A jagged bolt of violet lightning speared down from the heavens, detonating across the battlefield. Its reach spanned dozens of meters, its target Axel, but Terrence was caught at the very edge of the blast.

Thunder roared, deafening and merciless.

And in that same instant, Axel's and Terrence's blades finally met, the collision detonating with a blast that shook the snow-swept ground like the world itself was coming apart.

The place where Axel and Terrence had just stood looked as if a high-yield TNT bomb had gone off. Snow blasted into the air, swirling in a blizzard of white as shockwaves tore outward. The ground itself rippled, snow rolling in waves like an ocean storm.

At the epicenter of the strike, silence. A vast white crater yawned, the earth sunk nearly ten meters deep.

Cough… cough.

The haze of snow still hung thick, obscuring the view, but a faint sound leaked out. Terrence.

He stood just beyond the impact zone, exhaling sharply as his gaze shifted toward a figure in cyan robes a hundred meters away.

"Rook," he muttered, voice edged with annoyance. "You ruined a fight I was actually enjoying."

The robed man—Rook, last survivor of Stormwatch—staggered, drained, and dropped heavily to the ground. His tone was sharp, bitter.

"You enjoyed it. I wanted results. And I took out that musclehead too. It's over."

That strike had been his ultimate skill, one he hadn't even used against Eagle's Crest Command. Half a minute of chanting and charging for a single detonation—but its power was monstrous. If not for Terrence's emergency teleport crystal, he'd have been done for too.

Axel's presence was gone, erased. Terrence let out a quiet sigh and tossed aside the shattered crystal, only to glance up at the floating list in the sky. The next instant, his body stiffened.

Shh!

Axel's name hadn't disappeared.

A fraction of a second too late, realization dawned. The Red Flame Blade carved a bloody gash across Terrence's arm.

Terrence's eyes dropped, catching sight of a faint dusting of white powder clinging to Axel's palm. His lips curled. "So… you had that little trick too."

He didn't strike back. Axel looked like hell—hair scorched, skin burned, body covered in cuts that still crackled faintly with leftover lightning.

Why bother? Terrence thought. Even if Axel still had a hidden weapon, he was finished.

From the sidelines, Rook chuckled weakly. "Persistent bastard. But that's it. He's done. Just give me a couple minutes to recover, and I'll finish him off." Relief bled into his words. Axel had been a nightmare, but now the fight was finally over.

Or so he thought.

Because Axel's mouth twisted into a hideous grin, teeth bared like a demon's. He spoke a single word.

"Enough."

Rook barked out a laugh, ready to mock him—then froze as Axel casually snapped his fingers.

Boom!

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Flames tore through Terrence's body from the inside out. His flesh erupted like an IED had gone off beneath his skin. Bones shattered, and blood poured from his eyes, ears, and nose.

The blast blinded both Rook and Terrence, white light consuming the field. Bradley's voice bellowed in panic from somewhere beyond:

"Hurry! Heal him—now!"

And just like that, silence fell. Terrence's name vanished from the sky.

Axel still stood, charred and barely human, smoke curling from his ruined body. Alive or dead, no one could tell.

Rook could only stare, terror clawing through his gut.

What the fuck… how could this even happen?

Inside the Landscape Scroll, silence. Every team, every fighter turned toward Stormwatch's shattered peak, stunned.

Terrence lay crumpled, blackened like charcoal, vomiting streams of blood. His eliminated teammates crowded around him in panic as medical staff unleashed healing skills in hurry.

But all anyone could think, all anyone could whisper was the same:

"Terrence… what the hell happened? How did Axel pull that off?"

At Eagle's Crest Command, Sergio exhaled, gaze steady.

"High-sequence awakening talent. A pile of Original Instruments. Even a spatial crystal. Terrence's loss was well-earned."

His teammates turned.

"Keep watching," Sergio said, eyes never leaving the battlefield. "It's almost over."

Only then did they all realize—the fight wasn't finished.

But Axel was on the verge of collapse.

Could he put Rook down before the man recovered?

That question burned in every mind, the entire arena holding its breath for the answer.

...........

"You—what the hell did you do to him?!"

Rook's voice cracked, trembling. No one knew Terrence's toughness better than he did.

But then he clenched his staff. Not now.

His whole body still shook from the backlash of his ultimate skill, but one truth hammered in his skull: Axel had to die, here and now.

"Damn it," Rook muttered through clenched teeth. "Why won't my body listen?!"

He was still too drained. Recovery would take time—and Axel was dragging himself closer, step by bloody step.

Relief flickered across Rook's face as he watched. At this pace, Axel wouldn't reach him for at least a minute. The bastard was running on fumes, hanging by a thread.

Rook's gaze softened. "I'll admit it—I admire you. Taking Terrence out like that? Impressive. When we're out of here, Terrence will probably want to be your friend… hell, I would too. But this is still a competition, isn't it—"

The words froze in his throat.

Because Axel, burned and broken, had just pulled something from his charred armor.

A pistol.

Rook's eyes went wide.

The entire Landscape Scroll went silent. At their level, ordinary firearms were worthless. Everyone knew awakened abilities eclipsed anything a handgun could do. Who the fuck would bother carrying one?

Bang!

The first shot cracked, the bullet streaking forward with a faint ripple of Force. It smashed into Rook's forehead, embedding deep but not shattering bone. Blood spilled down his face.

Bang! Bang!

Two more rounds slammed into his skull. Rook's vision blurred red, his head jerking under the impacts. One round punched his eyelid, and pain detonated in his eye like it was going to burst out of his skull. Blood streamed down his cheek, his vision swimming.

Axel kept coming, step by step, every footfall crunching the snow louder than the gunshots. Burned black, bleeding from every pore, he looked less like a man and more like some demon clawing its way out of hell.

The gun thundered again. And again.

Finally, Rook broke. "Let me out! Let me out!"

In a blink, Bradley appeared at his side. He casually caught a bullet between two fingers, then sighed at Rook. "You said it yourself."

He looked at Axel then, expression grim. It wasn't the bullets that had broken Rook—it was Axel's sheer will, his refusal to ever back down. That was what had crushed him.

"Axel, you win," Bradley declared. "Get him medical treatment—now."

Axel's lips twisted into a faint smile. Then his body gave out, collapsing into the snow.

The last thing he heard before darkness swallowed him was Bradley's roar echoing across the arena:

"Medics! Now!"

.....

High atop the sixteen isolated peaks, the students of the War Academy were dead silent.

The final image seared into their minds: Rook on his knees, blood dripping from his eyes… and Axel, charred to a husk, still dragging himself forward, pistol in hand.

No sparring match at school had ever come close to this. This was survival. This was real.

From an outside perspective, if Axel had run dry on ammo, and if Rook had recovered, he could've struck back. But no one mocked him. Because deep down, they all knew—they wouldn't have stood firm either against that.

"We fucking won, Yara!" On Bloodstone Warfare's peak, Yakov's scream shattered the silence, manic with joy. "Axel did it—we're the champions!"

Beside him, Yara blinked herself back from shock. Slowly, a smile—rare and unguarded—spread across her face. She flung herself back onto the mountain peak, arms out, eyes on the dark sky above.

"Yes… we won. He really did it. He's going for the championship."

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