The giant lifted its foot.
With one step, the entire arena’s ground trembled.
The massive longsword dragged in its hand, the blade cutting into the ground, leaving a bottomless trench as rubble and dust sprayed to the sides.
Audric stood still, his body covered in a pale golden scale armor, his vertical pupils fixated on the approaching giant.
Then the giant swung its sword, a strike executed with full might.
The longsword swept upwards from below, the silver-white gleam from its edge almost solidified, surging skyward like an inverted waterfall.
The mont the sword edge touched him, Audric vanished.
His figure left a pale golden afterimage in the air, which was torn apart by the sword’s light, but his real form had already appeared fifty ters away in mid-air.
Boom—!!
The sword’s light struck the arena’s ground.
The entire arena shook violently.
A hundred-ter-long fissure extended forward from the sword’s impact point, wide by several ters, and bottomless.
Rubble and dust shot skyward but were blocked by the space barrier, forming a gray curtain that blotted out the sun.
Exclamations erupted from the stands.
But this was only the beginning.
The silver-white giant gave Audric no respite.
Though clumsy-looking at twenty ters tall, its speed defied the impression given by its size.
The second sword struck horizontally.
The crescent-shaped sword light swept across, covering over one hundred and fifty ters.
As it passed, the air was shredded, and space warped slightly.
The silver-white crescent light blade, like Death’s scythe, swung to sever Audric in mid-air.
Audric soared higher.
He executed three successive leaps in the air, narrowly avoiding the edges of the sword light each ti.
On the final leap, the sword’s light grazed the sole of his foot, vaporizing a floating piece of rubble beneath him.
"Crash—!!"
The sword light struck the opposite wall of the arena.
The entire stone wall protected by reinforced witch arrays was sliced with a hundred-ter-long terrifying crack.
Countless runes flickered frantically at the crack, trying to repair the damage, but the silver-white light lingered, severely hindering the speed of repair.
In the stands, many people stood up.
The scale of this battle had gone beyond what most could imagine.
Duke sat in the corner, eyes locked on the scene.
He could see Audric’s state; that guy was dodging, always dodging.
He never took a strike head-on, always moving just before the sword arrived, always just barely avoiding it, always letting Leon’s attacks miss.
But Duke also noticed sothing else.
Audric was observing.
Those pale golden vertical pupils hadn’t drifted away from Leon since the battle began.
He watched the giant’s movents, its speed, the energy expended with each sword strike, and noted the changes in brightness of the two silver-white flas.
Audric was waiting for an opportunity.
The silver-white giant continued its assault.
The third strike ca down, adding another hundred-ter crack to the ground.
The fourth strike swept across, causing the arena’s eastern stone wall to collapse completely.
The fifth strike thrust out, the sword tip piercing through three layers of reinforced witch arrays, leaving a cobweb-like crack on the space barrier.
The sixth, seventh, eighth strikes...
The arena floor was unrecognizable.
The originally flat gray-white rocky ground was now crisscrossed with fissures, the deepest of which revealed flowing spatial energy below.
Rubble piled up like mountains, dust hung like mist, and the entire venue looked as if a teor shower had struck repeatedly.
The silver-white giant stood in the center of the ruins, its surrounding glow still fierce.
But its breathing had beco erratic.
The brightness of the two silver-white flas was dimr than when the battle began.
A barely perceptible dimness, one almost no one would notice.
Audric noticed it.
He hovered mid-air, his entire body enveloped in intact pale golden scale armor, without a scratch.
His vertical pupils were locked onto the giant’s chest, where Leon’s true body was located.
He was still waiting.
The silver-white giant raised its longsword once more.
This ti, it didn’t imdiately slash down. Those silver-white fiery eyes fixed on Audric in mid-air, the glow from the helt slit flickering intensely.
"All you can do is dodge?" The giant’s voice echoed from all directions, with a tallic quality.
Audric smiled slightly.
He didn’t reply.
The silver giant remained silent.
With both hands gripping the sword, he raised the longsword high above his head. The runes engraved on the sword’s body all lit up, with seven holy silver crystals simultaneously bursting into dazzling radiance. The silver light shot up from the sword’s blade, piercing the spatial barrier above the arena, stirring wave upon wave of intense ripples.
All the light, all the power, converged into this single strike.
This strike was his final power.
This strike, he gave it his all.
Audric’s smile froze.
His pupils suddenly contracted.
Because he understood, this strike was not aid at him. It was aid at the entire arena.
Once this strike descended, the entire arena could be split in two.
Audric didn’t dodge anymore.
He hovered quietly in midair, watching that longsword accumulating destructive power.
Then, he smiled.
The smile was no longer the previous casual, aristocratic smile, nor the excitent of a hunter locking onto his prey.
It was sothing deeper, ancient, as if erging from the depths of his bloodline.
Audric raised his right hand.
His five fingers spread open.
Behind him, a massive golden vortex suddenly appeared.
The vortex, over a hundred ters in diater, slowly rotated in the void.
The edges of the vortex were a bottomless gold, growing brighter towards the center, until it beca almost blinding at the exact center.
At the center of the vortex was an eye.
A giant, tightly shut eye, seemingly from an ancient dragon.
The contours of that eye, every fold of its eyelids, every fine scale covering the eyelids, were clearly visible. It remained quietly closed, yet exuded an aura that made the entire arena tremble.
In the stands, countless people slumped in their seats.
So were pale, so trembled all over, so instinctively clutched their chests, feeling as though their hearts were about to stop.
It was suppression from the deepest part of the bloodline.
It was the innate pressure of a higher life form against a lower one.
The silver giant’s sword finally descended.
The heaven-destroying, earth-shattering silver sword light, carrying the power to cleave the spatial barrier, slashed towards the golden vortex in midair.
Just as the sword light was about to touch the vortex—
The eye opened.
Golden vertical pupil.
A thousand, ten thousand tis larger than Audric’s vertical pupil.
The eye rely opened, rely gazed at the sword light.
Boom!!!
In midair, the sword light shattered directly.
Like glass hitting steel, like fla falling into the deep sea, like all worldly forces eting an ultimate existence, the only outco.
The silver giant’s body trembled violently.
The two clusters of silver flas flickered madly, then extinguished.
The twenty-ter tall giant began to disintegrate.
Starting from the head, the silver armor flaked away piece by piece, turning into countless points of light that scattered.
Then the shoulders, the chest, the arms, and the longsword still held in its grasp.
When the last trace of silver light dissipated, Leon’s figure appeared at the center of the ruins.
He knelt on the ground, covered in blood.
Leon’s eyes were tightly shut, his head drooped powerlessly, and his entire body slumped forward, falling into the rubble around him.
Motionless.
Above the arena, the golden eye slowly closed, and the golden vortex dissipated along with it, as if it had never appeared.
Audric landed on the ruins, the pale golden scale armor on his body already gone, returning to his dark red robe.
The robe remained unstained, not a speck of dust, not a crease on it.
He walked to Leon, looking down at the unconscious figure.
His face bore no expression.
No mockery, no disdain, not even the pride of a victor.
Only calmness.
As if it had all been predestined from the start.
In the stands, a deathly silence.
After a long, long ti, soone trembled, and asked a question:
"What... what was that..."
No one could answer.
Duke sat in the corner, his gaze on the fading remnants of the golden vortex.
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