The impact between the two produced not just a shockwave—it produced resistance. Not in the physical sense, but in the concept of combat. For the first ti since the beginning of the confrontation, Vergil felt sothing that wasn’t simply inferior opposition being overco; there was a return. There was a response. Angelo’s fist didn’t just et his—it lingered there for an instant longer than it should have, sustaining the collision as if trying to comprehend, absorb, decompose that contact into usable information.
Vergil perceived this instantly.
And he acted.
His arm spun, diverting the line of force, while his body advanced inside his opponent’s guard with surgical precision. His elbow rose in a short arc, straight for Angelo’s jaw, a compact, efficient strike, designed not to destroy, but to interrupt.
The impact ca.
Angelo’s head snapped back violently, his body montarily losing stability, and Vergil didn’t waste the opening. His foot slid across the floor, rotating his hip as he delivered a side kick that struck his opponent’s torso with enough force to send his body crashing through two consecutive walls.
Stone exploded.
Runes shattered.
The corridor collapsed in a straight line of destruction.
Silence.
For a split second.
And then... movent.
The debris shifted.
Not naturally.
Fragnts of flesh, bones, and that undefined structure that made up Angelo began to reorganize themselves even before stopping completely. There was no pause, no latency. Reconstruction was already underway before the impact even finished echoing.
Vergil walked.
Without haste.
His steps were silent over the rubble, his eyes fixed on that process that no longer seed curious to him—now it was a problem to be solved.
"You don’t just respond..."
His voice was low, almost inaudible.
"...you anticipate."
Angelo erged from the wreckage even before the dust had completely settled.
And he attacked.
But this ti... the attack wasn’t direct.
It wasn’t brutal.
His body spun slightly before the blow, altering the angle, adjusting the trajectory, eliminating wasted movent. It was subtle—imperceptible to most—but not to Vergil.
He tilted his body.
The blow passed.
By milliters.
But Angelo didn’t stop.
His second attack ca in the sa motion, connected to the first like a continuous sequence, without interruption, without restarting. A flow.
Vergil blocked.
But, at the instant of contact, he realized.
The force had changed.
It was no longer just power.
It was direction.
Angelo wasn’t just attacking.
He was learning to apply force.
Vergil took a step back.
And that, in itself, was significant.
It wasn’t a retreat out of necessity.
It was strategic repositioning.
But still... it was the first voluntary movent he’d made since he’d started fighting physically.
Angelo advanced again.
Faster.
More precise.
The space between the blows decreased.
The adaptation wasn’t gradual.
It was exponential.
Vergil turned his body, dodging an upward blow, and responded with a sequence of three quick attacks—fist, elbow, knee—each coming from a different angle, with slightly off-kilter rhythms, purposefully breaking any predictable pattern.
The first one hit.
The second one too.
The third...
Was partially blocked.
Vergil stopped.
For a fraction of a second.
And, in that instant, sothing inside him adjusted.
He’s not just learning movents.
He’s learning principles.
Angelo didn’t wait.
His counterattack ca imdiately, a downward blow that carried more weight than any before. Vergil dodged, but not completely this ti. The impact grazed his shoulder, enough to dislocate it a few centiters.
A few centiters.
It wasn’t much.
But it was enough.
Vergil looked at his own shoulder for a mont.
There was no significant damage.
But there was contact.
And that...
That shouldn’t have happened.
A smile appeared on his lips.
Small.
Constrained.
But genuine.
"I understand..."
He looked up again, no longer seeing Angelo as a passive object of study, but as an active, evolving system.
"You’re not getting stronger..."
Angelo advanced.
"...you’re becoming more efficient."
The next clash was more intense.
The two collided in the center of the destroyed corridor, their blows eting in a sequence too rapid to be followed by the naked eye. Each impact produced a shockwave, each exchange of movents generated air displacents that ripped fragnts from the remaining walls.
Vergil had changed.
His movents beca less linear.
Less perfect.
