifying it as he caught one of the needles with his bare hands.
Surend's eyes went wide, and he reacted on instinct, shooting eighteen whole needles – meant not to harm the demon – but to contain him as Adam shot away.
Cracking his shoulder, he grumbled at the infection spreading through his veins.
"Alright, I think I have seen enough." He muttered, a black aura encapsulating his body.
'!?'
There was no visible effect, but Surend could feel it.
His poison, and the infection alike, they were gone.
Serpentine staggered a step forward, snapping Surend out his reverie as he groaned to Adam, "How the hell are you still walking?"
That was a fair question, if not ironic as his own heart was completely and utterly crushed.
Adam didn't reply, glancing at Surend as their eyes met, a silent agreement as they dove back into action, several needles shooting in the direction of the demon as Adam ran straight towards the kobold.
Serpentine did not move, letting Adam reach the kobold, who passed him a glass flask with a luminescent white fluid inside. He gulped it down, and immediately, his wounds began healing at a visible rate.
'An Alchemist.' Serpentine mused. The necrotic poison and regeneration options gave away his archetype.
Ignoring them for a brief moment, he closed his eyes with a deep breath, letting his spatial awareness scan the battlefield, and his instincts drive the body as he focused.
'The concept of poison.'
A black aura spread from his body in an elliptical zone, within which, all necrotic infection was cured, though the damage already done remained.
Surend and Adam looked wary, not wishing to enter the black miasmic field, but they didn't have a choice, as the demon ran straight to them instead, the ground shattering under his feet as he ran with abnormal speed.
The kobold immediately looked alarmed, not only infusing his light manipulation into the needles, but also forming a giant stake of golden light on his right, and a large, spiked whip forged on his left, all three of his weapons diving down to attack, control, and defend against the approaching menace.
But it was useless.
'The concept of light.'
The black miasma suddenly expanded tenfold, and within it, light dimmed before everyone's eyes to complete darkness.
A cloud of absolute lightlessness.
Surend felt his heart skip a beat, as he tried to artificially generate light – all to no avail, as the very concept of light had ceased to exist.
With his serpentine vision, he could still see the demon rushing straight at him, but in his stupor, failed to react as the creature rammed into his ribcage with his shoulder at a titanic speed.
Adam's flail swung between the two, forcing them to separate, before his second spiked ball swung towards Serpentine, shattering the ground as it was dragged through the earth, the very shards of rocks shooting towards him like bullets.
But that too was useless.
'The concept of gravity.'
The next thing Adam knew, his world shifted. The ground vanished under him, and he floated, weightless and powerless, adrift in the void.
His senses were in disarray, both sight and gravity gone, his balance in chaos as his blood flow grew chaotic. But there was nothing he could do, as he had already bounced off the earth, and his powers too were stripped away.
No light. No gravity. No poison. No healing.
In the weightless gravity, a terrifying chill seemed to emanate from the lack of heat. Added with the suffocating pressure from facing the demon, Surend and Adam felt as if they were drowning in the deepest trenches of the ocean.
Four wings beat powerfully, as Serpentine shot towards Adam, trying to grab him by the throat, but even without his powers, Adam was no slouch, as he nimbly voided his grip, and twirled around the arm, using it as leverage, an axis to rotate around the demon and put him in a chokehold.
Something he regretted dearly as a single powerful elbow shattered his liver, but that only served to tighten his grip like a python.
In the weightless void, relying on the infrared vision and echolocation of his serpentine senses, Surend crawled towards the demon, gripping needles between his feet as he clawed his way in the absence of gravity.
His serpentine eyes gleamed with predatory focus, needles poised to pierce the demon's body.
Six needles were shot, each accurately puncturing a pressure point, immobilising Serpentine further.
Blood foamed from Serpentine's mouth, bile from Adam's, both locked in a deadly, tightening chokehold, suspended in the weightless void.
Adam's grip tightened like a python's, crushing the life from Serpentine, but the demon refused to submit. His wings twitched weakly, limbs numb with a paralyzing chill.
"Just... stay... down!" Adam grunted through his clenched teeth, his voice straining, the sound of cracking molars echoing in the demon's ears.
"I... will... not!" The rogue choked out, a bloody, morbid grin marring his face, mocking the human who strangled him and the kobold who tried to claim his life alike.
But as Surend approached the beast, his needle piercing for a final strike, Serpentine reared his head, lunging like a serpent lying in ambush, and his teeth sank into flesh.
Surend's eyes widened in horror as the demon tore a bloody chunk from his throat. Blood sprayed into the void, the kobold's breath gurgling into silence.
However, his last strike rang true, his needle lacerating Serpentine's throat, ripping through his jugular, flesh, trachea...
...and sliding right into Adam's eye.