The dragon form ability had not left his baseline physique untouched, the muscle density and fra carrying the permanent modifications of an ability that had been active and developing for long enough to change the underlying structure. His hair was long and green, which was unusual in a way that registered imdiately, and his expression, settling from the disrupted comfort of a mont ago, carried the elevated self-regard of soone whose recent experience had confird their view of themselves at regular intervals.
Behind him in the domain interior, three won, visible in various states of having been engaged in sothing when the gate opened.
Adam looked at Neil with the particular quality of assessnt that began with physical comparison and did not find what it was looking for and arrived at a conclusion that was missing significant information.
Neil opened his mouth.
"Neil Yates."
Randy’s voice ca from three tres behind him, and Neil turned to find the warden of Settlent Number 2 standing there with his arms folded and the expression that appeared on his face when a situation was developing in exactly the direction he found most personally beneficial.
He had apparently been nearby. Or had been inford. With Randy the distinction was not always clear.
"Were you going to do this without telling ?" Randy said, with the tone of soone who already had their answer and was enjoying the confirmation.
"I was going to challenge him and inform you afterward." Neil said.
"Those two things are the sa from where I am standing." Randy said, unfolding his arms and walking forward. He looked at Adam with the shift in expression he used when addressing soone under his jurisdiction in an official capacity, the ease dropping to sothing with more authority underneath it. "Adam."
Adam had straightened when Randy appeared and his expression had put on its thin layer of respect over the arrogance, not replacing it but covering it adequately for the purpose.
"Warden Randy." He said, with the required nod.
Randy gestured at Neil with the easy movent of soone making introductions at a social event.
"This lord is challenging you." He said. "Domain stake. Core for core." He looked at Neil. "Am I characterising this correctly."
"Yes." Neil said.
Randy looked back at Adam with the particular expression of soone who was already thinking several steps ahead.
"I am going to set up a proper venue." He said. "I need to recover so of what I spent last week. Be ready in a few hours."
Adam looked at Neil with the reassessed attention of soone retrieving and evaluating the information they had filed under rumours, and his expression moved through several stages of processing before arriving at sothing that was still fundantally dismissive but was doing more work to maintain itself than it had been a mont ago.
He had heard things. Neil could tell from the quality of the look that the rumours from the recent event had reached him, though clearly in a form that had not fully resolved into a picture he was taking seriously.
"The core." Adam said, slowly. He appeared to be thinking about sothing other than the core. "Not particularly interesting to as a prize." He let a mont sit. "How about this. If I win, I choose two people from your domain." He said it with the casual confidence of soone who has already decided the outco and is arranging the aftermath. He had apparently heard about the people in Neil’s domain and ford specific opinions about them.
Sothing in Neil’s jaw tightened in the way it tightened when he had been annoyed by sothing he was not surprised to be annoyed by.
"No." He said, flatly. "Core for core. That is the only condition I am offering."
Adam looked at him for a mont, the calculation happening behind his expression with the visibility of soone whose inner processing was not fully concealed.
He was apparently concluding that the condition of the prize did not matter significantly because he intended to resolve the question of prizes by ending Neil in the fight and taking everything at once, which would make the specific agreed terms academic.
"Fine." Adam said. "Core for core."
Randy clapped his hands together once with the energy of soone initiating a process he had been managing in his mind since the mont he arrived.
"Excellent." He said. "I will have the venue ready. Midday. Both of you, the open area near the eastern market district." He was already moving as he said this, pulling out his communication device and beginning a series of contacts that suggested the event arrangents were more elaborate than the tiline implied.
The open area near the eastern market district was large enough for the kind of fight that involved transformation abilities and the spatial implications they carried, and when midday arrived the crowd surrounding it was considerably larger than the short preparation ti should have produced.
Randy had apparently made very efficient use of his few hours.
He was standing at the edge of the arranged space with the settlent figures he had called in, talking with the animated quality of soone who had multiple financial interests active simultaneously and was enjoying the managent of all of them.
Adam arrived with an entrance that communicated he had thought about it, walking to his position with the deliberate stride of soone who was aware of being watched and had opinions about how being watched should feel for the observer. He wore his baseline physical presence like armour even before the ability activated, and he looked at the assembled crowd with an expression that was performing for them and found the performance comfortable.
He looked across at Neil and smiled, which was the smile of soone who believed they already knew the conclusion and was entertaining themselves in the interim.
Neil stood at his position and looked at Adam without expression and without performance.
The crowd distributed into its natural factions, a portion aligned with Adam based on his track record and his presence and his Diamond class rank, and a portion aligned with Neil based on whatever they had absorbed from the recent event and the particular quality of sothing they could not fully articulate when they looked at him.
Randy’s signal-person gave the start.
Adam did not escalate gradually.
The scales ca up imdiately across his skin, dense and overlapping, the dragon form asserting itself in the first two seconds with the confident speed of soone who had used this ability enough tis that the transformation was reflexive rather than considered. His fra expanded, his face shifted into the broad reptilian structure of the form, his tail extended behind him and his claws ca forward with a dark and viscous coating that was the poison he had prepared before arriving.
He had treasures active, Neil could feel the supporting energy signatures layered through the transformation, defence enhancents and essence circulation boosters and sothing for survival in the event the opening exchange did not close things, and he ca across the space between them with the full committed energy of soone going for an imdiate finish.
The claw ca forward on a trajectory and at an angle that were both visible to Neil from the mont Adam’s shoulder committed to the direction of the strike, and the killing intent behind it was clean and unambiguous.
Neil threw his fist forward.
Not a technique or an ability or any of the various tools available to him. A punch, with the full weight of a Mythic class body carrying peak third Origin energy, completely converted and saturated, thrown at the precise point and mont that the incoming trajectory opened.
The impact was singular.
Adam’s large body, scales and all, hit the ground and the transformation dissolved in the way transformations dissolved when the person maintaining them was no longer in a position to maintain them, scales receding, dragon form releasing, the body on the ground ordinary and still.
The crowd was quiet.
Randy, at the edge of the space, made the sound of soone who had hoped for a longer entertainnt and was processing the absence of it, a sound between a click of his tongue and an exhaled breath.
"That is." He said, and did not finish the sentence.
The crowd noise that ca after the silence carried the specific quality of people recalibrating what they had seen, the conversation that happened when sothing had concluded before the frawork for watching it had fully assembled.
"One punch." Soone said nearby.
"He did not even draw anything." Soone else replied.
Neil turned and walked in the direction of Adam’s domain.
The gate was unlocked when he arrived and he walked through without stopping, across the courtyard and into the main building, following the core’s energy signature through the interior. The domain’s three residents had apparently been watching through the barrier and had not co out, which was a reasonable decision given the circumstances.
He found the core room at the back of the main building, the door closed but not secured with anything aningful, and he pushed it open and walked in.
The core sat in its housing in the centre of the small room, second Order Diamond class, the energy of it solid and dense and well maintained, exactly consistent with what Nemo had described and exactly what he needed.
He took it.
The weight of it in his hand was the weight of the final piece in a sequence that had been running for so ti, and he held it for a mont with the uncomplicated satisfaction of completion before putting it in his coat.
❖❖❖
Thanks for reading... adios
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