The arena had beco a war zone, the reinforced floor designed to withstand Kryptonian punches and extre magical attacks had been reduced to a cratered wasteland of twisted tal and exposed wiring. Arthur Blackwynd stood with his shadow armor smoking, his Lightning Spear spinning lazily in his right hand, and an expression of mild disappointnt on his face.
Elias in his golden knight form swung his greatsword in an arc that would have bifurcated a small mountain. Arthur didn’t dodge, instead he stepped a single pace forward, inside the blade’s reach, where its montum ant nothing and the flat of his spear cracked against the knight’s gauntlet, hard and precise.
The gauntlet shattered and golden light bled from the wound.
"IMPOSSIBLE.." Elias’s voice bood.
"Your weight distribution is off," Arthur said conversationally, sidestepping a desperate backhand from the knight’s other arm. "You’re favoring your dominant side. It makes you very predictable... try not to do this against the other Monarchs, this will lead to your death."
He drove his spear into the knight’s knee joint.
The leg buckled and he crashed downward, Elias inside screaming in frustration. Before the he could recover, Arthur was already moving, not toward the fallen knight, but toward the storm of lightning and wind that had been circling him for the past ninety seconds.
Renshiro’s Storm Incarnate struck like a hurricane, four katanas, each wreathed in lightning, each trailing compressed wind blades, descended on Arthur from four impossible angles simultaneously. Arthur moved between them.
Step. Turn. Duck. Spin.
Each katana missed by a margin that shouldn’t have been possible. Not because Arthur was faster than lightning, though he was, but because he had already read the pattern three moves ahead.
"You circle the sa way every ti," Arthur said, now directly beneath the storm spirit’s central mass. "Clockwise, always clockwise. It’s a bad habit."
"WHAT?!"
Arthur drove his fist upward into the spirit’s chest.
Not with his weapon, and not with Ruler’s Authority. Just his fist, wrapped in shadow armor, driven by strength that had no business being contained in a human fra.
The impact broke sothing. Cracks spread across the storm spirit’s torso, blue-white fractures and Renshiro’s face contorted, his eyes wide in a mix of pain and disbelief.
"That’s.." the Japanese Hunter gasped.
"Your spiritual body," Arthur finished. He grabbed one of the four spectral arms, yanked, and the entire form lurched forward off-balance. "It’s powerful. But it’s still you. And you’ve been fighting on empty since the transformation started."
Arthur’s palm pressed against the spirit’s chest.
Ruler’s Authority exploded outward, not a grip this ti, but a shove. A wave of pure will that hit the Storm Incarnate.
Renshiro’s spiritual body manifistation detonated.
Blue-white fla scattered across the arena in a thousand fragnts, each one fading as it touched the ruined floor. The Japanese Hunter’s real body tumbled through the air, small, fragile human, and crashed into the far wall with a sickening crack.
He slid down and didn’t move.
The golden knight, Elias, still struggling to rise, froze as he saw that.
"That idiot.."
Arthur didn’t look back. He was already walking toward the fallen Hunter, his footsteps crunching on broken tal. He crouched beside Renshiro’s unconscious form, checked his pulse with two fingers, and nodded.
"Alive," he called out. "And exhausted, He’ll wake up with a headache and wounded pride."
He stood and turned to face Elias.
The Iron Knight had finally climbed back to his feet, both of them, though the shattered knee joint made his spiritual form flicker. The greatsword ca up, its edge still glowing, its wielder still defiant.
"I am not finished," Elias growled.
"No," Arthur agreed. "You’re not."
He raised his Lightning Spear.
And waited and Elias didn’t. The knight lunged with no grace, his greatsword swept horizontally, trailing a wave of aura so dense it carved a trench through the floor as it traveled.
Arthur sidestepped. The wave passed him, struck the wall behind, and opened a gash that went through three layers of reinforcent.
Elias pressed. Aura Blade Projections, golden crescents of divine light launched from the greatsword in rapid succession, each one so fast, each one aid with the precision of a master swordsman.
Arthur wove through the first five yet the sixth grazed him.
His shadow armor scread, the light-based attack carved a furrow across his left shoulder. Not deep and not crippling but it was there. A thin line of red welled up through the black armor, and Arthur’s eyes was on it for just a second.
’Not bad,’ he thought. ’He actually clipped .’
Then he smiled.
"Good," Arthur said.
And threw his Lightning Spear.
The violet javelin crossed the distance between them in less than a mont, faster than light. It struck the golden knight’s chest plate dead center, right where the heart would be if the his armor had one.
CRACK.
The sound was divinity breaking.
Cracks spiderwebbed across his torso, golden light bleeding from every fracture. The spear didn’t stop it drove, carrying the four ter tall knight backward across the arena, its feet leaving furrows in the floor, until,
SLAM.
The spear pinned Elias to the far wall.
The golden knight hung there, impaled, its light flickering. The greatsword slipped from its grip, crashing into the floor.
Elias gasped. Blood dripped from his nose. His arms trembled as he reached up both hands closing around the shaft of Arthur’s spear protruding from his chest plate.
"I can still go..." he rasped, his voice cracking. "I can still... go on..."
He pulled and the spear wouldn’t budge.
He pulled harder, his muscles scread, golden light pulsed erratically around him, his spiritual body manifestation destabilizing.
Smoke curled across the arena floor and from within that smoke, a figure erged. Walking casually. His shadow armor smoking where the light graze had burned him.
Arthur Blackwynd stopped in front of the pinned golden knight.
Reached up and pulled his Lightning Spear free.
