The silence that followed Alice’s declaration wasn’t empty. It was heavy. Alive. Laden with intention. For a brief mont, the entire labyrinth seed to hold its breath, as if even the runes that supported that ancient structure recognized that sothing had changed. It wasn’t just a fight between participants. This had transcended the scope of the tournant.
Alice remained motionless after saying she would kill him.
Not as an empty threat.
But as a logical conclusion.
On the other side, Shiva—still occupying Shura’s body—watched her in absolute silence. His eyes, which had previously held analysis and curiosity, were now different. Deeper. More alive. And then... a smile appeared.
It wasn’t a polite smile.
It wasn’t a light smile.
It was broad. True. Dangerous.
And, above all... excited.
"...Interesting."
The word ca out low, almost like a satisfied whisper. His shoulders relaxed, and he turned his neck slightly, as if testing the body he occupied. The air around him began to vibrate, not from pressure, but from presence. It was as if reality itself were being pressed by sothing far greater than that space should contain.
"You just declared your intention to kill a god... and there was no hesitation."
He took a step forward.
The ground didn’t crack.
It simply yielded.
It sank a few milliters, as if unable to support the weight of that existence.
"I like this."
The next instant, he disappeared.
There was no transition.
There was no preparation.
Just absence.
And then—
The impact.
Alice raised her arm the exact mont Shiva appeared before her, his fist descending with absurd force. The clash between the two generated not only a shockwave—it warped the air. The space around them curved for an instant, as if pressed against itself.
The sound ca next.
A dull rumble that echoed through the labyrinth’s corridors, making entire walls vibrate.
Alice wasn’t thrown far.
But the ground beneath her feet collapsed.
It sank.
It shattered.
A crater instantly ford beneath her.
Even so... she remained firm.
Her feet adjusted their weight.
Her body absorbed the force.
Her eyes didn’t waver.
She responded.
No visible magic.
No preparation.
Her fist advanced.
Direct.
Precise.
Impact.
Shiva tilted slightly, dodging by milliters, and counterattacked with a side strike. Alice rotated her hip, aligned the movent, and blocked with her forearm, redirecting the force to the ground. The stone exploded beneath them, unable to withstand the transfer of energy.
The two disappeared again.
And then the labyrinth began to break.
They appeared and disappeared every fraction of a second, colliding at different points in the corridor. Each impact created larger fissures, each exchange of blows generated shockwaves that pierced walls, traversed rooms, pierced entire structures.
It was no longer a contained fight.
It was destruction in motion.
Alice advanced with absolute precision, each blow calculated, each movent optimized. But now there was sothing more. Her magic was no longer support—it was part of the combat. Incantations echoed in her voice, ancient words intertwining with her movents.
"Fortify."
Her fist descended.
The impact generated an explosion.
"Gravity."
Her kick descended.
The air was crushed along with it.
Shiva took a half-step back.
And laughed.
"That’s it! More!"
He advanced with even greater speed, his movents no longer rely martial arts. Now there was sothing more. Each of his gestures carried pure destruction, as if the very idea of ruin were being applied directly to combat.
His next blow wasn’t aid solely at Alice.
It was aid at the space around her.
The impact ca from all sides at once.
Alice was forced to erect a barrier.
It ford instantly.
And shattered in the sa instant.
The force surged through.
And for the first ti... Alice was launched.
Her body traversed the corridor like a projectile, passing through one wall, then another, until finally stopping inside a wide chamber, sliding across the floor until it stabilized.
Silence.
For a second.
Two.
And then she stood up.
Without haste.
Without hesitation.
A small trickle of blood ran from the corner of her mouth.
She touched the spot with her finger.
She observed.
"I understand..."
Her aura intensified.
Not chaotically.
But dense.
Controlled.
Focused.
And then... she disappeared.
The next impact happened before Shiva could even finish taking his next step.
Alice appeared beside him.
Fist.
Straight.
The blow hit him squarely.
This ti... he was thrown.
His body crashed through three consecutive walls, engulfed by a wave of destruction that spread through the labyrinth like a straight line of impact.