He began to introduce imperfections.
Small deviations.
Minimal delays.
Unexpected accelerations.
Not through failure.
But through strategy.
He was breaking the pattern.
And Angelo responded.
Not imdiately.
But fast enough.
His body hesitated for milliseconds—enough ti to indicate processing—and then adjusted again, correcting the reading, reducing the impact of the variations.
Vergil noticed.
And, for the first ti since the beginning of the fight... he frowned slightly.
This isn’t simple adaptation.
It’s convergence.
He’s not trying to keep up.
He’s trying to reach a point where difference doesn’t matter.
Angelo attacked again.
Vergil blocked.
But this ti, the impact pushed him.
Not much.
But more than before.
The ground gave way beneath his feet, opening fissures that spread across the corridor.
Vergil slid half a step back. And then... he stopped.
His gaze deepened.
The interest was no longer rely intellectual.
It was strategic.
If this continues...
He won’t just resist.
He’ll match them.
A second of silence.
In the midst of the chaos.
Vergil breathed.
Calm.
Controlled.
And then...
He advanced.
But not as before.
His movents changed again.
They were no longer just variations.
Now there was sothing more.
Layers.
False patterns.
Movents initiated and interrupted.
Strikes that never materialized.
Trajectories that dissolved mid-way.
He was no longer fighting efficiently.
He was introducing noise.
Useless information.
Contradiction.
Angelo responded.
But, this ti, there was a failure. His movents faltered for a mont, his body trying to follow multiple possibilities at once, unable to determine which one was correct.
Vergil took advantage.
His fist pierced the guard.
Direct impact.
Angelo’s body was thrown back, crashing through another wall, but this ti... it took longer.
The regeneration didn’t stop.
But it hesitated.
Milliseconds more.
A small break in the flow.
Vergil remained motionless.
Observing.
Confirming.
But then...
Angelo rose again.
And, this ti...
His body didn’t try to follow all the patterns.
He ignored them.
He simply discarded them.
And chose.
Vergil saw.
And understood.
"...You’re filtering."
The voice ca out lower.
More serious.
He’s not trying to learn everything.
He’s learning what matters.
The next attack ca.
Direct.
Simple.
No variation.
But... precise.
Vergil blocked.
And, in the instant of impact, he realized.
The force had increased again.
But not through brute amplification.
It was optimized application.
No waste.
No loss.
Angelo had discarded complexity.
And beco more efficient.
Vergil took a half step back.
This ti... no choice.
Silence.
For a mont.
The two stared at each other.
And, for the first ti since the beginning of the fight...
Vergil wasn’t just interested.
He was engaged.
His smile returned.
Sharper.
More defined.
"...Now that’s more like it." His hand slid back to Yamato’s hilt. But he didn’t pull it.
Not yet.
Because he knew.
If he went back to the blade now...
Angelo wouldn’t be the sa target anymore.
The air around them vibrated.
The pressure increased.
And, in that instant... Vergil understood sothing he hadn’t expected to need to consider.
This fight... wasn’t one-sided. Not anymore. And, if he made a mistake... even just once... this could cease to be an experint. And beco... a real problem.
...
...
...
The impact of the walls crumbling under the weight of the battle had ceased to be an isolated event and had beco a constant. Alice could no longer tell if they were still inside a labyrinth or just walking through their own rubble, forcibly shaped by blows that tore through stone, magic, and space with equal ease. Shiva advanced with his destructive dance, each step a sentence, each turn an inevitable collision, and Alice was dragged along in this infernal rhythm, thrown from side to side as if the very scenery were being redrawn around them. The air burned, vibrated, distorted, unable to withstand the growing intensity of that exchange.
Alice passed through another wall, her body breaking through structures as if they were made of paper, until finally rolling across the floor of a wide circular chamber. For a brief mont, silence prevailed—not from a lack of energy, but from the strange calm that central space carried. It was different. Ancient. As if that point in the labyrinth existed before everything else, as if it were the heart of sothing much older than any combat present there.