Elias’s spiritual body dissolved exhaustedly. The golden light crumbled like ash, falling away to reveal the man beneath: smaller now, human now, his armor cracked, his face pale. He dropped to his knees on the ruined floor, both hands pressed against the ground, breathing in ragged gasps.
"You did good," Arthur said quietly.
Elias looked up, disbelief warring with exhaustion in his eyes. His mouth opened,
Then a white-violet blur scread across the arena.
Arthur moved.
The energy spear, if it could be called that wasn’t aid at him. It was aid near him. Arthur sidestepped, but the projectile curved, its trajectory bending impossibly, drawing him into its path rather than striking directly.
He twisted at the last second. The spear passed within inches of his face, close enough for him to feel its gravity pulling at his skin.
His eyes snapped toward the source.
Ethan Jones, the teenager stood at the opposite end of the arena, his form was still intact. The halo rings behind his head spun slower now. The white-violet armor flickered and his chest rose and fell in sharp, controlled breaths.
But his hands were already forming new spears.
Arthur didn’t dodge the second one. Or the third. He watched them curve, watched them bend, watched them try to trap him in a web of gravitational pull rather than pierce him.
’Interesting power.’
Arthur murmured to himself, low enough that even Superman’s hearing might have missed it: "I know what the Rulers can do, so I’m quite certain Rulers don’t have these kinds of..."
He stopped and his eyes widened in realization.
Arthur’s gaze lifted to Ethan’s flickering form.
The teenager was exhausted. Barely standing. His attacks were losing cohesion, the spears wobbling in flight, their gravitational fields unstable.
But the nature of them.
"You’re a tahuman," Arthur said.
Ethan’s next spear wobbled mid-flight. He caught it, dismissed it, his brow furrowing.
"Or at least," Arthur continued, walking slowly toward the teenager, his spear dangling at his side, "you were before further awakening as a vessel of a Ruler. It amplified your original powers."
He stopped ten ters from Ethan and cocked his head.
"I get it now."
Ethan’s chest heaved. Sweat dripped down his face. His halo rings flickered again for a mont.
"I have no idea," Ethan said between breaths, "what you’re saying."
Arthur studied him. The exhaustion, the flickering form, the way his hands trembled even as they ford new weapons.
"I know you can’t keep up that form much longer," Arthur said. "So do your best now, as fast as you c an."
For a mont, sothing sparked in Ethan’s tired eyes.
Then he moved.
’KING’S DOMAIN.’
The words weren’t shouted. And the White-violet energy exploded from Ethan’s body in a perfect sphere, expanding outward in every direction.
Everything around him beca subject to his gravity.
The floor cracked from the enormous weight. Ethan floated at the center, his halo rings blazing, his eyes white with power.
And Arthur stood inside the ’King’s Domain’ with his feet planted, his shadow armor rippling against the pressure, his expression... calm as ever.
"Hmm," he said.
"HMM?!" Ethan’s voice cracked.
"You’re spreading the effect too wide," Arthur said. "Up to a kiloter, right? That’s what I’m sensing, but against a single target, you’re wasting energy, you should compress it. Focus it, and make it hurt."
Ethan’s jaw tightened.
He lunged.
No more energy spears. No more fancy techniques. Just fists, wrapped in white-violet gravity, swung with the desperation of soone who had nothing left to lose.
Arthur dismissed his Lightning Spear, it vanished in a crackle of violet lightning, and Arthur raised his hands open and waiting.
Crack.
Ethan’s first punch. Arthur blocked it with his forearm, the impact sending shockwaves through the already ruined arena.
Crack. Crack. Crack.
Three more punches. Arthur deflected each one with minimal movent a tilt of the head, a shift of the shoulder, a redirection that sent Ethan stumbling past him.
"You’re telegraphing," Arthur said.
Ethan spun, swung again.
Arthur caught his fist.
His fingers closed around Ethan’s knuckles, and the gravity pressing down on him seed to pause, uncertain how to respond.
"You’ve got power," Arthur said quietly. "More than the other two idiots. But you’re still thinking and fighting like a child."
Ethan’s eyes burned and he swung with his other hand.
Arthur released the caught fist, swayed under the punch, and drove his palm into Ethan’s abdon.
It wasn’t a hard blow. Not by Arthur’s standards. But it was precise a spike of force that targeted the solar plexus, that bypassed the gravity armor, that found the soft, exhausted human beneath the celestial form.
Ethan folded, his knees hit the cracked floor. His hands pressed against the ground, holding him up by sheer stubbornness. Blood, red and wet dripped from his lips onto the broken tal.
His form flickered then shattered.
The white-violet armor fell away in fragnts, dissolving into light that faded before it touched the ground. The halo rings spun one last ti, then winked out. Ethan Jones, the teen, bleeding, trembling, barely conscious knelt in the ruins of the arena, his spiritual body manifestation gone.
He tried to stand.
His legs wouldn’t cooperate.
Arthur raised a hand.
"I resign from this fight."
Ethan looked up, his vision blurry, his mind struggling to process the words. "...What?"
Arthur crouched down, bringing himself to the teenager’s eye level. The shadow armor receded from his face, revealing the calm, almost gentle expression beneath.
"You heard . I resign."
"But you won." Ethan’s voice cracked. "You beat us. All three of us. You.."
Arthur shook his head.
"This wasn’t about winning or losing to ."
He stood, offering a hand to the kneeling teenager. Ethan stared at it like he’d never seen a hand before.
"I wanted to understand sothing," Arthur continued. "And see where you stand right now." He smiled, small, genuine, without mockery. "And I got it." Ethan’s hand rose slowly. Trembling. He took Arthur’s and the Shadow Monarch pulled him to his feet.
/-\
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