And it didn’t stop there.
Alice appeared again.
And again.
And again.
Each blow pushed Shiva further, like a continuous sequence, without pauses, without room for recovery.
Until—
He stopped.
His foot dug into the ground.
The final impact was contained.
He raised his head.
And smiled even more.
"Perfect."
His aura exploded.
Not as energy.
But as presence.
The air around them crumbled.
Literally.
The nearest walls began to crumble to dust, unable to maintain their shape under the pressure. The runes that supported the labyrinth began to fail, their lines shining irregularly, unstable.
Above, in the stands, the reaction was imdiate.
The audience, once noisy, began to fall silent.
Not by order.
But by instinct.
This... was no longer entertainnt.
Sothing was wrong.
Very wrong.
The entire labyrinth structure began to vibrate, fissures spreading like cracks in glass. Projections began to fail, images distorting, parts of the map simply disappearing.
In the control center, tension exploded.
"This is not within paraters!"
"Energy levels are exceeding the limit!"
"If this continues, the labyrinth will collapse!"
But no one could stop it.
Because inside...
Alice and Shiva were no longer fighting within the rules.
They were imposing their own.
On the battlefield, Alice took a deep breath.
And then spoke again.
But this ti... it wasn’t a short incantation.
It was long.
Complex.
Ancient.
Words that shouldn’t be used in a space like that.
The ground beneath her feet began to float.
Fragnts of stone rose up around him, slowly swirling.
Gravity... was being rewritten.
Shiva watched it.
And his smile... vanished.
Not from fear.
But from recognition.
"...Ah."
He tilted his head slightly.
"Then you can do this too."
He raised his hand.
And the world responded.
The space between them distorted violently, as if being pulled and compressed at the sa ti.
And then—
The two advanced.
This ti... there was no single impact.
There was rupture.
The point where their blows t... disappeared.
It didn’t explode.
It didn’t collapse.
It simply ceased to exist for an instant.
A gap.
A void.
And then the explosion ca.
The entire labyrinth trembled.
Entire parts of the structure crumbled.
Rooms collapsed.
Corridors were extinguished.
And for the first ti...
There was a real risk.
If this continued...
It wouldn’t just be the tournant that ended.
It would be everything.
And yet—
Alice advanced again.
And Shiva... too.
The clash between the two didn’t end in the explosion.
It lingered.
As if the world itself had been forced to sustain a conflict that shouldn’t exist in that space, the released energy didn’t simply dissipate—it remained. Hovering. Vibrating. Distorting everything around like invisible waves that insisted on propagating.
The point where their blows had t remained unstable.
The air there... trembled.
As if it were still being torn apart.
Alice was the first to erge from the cloud of destruction.
Her body lurched forward even before the dust had fully settled, her feet not touching the ground in a conventional way—she ignored it. The gravity around her was misaligned, fragnted in multiple directions that she controlled as if they were invisible threads attached to her fingers.
Her eyes were different.
There was no more curiosity.
There was no more passive analysis.
Now there was intention.
Active calculation.
Execution.
She raised her hand.
And the space before her fragnted.
It wasn’t a visible spell. There was no magic circle, no words this ti. It was a direct application. Brutal. Precise. The reality before her shattered into invisible plates, each displaced at slightly different angles.
And then she closed her hand.
The plates collided.
The impact wasn’t audible.
It was structural.
An instantaneous compression of space that surged forward like a wave.
Shiva appeared within her.
He didn’t flinch.
He pierced through.
His body surged against the compression as if breaking through a current, his muscles tensing not against matter, but against concept. His hand opened, and with a single movent, he tore the effect in two.
Literally.
As if he had grasped sothing physical.
As if he had enough strength to part space with his bare hands.
He appeared before Alice in that sa instant.
His fist ca from below.
Ascending.
Alice crossed her arms.
The impact ca.
And this ti... she didn’t stand still.
Her body was launched upwards.
Not like before.
Now there was real displacent.