She stood up slowly, her mind working at an absurd speed, analyzing everything—the structure, the flow of mana, the density of the air, the residual vibrations. It wasn’t intentional. Neither of them was looking for that. They simply... destroyed the path to get there.
Seconds later, Shiva passed through the opposite wall like a force of nature, landing with impossible lightness in the face of the devastation he caused. His eyes were fixed on her, his expression carried an almost joyful intensity, as if he had finally found sothing worthwhile. He said nothing. He didn’t need to. The dance continued.
But then, sothing else moved.
A heavy, deep sound echoed off the still-standing walls. It wasn’t magic. It wasn’t refined energy. It was brute, instinctive, primal force. Sothing that existed to kill.
From the shadows in the center of the arena, he erged.
The Minotaur.
Gigantic, grotesque, his body seed sculpted for war, muscles as dense as stone, breath as heavy as thunder, eyes blazing with a blind fury that didn’t distinguish between allies and enemies. He didn’t hesitate. He didn’t analyze. He didn’t think.
He charged.
The ground trembled beneath his steps, each impact echoing like a war drum, his overwhelming presence filling the space as his blade—enormous, brutal—was raised to split everything before him.
But Alice and Shiva didn’t move imdiately.
For a mont... they stopped.
There was no verbal communication. No exchange of glances. But sothing was understood. A montary, instinctive, inevitable synchronicity. It wasn’t cooperation. It wasn’t an alliance. It was simply... efficiency.
The Minotaur roared, leaping, its weapon descending with a force capable of splitting mountains.
And in that very instant—
They moved.
Shiva advanced with a step of his dance, his body spinning, energy condensing in his arm with absurd precision, while Alice erged from the other side, her posture firm, her eyes cold, calculating the exact point of impact.
Two blows.
Simultaneous.
Perfect.
The impact was silent.
There was no explosion. No visible shock. Just... result.
The Minotaur’s body froze in the air for a second that seed to stretch infinitely.
And then—
It shattered.
Not dramatically, not in a grotesque explosion, but in a clean, absolute cut, as if its existence had simply been... negated.
It fell. Dead.
Instantly.
Silence returned, heavy, strange, almost uncomfortable after the intensity of what had happened.
Alice slowly lowered her arm, her eyes still analyzing what remained of the creature, processing every detail. There was no significant resistance. No adaptation. No variation in pattern. It was just an entity programd for brute force. Predictable. Limited.
"Weak," she murmured, more to herself than to anyone else.
Shiva, on the other hand, let out a slight sigh, almost disappointed, his energy still pulsing as if ready to continue. He looked at the fallen body, then at Alice, and a small smile appeared on his lips.
"That... was a waste," he comnted, his voice carrying a mixture of boredom and expectation.
But Alice didn’t answer.
Because sothing had changed.
The air.
The structure.
The very space around them.
She slowly raised her gaze, her eyes narrowing, no longer analyzing the Minotaur... but the surroundings.
"Center identified," she said, her voice calm, yet deeper, carrying a different weight.
The labyrinth... wasn’t just destroyed.
It was... reacting.
The remaining walls began to move, not like physical constructions, but like sothing alive, rearranging, rebuilding, trying to adapt to the new reality created by that battle. The space vibrated, lines of energy ran across the floor, rising up the walls, redrawing the scenery as if trying... to defend itself.
Alice watched everything, absorbing, understanding.
"Interesting..." she murmured, her fingers moving slightly, as if already tracing possibilities.
Shiva tilted his head, his expression becoming more animated as he perceived the change.
"Ah... so it’s not over yet," he said, his aura growing again, as if the re idea of continuity was enough to rekindle his interest.
Alice didn’t answer imdiately.
Her eyes shone slightly.
Calculating.
Predicting.
Learning.
Because for her... this wasn’t just a fight.
It was an experint.
And now...
The labyrinth had also beco a part of him.
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