She burst through the ceiling of the chamber they were in, breaking through stone, runes, and magical structures as if they were paper, rising in a straight line until she reached an upper layer of the labyrinth.
Shiva didn’t jump after her.
He was already there.
His foot dropped.
Alice spun her body in the air, adjusting her trajectory, and blocked with her leg. The impact between the two created a circular wave that simply... swept through the surrounding space. The remaining ceiling shattered into fragnts, and for a mont, the artificial sky above the labyrinth was visible through gigantic cracks.
Laminated glass.
Runic.
Designed to contain.
And yet... it was cracking.
Alice spun in the air and landed on one of the stone fragnts still floating around, her hand sliding down her arm as thin lines of energy rearranged themselves on her skin.
She was adjusting.
Optimizing.
Refining.
Shiva watched her.
Then he tilted his head slightly.
"You learn too fast."
He disappeared again.
Alice didn’t follow him with her eyes.
She didn’t need to.
The instant he appeared behind her, her body was already moving. She spun, lowered her center of gravity, and dodged by centiters the blow that would have co straight to her head. Her hand touched his wrist—not to block.
To read.
Minimal contact.
Maximum information.
She let go.
And stepped back.
Three steps.
Not out of necessity.
Out of calculation.
Shiva advanced.
Now faster.
Heavier.
His blows began to change. They were no longer just refined techniques—there was variation, unpredictability, changes of rhythm that followed no pattern. It was as if he were deliberately breaking the logic of combat.
And Alice... watched.
Processed. She adapted.
A blow ca high.
She dodged.
Another ca low.
She blocked.
The third... changed mid-movent.
She didn’t react.
She already knew.
Her body responded before the blow fully materialized, intercepting the attack with her elbow, redirecting the force and using the movent itself to spin and counterattack.
Her fist struck Shiva’s face.
The impact didn’t throw him.
But it made him recoil.
One step.
Just one.
And then... he laughed.
Really.
"That’s it! That’s it!"
His aura exploded again, denser, heavier, compressing the surrounding space like an absurd gravitational force. The ground—or what remained of it—began to sink, fragnts being pulled down as if being swallowed.
Alice felt it.
And responded.
She opened both hands.
And pulled.
But she didn’t pull the ground.
She didn’t pull the air.
She pulled... his own gravity.
For an instant, the forces reversed.
Shiva was launched upwards.
Not by impact.
But by inversion.
And at that very instant, Alice appeared above him.
Her fist ca down.
Straight.
Amplified.
The blow struck his abdon.
And this ti... there was displacent.
Shiva was launched back down like a teor, piercing multiple layers of the labyrinth, leaving a trail of vertical destruction that tore through the entire structure down to lower levels.
The final impact was... catastrophic.
An entire column of the labyrinth collapsed.
Rooms were swallowed.
Runes failed in a chain reaction.
And for the first ti since the beginning of the tournant... the central system partially collapsed.
Lights failed. Projections disappeared.
And the map... ceased to exist.
In the stands, panic began to rise.
"They’re going to destroy everything!"
"This is beyond control!"
"Stop the fight!"
But no one moved.
Because there was no one who could enter there.
Not anymore.
At the bottom of the impact, surrounded by debris and fragnts of stone floating in an unstable gravitational field... Shiva stood up.
Slowly.
His body was intact.
But his eyes...
Now they were different.
There was no more lighthearted fun.
Now there was sothing deeper.
Ancient.
More serious.
He looked up.
Through the shattered layers.
Straight at Alice.
And spoke.
"...Enough warming up."
His body shifted posture.
His feet beca firm.
His arms relaxed at his sides.
But the pressure...
The pressure exploded.
Not like before.
Now it was overwhelming.
The space around him began to truly collapse, as if compressed by an invisible, uncontainable force.
And then... sothing awakened.
It wasn’t visible.
It wasn’t announced.
But it was felt.
Even outside the labyrinth.
Even by the gods.
Alice... smiled.
For the first ti.
It wasn’t a child’s smile.
It wasn’t curious.
It was small.
Confident.
And dangerous.
She took a step forward.
And answered.
"...Great."
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